Many activists, or ex-activists, who took part in the anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist struggle in the 70’s, are hesitant about taking up again the task of founding the Party.
When they are told that we have a plan for doing just this and nothing else, they want to know how it will be different from earlier attempts they took part in or watched that failed. They want us to guarantee success by some formula. Nothing of this kind can be done by any honest people. The Party has been constructed in many countries on a new more consistent basis and it is the necessity of the time in the US now – therefore, following the experience of those who succeeded before us and our own experience with the sabotaging methods of the bourgeoisie, their police and the opportunists, we too will surely solve this problem.
Furthermore, one of the main problems that became apparent in the earlier attempts to rebuild the Party was the belief of many cadres that they should leave most or everything up to the leaders, that democratic centralism was maintained by turning off your mind and following orders; anything else must be “petti-bourgeois individualism”. The comrades who are now asking us to tell them what to do and give them complete assurances ahead of time, and a complete “ideal” plan, are just continuing this mistake. Naturally, the activists reacted against the loose coalition structure of the old Party and the Civil Rights and Anti-War groups, and demanded discipline, as was only their right. But they brought the bourgeoisie’s ideas of what constitutes discipline with them, so they couldn’t understand that democracy is the dictatorship of the collective and its needs over everyone, especially the leaders, and that the collective will and action can only be the result of serious, mass, well prepared discussion, based on the laws of Marxism-Leninism and a profound investigation by everyone of the actual situation. The Marxist-Leninist Party is the voluntary union of agents to form a collective agent. It is everyone’s right and duty to help develop the line and plan of the Party (and for founding it), and to insist that just this line and plan are carried out and no others (once it has been agreed upon).
It is the duty of the San Diego Marxist-Leninist Group, as the organized leading body of the Marxist-Leninists in San Diego, to go over the problems of the past and present, and the tasks before the people, and work up a suggested plan. It is the duty of the other activists to help us to go over the past and its problems and our plan to move forwards, and to help us improve our knowledge in width and depth. But mostly it is the duty of all real activists to join us in the struggle to construct the collective agent, the instrument of unremitting struggle against all opportunism and the real leader of the peoples struggles. We will listen even to those who just stand on the side lines and complain for what we can learn from them, but clearly only those who take up the task with us can be taken very seriously.
Instead of complaining and repeating the bourgeoisie’s nonsense about how “they tried Marxism-Leninism and party-building and it didn’t work”, the activists temporarily separated from the movement to found the party should be thinking over their experiences and what went wrong, and even better, should meet together with others to talk things over, Preferably this would be done under the leadership of the organized Marxist-Leninists with the purpose of ending the activists’ isolation. There is no such thing as a non-party Marxist-Leninist! The question is not so much: what is our plan?; but: what are you doing to unite the Marxist-Leninists and the masses in all-out opposition to the bourgeoisie and all their ideological diversions?
In the past, the bourgeoisie have managed to split the people, the class, and the Marxist-Leninists on the basis of their hoax controversies where both sides are under the leadership of one faction of the bourgeoisie or the other. The question of the stand on the E.R.A., busing, the exact borders of the Chicano Nation, and so on, were made points over which Marxist-Leninists were divided; while the real basic points of Marxism-Leninism were glossed over and never used to clarify what the stands of the Communists should be. Loud sloganeering, without any serious investigation or study, with everyone taking one side or the other of the two “different” sides presented to the people by the bourgeoisie and their opportunists, to avoid the serious discussion of the basic points of Marxism-Leninism., this is what happened to us; what we got caught up in. We must say “BASTA!” (Enough!)
Therefore, the San Diego Marxist-Leninist Group feels that all of us must insist on the formation of the Party in complete and total opposition to all the trends of bourgeois society, the unwavering refusal to take part in these “controversies” among the bourgeoisie about which way to save the system of imperialism. Instead, we must aim to expose all of the “sides” of these pseudo-discussions and repeat and explain, over and over again, the basic truths of Marxism-Leninism, the fundamental laws of imperialist and socialist societies, and show how these facts prove the utter unworkability of all the bourgeoisie’s snake oil “cures”, and how all these “solutions” are really meant to save the exploitative system by ruining the people and slaughtering them in the reactionary wars.
This, in our opinion, is the way forwards to the Party, and we have concentrated our stand into The 10 Burning Questions, especially the first five. There we try to set down just those basic laws and stands which the bourgeoisie’s agents tried to stop us from hammering out and making the basis of our action and thought. These questions are just those we would need agreement on to feel justified in giving up our organizational autonomy. Decisions based on these principles are those we would be willing to lay down our lives carrying out...there can be no lesser demand for Marxist-Leninist Unity – if people are really serious.