This report was delivered by CP (M-L) Chairman Michael Klonsky at the party’s Founding Congress on June 3, 1977. The report, which outlines the present situation and the party’s tasks, was unanimously adopted.
Comrades:
I have been asked to make this political report by the Organizing Committee. My report will cover the following points: 1) the history leading up to the founding of our Marxist-Leninist Party, 2) the present crisis and the international situation, 3) our tasks in the coming period.
I would like to begin my report by saying that this Congress is truly a great event in the long and eventful history of the U.S. working class. The working people have struggled so hard and so long without giving up hope—hope in the future, hope for their children, hope for a better life without the oppression and misery of capitalist exploitation, hope for a world free from war, free from racism, free from fascism.
For a time, they had the Communist Party to guide them, and great advances were made. In that period, the workers won their greatest gains in history, and it seemed as if their victory was drawing near. Then came the betrayal, which every oppressed class comes to know at one time or another. The revisionists smashed our Party from within after the ruling class failed many times to smash it from without.
Now 20 years have elapsed where people struggled, but struggled with no revolutionary leadership. They struggled spontaneously and with great courage from the steel mills in Indiana and the auto plants in Detroit to the ghettoes of Watts and Harlem.
But now once again there is a feeling of great hope in the air. Now the class-conscious workers are being reconnected with their own history of class struggle. Now they are being reconnected with the science of Marxism-Leninism. Now they are once again being organized along revolutionary lines.
After years when all such talk was dropped in the revolutionary movement, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the path of mass revolutionary struggle is being heard once again.
Yes, the founding of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) is an historic event. It is a time for the working class to be proud, to walk with its chest puffed out and to say: “Yes, we have been held down for so long, but now a new day is dawning. Now we have our Party, the Party of the proletariat.”
The work to build our Party has not been easy. At every step we are met not only by political repression by police, FBI and fascist elements, but more significantly, by the forces of revisionism and opportunism who, despite their differences among themselves, all declared a war on our trend, which they called the “number one enemy” in this country.
But they could not stop us. In fact, we have grown stronger in the fight against them. It has prepared us for the final showdown between the working class on the one hand and imperialism and its defenders on the other.
We have not only had to fight the revisionists of the Gus Hall clique, but also their front-men within our own movement and in our own organization. We have led a determined struggle against all pretenders to the name of “communist” from the right-opportunist chauvinists of the Revolutionary Communist Party, to the centrist Guardian, to the various Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyists like Workers Viewpoint and the “Revolutionary Wing.” Internally, we faced the attacks from enemy agents like Martin Nicolaus, who nestled in our organization and tried to divert us from our central task of party building and into an alliance with imperialism.
All of these opportunists had a common bond. They all tried to smash the Party, to kill it while it was still in the womb and before it could be born. Whether from the stand of right-opportunism and reformism or from the position of infantile “left phrase-mongering” they all pushed the line of separating Marxism-Leninism from the masses, and practice from theory. The opportunists all in one way or another, tried to reconcile Marxism with revisionism and steer our young movement back into the camp of the CPUSA and the Soviet Union, especially through their calls for “united action” with revisionism. Furthermore, they all preached the line of chauvinism or nationalism that had crippled our movement so badly throughout its history and making it appear to the masses that communists were either downright racists who marched with ROAR against school integration or else some petty bourgeois nationalists who were only out to divide the oppressed nationalities and workers.
But all these attempts have failed. We have succeeded in drawing clear lines of demarcation with all these fraudulent “Marxists” and have clearly distinguished ourselves in practice among a significant section of the revolutionary workers. Our Party has been founded on a firm and principled basis, around a correct line, embodied in our Draft Program.
At the same time, we have worked to unite all the Marxist-Leninists that could be united in one single unified party on the basis of our line and program. Of course, this work must continue in the future, but this founding Congress marks a great step forward in building communist unity. We will see, following the Congress, the widespread impact of our Party on the events which follow.
Finally, we should see that we are not fighting alone. On our side is the Marxist-Leninist movement in every country which is rallying to build its parties in opposition to revisionism. On our side as well are the liberation movements and revolutionary struggles of the masses in every country.
Of course the march forward is not without twists and turns, nor without setbacks. Those who expect it to be otherwise are not yet communists. We have suffered our defeats as well as victories and have lost some comrades along the way.
We deeply feel the loss of our beloved teacher Mao Tsetung and his close comrade in arms Chou En-lai. Chairman Mao was the greatest Marxist-Leninist of the contemporary era. His contributions led in saving the future of socialism as well as in helping us defeat the bourgeoisie worldwide. Now he and comrade Chou are gone, but they have raised up millions of successors in the school of revolution. Our Party must always consider itself among their ranks.
The founding of our Party is part of the glorious tradition of the U.S. working class movement. It is the latest feature of the sharp two-line struggle against revisionism that has always existed in the ranks of the American communists. The present struggle to reconstitute the U.S. Marxist-Leninist vanguard party has scored a mighty victory.
After more than two decades, the working class once again has its general staff organized. After some unsuccessful tries, the U.S. Marxist-Leninists have summed up their experiences and deepened their understanding. Our Party has been established and is growing strong in the fight against modern revisionism, which today stands as the main enemy in the communist movement, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Modern revisionism has a long and treacherous history in this country. Browderism which took over and finally liquidated the Party in the late 1930s and 1940s was the forerunner of the Titoite revisionists and later the Krushchevites and Brezhnevites in the USSR.
At the heart of Browder’s revisionist line was his overestimation of imperialism in general and of U.S. imperialism in particular. His “American exceptionalism” line promoted the illusion that the capitalist system in this country was not subject to the laws of growth and decay that govern capitalism in other countries. It claimed that the U.S. monopoly capitalists could resolve the basic contradictions in society based upogrowth of the productive forces alone.
Browder’s book Teheran promoted the jingo-ist line that the U.S. monopolists were the most fit to run the world. His Keynesian economics portrayed a U.S. society that could solve the crisis of overproduction through planning. It obliterated class struggle.
Browderism tried to show a path of assimilation for the oppressed nationalities and liquidated the Party’s revolutionary stand on the national question, including the right of self-determination for the Afro-American people. Work in the deep South was stopped in what amounted to an all-round betrayal of the Black struggle. Many comrades such as Nanny Washburn were left to fend for themselves in the face of KKK terror and attacks from the state. This scene was repeated in similar ways throughout the working class movement. As Comrade Odis Hyde says: “I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me.”
