First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 13, April 11, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The publication of the Draft Program for the new Marxist-Leninist Party (printed in last week’s Call) is being welcomed with great enthusiasm by communists, revolutionary workers and thousands of activists and militants throughout the country. The Draft Program represents a great historic advance in the struggle against revisionism and lays the basis for the formation of the new Party in the immediate future.
Its publication clearly shows that our movement is now in a period of consolidating unity and forming a single party, not a period of continuing the former scattered activities of local small circles. It is on the basis of such a program that the U.S. Marxist-Leninists can arrive at organizational unity and unity in their political work.
The approach to party-building put forward by the small-circle advocates (those who wish to continue this whole period of localism and primitivism) is to hold endless and undirected debates, without an Organizing Committee and not connected with a concrete program to which all members of the new party would be bound.
On the flip side of this openly anti-party coin are the recently-founded parties: the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and the Workers Viewpoint Organization. These groups formed their parties around opportunist lines and further split the Marxist-Leninist ranks, instead of uniting the genuine Marxist-Leninists into a single organization. Our program draws a clear line of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and the opportunism of these groups.
Most importantly, the new Draft Program is a smashing blow against the revisionists of the Communist Party USA on the fundamental questions of the proletarian revolution. The Draft Program hits hard at the revisionists’ theory of “peaceful transition to socialism” and all forms of reformism and opportunism.
The Program proclaims boldly: “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.” It exposes the line of the revisionists who preach parliamentary “structural reforms” of capitalism, which they claim will “evolve” into socialism.
The revisionists promote a “two-stage” path to socialism which must first go through some sort of “anti-monopoly” reform government. Such a government is in reality nothing but a capitalist dictatorship in which revisionists share power with a section of the present ruling class. To the oppressed nationalities, they preach “peaceful integration” under the present system.
In sharp opposition to the revisionist line, the Draft Program points out that we in the U.S. are living in a country in which capitalism has already developed to its highest stage, monopoly capitalism or imperialism. It is a system based upon exploitation of the working class and the most brutal oppression of the nationalities. Imperialism has become “pregnant with socialism.” Having completed the bourgeois revolution more than 100 years ago, the task of the working class now is to carry out the socialist revolution in one stage. There can be no “two-stage revolution,” as in some colonial and semi-colonial countries of the third world. Nor can there be socialism without the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As the program points out, “There can be no ’state of the whole people’ as the revisionists have asserted.” Explaining democracy in class terms, the program shows clearly that today we live in a country where democracy exists only for the capitalists, who are less than 5% of the population. Under socialism, democracy of the fullest type will exist for the great majority of working and oppressed people, while the old exploiters as well as new ones will be repressed in their efforts to restore capitalism.
The Draft Program shows the Party’s determined support for “every struggle” and “every reform that builds the unity and fighting strength of the working class and its allies, linking these struggles at all times with our final aims.” It points out that, while mastering various forms of struggle, “The Party never relies on peaceful or parliamentary struggle to bring an end to the capitalist system, but rather on the armed struggle of the masses to overthrow capitalism.”
Just as significantly the program points out that today the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie is “the principal contradiction in U.S. society.” All of the revisionist theories about the “dying out of the working class” and of class struggle are exposed. The program states that on the basis of capitalism’s development in this country, the working class is the only consistently revolutionary class and all other classes tend towards extinction.
The very conditions of life under this exploitative and oppressive system prepare the working class for its role as the ruling class of tomorrow. For the first time in history, under socialism the ruling class will be made up of the majority of people who produce the wealth of society.
However, the program points out that the working class does not stand alone in its struggle. Internationally, the U.S. working class has the great majority of the world’s peoples on its side. In addition to the workers, Marxist-Leninist parties and genuine socialist countries of the world, allies of our struggle also include the broad masses of people in the third world and all countries oppressed by imperialism and the two superpowers.
Here in the U.S. the movement of the oppressed nationalities is shown to be the main ally of the working class. Our program, with its policies of self-determination, regional autonomy and democratic rights, provides a correct direction for the building of this alliance. It serves as a deep exposure of the revisionists who abandoned the Afro-American and other national struggles when they seized control of the party.
Our program also flies in the face of the revisionists’ so-called “anti-monopoly coalition,” which relies on the liberal capitalists rather than on an alliance of the oppressed peoples here and around the world. On the basis of this alliance, and under the leadership of the working class, the broadest united front can be built in this country to overthrow U.S. imperialist and oppose its reactionary policies.
The program shows that while the U.S. monopoly-capitalist ruling class is the target of our revolution, internationally there are two main enemies, not just one. While carrying out our revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism, we must also join the ranks of the people worldwide in the struggle against both superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The program states clearly: “The Soviet Union was once the proud home of the first socialist state, but today the modern revisionists have seized state power, completely restored capitalism, and instituted a fascist dictatorship of the Hitler type.”
The program is based thoroughly on proletarian internationalism, rather than the national chauvinism of the revisionists and opportunists like the RCP. The program makes it clear that today it is no longer possible to separate the revolutionary struggle in one country from the worldwide struggle against imperialism and the two superpowers. It staunchly defends the genuine socialist countries like China and Albania while boldly arousing support for the third world, which today constitutes the main force in the struggle against the superpowers.
Our stand on the international situation sets our program apart from all the revisionist and opportunist programs and draws a clear line of demarcation between our Party and every other trend. This stand fully prepares our Party to lead the masses against the superpower war schemes and turn the inevitable imperialist war “into a civil war” against the imperialists themselves.
All in all, on the national question, the trade unions, the woman question, the capitalist crisis, the fight against fascism, and on all the burning questions of the day, the Draft Program lays a firm foundation, applying Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought to the concrete conditions.
The program doesn’t present itself as an in-depth discussion of these many questions, but as a relatively short, concise statement which can be used as a guide to action. Of course, no program by itself can replace the various tasks of communist education through agitation and propaganda. Rather, it serves to guide and organize that work.
Finally, the new Draft Program represents more than the ideas of any individual or group of individuals. It is the concentrated expression of the leading political trend in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. Its line is one which has grown stronger through the practice of the U. S. revolution and through the various twists and turns of the struggle. The basic presentation of the Marxist-Leninist line is there, contained within the program’s pages. It is a line that will serve as a rallying cry to all revolutionary fighters to unite together in the struggle against capitalism and revisionism.
In the coming week, through discussion and criticism, any weaknesses and shortcomings in the program can be corrected and the final draft adopted at the First Party Congress.