This program of study is to enable communists to prepare themselves theoretically for building a new, non-revisionist communist party. It is the outcome of discussions among various Marxist-Leninist forces in the S.F. Bay Area concerning the possibilities of publishing a new newspaper. This introduction describes the struggle in those discussions, from which we concluded that the task at hand is to prepare for forming the new party.
From the beginning of our discussions, one side (which eventually prevailed and is therefore responsible for this summary) insisted that the struggle was between two political lines. The other side (which is not dead and buried but will no doubt be represented in the course of study) denied this. In a number of meetings where we discussed the issues thoroughly, the second line’s supporters complained that their views were being misrepresented, misconstrued, misapplied – in short, mistaken for something they weren’t really saying or didn’t really mean.
But their own words show where they stand and why. Clinging to their petty-bourgeois baggage, they are standing in the way of a Marxist-Leninist party and newspaper.
Was it, in fact, a two-line struggle? Were two opposite lines expressed, reflecting opposite class interests? Or was this a question of different approaches, different tactics – a struggle in which knowledge struggled against ignorance, clarity against confusion? The answer is clear in the two titles on the original position papers:
1) “Proposal for a New Marxist-Leninist Newspaper” (hereafter called “ML”)
2) “The Task at Hand: To Create a Bay Area Mass Revolutionary Newspaper” (“MR”).
Immediately after the title, the MR advocates began their argument:
We have in mind a mass newspaper, for a mass audience – not primarily for people already in Marxist-Leninist organizations. This doesn’t contradict the paper being a ’center for Marxist-Leninists to communicate’ or for communists to use it to pursue our primary organizational task –building a new communist party. But we have a dual objective, as Mao wrote, to ’draw together the activists to form a nucleus of leadership’ and ’link this nucleus closely with the masses’.
What is wrong here? First, the newspaper they have in mind is opposed to a Marxist-Leninist newspaper. (A Marxist-Leninist newspaper will not appeal to the masses of people.) Second, they say that the audience of a Marxist-Leninist newspaper will be limited to those who are already members of Marxist-Leninist organizations. This is wrong because it likens a Marxist-Leninist newspaper to an internal organizational organ. Instead, the advocates of a Marxist-Leninist newspaper explained that their audience would realistically include:
*advanced workers sympathetic with the idea of revolution but unfamiliar with Marxist-Leninist theory,
*those who know intellectually that socialism is inevitable but are unorganized,
*those already exposed to Marxism and in organizations that call themselves Marxist-Leninist.
Taken together, this constitutes a very small minority. But uniting the core ideologically and organizationally is clearly a prerequisite before the masses can be won to Marxism-Leninism.
The MRs say that theirs will be a mass newspaper (and because of that, we think, not a communist newspaper). But, they say, communists still will be able “to use it to pursue our primary organizational task” (emphasis ours). They say that addressing a mass audience (one not immediately prepared for Marxism-Leninism) “doesn’t contradict” also being a center for Marxist-Leninists, This appears to be a simple case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
But that is just appearance. In fact, by reducing party building to an organizational problem, they have severed organization from ideology. Of course, this is impossible. A communist organization rests on ideological unity. To emphasize the organizational and omit the theoretical (to suggest that we can build a core through a mass newspaper) is opportunistic.
In fact, all this talk by the MRs hides a central purpose (whether they know it or not). The central purpose is to oppose the idea that we have one central task, building the party, and that this is primarily a theoretical struggle, particularly in the early stages,
Secondarily, by arguing that the audience for a Marxist-Leninist newspaper are only Marxist-Leninists, their purpose is to present Marxism-Leninism as a dogma – to make it appear that Marxist-Leninists publish things only for our own pleasure and enlightenment and that we want only to form a core and not to link it up with the masses.
Here, quoting Mao, they write that they, instead, have a “dual objective” – forming the core and linking it to the mass movement. This is quote mongering –quoting the authority for effect while overlooking his teachings, Mao writes that in any contradiction one aspect is principal and decisive and the other aspect secondary. Thus, if we have a dual objective – forming the core and linking it to the mass movement –one aspect, not both, must be principal. And the aspect which is principal determines the character of the whole thing. What happens when we apply this to the MR’s “dual objective”?