Browderism struck its blow at the Party’s factory concentrations and liquidated its independent role in the trade unions in 1939. Party recruitment was halted, shop papers liquidated and communist fractions were openly condemned by the leadership. Furthermore, all criticism of the CIO leadership, which was preparing to hand over the communist-built unions to the imperialists, was stopped. In the course of the anti-fascist struggle, Browder distorted the Party’s basically correct policy of the united front into a revisionist policy of “everything for the war effort.” He misled the Party into tailism towards the bourgeoisie and called for an end to strikes and the fight against Jim Crow racism.
All this, of course, culminated in the dismantling of the Party itself at the May 1944 Convention, and the setting up of the “Communist Political Association.” The CPA was the ideal instrument as long as class struggle was being written out of the Party program and “support for Roosevelt” was made the Party’s rallying cry.
Following the open letter by the French communist leader Duclos (who later became a revisionist himself) which brought the liquidation-ism before the international movement as well as before the rank and file of the CP, a struggle was waged under the leadership of Foster to rebuild the Party. The fact that it took such a letter showed that the Party’s rank and file had been excluded from the struggle in the first place and that, despite their low level of Marxist-Leninist education, never really went along with Browder’s destruction of the Party. Once they became alerted, they rallied in support of the proletarian center.
That center, under Foster’s leadership, had many weaknesses which created favorable conditions for the revisionists to seize power. The Emergency 13th Convention of the Party unanimously endorsed a correct statement which declared: “The source of our past revisionist errors must be traced to the ever active pressure of bourgeois ideology and influence upon the working class.”
But while the Foster leadership recognized the class struggle in the Party in a general way, and set about at this Convention to cleanse the Party of Browderism and put it back on a solid Marxist-Leninist basis, this was not to be. Foster himself, still clung to the line of “peaceful transition to socialism.” He mistakenly thought that “ultra-leftism” was the main danger to the Party and opened the door to the Dennis rightist clique and its liquidation of the Black national question.
The new leadership, while dealing a blow to Browderism was not able to go deeply enough and while for a time there was a positive movement of the Party back on a class-struggle footing, it was only a matter of some ten years or so before the new Browderites were back in power. Once again the assault was directed at the national question and the leading fighters for the rights of the Afro-American and other oppressed nationalities were purged from the ranks. This time it was Gates, Dennis and Gus Hall leading the charge that would deal the death blow to the old Communist Party USA and treading on its glorious history of the building of the industrial unions, the defense of the Scottsboro Boys and the fight against fascism and on the red flag of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat itself.
Of course this second emergence of Browderism, the consolidation of revisionism and the line of “peaceful transition” cannot be viewed apart from the seizure of power in the Soviet Party following the death of comrade Stalin. Revisionism in power meant the restoration of capitalism in the birthplace of socialism and the destruction of most of the world’s Marxist-Leninist parties. Modern revisionism had won an important, although temporary victory, just as it had done in 1944. Throughout the world, more than 100 parties followed the Khrushchevites into the revisionist swamp. The split that followed was a by-product. Led by Mao Tsetung and the Chinese and Albanian Parties, the communist movement was saved from destruction and new Marxist-Leninist parties were born and developed, and some of the old ones were saved.
What are the lessons of this bit of history? They must be summed up well if we are to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past now that we have once again set the Party of the U.S. proletariat back upon its feet. Our cadre must become deeply knowledgeable of the history of our working class as well as of the general experiences of the international working class movement. This knowledge will help them keep from being taken in by new Browders who are at work this very moment, trying to smash our Party.
We must combat the notion that the Party’s destruction was inevitable. This notion stems from a view that the CP was doomed from the start or was “always revisionist.” This is the fashionable preaching of some present day opportunists such as the “Revolutionary Wing,” CLP and the centrists who would write off the entire history of communism and instill in our ranks a spirit of defeatism and pessimism. Another version of this view is the theory of “gradual degeneration” of the Party which views the Party’s history in an undialectical and metaphysical way, as a continual, even downhill process until its present all-out revisionist position.
The history of the CPUSA and the communist movement up to the present time is a history of sharp two-line struggle. As Chairman Mao wrote: “Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party: this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society.” (“On Contradiction”)
The history of two-line struggle is universal in the experience of the socialist and communist movement in the U.S. going all the way back to the early beginnings of Marxism itself which came to this country in the 1850s with the European immigrants. Even at that time the revisors of Marxism were showing themselves in many of the same ways as today. The likes of Kriege were promoting their own version of “American exceptionalism,” claiming that the unsettled lands in the West would be the salvation of capitalism. They claimed that with land distribution to the poor, U.S. capitalism, unlike the old, bureaucratic capitalism in Europe could become something progressive. They were fought tooth-and-nail by the likes of Joseph Weydemeyer and F.A. Sorge who were the leaders of the left-wing of the early socialist movement. Weydemeyer led a detachment of workers into battle for the freedom of Black slaves and together with Sorge founded the Proletarian League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S., in 1852.
The history of this two-line struggle continued in the socialist movement at the turn of the century and into the early periods of World War I, when Eugene V. Debs stood opposed to the blatant chauvinism of the Second International-types and proudly proclaimed that he would refuse to fight an imperialist war against other workers and that the only war he would take part in was the class war against capitalism.
The liquidation of the Party and the revisionist line that brought forth white chauvinism and class collaboration was combatted in the 1920s when it was put forth by the arch traitor Lovestone. At that time in 1929, comrade Stalin criticized both factions within the Party, including Foster’s left-wing, of “exaggerating the specific features of American capitalism.” He said: “You know that this exaggeration lies at the root of every opportunist error committed both by the majority and minority group.”
But it was the Lovestone group that carried through this opportunist stand to its logical conclusion, going so far as to claim that the growth of industry could “liberate” Black people. Lovestone was joined in his theory of the “productive forces” by the Trotskyists who were expelled from the Party in 1928 for their splittism and anti-Sovietism.
And in the 1950s, it was comrades like Harry Haywood and others of our veterans who stood up to the chauvinism and revisionism of Dennis and Gates and who were expelled by the revisionists for defending the class struggle, the rights of the oppressed peoples and the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The revisionist line in this period set the Party up for attacks by McCarthy and disarmed it ideologically and organizationally in the face of these fascist-like attacks.
