(From Remarks on RWH’s “Realignment . . .” by the Chicago Area Marxist-Leninist Study Circle, February 1982)
We offer these comments on the RWH’s “Realignment, Reagan and Our Tasks” in the spirit of building communist unity through democratic discussion and working towards the formation of a communist party in the U.S. . . .
Our small circle of communists is based in Chicago and is made up of former members of the CPML. We are active in trade union work as well as in anti-war and solidarity work with Poland. We hope that the planned debate will take place and open the door to some fresh thinking, in light of the tragic disintegration of the anti-revisionist movement which has occurred during the past two years.
RWH . . . correctly points out that an anti-Reagan united front is in the making here. Such a front cannot be ignored and we as communists should join, initiate and fully participate in it, not only to lend our organizational skills and experience to the growing opposition, as the RWH maintains, but to try to transform it and direct it away from its Democratic Party orientation. But to do that (and here the RWH equivocates) there must be a complete break with liberalism.
The liberal alternative to Reagan has consistently shown itself to be bankrupt.... The RWH, while correctly pointing to the emerging front as an important force, goes overboard, merging itself into the liberal anti-Reagan program. The RWH shows disdain for any real independent working-class perspective (the working class itself disappears from the language and analysis of the Headquarters’ paper); they make the anti-Reagan front the end-all and be-all.
. . . The RWH comrades have reduced the independent role of the working class within the front to being just one anti-capitalist group among many with one set of interests among many. They fail to demonstrate any avenue, today or tomorrow, for the working class ideology, politics and organization to develop.
The Headquarters paper denigrates party-building at every possible turn. It plays the dangerous game of summing up the past in a one-sided way, exaggerating errors, writing the positive out of history and even writing a premature death penalty for the M-L movement should it fail to meet the upcoming challenge presented by this crisis.
The Marxist-Leninist movement is referred to as “the new communist trend which aligned itself with the views of the Chinese Communist Party.” The Chinese Communist Party is accused of betraying anti-imperialists around the world with its implementation of the three worlds theory and is accused of being an “ally of their (anti-imperialists’ – ed.) immediate enemies, local tyrants and U.S. domination.” Ergo, the Marxist-Leninist movement is placed in a light as negative as possible.
History should show that the Marxist-Leninist movement which arose in the latter half of the 1960s was not simply defined by its support of China and Mao’s line, although these were certainly major influences which would later have both negative and positive aspects. More central to this development was our opposition to and total break with the Soviet revisionists .... This rejection led us down the difficult path of trying to reconstruct a new U.S. communist party and revolutionary movement ....
While taking some verbal pokes at the Soviet Union, the RWH paper mainly soft-pedals the Soviet threat. Afghanistan, Kampuchea and even Poland are down-played and referred to as “setbacks” for the Soviets. We’re sure Moscow would enjoy three or four more such “setbacks” as it expands its sphere of influence in its rivalry with the U.S. The logic of the RWH position seems to be ’leave the USSR alone and they will destroy themselves.’
RWH’s direction for U.S. foreign policy leans heavily toward the liberals’ anti-Reaganism. Reagan is attacked precisely on his anti-Soviet stand. It is claimed that Reagan’s approach is “everything that the Soviet Union could ask for.” While correctly hitting Reagan’s ass-kissing to South Africa, the RWH neglects to hit his two-Chinas policy – obviously not wishing to be associated with China’s just position in any way, shape or form.
Whatever’s wrong with Reagan’s foreign policy, it is certainly not one that makes Moscow very happy. First, it represents a break from the old Kissinger doctrine on Eastern Europe’s historic subservience to the Soviet Union. Secondly, it represents a change from the U.S.’s one-sided attachment to Israeli Zionism. Third, it is a turn from the outright appeasement policies of the early Carter administration exemplified by Andrew Young and Cyrus Vance.
Of course, U.S. foreign policy is an imperialist foreign policy. Its reactionary character can be seen in its aiming its blows not only at the oppressed nations of the world, but at the people of the U.S. as well. Its present backing of the Salvadorean junta represents one of its most dangerous threats of open intervention.
Whose interest, however, is served by belittling the aggressive role of the Soviet hegemonists? They are the main source of world war today. They are the most aggressive and fascist-like. It is they, and not Reagan’s “blustery threats of retaliating” against them (or his promotion of sanctions against them, or against Cuba) which is the main problem.
There is a chauvinist and cowardly ring to the RWH attack on China in the name of the world’s “anti-imperialist fighters.” If the RWH wants to attack socialist China, let them do so. But let the words come from their own mouths and not as spokesmen for the world’s liberation movements, who are capable of speaking for themselves.
On organization, the RWH opposed “rigid, schematic ’democratic centralism,’” blaming the decline of the CPML and others on this feature. Secondly, it proposed a new organization, made up of “folks from the anti-revisionist, anti-left trend” as well as “revolutionary social-democrats.”
Such an organization is both opportunist in its get-rich-quick approach, impractical (after all, the social democrats are far too principled to accept such a ’party’!), and anti-Marxist (American or otherwise).
Of course, the present situation is complex. There are no simple answers. We do not blame the RWH for this nor do we back away from our own responsibilities for the decline. It is our mess, and we should clean it up. The problem is that the RWH is only adding more to the mess. It leans heavily away from what we consider to be a revolutionary approach or an M-L perspective.