How can the core link up with the mass movement when there is no core? In a bourgeois society, a mass movement without a Marxist-Leninist core is a mass movement in which the politics and ideology, if not the organization itself, are bourgeois. Without an organized core, the contradiction between the (unorganized) communist vanguard and the mass movement is resolved in favor of bourgeois leadership.
On the other hand, the contradiction between the vanguard and the masses changes qualitatively in the process of the coming into being, development, and increasing political influence of the communist party. The mass movement becomes a different mass movement. In this mass revolutionary movement, the contradiction between the vanguard and the masses is resolved in favor of proletarian leadership. The theory of the mass line is the scientific method for solving this problem. It is theory applied consciously by an organization of Marxist-Leninists,
As Mao pointed out: “The force at our core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party, The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism” (1954). “Without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory,” he says, “it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs” (1948).
But of course, if one throws out dialectical materialism, even the impossible becomes possible.
Now, the MR’s have given us their “dual objective” in metaphysical harmony, stated as though neither aspect is principal, as though creating a core and linking it to the masses were comparable to walking and chewing gum simultaneously (one of them suggested this). But just as with any other contradiction, the contradiction in their theory cannot exist without one aspect being principal. And the aspect which they hold principal is, lo and behold, the link with the masses.
This assertion will no doubt provoke great consternation and feelings of persecution among them, “But we agree,” they will say, “the party is principal, building the party is the central task.”
If these comrades will read Lenin’s What is To Be Done??, they will find some old friends, the economists. The economists, too, tried to “adjust” Marxism to the level of the spontaneous mass movement. They, too swore up and down that they were not economists, Lenin called this the “not here” method and mocked them:
Oh, those evil slanderous politicians! They must have invented this Economism out of sheer hatred of mankind, in order mortally to offend other people. (Lenin, What is To Be Done?? Chapt. III, p. 75 Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973.)
We recognize this as the “not here” method because there is a hitch in their “dual objective” theory. The hitch is that there are different views on party building. This is what they say about that problem,
We believe that the different approaches to forming an editorial board reflect the different approaches to party building held by various groupings of honest revolutionaries around the bay area,, While we recognize the importance of the struggle between various ideas on party building, we don’t believe that they should impede the formation of a mass revolutionary newspaper.
We do not believe that the path to organizational unity lies in closed-in discussions, inaccessible and unrelated to the mass movement. To speak simply to ourselves and then on the basis of months of discussions emerge (if possible) as an organization with a newspaper, is at best to mark time in the face of consolidating fascism.
We all agree that the new newspaper should be a tool in the hands of communists who are building a new party. But while some people see the discussions and struggle toward forming the paper as the tool, we believe that the process of publishing the paper is the best way to move forward in both theory and practice.
Is it not very clear what they believe and what they don’t believe? They do not believe that the party should be formed now. Instead, they believe that we should put out a “less revolutionary” newspaper which will better the conditions for forming the party.
They admit that the struggle over how to form the editorial board of a paper reflects the struggle on party building, but at the same time they think they can form an editorial board without resolving the differences. Lenin’s method was quite the contrary:
Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and hinder its radical elimination. (Lenin, Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra, Collected Works, Volume 4, p. 354, Moscow: Progress Publishers)
Besides, the MR’s argue, we can’t put party formation before publishing a mass newspaper because fascism is upon us. We can’t struggle out theoretical differences because it takes too long (months!) and the debate won’t be accessible to the mass movement. Even if we succeed, they say, our efforts will come to nought. Why? Because fascism is consolidating. That is to say, we can’t build the party now because it’s too late. From the Revolutionary Union, October League, and Guardian’s “It’s too soon to build a party,” now we get “It’s too late to build a party.” (This, too, makes its comical appearance in What Is To Be Done?. Lenin was warned that “soon, very soon, the assault will begin,” and that the eve of the revolution was no time to “propagate armchair ideas and armchair activity” by concentrating on building a party, (Chapt. V, p. 212, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973.))
Us poor communists. Either we’re too soon with too much or too late with too little. What a predicament!
How do we extricate ourselves from this abysmal pit of “left pessimism”? First, the MRs have cut the heart and brain out of the party building movement in their description of it. The party building movement, or any movement, cannot be reduced to a struggle among comrades, honest and true, as they say it is. Instead it is a class struggle. It is not a struggle between “different approaches” and “various ideas” but between proletarian ideology (Marxism-Leninism) and petty-bourgeois opportunism.