So from this brief glimpse of our Party’s history we can see that our movement has always had a two-line struggle, a struggle that still has not been finally decided and won’t be for many years to come. It will last as long as class society lasts, even for a long period after the socialist revolution.
The destruction of the CPUSA was the result of a seizure of power by the agents of capital within the ranks. They promoted revisionism. They prepared ideologically for their day of glory, while nestling in the ranks and posing as Marxists. They sowed sectarianism and factionalism in the Party and liquidated its democratic-centralism. They played upon the pragmatic and backward tendencies and took advantage of the mistakes of the genuine communists and weakened the Party’s morale and fighting spirit. They drove a wedge between the Party and the masses, attacking its “left centers” as Haywood calls them, and setting the Party up for the kill. With their seizure, they turned the Party from a vanguard detachment of the working class into a bourgeois party—a fascist party—and a party that openly defends imperialism and social-imperialism around the world.
But the rank and file and its proletarian leaders never for a moment accepted this attack lying down. Were mistakes made? Yes. Did the leadership fully prepare the Party for the assault from within and without—no it didn’t. Here as in the Soviet Union we can see that the mistakes of the Marxist-Leninists could not but help the modern revisionists in their drive for power.
Most importantly, this leadership failed to prepare the membership of the Party by arming them with materialist dialectics, the number one weapon in fighting revisionism. But we must draw a clear line between the mistakes of the Marxist-Leninists and the attacks by the revisionists. As Lenin said: “Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun.” (Letter to American Workers)
The errors of our comrades will be like stepping stones for us to reconstruct the Party on a firm Marxist-Leninist foundation. We accept the great working class traditions from Weydemeyer and John Brown to Debs, Ruthenburg, Foster, Dubois, Haywood and all the rest. But we are not content to dwell on history or traditions. We are making our own history.
It is vital that we rely wholeheartedly upon the masses, upon the rank and file and train and educate thousands of Marxist-Leninist fighters from their ranks. The level of communist education is the best guarantee against a revisionist line winning out. The fight against revisionism cannot be confined behind the closed doors of the Central Committee.
We must take the fight against revisionism seriously into account in all of our work. It is the number one enemy within our ranks and inevitably will find people in our midst to carry out its destructive work. The leadership must lead the struggle to purge revisionism from the Party’s ranks in a protracted struggle which mobilizes the rank and file. The careful study of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung must be carried on by every Party member. Especially important is the study of dialectical and historical materialism and the grasping of the philosophical as well as the economic and historical underpinnings of Marxism-Leninism.
The fight against the line of Martin Nicolaus is a positive example of this struggle. Nicolaus was just such a capitalist-roader, a bourgeois agent who nestled in our ranks but who was exposed and driven out when the masses were mobilized. If Nicolaus’ line would have taken power in the October League, the attempt to form our new Party would have been smashed. Instead, Nicolaus and the handful of other opportunists and renegades from Marxism have been exposed before the rank and file and forced to openly take their stand with revisionism and imperialism.
Another lesson for us to grasp concerns the special role that the national question has played and continues to play in the history of our Party. Whenever the CPUSA took a correct stand on the national question, they moved forward and made great advances. This could be seen in the great organizing drives that built the CIO, which brought fully into play the mighty army of Black labor side by side with white. It could be seen by the thousands of Black people and other national minorities who flocked to the Party’s ranks when it raised the banner of self-determination or showed its militant self-critical stand against white chauvinism in the Yokinen trial.
On the other hand, these same powerful revolutionary forces left the Party in droves when “self-determination” and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” were written out of the Party program by the Gus Hall revisionists. The mighty Black Power movement of the ’60s was left without communist leadership because of the chauvinist stand of the revisionists.
The widespread influences of opportunism heightened especially by the privileged position of U.S. capital in the world for so many decades had its effect on the U.S. working class movement. The savage plunder of the colonies provided tremendous super-profits which the imperialists could use to buy off the upper section of the proletariat and corrupt many working class fighters, getting them to support imperialist plunder and, as Lenin pointed out: “find themselves playing the role of hired thugs.. .for the benefits of wealthy scoundrels.”(Letter to American Workers) In the epoch of imperialism, Lenin said “social-chauvinism’s basic ideological and political content fully coincides with the foundations of opportunism.” (“Collapse of the Second International”)
The chauvinism of the imperialists penetrates the ranks of the working class and its party and organizations. Because the national movements against imperialism are the chief ally of the general workers’ movement, we either stand with the tens of millions of oppressed nationalities or with the ruling class. Look at the pitiful example of the Revolutionary Communist Party and their forerunners, the Progressive Labor Party, both of whom tried to reconstruct the Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S. but who failed to break from the white chauvinism of the CPUSA’s leadership. Didn’t it follow that if they stood with the bourgeoisie on the national question, they would stand with them against the workers’ movement altogether? Doesn’t it make sense that the defenders of imperialism’s oppression of the nationalities will line up behind their reformist programs for the working class as a whole?
Marx put it out in a very straightforward manner when talking about the Irish question to Kugelmann in 1869: ”and the only question is to drive this conviction home to the English working class—that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling classes...
It is on the national question and especially in defense of the right of self-determination for all oppressed nations that our Party has clearly stood out from every other trend. But this stand must be safeguarded against all chauvinist as well as narrow nationalist influences. White chauvinism is the main danger in our ranks on the national question, while a determined struggle must also be carried on against bourgeois nationalism, led by our minority comrades.
Furthermore, we must build our Party among the basic strata of the proletariat and go deeply among the workers, especially the industrial proletariat, to carry on our work. It is here that we should recruit most of our membership and build our basic units of organization. The factory nucleus and the trade union fractions which allow the Party to function independently within the workers’ movement can never be sacrificed for some narrow tactical gains.
Our trade union workers must be firmly grounded in communist tactics and principles so that they won’t succumb to the reformist pressures of trade unionism. They must remember that they are communists first and members of the Party. Their positions in the unions, no matter how influential, are never ends in themselves.
Finally, we must always defend the Leninist principles of party building. Organizational opportunism flows from opportunism on other political questions and facilitates the spread of revisionism. The Party must wage a consistent struggle against bureaucratic centralism, ultra-democracy and anarchism and all other petty-bourgeois deviations. The unity and discipline of the Party is our great weapon that links us to the broad masses of workers and allows us to smash the power of the capitalists and withstand their fascist attacks.
