In the realm of practice, too, the distinction between communists’ tasks before and after the formation of a party is less distinct than a neat, schematic presentation would have it. On the one hand, as we show in Chapters IV and IX, the preconditions for successful adoption of the democratic-centralist party form do not per se include a specific degree of proletarian involvement in party-formation. Furthermore, the party form will permit communists to engage in much more effective practice, permitting a qualitative improvement in our ability to carry out the continuing work of building up a strong party that truly is the organization of the proletarian vanguard. On the other hand, failure to take up practical work in a serious way, as part of our party-building tasks now, would unnecessarily–and, therefore, inexcusably–delay our starting to transform the character of both the communist and workers’ movements by promoting their fusion. Furthermore, as we explain in this chapter, such failure would sabotage our other party-building work, rendering us incapable of doing good theoretical work, making it substantially more difficult to settle differences among communists, and in general heightening the conditions in which petty-bourgeois deviations flourish.
There are major disagreements in the communist movement about the extent to which we can engage in mass work in this period and about how broad that work should be. In our view, comrades should engage in as much practical work as we can while still devoting sufficient attention to our theoretical and organizational tasks, keeping in mind the primacy of overcoming the communist movement’s theoretical weaknesses. This is a vague formulation, but as a general orientation it will lead to different results than the work of those who devote almost all their resources to practice (out of right or “left” justifications)(e.g., CPML, R.C.P., many local groups) and those who tend to see practice mainly as a distraction from the real work of party-building (the “Revolutionary Wing”, U.S. Leninist Core, some small circles, apparently Irwin Silber).
On the breadth of that work, we think that communists should concentrate our forces in the struggles of the industrial proletariat and also key mining sectors, selecting locations, industries, and plants where the factors are most favorable for workers’ receptivity to revolutionary socialism.[1] In this chapter we argue that communists must pay particular attention to working closely with the most progressive and active workers who come forward. We must try to raise their political level, obtain their assistance in our broader mass work, learn from them, and–for those who are ready to be taught scientific socialism–win them over to communism. At the same time, we argue, communists must try to organize and educate the broad masses in those plants where we concentrate. It is incorrect to either keep all work at the level of the broad masses or to zero in on propaganda to the relatively few workers who today are interested in learning about communism. In explaining this position, we cover several topics:
(1) the separation of the communist and workers’ movements and the need to help create a communist workers’ movement;
(2) the roles of agitation and propaganda in creating such a movement;
(3) the relationship between practical work among the broad proletarian masses and the formation of a proletarian vanguard (a sizable group of active socialist workers, with some real leaders among them) and winning it to communism;
(4) other ways in which practice promotes our party-building tasks; and
(5) whether practice is party-building.
It is impossible to discuss these topics adequately without also attempting to penetrate the confusion that prevails in our movement about how to use the terms advanced, intermediate, and backward in describing strata in the working class; and in a digression we make such an attempt. Furthermore, for many communists, an objective appraisal of the relationship between propaganda and agitation is impossible because they understand certain quotations to give propaganda a preeminent role during party-building. The quotations have been totally misinterpreted, and a fictitious Russian party-building history has been constructed around them. However, since many comrades were never “taught” this misinformation, we have placed our criticism of it in an appendix.
Revolutionary theory and communist organization alone do not make a revolution. The vanguard party can be neither an elite sect trying to manipulate the rebellious passions of the masses, nor an organization merely trying to service the mass movement as it develops spontaneously. Nor can it just be in the vanguard intellectually; it must be an organization of revolutionary communist workers, the vanguard of their class, and it must become the actual leader of the millions of workers in this country.
Today’s communists are not even close to this description. The number of workers who look to any communist forces for an understanding of an economic or political question, or for leadership in struggles against exploitation and oppression, is miniscule. The communists and other socialists of this country are overwhelmingly ex-students and other people of petty bourgeois backgrounds. We came to Marxism-Leninism from the anti-war/student movement, the Black and other national liberation movements, and the liberation support movement. There is a small but growing workers’ movement, but today it is a movement for militant unionism, for union democracy, and for organization of unorganized plants, not a movement for socialism. In Europe, millions of workers vote for the parties that they think will bring them socialism; workers here are not in love with capitalism, but they overwhelmingly believe that no better system has been developed anywhere else.
