The main question discussed in the workshop on trade unions and unorganized labor was the character of the work of Marxist-Leninists in the trade unions and unorganized labor.
First of all there should be no question, as to whether or not Communists should work in the trade unions, As Communists, we must enter the trade union struggles on three fronts: political, theoretical, and economic – not only in the trade unions but in all sections of the working class. We must as communists submerge into the organized and unorganized working class movement and emerge as the leaders of that movement nationally and internationally. In order to achieve this we must struggle for the highest level of theoretical, political and ideological clarity on the knowledge of the laws of the movement and knowledge of the laws of revolution, i.e., the science of Marxism-Leninism. Of particular importance here is the importance of political exposure, that is, developing political consciousness in the proletariat of its role as leader, organizer and spokesmen for the whole population against the bourgeois state. While we must engage in the economic struggle in our plants and unions, we have to ensure; at the same time that the proletariat is raised to the level of class consciousness in understanding its role in relation to the state and to all other classes.
Communists must use the issues that are in the hearts and on the minds of all workers, such as the Watergate affair (a real government crisis that can be used to expose the bourgeoisie and its state) and the Wage Price Controls. We have to expose the rotten and corrupt existing trade union leadership which supports the bourgeoisie with complete disregard for the real needs of the working class movement. Here it is essential to Party building that we expose politically and practically the role of the CPUSA in supporting this corrupt trade union leadership and all other forms of bourgeois control. In our task of uniting the working class and opposing the opportunism of the CPUSA and the misleaders in the labor movement, we must concentrate on the unorganized workers who for the most part are among the most exploited and oppressed – that section of the class from which Communists must speak. The unorganized represent a large section of the women, youth and national minorities.
We recognize that the primary deviation today in the trade union movement is reformism. This does not mean, however, that we do not struggle for reforms, but we must not allow reforms to become our goal, but only a means to obtaining our revolutionary goals. There are also many other deviations and bourgeois ideologies that divide the working class that we must expose such as, anarchism, syndicalism, revisionism, dual-unionism, white chauvinism, male supremacy, etc.
We can only oppose these deviations and bourgeois ideologies by linking Marxism-Leninism with the working class movement and fighting for the political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie and their revisionist agents. We must oppose the bourgeois ideology of white chauvinism by militantly fighting for proletarian internationalism. It is our proletarian internationalist duty to expose and to call for the isolation internationally of the present leadership of the large unions in the USNA which work hand in hand with the imperialists to mislead and disorganise not only the revolutionary working class of the USNA but especially and most brutally to mislead and disorganize the revolutionary working classes of nations oppressed by USNA imperialism. In our trade unions and factories, among the organized and unorganized, we must call for the revolutionary international unity of the Anglo-American working class with the struggle for national liberation of the workers and peasants in the colonies and semi-colonies of USNA imperialism. We must begin to link the class question with the national colonial question and for the Anglo-American working class this means raising the ”concrete demands for Independence for the Negro Nation, Independence for Puerto Rico, Regional Autonomy for the South West and Regional Autonomy for the Indian Peoples.
This conference of North American Marxist-Leninists has been very successful and is truly an important step toward building a real Communist Party in the USNA. But the fact that it has been successful should make us realize even more strongly how urgent it is that we get to work.
These two aspects – unity among Marxist-Leninists and the strengthening of the ties and connections of the Marxist-Leninists in the working class movement – are inseparable if the working class is to have a real Bolshevik Party. This takes years of struggle, but with the unity and the struggle that is taking place now among Marxist-Leninists it is clear that we have no time to spare. In relation to the whole labour movement, Marxist-Leninists today must discuss in a concrete way how we put into practice the lessens raised by Marxism-Leninism as to how Communists are to make “every factory our fortress”!, how communists have to submerge into the working class movement and link Marxism-Leninism with that working class movement; how Communists are to get out the leaflets and the national Communist newspaper that Lenin fought for, to link Communists to the class and to unite the class into one.
In our tactical struggles with all these questions, we must not lose sight of our overall strategy at this point: To win over the advanced of the advanced of the proletariat in our struggle to build an independent multi-national Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.
MAKE EVERY FACTORY OUR FORTRESS
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY.