First Published: Frontline, Vol. 5, No. 1, June 8, 1987.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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One of the most stubborn problems facing the U.S. left is the fact that the organization which ought to be leading the way in trying to develop united action by all progressive forces, the Communist Party (CPUSA), is in the grip of an entrenched sectarian deviation.
This sectarianism – which is directed to forces both to the left and the right of the CPUSA – takes two main forms: totally ignoring the outlook, the role and influence of other organized left trends; and, on the few occasions when it deigns to acknowledge the existence of other left formations, characterizing them not just as politically off base but as illegitimate – the “phony left” – objectively if not consciously doing the work of the bourgeoisie. And despite the fact that this assessment is not taken seriously by any progressive with even the most cursory knowledge of the actual socialist and communist forces functioning in U.S. politics today, the CPUSA leadership feels obliged – for reasons we will discuss later in this column – to reassert it in the draft resolutions for the party’s upcoming 24th national convention.
Those resolutions (published in the April issue of Political Affairs and discussed in general in the first article in this series) assert a number of times that “a broad Left” is growing in the U.S. working class movement, especially within the trade unions. But as for any discussion of the concrete trends and forces – other than itself – which make up this “broad left,” the CPUSA limits itself to the following paragraph (in the section on the independent role of the CPUSA):
Our plus includes the exposure and isolation of the divisive influence of the phony Left – the Trotskyites, Maoists, Line of Marchers, New Alliance Party, etc.
Concededly, being included by name on the CPUSA’s hit list has captured our attention. But the problem revealed by this snide little commentary goes far beyond the Line of March, which will undoubtedly survive such inanities. The CPUSA’s formulation concentrates a larger problem which is the legitimate concern of all serious forces on the left.
In the first place, as a communist analysis of the contours of the progressive movement the most generous thing one can say about the CPUSA’s evaluation is that it is imprecise. To group together tendencies and organizations as diverse as those listed (plus the catch-all “etc.”) under one simplistic heading is useless politically. Short of rallying those who are already convinced that the CPUSA is the only legitimate party in the workers’ movement, it offers nothing to activists attempting to work in mass struggles and within the broad coalitions – except a justification for distorting others’ political views, “enemy-agent” baiting and petty intrigue.
But of course the purpose of this paragraph is not political analysis in any case. As the dubious category “phony left” indicates, the real objective is ideological: to substitute any concrete analysis of contending left trends with a blanket dismissal of their class standpoint. Conveniently, this allows the CPUSA to avoid any discussion of the actual positions advanced on the left, the balance of progressive opinion in those debates, or the reason why the CPUSA – despite 60 years of history and recognition by the main parties of the international communist movement – is far from considered by whole layers of the U.S. progressive movement as the only, or even the leading, communist force in the country.
And no wonder. What can activists think about a political party which focuses the bulk of its analytic and practical energy on organized labor but has not one word to say about the left social democratic current which presently plays such a prominent role in labor’s emerging progressive wing?
The CPUSA’s blind spot is profound: not one of the CPUSA’s four draft resolutions even mentions the existence of a social democratic trend in U.S. politics, much less analyzes its outlook, degree of influence or the process of developing a serious relationship of working unity and ideological struggle with it. And this omission conforms to CPUSA practice: though individual activists in the CPUSA have ties with individual social democrats, the CPUSA as a party displays no visible inclination to develop a serious analysis of U.S. social democracy or to struggle (against social democracy’s anti-communist prejudices) to forge a political link with it.
This aspect of the CPUSA’s sectarianism may be less conspicuous than the party’s overt attempts to “delegitimize” every organized force to its left, but it is just as harmful. And it serves to underscore just how deeply the CPUSA leadership holds the view that seeking any ties or unity with other organized left trends is not just irrelevant, but damaging to the process of forging a working class united front and militant popular movement.
