First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 2, No. 5, June 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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May Day 1977 was a smashing success! In New York City and Los Angeles, a militant detachment of the U.S. working class, under the leadership of the Workers Viewpoint Organization, marched 1000 strong in step with the proletariat of the world – as one army, under one flag, with one aim! In boldly proclaiming our lofty aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat and Communism, and making the streets ring with the Internationale, the battle hymn of the international proletariat, we declared war on the monopoly capitalist class.
The militant and spirited demonstrations were overwhelmingly proletarian in character and composition. In New York alone, a thousand workers and their families, led by communists marched through the working class communities of the Lower East Side in disciplined fashion, shouting chants and slogans that burned with anger and hatred for the rotten system of capitalism, and calling out “The Workers Solution is Socialist Revolution!” The rally which followed the march was a rich program of proletarian culture – songs, poems, dances and speeches – which helped push forward the militant and lively proletarian spirit of May Day, and which further unleashed the initiative and enthusiasm of the workers and cadre. This, the largest May Day demonstration in the U.S., truly shook the foundations of monopoly capitalism!
In the course of mobilizing for May Day, the Workers Viewpoint Organization has deepened our ties with the masses, and has gained valuable experience in winning and training the advanced workers and ourselves and in rectifying shortcomings in our methods of work. The Workers Viewpoint Organization has truly emerged as the foundation for the genuine Communist Party in the U.S. Following is the speech, given by the Workers Viewpoint Organization spokesperson at the May Day rally in New York. A fuller sum-up will follow in the next issue of the newspaper.
Comrades and Friends:
Today, right here, we have won a great victory. We all can feel it, today, right here, THIS IS May Day. We can all feel it in our hearts – the tradition, the spirit, the tremendous optimism and hope of the greatest class in the history of mankind and the only class that can free all of mankind – the working class. And, tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that when we go back to the factories, to our communities and to the schools, we are going to bring the message back and we are going to organize our class brothers and sisters–TO BREAK THE CHAINS OF WAGE SLAVERY AND NATIONAL OPPRESSION: TO FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM! And to tell them that our Party, the Party of the working class is on the horizon because the foundation for this Party has been laid. It is a solid foundation, it is the Workers Viewpoint Organization. And for the bourgeoisie and opportunists (like the Communist Party USA [CPUSA] and the Revolutionary Communist Party [RCP]) that’s right, they get a message too because our victory is their defeat. We are reminding them that socialism and communism are inevitable–that the working class and all oppressed people will fight, fail, fight again, fail again, and keep on fighting until we overthrow this rotten dictatorship of the monopoly capitalist class and set up a dictatorship of the working class.
The tradition that we are building on that the bourgeoisie will never take away from us was started back on May 1st in 1886. Hundreds of thousands of workers in Chicago and throughout the country marched triumphantly through the streets demanding the 8 hour day and the right to unionize. At the Haymarket Square in Chicago, the capitalists, with the collaboration of the labor misleaders, issued orders to the police to fire directly into the crowd and planted a bomb in order to frame up the organizers and discredit them. But the workers were not fooled. They were armed and they fired back and several policemen were killed. This incident gave tremendous impetus to the struggle for the 8 hour day and for the right to unionize. The battle cry was taken up by workers all over the world. Monopoly capitalism was shaken at its very foundations. The capitalists were so shook up they sent 6 men to the gallows on trumped up charges. They even erected a monument of the dead policemen at the Haymarket Square. But this didn’t intimidate the workers. Instead it made them more angry and made them more eager to continue to organize and fight back. In fact, they couldn’t keep the statues in one piece. First the heads were knocked off, then the arms, and so it went on. And every time the capitalists put the pieces back, it was busted up again. In fact, the only things that took to the statues of the cops were the dogs in the neighborhood. They paid their respects every morning and every night they pissed and crapped at the foot of the monument. This is the only “respect” that the bourgeoisie is going to get because they belong on and will end up on the dung heap of history. The bourgeoisie finally got the message and removed the monument.