If we adhere to the guiding principles laid down in our Program and our Constitution, revisionism will have little chance to root itself in our Party.
The founding of our Party is taking place in a country and in a world that is full of turbulence and upheaval. This is the era when world capitalism is in rapid decline and when the socialist revolution is sweeping the world. The whole imperialist system, Soviet social-imperialism included, is in a state of general decay and is locked in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the ’30s.
The struggles of the working people and of the oppressed nations and countries of the world have surged forward in recent years. This great intensification of the worldwide revolutionary movement of peoples, countries and nations has sharpened all the contradictions of capitalism.
Lenin pointed out long ago that imperialism was moribund capitalism and the final stage of capitalism. Under imperialism, all the contradictions have grown sharper, leading to the general crisis of capitalism at the time of the first world war. The general crisis is an all-round economic, military, political, ideological and cultural crisis. The driving force behind the development of this general crisis is the growth of predatory monopoly capital, which began before the turn of the century.
Today imperialism has become a steady stream of crises and wars. Despite all the rosy talk by the Carter administration of “recovery” no stabilization is in sight. The U.S. is presently locked in its sixth major recession since World War II. While some upturns in production have taken place since the present phase of the crisis began around 1974, they have all been temporary and partial upturns. The crisis has so many aspects to it that the capitalists have only been able to ease the pressure from one aspect at the cost of increasing the pressure from the others.
Massive unemployment is accompanied by tremendous inflation. Falling production has been joined by an extremely serious energy crisis as well as a currency crisis which has toppled the dollar from its position of world prestige. The cities of the U.S. are filled with millions of jobless workers. Crime, violence and cultural decay follow. The U.S. prisons are filled with workers, especially minority workers, and the all-round growth in racist attacks and the segregationist movement continues, as do attacks on the families of the poor and working people.
The present crisis developed amidst the general crisis and has affected every capitalist country. During 1975-76, postwar highs in unemployment were reached in the U.S. as well as in Australia, France and Great Britain. German unemployment rates were the highest since the mid-1950s, and Japanese jobless rates reached the levels of 1959. (Monthly Labor Review, April ’77, p. 12)
The economic “recovery” which supposedly began in the U.S. in mid-’75, “lost momentum” according to government experts in the second half of last year. All told, the government claims that there are some 7 million unemployed workers in the U.S., not counting of course those millions who have quit looking or who have never worked to begin with, nor those who are under-employed, in the service or going to school.
In many cities, the unemployment rate among Black and other minority workers is at a higher level than it was during the rebellions of the ’60s and nearly as high as during the Great Depression of the ’30s. Among Black, Chicano and Puerto Rican youth, the jobless rate has reached over 60%.
This is all taking place while a handful of giant corporations are reaping record profits. This year, for example, GM took in the greatest profits of any corporation in history – some $3 billion. The top 500 corporations saw profits rise to $49.4 billion, up 30.4% from a year ago.
In all the imperialist countries, as Lenin pointed out, “The worker is impoverished absolutely, i.e., grows actually poorer than before, is compelled to live worse, eat more sparingly, remain underfed, seek shelter In cellars and attics. The relative share of the workers In capitalist society, which is rapidly growing richer, becomes even smaller, because the millionaires grow richer ever more rapidly... In capitalist society, wealth grows with unbelievable rapidity alongside the impoverishment of the working masses.” (“Destitution in Capitalist Society”)
This present crisis is developing in the conditions of the sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry, especially between the two superpowers, for the division of markets and spheres of influence. This contention has led to a new round of rising military expenditures as the superpowers have expanded their role of arms merchants for the whole world as well as heightening the preparations for their own inevitable war. This factor has served to greatly imbalance the structure of the economies of these countries, increasing the national debt, as well as placing an increased burden upon the backs of the workers through increased taxes and an unprecedented use of the national income for nonproductive purposes.
A distinctive feature of the present crisis is the fact that the awakening and growth of the third world has offered up a challenge to the hegemonism of imperialism and social-imperialism.
At one time, the colonial and semi-colonial countries served as a safety valve for the capitalist crisis. They were a dumping ground for commodities as well as a back on which greater debts could be shifted to take the load off the imperialists. Their agricultural and other natural resources were bought cheap while industrial goods were sold high. The result was relative prosperity in the advanced industrial countries and widespread misery and starvation and debt in the colonies.
But today a new wave of resistance has broken out with the rise of the third world movement. The third world has strengthened its unity through its various organizations. Many of the imperialist holdings have been nationalized. The price of oil and other resources has been put on a more equitable level, and other countries have resisted having the burden of the crisis placed on them. On top of this, the liberation movements in the third world have won major victories, as have the socialist revolutions in a number of countries. This has sharpened and deepened the crisis of imperialism. In the recent period, the trade deficit has grown as the U.S. has had to increase its imports of oil and other raw materials.
The operation of the law of uneven development under imperialism has drawn the countries of the second world into the anti-superpower struggle as well. This has given the economic and political organizations of the European countries, Japan, Canada and some others, some progressive qualities.
All this confirms that capitalism can never escape its contradictions and its inevitable doom. As long as this system exists, economic crises will exist with it. The present cyclical crisis may well prove to be the worst in capitalism’s history, bringing closer its final destruction with revolution as its offspring because it is the only real way out for the working class.
The monopoly capitalists are increasingly moving to saddle the masses of working people with the burden of the crisis. In their drive for maximum profits, the bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression and exploitation of the workers, worsening their impoverishment and attacking every aspect of their living conditions as well as their basic rights. Especially hard hit have been the millions of oppressed minorities who make up a bulk of the unemployed and who suffer under the worst living conditions.
According to the government figures, unemployment among minorities since 1969 has grown from 6.4% to 13.1% in 1976. Among whites these figures show a rise from 3.1 % to 7%. These figures are even worse and more greatly differentiated in the Black Belt South where the history of national oppression of Black people has its longest and ugliest history.
One important lesson from these figures is that, as Marx said: “Labor in a white skin can never be free, while in the Black it is branded.” While minorities were hit worse than whites, whites were hit harder and harder as the crisis grew worse. There is no truth to the capitalist story that white workers share in or benefit from the oppression of Black and other minority workers. The same can be seen in the figures on annual earnings.