(Let us not be misunderstood on this point We do not believe that a communist party must, as a matter of principle, seek ties with any and every group that declares itself left; nor do we hold the social democratic prejudice that it is negative for a communist party to strive for a preeminent role in the workers’ movement But we do believe that a communist party attains a vanguard position by winning it in practice, not by declaring that by definition – irrespective of the real contours of the left in a current period – it is the only legitimate representative of the proletarian movement. The fundamental sectarianism of the CPUSA leadership is that it promotes and operates on the basis of precisely this hollow claim.)
The dilemma in which this leaves the CPUSA is that the party’s evaluations of the rest of the left have even less credibility among progressives than its one-sided assessment of the current battle against Reaganism. And it is exactly because the CPUSA leadership is feeling the heat around its narrow-minded and self-serving position that it feels compelled to get their party officially “on record” behind the witch-hunt against the “phony left,” up to and including targeting the Line of March by name in an official party resolution.
Further, given that passing such resolutions is also the way that the current CPUSA leadership has long dealt with questions bubbling up from the party ranks, it is also safe to assume that doubts about such a hard-core sectarian line have surfaced within the CPUSA membership itself. Unfortunately, we doubt that such hesitations will produce an open challenge to the leadership’s formulations at the upcoming convention. The ideological atmosphere needed for a realistic discussion of the rest of the left has been so poisoned within the CPUSA that stronger pressures than exist at the moment will be needed to clear away the pall.
Those pressures are building, however. The most telling evidence is the compulsion the CPUSA apparently feels to take its crusade against the “phony left” to international forums. Thus Jim West, a member of the CPUSA Political Bureau and chair of its Central Review Commission, in a paper presented to an international colloquium sponsored by the Academy of Social Sciences of the German Democratic Republic, takes note of an AFL-CIO resolution welcoming the resumption of arms control talks between the U.S. and USSR and then declares:
This action of the AFL-CIO convention is a fitting rebuff to petty bourgeois radical groups such as Frontline, Line of March and the New Alliance Party, which peddle the fiction that the working class in general and its organized sector have lost the potential for progressive, let alone revolutionary, development and action. Some of these groups are making efforts to establish international ties. Experience with the LaRouchite National Caucus of Labor Committees, which in the beginning masqueraded as a Left movement and which today stands exposed as neo-fascist, shows that these groups employ radical rhetoric to mask activity which is detrimental to the interests of our class and serves the interests of the multinationals. (Political Affairs, March 1987)
As a characterization of the political positions advanced by this newspaper, West’s statement is hard to take seriously, and the attempt to equate Frontline/Line of March with the ideologically unstable New Alliance Party much less the LaRouche neofascists is desperate even by the CPUSA’s low standards. But if the substance of West’s remarks offers nothing but nonsense, the fact that he felt compelled to utter them at a conference bringing together scholars and activists from the international communist movement is quite revealing.
The CPUSA center has long regarded its international ties not just as concrete expressions of proletarian internationalism – which they are – but also as bestowing upon the CPUSA some kind of “franchise” as leader of the U. S. working class. In this twisted framework, the slightest sign that any serious dialogue – much less actual ties – might be developing between revolutionaries and communists of other lands and forces in the U. S. left outside the CPUSA is a “threat” to be warded off at all costs. If it is not, the CPUSA might have to fight for its Marxist-Leninist credibility solely on the terrain of political and theoretical debate and actual practice in the class struggle. And here is where contention with Frontline concentrates the CPUSA’s dilemma, because the Line of March is in ideological alignment with the mainstream of the international communist movement while at political odds with the CPUSA. Further, this political polemic addresses the CPUSA’s most vulnerable spot its failure to acknowledge the material basis of opportunism in the workers’ movement and its underestimation of the struggle required to unite the U.S. working class on an anti-racist, internationalist basis.
For the CPUSA to take up a serious debate over political strategy would be a real step toward reuniting U.S. communists, building greater unity on the left and strengthening the working class movement. But West’s attempt to head off such a possibility – followed so closely by the CPUSA’s reiteration of its “phony left” line in its preconvention draft resolution – makes it clear that the party’s sectarianism remains a major barrier to serious dialogue and united action among Marxist-Leninists and on the left more broadly.