Rank and file caucuses develop within the trade unions as the reflection of different political forces which are battling one another for leadership of the union. The rank and file caucuses under communist leadership have usually taken the form of a Left-center coalition, a united front formation bringing together communists, revolutionary workers, and progressive workers. The strength of this united front is always based on struggle, with errors on the part of communists leading either to the caucus remaining a left bloc or degenerating into a common-denominator progressive grouping.
The nature of the alliance upon which the rank and file caucus is based is determined primarily by its program. Communists struggle to win the members of the caucus to accept the formers* minimum political and economic program. Because caucuses operate within the trade union framework, demands relating to the economic struggle tend to predominate in the program. Over-all, such an orientation is inevitable because of the very nature of trade unions under capitalism: they are primarily economic-defensive in nature, bargaining for the price and conditions of sale of labor-power. But beyond this general condition, rank and file caucuses have strong tendencies towards economism and take up political questions only from a trade union perspective because in the U.S.A. the working class has been politically backward. When the working class does choose to step onto the political stage, for example, it does so principally through the vehicle of a liberal-bourgeois party, the Democratic Party.
The effects of this political backwardness become felt even within the communist organizations themselves. There is an opportunist separation of the political struggle from the economic struggle, on the one hand. And on the other hand, when communists talk about their own mini.mum program for the caucuses, they often assume that such a program is just economic, and that any political aspects would have to be part of their maximum program. But this perspective is incorrect and misleading tactically because communists not only proselytize for their maximum political and economic program of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism; they also agitate for a political and economic minimum program.
One common effect of such disorientation is the creation of “intermediate workers organizations” like the National United Workers Organization, the Trade Union Educational League, and the Trade Union Action League. These are the organizations which are supposed to gather together the most advanced workers to take up the political struggle. Naturally, accepting the bourgeois separation of the political and economic spheres, the communists who set up these particular organizations assume that political struggle cannot really go on in the trade unions. But, the fact remains that there is a dominant politics within the trade unions, and that is bourgeois trade union politics. This kind of politics avoids introducing political issues at the level of the supposedly backward rank and file, but prefers to take up these questions at the upper eschelons of the union, behind the scenes, where jockeying for position and influence within the Democratic Party can take place.
A good example of a general expression of a political and economic minimum program, which can help clarify what we are proposing, can be found in the Chinese Communist Party’s 1963 Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement. This document states that a proletarian party must not only fight for a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the imperialist and capitalist countries, but in the course of this strategic task it must also actively lead the working class and working people “to oppose monopoly capital, to defend democratic rights, to oppose the menace of fascism, to improve living conditions, to oppose imperialist arms expansion and war preparations, to defend world peace and actively to support the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations.” (FLP, Pg. 18)
While recognizing the present objective limitations of rank and file caucuses, communists must aggressively take vital political issues into the trade union struggles and educate the rank and file to take a firm class perspective on all social, economic, and political issues. The working class must be educated in scientific class consciousness, as the representative of the interests of all humanity. As Lenin says, “working class consciousness cannot be genuinely political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected.”
One of the most burning political issues in this historical period is the issue of imperialist war preparations. Communists must bring this issue into any rank and file caucuses in which they are involved. Opposition to war preparations need not be a principle of unity of a caucus, but Marxist-Leninists should insure that this issue is addressed by the caucus and should work to win over the membership of the caucus to oppose imperialist war.
The question of how to address the war issue relates to how communists should look at and evaluate the center forces in a left-center coalition. The center forces in the rank and file in general in this period may very well favor trade union democracy, oppose forced overtime, and advocate a firm struggle to defend the working class» standard of living; but on the question of whether they are national chauvinist, support the draft and registration, and would fight to protect their country against the Soviet Union, the majority of these center forces are probably backward. There is always unevenness of development among the center forces, and the degree of their backwardness on particular issues such as war preparations will vary to the extent that they perceive their self interest being damaged by supporting the demands of the minimum program.
The minimum program should not be a program that is just neatly tailored to fit the given state of development of the center forces in a caucus. The program developed by communists is intended to serve the interests of the class struggle by communists in favor of their minimum economic and political program is intended to raise the center forces to the level of the program. For example, the fight against discrimination and national oppression and the struggle for proletarian internationalism will not likely be immediately adopted by the center forces. The taking up of these issues by the center forces will depend on the level of class consciousness among the broad masses of working class people.
The level of class consciousness among the U.S. working class is not high, especially when we examine issues which split the class along national lines. Significant sectors of the U.S. working class have bought the idea that their own self-interest depends on keeping oppressed nationalities in their place because they mistakenly believe that the advance of these nationalities will involve an increase in the competition for jobs and a deteriorating standard of living for all. On these fundamental questions, the majority of the center forces must still be regarded as aligned in the present period with the right.
When we are attempting to develop a rank and file caucus, which is supposed to be a left-center coalition, we have to recognize this fact that the majority of the center forces are already aligned politically and ideologically with the right. This is the subjective basis for the continued hegemony of the trade union bureaucrats within the union structure. It is also the subjective basis for expecting that the majority of the working class, especially white workers, will likely continue to move in more reactionary political directions in the coming period, before this rightward trend is turned around.
When we concretely analyze the basis for a real left-center coalition, we can realistically expect that only a minority of the center forces will become consistently involved in or support the stands of the caucuses. When communists energetically push out the issues of imperialist war preparations, national chauvinism, and discrimination, even these limited center forces will be narrowed down. And among these remaining progressive workers there will be a high percentage of young workers, many of whom are probably educated, women, national minorities, and immigrant workers.
Marxist-Leninists cannot afford, however, not to push out the issues which are critical in solidifying the unity of the working class. Otherwise, such unity that exists will be a false and oppressive unity, built upon the subjugation of national minorities and nations. While the majority of the center forces will probably not take up any real aggressive fight against national chauvinism and discrimination, Marxist-Leninists must not on that account fence themselves off from these forces.
Communists must be flexible and shrewd enough not to cut themselves off from these center forces while at the same time struggling in a principled way for demands based on furthering real working class unity and proletarian internationalism. That is, of course, no easy course to chart. The demands that will maintain unity with the majority of the center forces at this time will be primarily economic – no real wage cuts, no mandatory overtime, strengthen the right to strike, union power over health and safety.
What is important to stress when we are talking about striving to solidify a united front based principally on communists and progressive center forces is that it is politically urgent to establish an organizational presence within the working class that takes a stand against imperialist war preparations and national and racial oppression. This will mean that a caucus based on such a program or adopting such policies will be perceived by the broad masses of the rank and file as essentially radical. This status for the caucus will effectively cut off the avenue of many rank and file organizations that gravitate into being a mere electoral bloc and vie for union position. From our perspective, in this historical period this is primarily a good thing, and not a bad thing.
In order for such a radical caucus not to remain an isolated left bloc, it must take up a militant defense of the economic interests of the rank and file in day-to-day struggles. This is part of a general use of united front tactics and the application of the mass line, and serves to link the radical caucus with the broad masses on the one hand, and on the other hand retain the membership of center forces within the caucus who may waver on the war issue or discrimination.
The present acute sharpening of the all-around crisis of the imperialist system and the intensification of the contradictions leading to war open up opportunities for Marxist-Leninists to win the masses to the side of revolution. But these opportunities take place at present within a conjuncture in which there will be a general increase in a rightward trend politically, especially among the working class. This signifies that for a few years to come, the majority of the center forces, principally the middle and right wings, will be unshaken in their alliance with the right forces. However, this does not imply that the left and the progressive center forces should go tailing after such a political reactionary direction; but that, on the contrary, they should firmly stake out their political claim to represent the genuine interests of the working class, opposed to war, fascism, and national oppression.
There exists a good opportunity for a relatively modest but significant revolutionary current to develop within the working class movement as a whole, and this is the real material basis to take an optimistic view that the rightward trend will be eventually turned around. This embryonic revolutionary current must be based on the alliance of the left and the progressive center forces in order for it to act as any kind of brake on the development of a reactionary or quasi-fascist movement within the working class.
The principal litmus test for gauging the members of the progressive wing of the center forces is the extent to which they are willing to take a principled stand against war and against national and racial oppression. As the objective conditions ripen, such a stand will increasingly propel these forces into a more solidly revolutionary direction and cement their alliance with the left. In order that such an opportunity is not lost, the left forces must not under any circumstances cut themselves off from the broad masses or refuse to carry out agitation and propaganda among the center forces as a whole. If the left adopts policies of adventurism, sterile intellectualism, sectarianism, or other serious forms of left blocism, this will serve to fritter away the opportunities to prepare the conditions for a more general radicalization of the working class.
To sum up, what this orientation means tactically at this point is that the left must take the issues of war preparations and discrimination into the caucus in order to make these questions a political focus of its activities. The membership of the caucus should be urged to get involved in anti-war demonstrations and rallies, in demonstrations defending undocumented workers, for quality education, against police brutality and other activities, and the caucus as a whole should be encouraged to make policy decisions endorsing such activities. At this point, such a program of activities and demands need not be incorporated as principles of unity of the caucus, for this approach may initially fence off the more progressive or left forces from the center forces that need to be drawn into the political environment of the caucus to begin with.
The deviations committed by Marxist-Leninists in trying to build rank and file caucuses can probably be grouped under two major headings: 1) isolating the caucus by keeping it a left bloc, and 2) reducing the caucus to the level of a common-denominator progressive grouping. When Marxist-Leninists commit the right economist deviation of reducing the caucus to a mere progressive grouping, this usually means that they are attempting to hide out politically, muting and mutating their politics in order to be acceptable to the majority of the center forces. In these circumstances the center forces are effectively calling the shots, limiting the framework of the struggle itself, with the left forces having no visible presence or bargaining power. At best, communists may timidly and hesitantly put out revolutionary politics, but quickly beat a retreat to trade union politics in public discussions in the caucus itself. This strategy can be called “secretly boring from within the rank and file caucus.” Such a caucus cannot actually be considered a left-center coalition, because for all intents and purposes there is no real left.
Such a deviation is probably the most common and the most damaging over-all for building any kind of revolutionary movement among the rank and file. With such a strategy, the members of the caucus are never really educated in anything but trade union politics. But militance in the defense of economic interests is not coincident with a revolutionary movement to abolish wage slavery. In fact, it is clear that under the dictatorship of the proletariat trade union militance, which is narrowly founded on sectional interest, is often reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
Communists often justify the strategy of ”secretly boring from within the caucus” by opportunistically pointing to the low level of class consciousness among the center forces as a whole. The center forces are treated as a large, amorphous mass which takes on an abstract existence because they are defined solely in terms of not being either revolutionaries or die-hard right-wingers. Such an approach fails to do a concrete analysis of the center, which for one thing can differentiate the left, middle, and right forces and their relative weight and influence within the center forces as a whole. Such an abstract approach is not dialectical either because it does not start with the potential for change that exists in the center forces, their political mobility which can lead to their being won to the minimum program of the Marxist-Leninists, even though they may initially oppose a number of its key points.
In order to combat such a commonplace deviation, it is probably more accurate and more helpful tactically to refer to the rank and file caucus as a left-progressive coalition, which has the potential to encompass all the center forces and isolate the right, out usually will involve primarily the left or progressive wing of the center forces if the Marxist-Leninists push out their general political and economic minimum program. In this historical period, when political reaction promises to increase, the middle and right forces within the center may support the rank and file caucus on some burning economic issues, but not likely on its over-all program.
The opposite deviation, which is obviously the flip-side of the previous deviation, is often called narrowing the rank and file caucus to a left bloc. In this situation as well, communists fail to take revolutionary politics out broadly among the center forces. The center forces are, in effect, characterized as too right-wing to bother with. The Marxist-Leninists are not able to demonstrate any flexibility or desire for unity with the center; they push up the principles of unity to a level where only the more advanced will endorse them, they try to control the caucus instead or lead it, and end up isolating themselves, left with just a few loyal followers. Even these followers will drop away in time, because of the lack of broader support among their fellow workers.
This left-bloc deviation is often given organizational sanction by portraying tne left bloc as the only real revolutionary alternative in the trade unions, a branch of powerful national organizations such as HUWO, TUEL, and TUAL. Because these left blocs are never able to apply the mass line and build a real fighting unity with the broad masses of working people, they very often degenerate into splitting and wrecking activities, objectively aiding the capitalists by disrupting any kind of united front activities.
The left bloc ends up objectively with the same results as the common-denominator progressive grouping, namely, leaving the working class movement without left leadership and therefore destined to lurch from one reformist solution to another without addressing itself to the question of the overthrow of the capitalist system itself.
Using the excuse of not wanting to isolate themselves and end up fostering just another left bloc, too many communists make the right deviation of being willing to water down their revolutionary politics. They conduct little real struggle within the rank and file caucus, they do little political education from a communist perspective, and then they justify the low level of their own activity by the low level of class consciousness among the members of the caucus!
In the name of avoiding dual-unionism, this economist approach quickly boxes the caucus into becoming an electoral bloc principally designed to take over control of the union. But what has to be realized is that the question of taking over a local lodge does become an immediate and unavoidable question precisely for those caucuses with a watered-down, economist program. There really is no logical choice for this kind of caucus but to work towards seizing power in the local. Unless the caucus is won to take up and struggle around a full economic and political program which includes demands around imperialist war preparations, discrimination, and national oppression, then it rapidly develops no real reason for existence independent of the union apparatus. The only reason that these caucuses with an opportunist program remain rank and file caucuses is that their leadership has not developed enough astuteness to figure oat how to amass the base necessary to ride into power.
The central determinant of how a caucus will be perceived and how it will develop is its program. The program and the consistency with which it is carried out will determine whether a left-led caucus deviates towards dual-unionism on the one hand, or slips into becoming a mere electoral bloc on the other hand. If the caucus has a program which really attempts to raise the class consciousness of the working class and speak to its genuine interests, then it cannot expect to become immediately popular. Under current conditions, when taking principled and firm stands on imperialist war preparations, national chauvinism, and discrimination are not going to be broadly popular among the working class, then a rank and file caucus with such a program will have to wage a protracted and complicated struggle to win the rank and file to its side and take over the union structure. It will necessarily have to involve itself in a long process of base-building, to establish and consolidate the mass support for its program, so that when the caucus does eventually take power, it will be able to implement its aims.