The number of Black people living in poverty rose by 5% in 1975, the last available figures. Similarly, 3 out of every 10 Blacks are below the federally defined poverty level of $5,850 for an urban family of four. More than 20 million families all told are living below this level at present.
But the working and oppressed people have not taken these attacks lying down. The past period has witnessed a major increase in the number of strikes.
Last month alone (May 1977), more than 306,000 workers were out on strike even though there were no strikes in major industry. This figure is the highest since 1960, not counting a similar figure one year ago.
While a revolutionary situation does not presently exist in the U.S. and the consciousness of the broad masses does not yet center on the need for revolution and socialism, that consciousness is developing rapidly among a significant number of workers. The worsening conditions, especially in light of the new growing war danger, are propelling the active class fighters among the workers in a revolutionary direction. The crisis and the overall conditions operating at present are very favorable for our work if we can carry it out in the correct fashion. We must work actively in the struggle, but do so in such a way that we are in tune with the present conditions, so as to better change those conditions in a forward direction.
A description of mass sentiment made by Stalin at the 17th Congress CPSU can increasingly be applied to the masses here:
The masses of the people have not yet reached the stage when they are ready to storm the citadel of capitalism, but the idea of storming it is maturing in the minds of the masses—there can hardly be any doubt about that.
The deepening of the crisis means that the bourgeoisie steps up its attacks on the working people with its double-edged sword. One blade is fascism, while the other blade is reformism and revisionism. As the revolts of the people increase, they throw both instruments into full play, relying on the trade union misleaders and other opportunists to disarm the workers and then trying to strangle them with growing fascist attacks.
Following the severe political crisis of Watergate and the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Indochina, the giant monopolists put forth Carter as the man they hoped could save their sinking ship and “bring the country back together again.” The Carter-Ford election campaign revealed the deepening rifts within the camp of the U.S. bourgeoisie. These rifts are not between Democrat and Republican but rather they exist within both of the imperialist political parties.
They are caused because the ruling class is caught in an insoluble position. On the one hand they must contend with their social-imperialist rivals while on the other hand deal with the liberation movements in the third world and their own workers at home. While they are united in trying to save their crumbling paradise, they are tactically divided to an ever sharpening degree. No grouping or faction within the ruling class holds any answers in solving the crisis.
Carter’s game has been to combine a few Kennedy-type liberal spending programs with a call for the workers to once again tighten their belts. Using populism and demagogy, Carter has fully utilized the labor aristocrats in his plan to stop the strike wave and bring the labor movement to its knees. At the same time, he has increased the drive towards fascism with new legislation and “anti-riot” reports from his Justice Department. Fascist groups are making a new resurgence, and increasingly the basic rights of the masses are being threatened.
Does this mean that fascism is inevitable? No, it doesn’t. Now that our Party is formed, it can rally the workers and the broad masses against imperialism and its fascist menace and mount a challenge for leadership of the workers’ movement against the reformist and revisionist leaders who practice class collaboration as well as set the workers up for fascist attacks.
Secondly, while Carter is stepping up his attacks on the people, the ruling class has become very proficient in the use of reformism, which can be just as deadly a weapon as fascism. The ruling class has become skilled in the ways of rule through its long history of development.
In their service are the reformist trade union leaders as well as the revisionists who echo Carter’s liberal fakery, calling for a “reordering of priorities” and superpower “detente” as well as blaming the crisis on foreign workers “taking away jobs.” But, as Lenin pointed out, if imperialism could reorder its priorities, solving the problems of hunger and reducing its arms spending, “it wouldn’t be imperialism.”
No, the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill and the like won’t provide a single job for the unemployed, nor will the increasing attacks on foreign-born workers. The real program of capitalism in crisis is now, and always has been, a new round of imperialist wars and increasing attacks on the workers.
What then is the road out of the crisis? How can jobs be won and the basic living standards be raised? Only our Party and Program offer the answer to these questions. We must point the way forward while exposing the lies and deceptions of the liberals, union hacks and revisionists. First and foremost, we must show that capitalism has no solutions. The massive struggles now being waged against the decaying capitalist system must be given consciousness and communist leadership so that every illusion about a capitalist solution is driven into the dust beneath the feet of marching workers.
But we must not confine ourselves to hollow phrases about socialism either. For this also is the game of the revisionists who preach “socialism” minus class struggle. Now we must heighten our struggle to build class struggle unions and take these political questions deeply into the trade union movement.
Our labor campaign over the past period has been a good example of bringing revolutionary education to the workers. Our exposures and actions have hit especially hard at today’s crop of liberal trade union misleaders like Ed Sadlowski and Arnold Miller, showing that beneath their rhetoric lies the same path of class collaboration taken by the old guard of the trade union movement.
In the period ahead, we need to take these questions to far more workers. The task of driving out the bureaucrats which is now understood by many of the more advanced workers, must become a task that is understood, supported and fought for by the broad masses of workers. Only in this way can our strategy of aiming the main blow at the reformist and revisionist union leaders succeed in isolating them and freeing the trade union movement from the chains of bourgeois ideology.
Secondly, we must continue the job of building the nationwide fightback against the crisis which we began over a year ago. The National Fight Back Organization is the fighting organization we need. It is a communist-led mass organization that has the potential to attract millions of workers and unemployed to its ranks in a common struggle against capitalism. Workers and unemployed, unite! Jobs or income now! We want jobs, not war! These are some of the fighting slogans under which the jobless and working people can unite in every community hit by layoffs, racial discrimination and police repression.
Our Party must also boldly arouse the mass opposition to a new imperialist war, expose the appeasement of the Carter regime which can only hasten the war, and prepare the masses for the difficult conditions ahead under war conditions. It was under these conditions during World War II that the great revolutionary potential of the working class movement was undermined by the Browderites and the reformist liberals and channeled into the safety of electoralism. Our fightback is a revolutionary fight-back against both the bosses and the reformists.
This fight must be linked closely to the fight against racial discrimination and women’s oppression, raising the special demands of women and minority workers, including affirmative action in hiring and promotion and freedom for the tens of thousands of people who fill the death rows and jail cells of American only because they are poor or Black. We can be proud of the struggle we have led so far in building the Fight Back. But this work is still weak. We must build our Party in the storms of the mass struggle that is building daily, as communists have done in every country. In this way, our Party will earn the respect of the masses and become a truly mass party in terms of its broad influence.
