First Published: Workers Viewpoint newspaper, Vol. 1, No. 6, September-October 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The recent October League Organizing Committee Forums in New York on August 29th & around the country further convinced the masses that the OL is the top philistine of the communist movement, not only in the poverty of their lines but also in their bankrupt methodology. The O.L.O.C. is a nest for careerists & opportunists.
First, Eileen Klehr, OL’s vice-chairman gave a kindergarten-level lecture with general platitudes against exploitation and vague denunciations of the revisionist “CP”USA (“Communist Party” of the USA) and Guardian. A former BWC-RWC (Black & Revolutionary Workers Congress) member who is now in the Organizing Committee in Buffalo tried to answer some of our criticisms laid out in the Workers Viewpoint Supplement (August, Vol.1, No. 5), But all he could spout out was slander, still shamelessly lumping the correct line of WVO, which spearheaded the clear defeat of the “left” opportunist line of the RWL/PRRWO clique, with the “left” otzovist clique.
Under a cover of “proletarian discipline” but actually showing their morbid fear of Marxist-Leninist criticism of their bankrupt line, OL put a two-minute limit on comments & questions. From the beginning they claimed the purpose of the forum was to achieve “Ideological clarity,” but in fact their two-minute limit was an attempt to avoid principled polemics and clarity at all costs! Throughout the country OL’s forums demonstrated to the communist movement and advanced workers their skill in wriggling and evasion.
Knowing OL’s petty bourgeois character, WVO anticipated their slipping and sliding and prepared, comments on the OLOC and 4 questions (see reprint). We passed these out before the forum to allow the OL to prepare answers. But just as in WVO forums when we repeatedly call for the OL to defend their line without time limits, no matter how much time the OL has, they cannot defend their undeniably opportunist positions on these questions. This once again proves WVO’s correct and consistent policy of exposing misleaders and sham Marxists before, during and after each event.
From the start we have total initiative in exposing these opportunists because of our correct positions. In NYC we rallied all honest forces in the audience around our demand that OL answer the 4 questions. Chants of “let them speak” or “philistines” drowned out their attempts at demogogy. After the WVO speaker was cut off in the middle of our comments & questions after 2 minutes, practically every speaker denounced OL’s “2-minute ideological clarification” rule and defended our right to deepen the polemics.
In NYC the OL’s anti-communist, union goon methodology was exposed through and through to the entire audience including their own contacts. Again showing their opportunism, they were forced to say “you respect our right to speak, we respect yours”, meaning our right to speak in WVO forums and not in theirs.
All during this time, the “left” opportunist PRRWO/ RWL clique stood cringing in the corner until OL tried to use them to divert from answering some sharp questions on the busing issue. This “hearty band of Bolsheviks” united with the right opportunist OL in attacking WVO. They squeaked and pointed their fingers at the WVO speaker, “they’re dangerous because they provoke violence” and cried that the principled line difference raised by WVO was “dying screams.”
The audience immediately roared with laughter at their ravings. Who really “provoked violence” recently in the communist movement is still fresh in the peoples’ memories.
It was particularly funny that the “left” opportunists used “dying screams” to refer to our principled polemics, after the article “Dying Screams of the RWL/PRRWO Clique and Responding Echoes from Assorted Opportunists” in the August Workers Viewpoint. Apparently the term is deeply engraved in their memory and the clique can’t rid themselves of their own image of dying screams in the last few months. Then the “hearty band of Bolsheviks” “exited” in midst of roaring laughter and ridicule.
The OL, failing to crush genuine polemics, tried to get over their marsh line by slithering all over the place and playing on words.
The first point raised in our leaflet and in the forum was the OL’s Organizing Committee, itself. The OL claims the OC is the basis for the party, therefore the OC principles of unity are the principles of unity for their party building. In fact, they say that the OC is the body to develop and write the party program.
This cannot be the case, because the party must be built through struggle and therefore the lines of demarcation are drawn in the course of waging class struggle against the bourgeoisie and corresponding polemics waged on line differences and resolutions reached such as on busing, the Equal Rights Amendment, and character of the United Front whether it’s a tactic or strategy and different lines flowing from that question.
The OL or OLOC forfeits these lines of demarcation, by-passes these questions and actually drops most of their strategic lines such as “moving the trade unions to the left” and uniting with militant mis-leaders, treating them as “the direct reserve of the proletariat.” The OL talks about lines of demarcation, but in actuality they don’t draw them so they can lull marsh forces, opportunists and careerists of all sorts into their party.
The OL claims that the OC is not their front. This shows their spinelessness again. The OC should be openly [text in original – EROL] their commission to organize the party around a definite trend.
