First Published: Unity, Vol. 5, No. 5, March 26-April 8, 1982.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
(UNITY often receives questions from our readers who want to know more about Marxism and communism, and more about the League’s political line. In this issue, we are starting a new column in which we will respond to questions we receive. Our audience is quite broad and many different kinds of people read our newspaper, including many for whom UNITY is their first introduction to socialism, revolution and Marxism-Leninism. In this first column, we address a few of these basic questions which we received from some of our newer readers.
This column will be featured on a regular basis, and we encourage readers to send us their questions about Marxism-Leninism and the League’s views in particular – the editors.)
Q: Many understand the need for social change, but why do we need a revolution? What is socialism, and why is it necessarily better than capitalism?
A: Many people today across the country are involved in issues and struggles to improve their situation or stop injustices that they face. In practically every city and community, there are tenants struggles, efforts by workers to obtain a living wage that keeps up with inflation, and Third World people fighting to stop police attacks and racist violence. These struggles involve not just communists or political activists but many different people, ordinary working people. We communists unite with these struggles of the masses and try to work with all those who want progressive change and to help improve the conditions of the people.
These various struggles are important and can make a big difference for the masses. It makes a big difference, for example, whether there will be any unemployment benefit extensions for the millions of workers who have lost their jobs due to plant closings and can’t find new jobs. Or whether or not there will be any bilingual education. Or if poor people can find any housing.
While communists fight for the immediate improvement of the people’s well-being, we also fight for the long-term interests of the people. The long-range goal that we keep in mind and build for is the goal of revolution.
By revolution, we mean the overthrow of the capitalist ruling class and the basic economic system of society. We believe a revolution is necessary because the problems of this society – the economic problems of inflation and recession, national oppression, social ills – are all the product of the capitalist system itself. The basic nature of capitalism is that while the vast majority of people work and produce the wealth of society, a handful of monopolists control all the wealth – the factories, mines, railroads and fields, and all the profits that are produced. These monopolists prosper at the expense of the vast majority of the people, and their constant drive for profit and more profit results in only more problems and suffering for the people.
Thus while reforms are important, we believe that no amount of reform of the present system can offer any lasting improvements, security or stability for the masses or fundamentally alter their position in society’. Great reforms won by the masses of people in this country, reforms such as the winning of social security and unemployment insurance, or the Civil Rights Act that made segregation illegal, were major victories. They were won only through bitter and bloody struggle and alleviated the hardships of the people to some extent, but they have not fundamentally changed things. Today the retired and the elderly on fixed income cannot make ends meet; millions of workers are still thrown out of their jobs to save the profits of the employers; the police and the Klan have not stopped brutalizing and killing Blacks. In fact, it must be said that generally the situation is worse today than a generation ago.
Furthermore, the ruling class always tries to limit or negate those concessions that the masses have won, as seen in the Bakke Decision and Reagan’s cutbacks today. The ruling class will always do this so long as it holds the power of society; it will try to milk everything it can from the working people to enrich or protect its own interests.
Revolution, however, is not made overnight. Communists, in taking up both the immediate and long-range struggle of the masses, both fight for the immediate demands of the people and also prepare for the future. We do this through education and in helping to sum up the experience of the day-to-day struggle, showing the nature of the system and the need for fundamental change, building up the revolutionary forces and preparing in other ways. U.S. history has shown already in a thousand and one ways that the bourgeoisie never gives anything up without a fight; ultimately for the revolution to be successful, the masses of people and the revolutionary movement will have to take up arms to overthrow the exploiters.
The socialist revolution in the U.S. will seize the basic means of production from the hands of the capitalists, and turn this into public property. The workers and common people will hold economic power and political power, and will use it for the benefit of the working people and not their detriment. Exploitation will be eliminated and production will serve the needs of the people. The oppressed nationalities will be respected and provided the means to achieve genuine equality and full national development, including the right of self-determination for the Black and Chicano nations. The U.S. would no longer strive to dominate the world.
Of course under socialism there will still be problems and contradictions, but because the profit drive of the capitalists will no longer determine everything, problems can be handled in a rational way according to the actual interests of the majority.
Q: What is a central task? Why is party building the central task of the communist movement at this time?
A: Communists have a final goal – the establishment of socialism and ultimately communism, where classes are eliminated altogether. In order to reach our goals, we must proceed based on an understanding of the current objective conditions. There are different stages and periods of the struggle, and we must understand how to move things forward step by step according to what stage we are in.