These blunt truths are sobering, but they are no reason for pessimism. The development of a revolutionary proletarian socialist movement has to proceed step by step. Lenin long ago explained why, and he described experiences that began as ours has begun. Describing the tremendous strike movement of the 1890’s in Russia, he wrote,
Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness...
We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosphic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. . ..
Hence, [in Russia,] we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers.[1a]
Elsewhere Lenin described the necessity for these two movements to merge:
At first socialism and the working-class movement existed separately in all the European countries. The workers struggled against the capitalists, they organized strikes and unions, while the socialists stood aside from the working-class movement, formulated doctrines criticising the contemporary capitalist, bourgeois system of society and demanding its replacement by another system, the higher, socialist system. The separation of the working-class movement and socialism gave rise to weakness and underdevelopment in each: the theories of the socialists, unfused with the workers’ struggles, remained nothing more than Utopias, good wishes that had no effect on real life; the working-class movement remained petty, fragmented, and did not acquire political significance, was not enlightened by the advanced science of its time. For this reason we see in all European countries a constantly growing urge to fuse socialism with the working-class movement in a single Social-Democratic movement. When this fusion takes place the class struggle of the workers becomes the conscious struggle of the proletariat to emancipate itself from exploitation by the propertied classes, it is evolved into a higher form of the socialist workers’ movement–the independent working-class Social-Democratic party. By directing socialism towards a fusion with the working-class movement, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did their greatest service: they created a revolutionary theory that explained the necessity for this fusion and gave socialists the task of organizing the class struggle of the proletariat.
Precisely this is what happened in Russia. In Russia, too, socialism has been in existence for a long time, for many decades, standing aside from the struggle of the workers against the capitalists, aside from the workers’ strikes, etc. On the one hand, the socialists did not understand Marx’s theory, they thought it inapplicable to Russia; on the other, the Russian working-class movement remained in a purely embryonic form. . .. However, the Russian socialists did not hold to their undeveloped fallacious theory. They went forward, accepted Marx’s teaching, and evolved a theory of workers’ socialism applicable to Russia–the theory of the Russian Social-Democrats. . .. Since the foundation of Russian Social-Democracy (1883) the Russian working-class movement–in each of its broader manifestations –has been drawing closer to the Russian Social-Democrats in an effort to merge with them. The founding of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (in the spring of 1898) marked the biggest step forward towards this fusion. At the present time the principal task for all Russian socialists and all class-conscious workers is to strengthen this fusion,, consolidate and organize the Social-Democratic Labour Party. He who does not wish to recognize this fusion, he who tries to draw some sort of artificial line of demarcation between the working-class movement and Social-Democracy in Russia renders no services but does harm to workers’ socialism and the working-class movement in Russia.[2]
In this country it is not that there is no history of socialist ideas being brought to the working class before now. But the weaknesses of the old CPUSA, its revisionist degeneration, the bourgeoisie’s consistent and professional propaganda of reformism and anti-communism, the overall failure of Marxist-Leninists (and other socialists) to overcome that bourgeois ideology, and the spread of relative privileges among many workers, have created a situation where fusion remains very low.
Some comrades think that those of us who consider the level of fusion in the United States low today are like those in Russia who tried to hold the work back, because they did “not wish to recognize this fusion.” None of the existing parties gives any public recognition of the fact that we have a long way to go in fusing communism with the workers’ movement, but only the MLOC, now renamed the CPUSA/M-L, has tried to defend such a position.
The CPUSA/M-L’s views are mainly explained in a few paragraphs in the February, 1977, issue of Unite! The comrades oppose “the Trotskyist formulation of fusion as the combining of the ’communist movement with the working class movement’” by convincing themselves that there is never any separation of the two movements to overcome:
Communists are part of the working-class movement–there exists no separate communist movement which must be fused with the working class.
