This booklet is published on the eve of the formation of a Multi-National Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. This is an historic event for the proletariat of the United States of North America, and marks the fulfillment of years of work on the part of Marxist-Leninists dating back to the late 1950’s. The struggle for the formation of a real Communist Party reflects a complete break with the revisionist and social-chauvinist course of the CPUSA and its rotten revisionist line on American Exceptionalism developed and upheld by Jay Lovestone, Earl Browder, William Z. Foster, Gus Hall, and all the other social-democratic bourgeois politicians masquerading as Marxist-Leninists. The formation of the Party establishes a clear line between proletarian revolution on the one hand and revisionism and opportunism and conciliation to bourgeois reaction on the other.
The formation of the Party also marks the end of our existence, along with other Marxist-Leninist collectives, organizations, and individual activists. The League for Proletarian Revolution greets the prospect of its imminent dissolution with joy; it is not often the opportunity arises to dance on one’s own grave.
Coming out of the petty bourgeois “new left” movement, the League for Proletarian Revolution was formed in the summer of 1972 from the merger of two separate collectives: The Revolutionary Workers’ Caucus and the Red Detachment. The former was centered around trade union work, but was also involved in the study of Marxism-Leninism. Though recognizing the need to build a Party, the group was characterized by Right opportunist syndicalist tendencies, and had no clear idea of how to go about building the Party. The Red Detachment was a collective based in theoretical work, and immersed in the political fadism of Berkeley’s student and intellectual surroundings, and was detached from the working class. These two groups merged on the basis of building the Party as the central task of Marxist-Leninists, and began the work of studying and bringing Communist propaganda and agitation to the workers. In the early spring of 1974, a further merger took place between the League and the San Francisco Marxist-Leninist Organization which had been formed in the summer of 1973 by former members of the “Left” opportunist anarcho-syndicalist Venceremos Organization. The 1974 merger was the culmination of a process of peeling off layers of opportunists and opportunist political ideas. It represented a break with spontaneity characterized by syndicalist and economist trade union activity, anarchist community work, and generally petty bourgeois dabbling in the mass movement. It further represented a clarification on the line on party building with the emphasis on the development of conscious Marxist-Leninists as opposed to spontaneous “left” radicals. By the spring of this year this line was clearly reflected in the work of the League which centered around the theoretical basis for the formation of a Communist Party and included intense Marxist-Leninist study by our cadre, giving leadership in nearly a dozen study circles dealing with the basics of Marxism-Leninism, and the “burning questions” of party building, and carrying on Communist propaganda and agitation at a number of work places in the Bay Area. The concrete application of our line on party building took us without hesitation into the ranks of the Local Continuations Committee, and we have since put more and more of our efforts into conducting propaganda and agitation for the Congress of North American Marxist-Leninists which will form the Communist Party.
This booklet, Against Revisionism, reflects our theoretical growth during the period of transition from spontaneity and opportunism to the consciousness of party building. The author is a member of the League who has undertaken a great deal of leadership in our theoretical training as Marxist-Leninists, as well as the training of other comrades in our study circles. The issues he has addressed reflect the line of the League on some of the main questions around the central task of party building. Particularly key in our development was the Leninist analysis of imperialism as the material basis for opportunism and revisionism, that is, the bribery of the United States of North America’s working class and the creation of a “bourgeoisified upper stratum” of the class which forms the main prop for revisionism. We came to understand that basis of this bribery in the superexploitation of the colonies and semi-colonies, and from this the fact that the formation of the Communist Party is the practical expression of proletarian internationalism. It is only the Communist Party which is capable of leading the proletariat in supporting the anti-imperialist struggles in the colonies and semi-colonies, and most important in carrying out the main internationalist task of the USNA proletariat which is the defeat of the capitalist class, seizure of state power, the dismantling of the bourgeois imperialist state apparatus and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We hope that this booklet will assist advanced workers and intellectuals to come to understand that uniting around this Marxist-Leninist Communist Party is essential for the future of the working class.
LONG LIVE THE GREAT REVOLUTIONARY TEACHINGS OF MARX, ENGELS, LENIN, STALIN, AND MAO TSETUNG!
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST COMMUNIST PARTY!
WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD UNITE!