This message rings louder and clearer from May Day to May Day. Year after year, the working class grows in strength and in numbers. We mature through experience and become more conscious as a class–from the 8 hour day, to the end to child labor, to the organization of trade unions, to the May Day in 1934 where half a million workers, under communist leadership, marched under the banner to “Down Tools on May 1st” and “Forward to a Soviet America.” And this message echoes, through our voices, through our hands and fists, and through the barrels of our guns, from every corner of the world in our struggle against wage slavery and national oppression here, and against colonialism, racism, imperialism, and the hegemonism of the two superpowers–U.S. Imperialism and Soviet Social Imperialism–worldwide.
We are marching in the footsteps of the workers in China, Albania, Korea, Rumania, and Vietnam who have thrown off the shackles of wage slavery and imperialism. And on this, INTERNATIONAL WORKER’S DAY, we salute the struggles of the working class and oppressed peoples and nations of the world who are fighting so hard for their freedom and independence. The just struggles of all oppressed peoples support each other.
In the midst of the gravest crisis in the history of imperialism, the 2 superpowers are scrambling madly to maintain and expand their control of the world. Their fierce contention is the basis for the growing danger of a new world war. In fact, right now in Nevada, the Air Force and the Army have got this project called Operation Red Flag where they are simulating air combat in Central Europe which is the foca1 point of contention between the 2 superpowers. They’ve got styrofoam buildings that look like the buildings in Eastern Europe and styrofoam tanks that look like Russian tanks–they’ve got the whole works to train their so-called “elite squadrons.” What they don’t have to simulate is the fact that we, the working class, is paying for it with our sweat, our labor, out of our pockets and no doubt, they expect us to pay with our lives too. What they can’t ever simulate is what we are going to do about it. We oppose the war but we’re not afraid of it because when they become desperate enough to unleash an imperialist war, we will turn it into a civil war, a class war to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism.
This growing danger of war means more attacks on our standard of living. It’s getting downright impossible to get jobs, to find childcare, to get welfare, or any social service and the bills are getting bigger by the month. What did “casual” Carter come on TV and radio to tell us last week? He told us it wasn’t “fair” enough that we were the only ones reaching into our pockets to pay for the use of energy. From now on, the gas company, the electric company, and the oil companies are going to dig into our pockets too. That’s what bourgeois democracy is all about–the freedom for the monopoly capitalist class to exploit our labor. The more money they get, the less we get. The more bread on their table, the less on ours. The bigger their offices, the less jobs for us. Everything we produce, they take out of our hands. That’s why the only solution is socialist revolution.
But where there is oppression there is resistance and where there is resistance, there are misleaders. Because to keep us down, they have to keep us divided and disorganized. How? By every which way they can think of–by nationality, by trade, by sex, by age, they’ll divide the left-handed people from the right-handed ones if necessary. It is the misleaders, the traitors, the running dogs of the monopoly capitalist class that do this dirty work for them. These bloodsucking parasites like Cesar Chavez, Fitzimmons, G. Meany, L. Woodcock, Ed Sadlowski live off the superprofits that the U.S. imperialists rip off from the Third World. These running dogs will use any means necessary to smother our militancy, to disorganize our ranks, to divert our struggle into reformist and liberal channels. These misleaders, the labor aristocracy, are the main hurdle that stands in the way of our smashing the chains. In order to smash the chains of wage slavery and national oppression we have to first smash them and all the opportunists like the “C”P USA and the RCP. For the enemy within our ranks is more dangerous, they are the better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. And we will smash them in the course of our fight against the bourgeoisie. We have no interest in polishing the chains or gold plating them or adding a few more links to the chain like “C”PUSA and RCP are busy doing. These chains are worn thin already from over 100 years of class struggle.
Comrades, Friends! the hammer is in our hands, we have only one interest–raise that hammer and smash the chains. And we’re going to smash anything and anybody that gets in the way. And on the ruins of imperialism, with our freed hands, we will build a new socialist society. That’s what revolution is all about.