In effect, the opportunists don’t want to build a Marxist-Leninist party. They want to “reconcile” Marxism-Leninism with petty-bourgeois ideology and build an ideological united front. The comrades who support the line for a “mass revolutionary newspaper” are taking the sides of the opportunists against the Marxist-Leninists. They don’t have a “different approach” to party building. They have opposition to party building. Their opposition takes the form of a delaying tactic which desperately avoids the central task.
Why are they doing this? For what imagined gain are they willing to sacrifice principle? For influence in the mass movement (which obviously cannot be immediately attained with a Marxist-Leninist newspaper). Here’s how they put it:
The events of the last few weeks and months show the inability of the revolutionary left to exert any kind of substantial leadership. Time, Newsweek, and Walter Cronkite have done a better job of seizing the time and attention of the masses while the revolutionaries have faded into the background.
At the present time, Sam Ervin, Ron Dellums and the like have more sway over these people than do the communists.
Thus, first we will exert substantial leadership of the mass movement and then, based on this, we will have favorable conditions for building a party. Lenin’s understanding of Marxism and this particular problem was again the opposite. The “first historical task,” he said, was “winning over the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat” to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This couldn’t be done without “a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism.” (Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder, Chpt.10. p.98 Peking: Foreign Languages Press. 1970)
We have already seen how the MRs believe that the development of a communist party representing the revolutionary interests of the proletariat would only serve to “mark time” in the face of an onslaught of fascism. But the MRs also show the petty-bourgeois character of their ideology by comparing the “revolutionary left” with an implied “non-revolutionary left”. This presumably means the progressive unions, the Communist Party (USA), perhaps the liberal congressmen (Dellums).
But this conception of the left is borrowed whole from the bourgeois liberals, and it has nothing in common with Marxism. It places the “revolutionary left” (the MRs) at the extreme left of the bourgeoisie, as the tail of bourgeois radicalism, which is to the left of bourgeois liberalism, to the left of conservatism, to the left of fascism – but on the same plane. On the contrary, there is bourgeois ideology and there is proletarian ideology, Marxism-Leninism.
There is no middle course (for humanity has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonism there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn away from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the working class movement leads to... trade unionism,...and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. (Lenin, What is to Be Done?, Chapt.II, pages 48-49, Peking, Foreign Languages Press.)
It is not our job to attach ourselves to the radical bourgeoisie; it is our job to advance the interests of the proletariat. It is not our job to “raise the level” of the spontaneous movement; it is our job to qualitatively change the consciousness which determines the course of that movement.
* * *
Despite everything, the MRs kept on saying that they didn’t mean anything different from what the MLs were saying. They assured everyone that they didn’t have any intention of watering down their politics:
The difference comes in how we approach our audience. Malcolm, for example, spoke directly to people, laying out differences between reformist and revolutionary ideas, yet his speeches had a profound impact on the ideology and organizational tasks of the revolutionary movement. That is the approach we are talking about...when we say we won’t water down our politics... (our emphasis)
Malcolm X was a great figure of revolutionary stature, but he never claimed to be, and was not, a Marxist-Leninist, so how can we take him for a model of a communist propagandist? Of course Malcolm had a profound impact, but what was his “impact on the ideology...of the revolutionary movement”? He directed the spontaneous movement toward revolution; but the spontaneous movement, even with a revolutionary wing is not the same thing as a conscious communist movement guided by Marxism-Leninism and a communist party.
Another model of propaganda the MRs held up as an example was an article that appeared in the old Venceremos newspaper, “Serve the People Programs? Revolutionary in Themselves?” They brought up the article as an example of how communists could criticize reformism for a mass audience. But instead of this being an argument for their side, it turned out to be a big rock they dropped on their own feet. The article was a great example of what we wanted to avoid. This was a turning point in the discussion, and for that reason the article is worth summarizing.
It began by praising the early Panther efforts to educate people about the need for socialism.
The breakfast programs, community armed patrols, demands for full employment were tactics the party used to raise the level of struggle in the Black community to a higher level and more organized level of armed struggle, leading to the establishment of socialism.
Of course we agree that socialism is necessary to meet the needs of the people and that we should advocate socialism as the solution to capitalist oppression. But the more important part of putting socialism forward is that it is scientific and inevitable. Lots of workers sympathize with the general idea of socialism, but what they don’t realize is that it isn’t just a moral question.