This is true not just for communists. In trying to accomplish anything, one must decide what is the key thing that must be focused on to move ahead. This is true if one is building a house or if one is making a revolution. At a certain stage of building a house, excavating and laying the foundation is the key task. Other tasks, such as selecting the building materials, are undertaken simultaneously, but are influenced by the type of foundation being laid. All these tasks must be accomplished, but laying the foundation is the central task at that moment.
The same is true in making revolution. In any particular period one task must be the central task, the accomplishment of which will enable the entire process to move ahead. Determining which is the central task does not mean that that task is the only thing one does, but rather clarifies the key thing that will help along all the tasks in making revolution.
Today in the U.S. the central task must be forging a vanguard communist party for the proletariat. While party building is the central task, we also have other responsibilities such as developing mass struggles, widening communist influence in society and a number of other things.
But party building is our central task, because without such a party, there will not be the needed central command to lead the revolutionary movement to victory. Every successful revolutionary movement in history has had a leading party or organization.
The working class needs its own party. The capitalists themselves are organized to defend their own interests. Without its own organization, the proletariat and the masses would remain scattered and unable to resist the attacks of the monopolies, let alone overthrow their rule.
The U.S. socialist revolution needs a communist party – the U.S. revolution will be protracted and complex, and only a disciplined, farsighted and dedicated political party will be able to sustain the revolutionary leadership through all the twists and turns of the struggle.
At this time there is no such party. There are revisionist parties such as the Communist Party USA, which is a mouthpiece for Soviet imperialism, and there are wrecking organizations such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Communist Workers Party, which have shown by their practice to be detrimental to the mass movement. Thus it is the responsibility of genuine Marxist-Leninists to strive to forge a communist party.
Forging such a party doesn’t simply mean forming a group and calling it the party. Rather, party building requires the development of a correct political line, integrating with the mass movement and striving to lead it forward, and trying to unite all Marxist-Leninists. These are necessary, for in order for a party to be able to lead the struggle, it must have a good grasp of the conditions in the United States and be able to put forth strategies and demands as embodied in a program that will lead the mass movement forward. Communists must have ties among the masses and try to lead the mass struggle, in order to understand the actual conditions of the revolution, to test the correctness of its political line and to unite socialism with the mass movement. We also strive to unite with other Marxist-Leninists around a common line and program.
Q: What was Browderism (Browderite revisionism)? What was its effect historically?
A: Earl Browder was the general secretary of the Communist Party USA during the late 1930’s and the early I940’s. Under his leadership, the party adopted a full-blown revisionist line and even dissolved itself in 1944.
Browder’s revisionism was characterized by several main points.
One of these was his belief that U.S. capitalism was still progressive. He believed that U.S. capitalism would bring a continued higher standard of living to the workers. He believed that there was also a section of the ruling class that was genuinely democratic and part of the people’s forces. He therefore advocated that communists should simply help the liberal bourgeoisie reform the system.
For the oppressed nationalities, Browder advocated integration. He believed that upholding the national democratic rights of the oppressed peoples, including self-determination, “split” the working class and weakened the struggle against racism.
Browder also felt that U.S. imperialism could play a progressive role in helping “democratize” and “industrialize” other countries, such as Latin America. Thus objectively, Browder’s line, couched in Marxist phrases, was a full-blown defense of the U.S. bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Secondly, Browder believed that socialism in the U.S. would come about peacefully. He advocated that the working class and the oppressed nationalities and other strata should rely on the political processes of bourgeois society. He thought capitalism could be simply voted out of existence. Browder lost sight of the fact that while communists can and should make use of all the bourgeois democratic processes, including elections, ultimately the bourgeois political system cannot be relied on to usher in socialism.
As part of this outlook, Browder therefore tried to completely tailor communism to make it acceptable to the U.S. bourgeoisie. For instance, he coined the phrase that “communism is 20th century Americanism,” expressing the view that his “communism” was simply an extension of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Browder justified this perversion of communism by saying he was simply dealing with “American conditions.”
While communists of every country must creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to their concrete conditions and deal with the particularities of their respective countries, Marxist-Leninists must also uphold the basic principles and outlook of the proletarian revolution. Browder’s advocacy of a peaceful transition to socialism ignored the long history of violent rule in this country and the way the state is used daily to oppress the masses.
Lastly, Browder believed that even the communist party was unnecessary. He therefore presided over the organizational dissolution of the CPUSA in 1944. He transformed the CPUSA into an affiliation of “clubs” and called it the Communist Political Association. Browder’s faith in bourgeois democracy blinded him to the necessity that in the U.S., a steeled, highly disciplined and determined vanguard party of the proletariat is absolutely essential.
Browder’s revisionism brought tremendous damage to the party. It became alienated from many workers. Many of its members became disillusioned and dropped out of the party. For example all of the party’s southern work was dissolved.