Besides kicking out the misleaders what must we do? What do we need more than anything else? In all the history of class struggle, through repeated historical experiences, a history paved with blood, we can draw one conclusion – without the Party of the U.S. working class, the Communist Party, we will not have our general staff, we cannot achieve our political independence and we will not be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism. What is the Party? The Party is the advanced detachment of the working class. It can see farther ahead and has a broader scope. The Party is made up of the best sons and daughters who have been tested and proven through the course of class struggle. The Party is the most organized, disciplined, self-sacrificing, and persevering detachment of the class. It must lead the class through all the twists and turns, sudden changes of scenery and great disorders that always and inevitably accompany the great revolutionary changes in the world.
In short, in order for the Party to lead us to victory, we must have the correct ideological and political line.
One aspect of the correctness or incorrectness of ideological and political line is our line towards theory. “Without revolutionary theory, there can be no-revolutionary movement.” This is the truth summed up by our great teacher, Lenin. A fundamental condition for the success of any political party to serve its class is its ability to retrieve and assimilate the most advanced revolutionary historical experiences of all countries. Theory, the stand, viewpoint, and method of the historical experience of class struggle must be applied in the course of day to day class struggle. Theory must be applied to develop a profound grasp to our particular trade union movement, our particular national movements, and to gauge our particular political situation at any given moment to equip and prepare the masses for the final onslaught against the bourgeoisie.
Another aspect of the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line is the correct political orientation. We must understand the particularity of the classes in the U.S. and the particularity of nationalities in the U S. and the particular relations among them, and all their relations to the state. In other words, we must solve the fundamental question of who are our friends and who are our enemies? Who is the main force? Who are our stable allies? Who are the buffers that the bourgeoisie uses to shield and divert our attempts to smash them.
Only by developing a profound grasp of these relationships in the course of struggle against the bourgeoisie will we be able to successfully detect the tricks of the bourgeoisie, avoid the hidden reefs amidst the stormy sea of class struggle in order to unite all who can be united to push the great cause of proletarian revolution forward.
But is the theoretical and political orientation itself sufficient? NO, it is not. The Party must be the most organized detachment of the working class. The proletariat, because of their relation to the forces of production (because we work together, side by side, in a socialized way) is the most revolutionary class and the class most conscious and most capable of organization. It is the only class that can appreciate and carry out Lenin’s teaching that “...the masses are divided into classes,...that as a rule classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential, and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders.” The working class, in our fight against the bourgeoisie and through our setbacks can appreciate and are drawn to the correct organized leadership.
In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organization. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labor of capital, constantly thrust back to the ’lower depths’ of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organization, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. (Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)
It is unlike the petty-bourgeois intellectuals (the professionals and professors) who by force of habit are intellectual anarchists because of their relation to the forces of production–their worth is the worth of their “off the wall ideas.” That’s why they are diametrically opposed to the proletariat in gravitating away from authority, organization, discipline and will forever try to place themselves outside the Party or above the Party.
Another petty bourgeois sickness which goes hand in hand with intellectual anarchism is bureaucratism. Bureaucracy is for us more a product of routinism based on a dogmatic and doctrinaire state of mind in approaching tasks. A doctrinaire state of mind approaches tasks through book formula and rules and routines. It divorces our practice from reality, for the task takes on its own relative independence, separate from the reality which is what our tasks are supposed to address themselves to in the first place. Anarchism and bureaucratism both separate our understanding from the real situation, that is, to separate the objective from the subjective. This is a form of doctrinairism or dogmatism. While intellectual anarchists are a product of the “squeezing the brain juices” approach to know the reality rather than “seek truth from facts,” bureaucrats seek truth from established tasks and rules rather than the reality itself. Both are “lazy bones” approaches to revolution for they do not need to exert themselves to “seek truth from facts” and constantly keep up with the complicated and rapidly changing reality.
