The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) is the vanguard party of the proletariat, the advanced, organized detachment of the working class and the political leader of the working class movement.
The CP(M-L) is armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought which is the theoretical foundation that guides us through the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Our line is based on the teachings of the great communist leaders Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung who discovered and creatively developed the science of communism to its present level. Marxism-Leninism is the only theory that can lead the U.S. working class to the complete overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the pathway to communism. These are the final aims of our movement.
Our Party has been forged in the heat of class struggle. It is a party of revolutionary struggle and stands in staunch opposition to revisionism, Trotskyism and all other forms of opportunism. Its formation marked a great step forward for the working class and all oppressed peoples in our country who had struggled heroically for too long without the conscious leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party.
The need for our Party arose because of the out-and-out betrayal in the mid-’50s by the modern revisionists of the Communist Party USA who seized hold of that once-revolutionary organization and turned it into a revisionist, social-imperialist and social-fascist organization.
Under the cover of a vicious attack on Stalin, the modern revisionists directed their main attack against the program of communism, especially the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. In place of these everlasting principles, the U.S. followers of Khrushchev and Brezhnev substituted the treacherous line of “state of the whole people” and “peaceful transition to socialism” in order to disarm the working class and preserve the decadent rule of imperialism.
The traitorous leaders of the CPUSA betrayed the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nationalities. They abandoned support for the oppressed nations in their fight for the right of self-determination. They liquidated the united working class assault against the capitalist system. In place of this, they substituted “peaceful integration” under capitalism.
Our Party is one of the many communist parties and organizations worldwide formed in opposition to modern revisionism, a reactionary trend represented by revisionist parties and organizations in many countries, with state power in several countries, and a center in the social-imperialist and social-fascist Soviet Union.
We are a detachment of the developing international communist movement to which history has given the task of leading the proletariat and oppressed masses in smashing imperialism and social-imperialism and in making proletarian revolution. We are the inheritors of the great tradition of communism which was once embodied in the Communist Party USA before it was taken over by the modern revisionists.
The CP(M-L) has been formed under very favorable conditions. The world situation is marked by great turmoil. The countries, nations and peoples of the world are winning new victories every day in their struggle for independence, national liberation and revolution. The worldwide united front against imperialism is surging forward. In the U.S., workers’ struggles are rising up in response to the deepening crisis of U.S. imperialism.
At the same time, the contention between the two superpowers is heightening daily. The danger of a new world war is facing the people of the world, who must get prepared for its inevitable outbreak. These developments made the formation of our Party an even more urgent task.
Our Party is a working class party. There can be no parties that stand above classes, or as the modern revisionists have asserted, “parties of the whole people.” The CP(M-L) unites the most resolute, advanced and fighting elements of the U.S. working class. It embodies their experience in class struggle, their revolutionary spirit and their selfless devotion to the cause of socialism.
The Party is a multi-national party, uniting communists of all nationalities on the basis of our Marxist-Leninist line and program. It is dedicated to the alliance and merger of the general workers’ movement with that of our main strategic allies, the movements of the oppressed nationalities.
We support every struggle and fight for every reform that builds the unity and the fighting strength of the working class and its allies, at all times linking the struggle for reforms with our final aims. Reforms are won as a by-product of revolutionary struggle.
While the Party must master both open and secret methods of work, it must base itself primarily on secret forms of organization. The Party never relies on peaceful or parliamentary struggle to bring an end to the capitalist system, but rather on the revolutionary armed struggle of the masses to overthrow capitalism.
The building of our Party is the first and most important step toward the total emancipation of the working class and ending once and for all the exploitation and oppression of the capitalist system.