For them to deny that means two things. One, the OL has a “get rich quick” scheme they try to deny.
Lenin said, in struggle against the Mensheviks, “.. .the real work of creating the organized unity for the party was done entirely by the Iskra organization ” while the “organizing committee was mainly a commission set up to convene the Congress.” (“One Step, Two Steps,” LCW Vol.7, P. 274) In other words the party must be built by and from the leading line and circle developed in the struggle. In Russia the leading circle was the Iskra and the OC was the commission deliberately composed of representatives of different shades, to struggle out the line based on the recognition of the Iskra organization as the leading circle.
But OL claims their OC is not based on a definite leading line or leading circle. They even say, every circle regardless of their line has one vote to decide on policy. Even the program will be written by the OC based on the one group-one vote policy and not on the leading circle with a definite point of view as the Iskra. The OL frowns on using the terms “leading line and circle” and purposely refuse to use it in fear of turning other Mensheviks and assorted careerists away from this “joint stock” venture.
Lenin wrote straight forwardly with bold proletarian stand, viewpoint and method, that “Iskra become the Party and the Party became Iskra...” (To Alexandra Kalmykova, Sept. 1903, LCW Vol. 34) The Klonskyite revisionists dare not tell the forces he wants to llul into their revisionist party that the “October League is the Party and the Party is the October League.” Instead, these opportunists wriggle around with all sorts of tricks like 8 general points of unity as the line of demarcation. By ignoring the lines drawn in the course of communist polemics in the last few years, OL exposed that it is actually OL’s bloody liberal line that is the basis of their Menshevik party. The OL is not open and above board as Chairman Mao said all Marxist-Leninists must be. The OL’s OC and their denial that they are the party is in practice building the party with “intrigue and conspiracy” which characterized all revisionists, Trotskyites, and police agents in the communist movement.
THE SECOND EXPOSURE we raised which was picked up by other comrades in the audience was the question of the united front, whether it’s a tactic or strategy. This is the hundredth time we have asked the OL which has wriggled around this fundamental question for years. While still insisting that the united front is a strategy in this forum, Eileen Klehr mutated again and claimed the “united front is an element of strategy.” Sure the united front is an “element of strategy,” all tactics are elements of strategy but OL refuses to call it a tactic. So now the OL says on one hand that the u. f. is a strategy and on the other that the u.f. is an element of strategy. This typical opportunism of the OL is still an improvement over the united front as a “vehicle” line which they pushed in their proposal for a party.
On the question of busing, and especially OL’s calling in of Federal troops, they try to cover over their own deep-seated illusions on bourgeois democracy by their reply that they support ANY reform, whether it’s called by the bourgeoisie or the misleaders. Then they not only tried to distort history by saying that the demand for Federal troops was a demand of the Civil Rights Movement, but they also support the bourgeoisie’s use of Federal troops to “protect” the Afro-American community. The question is not whether calling in Federal troops is a reform or not, but that it shows OL’s revising of Marx’s teachings on the nature of the state. Again the OL is a better defender of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves.’
Through their latest forums the OL’s wriggling, evasion of principled line struggle, indefiniteness, their practice of not being open and above board was again demonstrated in living color. Comrades, the OL is the real splitter and wrecker of the communist movement. Genuine communists today in the US look upon the OL with contempt and disdain.
Throughout the forum in face of OL’s goon tactics, WVO and friends exerted true proletarian discipline. We exposed OL’s philistinism and opportunism by letting them talk and hang themselves. From beginning to end their own forum served as a rope tightening bit by bit around their necks, exposing themselves to the advanced workers brought to the forum by WVO. OL’s forums provide excellent opportunities to learn about opportunism.
In NYC, like OC forums all over the country this was just one in a series of performances by this gang of cowardly careerists. Without the least bit of Marxism-Leninism they call the party only to liquidate the party, they call for a party program only to liquidate the program. The whole tour originally intended to lure out forces has backfired into exposure; it will be remembered as the public debut of this totally bankrupt revisionist party. It also shows OL’s morbid fear of the WVO line which shines like a torch compared to the assorted marsh forces in their OC.
WVO has historically fought against the right opportunist lines of the RU and OL and the “left” opportunist lines of CL, PRRWO/RWL clique in the course of our undeviating struggle against the US bourgeoisie. Comrades, WVO has been and will continue to be tempered in the strongest heat and deepest freeze of class struggle against all opportunism aid the bourgeoisie. This is necessary to build the party of the proletariat and to immediately make preparations for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Comrades, forward to the Party!