The Political Education and Action Collective (PEAC), formerly the Way Forward Collective, has been in existence for about two years. We believe that during the present period the main task confronting the weak and scattered forces which are trying to build an anti-revisionist Communist Party is the development of theory. That theory needs to address such basic questions as the relationship between reform struggles and the rise of revolutionary consciousness, and the way to build mass political struggle.
Answering these theoretical questions calls for the development and extension of Marxist-Leninist theory itself. It is not only a matter simply of applying Marxist-Leninist theory to the United States situation. The work of Marx, Lenin and Mao does not answer the theoretical problems associated with the development of a revolutionary political movement in advanced imperialist societies, because these were not the primary problems with which they were faced.
While the history of our collective is short, many groups and individuals were responsible for the evolution of the ideas contained in this paper. Some of those ideas originated in a group called the New York Communist Workers Organization. That group put our two papers. The first, entitled The Opportunism of The Revolutionary Union And The Black Workers Congress In Relation To The Trade Unions, 1972, contained some of the basic thoughts on the nature of political and economic struggle which have been expanded upon in this paper. The second paper, called A Party Or A Sect, attempted to break with the ultra-left conception of party building held by what were then the October League and the Revolutionary Union.
Some of the members of the NYCWO later went on to form a group called the Trade Union Educational Alliance. This group attempted in a Guardian radical forum article to show the errors of the ultra-left conceptions of theory held by many in the movement (Guardian, 11/19/75). It also put out a pamphlet entitled New York City in Crisis, in which some of the economic analysis contained in this paper is to be found in its first form.
We would also like to acknowledge the valuable work of Neil Mullin in helping develop many of the ideas put out here. His work provided the basis and first expression of some of the analysis expressed in this paper.
PEAC is currently engaged in a dialectical process of enriching ideas already developed, discarding what is erroneous, and adding new concepts. We realize that many of the ideas contained in this paper are still incomplete. For example, we have come to see that the problem of economic determinism, which is presented in this paper as the root of the errors of the Communist movement, is only the result of an overall underdevelopment of the theory of revolution in advanced capitalist countries. In the absence of that theoretical knowledge, much of the Communist movement historically and currently make economic determinist errors. Furthermore, we realize that we have not discussed in this paper the overall tasks of the developing Communist movement in constructing a new Communist Party. We are at present addressing these questions.
It is because PEAC recognizes that some of the major theoretical questions facing the left remain unanswered that we posit the development of theory as our main task. We hope that this paper has contributed to the process of building a new Communist Party based on a solid foundation of revolutionary theory.