Revolution is neither an intellectual speculative game nor bible reading, nor an exercise in bookkeeping. We must struggle hard, very hard, to have our feet firmly planted on the ground. Chairman Mao taught us to shoot the arrow at the target–we must shoot the arrow of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung-Thought at the target of the U.S. revolution. To have a firm grasp of reality, in the U.S. society, we must develop a profound grasp of the practical movements. This is essential in leading the masses on to victory.
This is the question of how? A question of method–methods of work and methods of leadership. Mass line is the approach to combatting both intellectual anarchism and bureaucratism in the party and to shoot the arrow at the target of U.S. revolution. From the lessons of the Communist Party of China as summed up by Chairman Mao– “Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas of leadership–such is the basic method of leadership.” Comrades, the mass line–“from the masses, to the masses” is the basic method of work and leadership. We must strive to develop the proletarian style of study, of integrating theory tightly with practice and always strive to check out and integrate the generalities with the concrete and living reality.
As comrades witnessed last year, the Workers Viewpoint Organization has developed tremendously. We are truly a spectre of communism haunting the bourgeoisie and their bootlickers, the RCP and the spineless October League (OL) and countless other sects and bugs. Numerous Marxist-Leninist collectives have liquidated themselves to the WVO and declared their intention to join and there will be many more to come. To deepen and broaden our movement since the degeneration of the “C”PUSA and the beginning of the spontaneous movements of. the 60’ s and 70�s, our main task consisted in uniting the Marxist-Leninists and the advanced elements from the national and student movements, uniting them based on the correct theoretical and political lines. Based on the task ahead, in this period, since the question of party building is a settled question, to deepen and broaden our work we must turn our attention to the question of how to win over and to train the advanced as a concrete step in the preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat–the winning of the vanguard of the working class to its Party.
To deepen and broaden our movement in the next period, in winning over and training the advanced we must improve our method of work and method of leadership and mainly through them to improve our ability to rally the middle around the Party as supporters of the Party.
We must improve our propaganda. Not only more propaganda, but more focused propaganda. Last year we started to print a national monthly newspaper, mainly to unite the Marxist-Leninists. Now we must push forward this task more boldly, to put out better and more regular propaganda for the winning over and the training of the advanced. Along the same lines, this period does not consist of less theoretical work, but more focused theoretical and practical work. Both will be at a higher level. In our theoretical work, comrades will see publications ranging from a position on the Afro-American National Question to our Party Programme This more focused theoretical work will allow us to provide more timely guidance and improved methods of leadership which will aid the winning over and the training of the advanced elements.
We will improve our leadership in immediate struggles; we must intensify the learning and training of the wave upon wave of advanced by learning warfare through warfare.
Last year the WVO led many struggles. Our work in the industrial front is broadening and deepening. We are sinking deeper roots in the working class from the East Coast to the West Coast, to the Pacific West–from heartland of the industrial proletariat in Detroit and Chicago in the North, to the Black Belt South.
Comrades and friends! Based on our correct political line and grasping the correct methods of leadership, the WVO is flourishing like the cherry blossoms in the springtime–reflecting the strength, vigor, the vitality and the invincibility of the rising proletariat.
Today, a year ago in New York City, we had a demonstration of over 300 strong. Today our demonstration is at least 3 times larger. And this is only the very beginning. Next year, we’ll see you all in the industrial heartland of America, the birthplace of May Day, Chicago, and you can be sure there will be many thousands more. Let the bourgeoisie and the opportunists tremble day and night at the sight of this rising and irresistible force. Let the proletariat rejoice at the coming into being of the Party of the U.S. proletariat!
FORWARD TO CHICAGO!
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE WORKERS OF ALL NATIONALITIES IN THE U.S.!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION OF MAY DAY!
LONG LIVE INVINCIBLE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSETUNG-THOUGHT!
LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!
FORWARD TO THE FOUNDING PARTY CONGRESS!