To wage our struggle correctly, we must have a scientific understanding of the international situation and our internationalist duties as well as our domestic responsibilities. It is no longer possible, as it was before the imperialist era, to talk about the proletarian revolution simply in the narrow bounds of our own country. For as Stalin pointed out: “Now we must speak of the world proletarian revolution; for the separate national fronts of capital have become links in a single chain called the world front of imperialism, which must be opposed by a common front of the revolutionary movement in all countries.” (Foundations of Leninism)
While charting our strategy for proletarian socialist revolution to overthrow our own bourgeoisie here in the United States, we must also join with our brothers and sisters in every land to smash the entire system of imperialism and all reaction.
The present international situation is one which our comrade Chou En-lai characterized as “great disorder on earth.” (10th Congress Report, p. 21) This is still true today. As Chou said: “Relaxation is a temporary and superficial phenomenon and great disorder will continue. Such disorder is a good thing for the people, not a bad thing. It throws the enemies into confusion and causes division among them, while it arouses and tempers the people, thus helping the international situation develop further in a direction favorable to the people and unfavorable to imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction.”
In summing up the international situation, we must firmly grasp what we have come to call the “five mains” and the “two factors.” The “five mains” have to do with the main enemies of the world’s peoples; the main danger and main source of war; the main force in fighting imperialism and the direction of our main strategic blow.
First, the main enemies of the peoples of the world are the two superpowers, the biggest exploiters and oppressors of humanity and the biggest sources of reaction and war.
But in looking at the two main enemies of the world’s peoples, we should not be taken in by the imperialist propaganda about “equilibrium” and “parity” which they claim lays the basis for “detente” and “world peace.” Equilibrium between two contending forces is always tentative and temporary. They cannot be seen as dangerous to the same degree or same extent.
U.S. imperialism, which stepped into the shoes of the other imperialists in Europe after World War II, was for decades, the main imperialist power in the world. But the law of uneven development has played its role. Defeated in Korea and Indochina, the U.S. imperialists have been toppled from their throne. They are a superpower in decline and are facing a challenge from the rising superpower, the USSR. In the meantime, the social-imperialists were waiting in the wings and building their forces while the U.S. was overextending itself.
Everywhere the U.S. is being driven out through the front gate, the Soviet Union is now trying to enter through the back door. In the struggle for hegemony and spheres of influence the Soviet Union is now playing a role similar to the Hitlerites of the ’30s. They have mobilized their war machine to its fullest capacity and fully militarized their economy.
Their danger is enhanced because they cynically use the name and glory of “socialism” and of the great Lenin to carry out their dirty work. While the U.S. imperialists have in no way changed their nature and are still very dangerous and aggressive, the USSR has become the most dangerous of the two and the main source of a new world war.
What does this mean for us in carrying out our strategy and tactics here in the U.S.? Does this mean that we can in any way rely on one superpower to fight the other? Certainly not. Our Party has stood firmly opposed to the class collaborationist line of those like Nicolaus and others who would have us depend on the U.S. imperialists for our salvation as well as the revisionists and centrists of various stripes who view the social-imperialists as allies.
In the course of building the fight for socialism in the U.S. we must join with the peoples of the world in directing the main blow at the social-imperialists, who not only are an imperialist, fascist superpower of the Hitler type but also represent modern revisionism in power, the last Guardian at world imperialism’s gate. Among the appeasers of Soviet social-imperialism are the leaders of U.S. imperialism themselves. This could be clearly seen in Andrew Young and Vice-President Mondale’s recent statement supporting the presence of hundreds of Soviet “advisors” in Ethiopia. The RCP and Guardian centrists too have slandered us as “counter-revolutionaries” for our opposition to Soviet social-imperialism.
No matter how much the opportunists try and defend the new tsars by complaining that we are too hard on them, we will continue our work at unmasking social-imperialism from its disguise as “best friend of the oppressed.”
This will in no way hinder our work to overthrow U.S. imperialism, but rather it will help us. In the course of fighting world fascism, many Marxist-Leninist parties grew strong and rallied the broad masses of working people around them. We will do the same in fighting world imperialism led by the superpowers. We will oppose all preparations for war, including the frantic arms race and lay bare these preparations under the smokescreen of “detente,” while showing clearly where the war danger comes from. We will hit both appeasement of the Soviet Union as well as reliance on U.S. imperialism or either superpower.
If we can’t rely on either of the superpowers in our fight, on whom can we rely? What is the main force in fighting imperialism? The third world stands today as this main force. Throughout the world the growth and awakening of the third world can be seen as a major event. This vast mass of billions of people has become the most powerful ally of the proletariat.
Everything we do must assist in heightening the unity of the third world and in cementing the alliance between the proletariat in the U.S. and the peoples and countries of the third world. In the past period, we have stood firmly in support of the efforts by third world countries to defend their sovereignty and national resources. We have supported the efforts of the OPEC, the movement to maintain the 200-mile limit on territorial waters and other such movements. This work should be continued.
We have also worked actively to support the liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Our Party must continue to support the struggles of the African peoples against colonialism and racial discrimination and especially the liberation movements in southern Africa. Even as we speak, the people of Zaire are defeating the Soviet-backed invasion of their country, while all of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Azania are ablaze with liberation fires.
We hail the glorious victories of the Indo-Chinese peoples against U.S. imperialism which were also great victories for the American people. We must increase our efforts to get the U.S. to remove its troops from Korea, and rally support for the reunification of that country free from foreign interference. The same applies to Taiwan which is an historic part of China. We demand that Carter remove all troops from Taiwan and end U.S. support for the reactionary Taiwan ruling clique. We further demand that the U.S. proceed along the lines of the Shanghai Communique in normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Our Party will also heighten its support for the Palestinian and other Arab peoples against imperialism and Zionism.
In the coming period we will increase our efforts to support the movement for the genuine independence for Puerto Rico as well as for the return of the Canal Zone under the sovereignty of Panama.
Most importantly we will heighten our unity and solidarity with China, Albania and all socialist countries and the growing movement of Marxist-Leninist parties. We are joyously celebrating the great victory by the Chinese people and Party under the leadership of Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, Chairman Mao’s great successor. We also hail the great Albanian Party of Labor under the leadership of comrade Enver Hoxha which has blazed a trail in socialist construction and in the fight against the modern revisionists.