More of the article’s bourgeois liberal socialism comes in the explanation of how the Panthers changed from revolution to reform:
Instead of teaching the ABC’s of how to fight back, the Panthers began teaching the people the ABC’s of how to tolerate being oppressed.
This doesn’t at all describe the difference between a proletarian revolutionary line and a bourgeois reformist line. What it does describe is the difference between a militant reformist line and a line of tolerance of oppression, the difference between militant trade unionism and bureaucratic trade unionism, for instance. Of course, it’s good and well to point out the difference between the militant trade union leader and the bureaucratic sell-out, but we shouldn’t confuse trade unionism (or any other reformism) with communism. Lenin points out the difference:
In fact the ideal leader, as the majority of the members of such circles picture him, is something far more in the nature of a trade union secretary than a socialist political leader. For the trade union secretary of any, say British trade union, always helps the workers to conduct the economic struggle, helps to expose factory abuses, explains the injustice of the laws and of measures which hamper the freedom to strike and the freedom to picket explains the partiality of arbitration court judges who belong to the bourgeois classes, etc, etc....It cannot be too strongly insisted that this is not yet Social Democracy. The Social Democrat’s ideal should not be a trade union secretary, but a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; he must be able to generalize all these manifestations to produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to explain his Socialistic convictions and his democratic demands to all, in order to explain to all and, everyone the world-historic significance of the proletariat’s struggle for emancipation. (Lenin, What is To Be Done?? Chapt. III, p,99 Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1973)
Later on, after congratulating themselves on being good economists rather than bad ones, the authors of the “Serve the People…” article lay out their road to socialism:
The more people engage in political struggle with the city and successfully seize funds, the more the power of the people and the people’s institutions will rival the power of the pigs and their reactionary institutions. As Venceremos shows people the methods of struggle, socialism as the ultimate way to control our lives and armed struggle as a way to win socialism becomes less slogans and more a reality in people’s minds.
That is, the more militant the reformism, the closer to socialism. This isn’t empty rhetoric, it’s the rhetoric of petty-bourgeois economism. There is no discussion of the importance of Marxist-Leninist theory, none of the importance of the party. In fact, there is no place for these things in the petty-bourgeois scheme. This is not communism.
The publication of a Marxist-Leninist newspaper presupposes an organization of Marxist-Leninists, firm in their ideological stand and capable in their ideological judgement. This requires serious study,
In particular, it will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free themselves more and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and constantly to keep in mind that socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, i.e., that it be studied. (Frederick Engels, quoted in Lenin, What is To Be Done??, Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1973, pp,31-32)
We don’t propose that we should completely put aside propaganda and agitation until every person in every study group is a capable Marxist-Leninist, What we do propose is that all propaganda and agitation claiming to be Marxist-Leninist should be judged by Marxism-Leninism. The purpose of the study is to prepare people to do this, and since the only test of theory is practice, everybody who is convinced that Marxism-Leninism is the science of revolutionary class struggle should publish communist propaganda and agitation in the course of study. Only this way will they be able to test what they learn.
The purpose of this course of study is to prepare for forming a Marxist-Leninist party. Only then can our propaganda and agitation be systematic and national. We are not raising the slogan of the party abstractly or to maintain our credibility among communists. We are part of the anti-revisionist party-building movement.
...the task of the socialists is to be the ideological leaders of the proletariat in its actual struggle against actual and real enemies who stand in the actual path of social and, economic development. Under these circumstances, theoretical and practical work merge unto one aptly described by the veteran German Social Democrat (Wilhelm) Leibknecht, as:
Study, Propaganda, Organization
You cannot be an ideological leader without the above mentioned theoretical work, just as you cannot be one without directing this work to meet the needs of the cause, and without spreading the results of this theory among the workers and helping them organize.
Such a presentation of the task guards Social-Democracy against the defects from which socialist groups so often suffer, namely dogmatism and sectarianism.
There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and sole criterion of a doctrine is its conformity to the actual process of social and economic development; there can be no sectarianism when the task is that of promoting the organization of the proletariat, and when, therefore, the role of the intelligensia is to make special leaders from among the intelligensia unnecessary. (V.I. Lenin, What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, Collected Works, V. I, pp. 297-298.)