The influence of communist ideas and leadership in the working-class movement has increased significantly over the past years. For the first time in many decades, since the degeneration of the now-revisionist Communist Party, communists are playing leading roles in strikes and drawing workers of all nationalities into the growing fightback and the party-building movement.
By taking the struggles against the segregationist movement, deportations, and for the freedom of Gary Tyler into the factories and trade unions, communists are forging the revolutionary alliance and merger of the working class and national movements.
Today, the rudiments of communist cells and fractions are being built in many factories and trade unions. Through the work of communists and a weekly communist press, the new communist party is sinking its roots among the masses of working people and bringing about the fusion of Marxism-Leninism with the working-class movements.
To win complete emancipation from the capitalist system of wage slavery, the working class needs the leadership of its own revolutionary communist party. It is the principal task of communists today to build and strengthen this party, and especially to root it firmly in the working class through factory nuclei and trade union fractions.
Building factory nuclei, consolidating a core of communist workers in each department and plant-wide, is a protracted struggle. The level of organization of a factory nucleus or cell, its ability to carry out broad agitation and propaganda, to develop study circles and a wide network of sympathizers, and to lead the daily struggles and fight within the union, are all signs of the maturity of a communist party.
A factory nucleus must develop an internal division of labor and be able to build the closest possible ties with the workers while securing a strong and secret organization of communists.
In order to coordinate and lead the struggles in the trade unions, communists engaged in work in the same union should be brought together in fractions, on a citywide and nationwide basis. Setting up national sections for different industries and a national trade union commission is necessary to coordinate and develop the party’s labor work. The task of the commission is to sum up work nationally, using Marxism-Leninism to analyze the concrete conditions and recommend policies for the whole party.
Carrying on continual work of agitation, propaganda and organization, communists, Lenin said, “systematically educate themselves, the Party, the class and the masses,” and through independent leadership, fight to win the unions and the workers to the cause of socialist revolution.
The question of independent organization and policy for the working class is fundamental to every aspect of communist work in the trade unions. For this reason, communists must wage a relentless battle against all the trade union bureaucrats, from George Meany to Ed Sadlowski, who try to sacrifice the independent role of the working class and tie the workers to the parties and politics of the capitalist class.
To smash reformism and revisionism, communists must divert the working-class movement from the path of spontaneous rebellion to the path of conscious proletarian revolution. Communists should enter the spontaneous movement, making tactical agreements where it will help advance the workers’ struggle and the influence of communists among the masses. In making these agreements, however, communists must maintain their right to criticize and be assured of the necessary conditions for severing the masses from the reactionary leaders.
To expose the lies of the reformists and politically train the masses to fight these traitors and oppose the whole capitalist system, communists must organize “systematic and comprehensive political exposures, touching on every aspect of their collaborationist policies and the capitalist system that lies behind them. These exposures must educate workers to the role and position of each class under capitalism and their interrelationships.
Workers must understand concretely the oppression of different strata of the population, of the oppressed nationalities and of women, because it is the working class that must lead all the struggles for democratic rights of all oppressed peoples.
In the present period, when the principle task of communists is to build the vanguard party, to train and consolidate a core of leadership for the battles which lie ahead, the chief form of work must be the revolutionary education of the workers through propaganda and agitation.
The aim of this revolutionary education is to win the advanced to communism and the party while raising the political consciousness of the masses of workers. Agitation and propaganda must always be combined, just as building the party and waging mass struggles must also be tightly linked. Propaganda is decisive at this period in our work because propaganda provides the broad scientific understanding of Marxism-Leninism, of the nature of capitalist society and of the tasks of communists which is necessary to develop a core of strong class-conscious fighters.
The study of Marxism as well as the general training and preparation of workers can only take place in the course of the mass struggles. Advanced workers come forward in the course of concrete battles against capitalism. Through these struggles and through work in Marxist-Leninist study circles, in the writing, discussion and distribution of communist literature, shop papers and leaflets, advanced workers will be trained and recruited to the party, and the ranks of the advanced reinforced from among the broader, intermediate stratum of workers.
Building networks and discussion circles around a communist newspaper like The Call/El Clarin is crucial because the paper is a scaffolding for the party, a collective organizer, propagandist and agitator.
In writing propaganda and agitation for the communist press, analyzing the concrete conditions in industry and in the unions, communists use the paper as an instrument in organizing their work in the factories. It is one way of integrating Marxism-Leninism with the mass struggles and providing communist leadership.
Within the unions today, there is a growing spontaneous opposition against the trade union misleaders. This opposition has led to the development of many rank-and-file organizations, caucuses or committees, within plants and unions. It is important for communists to fight to provide leadership in these rank-and-file organizations, to raise the political level of the caucuses and of the workers, and to develop rank-and-file programs for advancing class struggle unionism.
There have been many examples of this rank-and-file movement over the past decade, particularly in the auto industry where the Black liberation struggles of the ’60s gave rise to Black rank-and-file caucuses in the largest auto plants in Detroit – the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), for example, and others particular to different plants.
These spontaneous organizations have attracted many workers who want to see real changes in the kind of leadership that exists in the union and who show interest in revolutionary ideas. Rank-and-file organizations have also attracted careerists and opportunists who only want to promote themselves into union office to replace the entrenched leadership. Such opportunists have tried to turn the caucuses into their own electoral base and machine. Ed Sadlowski in the steel union, for example, has set up his own “Steel Workers Fight-Back” organizations to use rank-and-file activity and anger to fuel his own ambitions.
Communists work in caucuses to unite workers against the bureaucrats and further expose their treachery with the aim of building class struggle unions. In addition, close attention must be paid to developing new leaders, to consolidating a core of leaders trained in Marxism-Leninism, and to strengthening the party organization to provide leadership in the struggle.
The opportunists in the rank-and-file movement must be exposed in the course of struggle, so that the majority of honest rank-and-file forces can be united in the fight to oust the trade union bureaucrats.
Today, the crisis has sparked many struggles against cutbacks, layoffs and discrimination. The working-class movement is on the upswing. The trade union movement is drawing and will draw increasingly larger numbers of workers into struggle against the bosses.
While the economic struggles themselves can never be the exclusive or main basis for communist work, communists must take part in all the workers’ struggles. Communists must link every struggle to the fight for socialism, transform every economic struggle into part of the political struggle for working-class power.
In the trade union movement, where the misleaders are in control of every large union, communists must exercise vigilance and maintain a consistent policy of independent communist leadership in every struggle, from a small grievance to a large strike. The aim of communists should not be to pressure the union bureaucrats into action. Communists work in the reformist trade unions not in order to drive the reformist officials into the struggle, but in order to kick these traitors out of the workers’ movement.
Communists must be good at uniting the vast majority of workers in waging struggle for their rights and winning them in the course of these struggles to see the need to drive out the mis-leaders. It is important to distinguish between the large number of trade unionist fighters among the workers and the handful of labor bureaucrats who promote trade unionism and are agents of the imperialists.
Many strong and honest class fighters have come forward as leaders of the rank-and-file upsurge of the past year. Promoting such class fighters to positions in the unions and training them as revolutionaries is an important step in building communist influence and leadership among the broad masses of workers.
The struggle to win the masses to revolution and the unions to communist leadership will follow many twists and turns. But based in nuclei and fractions made up of the most dedicated working-class fighters of all nationalities, communists can consistently provide independent working-class leadership, linking the immediate demands and daily struggles of the workers to the final aims of the working-class movement, to the need for revolution and the fight for socialism.