We will continue to uphold and defend Chairman Mao’s brilliant theory and strategic concept of “three worlds” which is a scientific basis for understanding the world in this period and will continue to stand for unity of the second and third worlds against the two superpowers. We oppose the attempts by the modern revisionists as well as by some misguided or opportunist elements who call themselves communists to distort or slander Chairman Mao’s theory. It is a theory which is hated by imperialism and social-imperialism, while it is used by those who work for the unity of the world’s people against their enemies.
By the “two factors” we mean the factors for war and revolution.
Presently we are faced by the growing danger of a new imperialist war. Both the factors for war and the factors for revolution are on the rise and are developing together. Where a few years ago it was adequate to talk about revolution alone as the main trend in the world, today it is not.
A concrete study of concrete conditions shows that a new world war is inevitable. As long as the two superpowers continue to contend for world domination, one must either defeat the other or be defeated by the other. It does no good to talk in abstractions about peace being possible. It is much better to be prepared for war than unprepared. The rate of war preparations is so rapid now that there is no possibility of civil war and the victory of socialism heading off the war. Therefore, our task becomes one of transforming the inevitable superpower war into a revolutionary civil war.
As Lenin said, the “struggle for peace cannot be waged by repeating general, vapid, benign, sentimental, meaningless and non-committal pacifist phrases, which merely serve to embellish the foulness of imperialism; it can be waged only by telling the truth, by telling the people that, in order to obtain a democratic and just peace, the bourgeois governments of all the belligerent countries must be overthrown, and that for this purpose, advantage must be taken of the fact that millions of workers are armed and that the high cost of living and the horrors of the imperialist war have roused the anger of the masses of the population.” (“The Pacifism of the French Socialists and Syndicalists”)
The imperialist war may not break out right away. In the meantime, we must get fully prepared. The key is bringing our correct stand on the war to the masses through our revolutionary Party: Our slogan of “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” must be transformed from a propaganda slogan into an action slogan. Our Party must fully prepare itself for the difficult conditions of war, deepening our base in the factories and in the military and combining our open work with more secret work.
Also of vital importance is our internationalist stand in defense of the right of self-determination for all nations oppressed by imperialism and defense of the sovereignty of all countries threatened by superpower aggression and subversion as well as our heightened struggle for the overthrow of our own imperialists. We have a common struggle with the workers in all the imperialist and social-imperialist countries to destroy the imperialist system and establish socialism in our own countries.
The source of war is the imperialist system itself and the two superpowers and most importantly the Soviet Union, which everywhere today is striving to expand at the expense of the United States.
We must base ourselves on the broad masses who must bear the burden of a new war on their shoulders. The war will heighten the revolutionary situation in all the capitalist countries. We should mobilize the masses to oppose imperialist war preparations and to use the sharpening contradictions to rally the workers and the oppressed peoples in a struggle to end imperialism once and for all.
We also must expose the pacifist and chauvinist slogans posed by the revisionists and centrists as well as those of the opportunist RCP who chants, “We Won’t Fight” as a program for war. We say, “We Will Fight” but it will be the fight waged by Debs in the first imperialist war when he said: “I’m willing to fight only the proletariat’s war against the capitalists all over the world.” (Quoted by V.I. Lenin in “War and Revolution.”)
Finally, we must take note of the fact that the sharpening conditions and growing factors of war and revolution have intensified the ideological struggle within the world communist movement. Following the death of Chairman Mao a new attempt to restore capitalism in China by the “gang of four” was defeated. Just like the period of history after Lenin’s death, opportunist elements today have popped out and tried to take advantage of the temporary confusion in order to attack Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The “gang of four” were right opportunists who tried to make a reactionary coup d’etat and restore capitalism in China. Their influence was broader than just in China, and if they had succeeded, the entire international movement would have suffered greatly.
Our Party must stand in the forefront of the struggle for communist unity. We use the time of our Congress to once again call on Marxist-Leninists the world over to unite on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and in the fight against revisionism. We oppose all splittism and unprincipled blocking. At the same time, we will firmly put forth our views and struggle for a correct Marxist-Leninist line everywhere we go.
There are those who are working to disunite our movement and to do the dirty work of revisionism within our ranks. They are working to create splits and to form an unprincipled faction within the world communist movement aimed at discrediting Chairman Mao’s teachings and the Communist Party of China.
In this country there are still a handful of groups like the RCP, Workers Viewpoint and others who refuse to give support to the struggle against the “gang of four” in China and who tacitly oppose the correct leadership of the Communist Party. They are trying to declare themselves as communist parties and part of a “new” trend in the communist movement. These opportunists are working overtime in the service of the bourgeoisie and will certainly be exposed before the people for their actions.
But our Party will never join in these unprincipled attacks. We proudly take our stand alongside the Chinese comrades who have rallied so heroically in the face of adversity.
We stand for the development of the trend towards unity within the communist movement internationally. We support the efforts of Marxist-Leninists in each country to move towards unity within one single party in each country and for all parties and organizations of the proletariat to rally closely together in these difficult times.
We will continue to build fraternal relations with other communist parties and organizations based on common stands and common struggle. We are deeply thankful for the many messages of support and solidarity that have come from our fraternal comrades in dozens of countries. This gives us great encouragement.
Comrades,
One of the most difficult tasks that faces us in the coming period involves the bolshevization of our Party and welding it into a mighty, unified, monolithic body. We must work hard to eliminate all remnants of the small-circle period and to combat all tendencies towards factionalism of all kinds.
Under the leadership of the new Central Committee, our Party will revolutionize its ranks in the heat of the mass struggle. This Congress of unity is a major step in uniting a significant number of communists into a single unified Marxist-Leninist party, but this task is by no means over. Based on our strengthened unity and on the firm basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought we must be able to unite still greater numbers of communists who still remain in some local circles and organizations under opportunist leadership. Our Congress should be a rallying cry of “Marxist-Leninists Unite!”
Internally, we must strengthen our Party’s cadres in carrying out the line and policies of our Congress. As Mao Tsetung said: “Cadres are a decisive factor once the political line is determined.” (“Role of the Chinese Communists in the National War”) The Draft Program reflects the correct general line of our Party. Our Program is a great document which will guide our work forward during the whole stage of the class struggle ahead of us.
Our Constitution expresses the class character of our Party and is a powerful weapon in uniting our ranks against imperialism and revisionism and in training thousands of cadres and revolutionary successors. The careful study and consistent application of the principles of our Constitution will serve as a safeguard against attempts by revisionism to gain a foothold in our Party.