In the course of building a revolutionary base among the working class, communists will be obliged to enter into innumerable blocs with reformist and opportunist leaders. The reformist leadership of other political groupings within the trade union movement will be dealt with differently than the rank and file under their leadership. The long range goal of Marxist-Leninists is to win over the rank and file under reformist influence, while, even though there will be some unity with leading reformists, the principal aspect of the relation with them will be struggle and exposure.
Our principal goal in relation to the trade union bureaucrats and the right-wing trade union leaders in general is to drive them out of leadership of the trade unions. Those leaders who come forth to represent the broad interests of the center forces should be carefully scrutinized. Our tactics in relation to them will depend on their political stands and motion. If they represent the left wing of the center forces, exhibiting a militant class solidarity and gravitating in an anti-capitalist direction, these leaders should be sought out and united with. At the local and district level, communists may be able to enter into formal united fronts from above with these kinds of progressive reformists. At the regional or national level, such formal blocs are unlikely at this time, given the relative weakness of Marxist-Leninists in building up their own radical base.
Since Marxist-Leninists command little base at this time, they are not in any strong position to bargain for advantage in establishing a bloc with reformist leaders in the trade union movement. What they do bring into such a front is the indispensable core of dedicated activists and disciplined organizers that any reformist cannot usually find in his own clique of followers. The goal of the reformists when they enter fronts with leftists is to utilize the talents of the latter to maximize their own success in achieving place, position, and pull. Communists, on the other hand, are not so much interested in positions in the short run as they are in being able to maximize their political access to the rank and file and extend their revolutionary influence.
The minimal condition that communists must always attach to the agreements underlying blocs with reformists, whether formally understood or not, is that they must reserve the right to put out their own agitation and propaganda. Within the front, communists must always maintain their own independent identity and retain some powers of political initiative, especially with regard to the task of differentiating between revolutionary leaders and reformists. Without such conditions, communists would be allowing themselves to objectively promote reformism and enhance the careers of reformists.
Beyond these minimal guarantees, Marxist-Leninists must also be concerned about the opportunities such a front affords to increase their own revolutionary influence. They have to evaluate the extent to which the reformist leaders themselves can be won over to allow for the increase in influence of communists, but primarily they have to consider the ability they will have to sever sectors of the rank and file from reformist leadership and expose the reformists who come out in opposition to communists.
Such united front tactics acquire particular importance when communists do not yet command a large following among the working class or the working class itself is on the political defensive. When the class is on the defensive, it is especially important to utilize united front tactics to augment the fighting unity of the proletariat in its pursuit of short-term goals or partial demands. When communists are still relatively isolated, it is especially important for them to develop a flexible use of united front tactics in order to gain a hearing for their ideas.
Part of what keeps communists isolated and politically impotent is the anti-communist lies spread by the bureaucrats that communists are splitters and wreckers of the working class. Communists are not afraid of the tactical unity of the working class because they are confident of their ability to demonstrate concretely over time how they are the only consistent and principled political force capable of providing sure, militant leadership willing to rely on the rank and file and carry each battle of the class through to the end.
Communists should understand that we start out with something of a disadvantage in such united fronts. But such a disadvantage is a reason to enter united fronts not an excuse to abstain from them. Certainly, it would be much easier to refuse on principle to make deals with opportunists and/or reformists. We could then sit in splendid isolation, gazing at our correct line in satisfaction while the reformists and opportunists continue their uncontested hegemony over our class. Another easy road to take would be to tag along after the most promising-looking militant reformer, hoping to move him and his entourage to the left and thereby do our political work for us. Historically, however, both the classic right error of tailing after reformists and the classic “left” error of refusing to have anything to do with them have shown themselves to be useless and counter-productive for accomplishing our revolutionary goals.
At the level of the operation of the rank and file caucus, we should be open to uniting with the more progressive reformists and bring them into the caucus. In cases where there is already a sizeable caucus functioning under militant reformist leadership which commands the respect and participation of many of the relatively more advanced workers, we should seek to join it rather than build our own caucus. This should be based on a judgment that we will be able to struggle around our own political and economic program on such vital issues as discrimination and opposition to imperialist war preparations.
To sum up, being flexible in the use of such united front tactics has historically been a valuable way for communists to gain leadership of the working class, and prepare it for the seizure of state power. Such united front tactics can be used to unite the class, whatever the different political affiliations of groups within it (communist, social-democrat, liberal, etc.), in order to fight for its immediate pressing demands that can help to strengthen the proletariat somewhat in relation to the bourgeoisie. At the present time, when there is no significant revolutionary current among the working class in this country, through the skillful use of united front tactics, communists can materially aid in the development and strengthening of this current.