Overall we must all work to strengthen the Party leadership and forge the closest ties between the leading cadres and the rank and file. The leadership must strengthen itself ideologically. It must develop a good style of work and never isolate itself from the rank and file and the masses. All Party committees should study carefully Chairman Mao’s brilliant writings on the workings of the party committees and use them as a guide.
Critical in the coming period will be the strengthening of the district and cell level leadership as well as the Party commissions. Here it is essential that all bureaucratic methods of work be eliminated and that ideological and organizational work in these areas be streamlined and politics be placed in command of all work.
Our work around The Call/El Clarin, Class Struggle and other Party literature is key to bolshevizing our ranks and spreading our influence among the masses. The Call/El Clarin is of special importance. This newspaper has been the strong scaffolding around which our Party has been and will continue to be constructed. Its weekly publication for over a year now has been a great source of joy and revolutionary inspiration to tens of thousands of revolutionary workers and activists throughout the country.
In the next period we must strengthen our work around The Call. More than ever, The Call must be used as our open face to the masses. It is at once our collective agitator and propagandist as well as our collective organizer. The Call should increase the size of its staff and the size and scope of its committees and networks out among the masses to the point where it can come out daily as soon as it is possible.
Furthermore the Party press and bookstores must be broadly expanded to meet the tasks of the period ahead. The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung must be widely disseminated along with a broad range of popular agitation and propaganda material from our Party and non-Party press.
As our Constitution says: “It is the duty of every Party member to read, study, promote, support and distribute Party organs.” In carrying out this work we must always rely on the masses and not place any hopes in the “freedom” of speech allowed by the ruling class. We must strengthen our distribution system so that it is completely self-reliant and independent of the state apparatus so that our Party will be able to maintain its links with the masses even under the most difficult periods of illegality.
In the coming period, our Party should recruit hundreds of new members from the ranks of the working class as well as other revolutionaries who have joined the proletarian struggle in a wholehearted manner. Most important here is building the factory concentrations and emphasizing recruitment among the industrial proletariat.
Recruitment must be carried out with great care. New members must be recruited only on a sound Marxist-Leninist basis and only after sufficient education as to our aims and principles has been carried out. Of course, we cannot expect members to already have a deep understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory the minute they join. They must be educated in the cells and in Party schools while they are engaged in the daily struggle among the masses for socialism. No communists can be trained “hot-house” style, but only in the heat of the struggle. We must ensure that every unit of our Party is a training ground for the new communists and especially for the workers. In the past and to a certain extent today, many of our basic units were unfit for this training. Meetings were dull and bureaucratic. Agendas were not organized well and the subject matter often abstract and disjointed. This practice should end and unit leaders should bear the main responsibility to see that meetings are run well.
Recruitment must be carried out among the advanced section of the proletariat on the basis of the requirements laid down in our Constitution with special care to weed out infiltrators and unstable elements.
Raising the theoretical level of all of our members as well as fully mobilizing them to carry out the Party’s work among the masses are two important ways of keeping out agents and opportunists. Another way is to develop the internal life of our Party on a good basis, where factionalism and divisive action will be conspicuously out of place.
We must work hard to build multi-national unity in the ranks of our Party. We should never forget that our Party is a living example to the masses of what the principles of communism mean. We must also remember that our working class is a multi-national and multi-lingual working class and work hard to make the workers of all nationalities feel that they are an equal part of our vanguard party. Building multi-national unity is part of our internationalist stand and is a blow to the splitting policies of imperialism and modern revisionism.
We must also take care in uniting the men with the women and the youth with the middle-aged and older members of our Party and combat all tendencies towards male chauvinism and other bourgeois, splittist ideas and practices. We should carry out special work in recruitment and training of working class, minority and women members within our ranks and greatly improve our multi-lingual work. Careful work should also be done to train many new successors from among our Party’s youth as well as fully caring for and utilizing the experience of our veteran cadres who constitute one of our most precious resources. In our committee work we should try wherever possible to combine old, middle-aged and young people as well as men and women and workers and intellectuals.
In the coming year, our mass organizations will have to play a much greater role in order to expand the influence of our Party among the oppressed masses. The National Fight Back Organization and the Communist Youth Organization will have to be bolstered as will the Party’s work in the most important mass movements and organizations of the people.
While our main emphasis continues to be placed upon getting the Party planted firmly on its feet, the mass work must be expanded as well. General education must be combined with mass action. Our Party has been born in class struggle and class struggle is its only reason for existence.
In carrying out this work, particular stress should be placed on propaganda work. Through the course of the past period, hundreds of revolutionary-minded, advanced workers have been brought to the doorstep of our Party. Now they must be consolidated and trained as communists themselves and won to Marxism-Leninism and to the ranks of the Party.
We should heighten our vigilance against all the right opportunist lines which separate our education work from mass struggle; agitation from propaganda or the Party from the working class struggle in general. These were the tactics of the revisionist Nicolaus who claimed that propaganda was the domain of the intellectuals and that agitation only should be our “chief form of activity.” Nicolaus claimed that hardly any advanced workers exist and that party building must first go through a stage of agitation before the Party could be built. Rather than relying on the working class, Nicolaus argued that we should rely on the liberal bourgeoisie because the workers and oppressed minorities were not ready to play their role in the revolution at this time.
This was all part of his strategy of liquidating the Party just as it was his forerunner’s Earl Browder. Like Browder, he confused socialism with capitalism and had hopes of forging an alliance between classes in the service of U.S. imperialism.
In summary, we must see that we are still in the period of building our Party, of planting it firmly on its feet. We must still pay careful attention to the uniting of communists into one Party, of training cadre and in general of carrying out our work of preparation. The period of heightened revolutionary conditions and heightened revolutionary struggle can and often does develop before the communists are fully prepared for it. We must work with the idea in mind of fully preparing ourselves and the masses for every and all possibility and face the future with confidence and determination.
We are a young Party holding our first Congress. However, we feel deeply committed to carrying out our internationalist duties, especially as a Party of the proletariat within one of the two superpowers. A new day has now dawned on the U.S. proletariat. A new wind of revolution is in the air. We are marching swiftly towards a communist world.
Long Live the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)!
Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought!
Unite to Smash Imperialism, the Two Superpowers and All Reaction!