All social movements are based on a definite class. The working class movement–that part of the working class engaged in struggle against the capitalists–grows out of the working class as a whole. If there is a separate communist movement, then where does it grow from–either the proletariat, the petty-bourgeoisie, or the bourgeoisie. And if it is part of the proletariat then it cannot exist as a separate movement.[3]
And again: “...Marxist-Leninists do not exist separate from the working class movement. ...” Of course no communists who understand and apply Marxism remain apart from the workers’ movement any longer than it takes them to apply their theoretical understanding and learn from experience, so that their forces merge with the vanguard of the workers’ movement. This process, when it does take place, includes the better non-proletarian communists overcoming many of their weaknesses and the best of the workers being won to communism. But to claim that there is never a separation because there should be no separation is sophistry. The main virtue of such reasoning is that it brings joy to the hearts of those who want to see themselves as part of the working-class movement, regardless of whether we are still in the period (described by that famous “Trotskyist” V.I. Lenin) when the socialists have yet to effectively fuse their activity with the working-class movement, and when that movement has little connection with socialism.
The CPUSA/M-L does say, “The task of the party is to fuse scientific socialism with the spontaneous working class movement in the course of leading the day to day struggle of the workers against the capitalist class.” Here, by speaking of socialism rather than the supposedly non-existent communist movement, they apparently mean that fusion means teaching the workers the socialist theory, while providing leadership to their struggles.[4] With further elaboration, we would agree that this states the means of accomplishing fusion. Thus to a certain extent the CPUSA/M-L does recognize the need to develop communist influence within the class, and this is clear in other statements of theirs. They also talk about the need to recruit more working-class people into their organization. But they persist in minimizing these tasks by wiping out any distinction between those petty bourgeois and intellectual forces which first accept scientific socialism, and the workers whom we must both win over and integrate ourselves with politically to avoid being a petty bourgeois socialist movement. (And they ignore the danger of opportunism in their own organization, given its class base.) A graphic example, but not the only one, of their understating the work of fusion was in the same Unite! article. The authors referred to “the ’left’ line which existed in the MLOC and the working class movement as a whole” and called for rectification “in the entire working class movement.”[5] The MLOC must have considered itself the workers’ movement, for there are no rank-and-file workers’ struggles in which the workers accepted (or ever considered) the allegedly “left” line on fusion which the MLOC repudiated.
Ironically, the CPUSA/M-L claims that those of us who call for fusing the communist movement with the workers’ movement are Trotskyists who see the party as an elite petty-bourgeois group which will effectively exercise its dictatorship over the masses. In fact, those of us who recognize the separation of communists from the workers’ movement, in order to make and implement plans to end that separation, are far less likely to make that deviation than those communists from the petty bourgeoisie who decide that they are the working-class movement.
The degree of fusion is, of course, a factual question, and a small collective in the San Francisco Bay Area cannot claim to have an overview of the answer. But if communist influence on the workers’ movement were substantially higher elsewhere than the very low level here, we think we would see some objective evidence of the fact. It would show in the demands put forward by the workers.[6] Such influence would also be manifest in communists’ ability to really mobilize the workers. For example, do those who think that fusion is high believe that the U.S. debate over the Theory of Three Worlds will determine whether the working class will, in the near future, oppose or support the strengthening of NATO? Another indicator of substantial communist influence on the workers’ movement would be a much higher level of systematic red-baiting and outright persecution by the top union hierarchy and the state, tactics that will surely be applied with a vengeance as communists become more of a threat. Furthermore, there are few, if any, workers at communist forums held in this area, and other comrades report that the same is true elsewhere. And we can be sure that if any of the existing parties had recruited many workers, they would have found ways to advertise that fact, but they have not done so. Finally, although this is not the place to prove it, we think that there is a great deal of evidence in the political lines and in the form of the agitation and propaganda of the existing parties to show that they have had difficulty changing the petty-bourgeois composition of their organizations. There are too many, and too consistent, mistakes that only groups of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia could persist in for long. (E.g., so many parties’ “left” sectarian attitudes towards other communists; dozens of MLOC or CPUSA/M-L articles that fail to explain carefully why the bourgeois or reformist answer to a particular political question is false.)
The MLOC did at one point treat the level of fusion as a question of fact, rather than something to be dealt with solely by reasoning that communists “do not exist separate from the working-class movement.” For they wrote,
. . .[T]he level of socialist influence in the working class movement is at a high level, as indicated in the analysis of the state of the working class movement in COMMUNIST LINE #3. . . .[The MLOC’s former erroneous view that fusion is at a low level] saw fusion as a question of the presence or existence of communists in the working class, rather than the fusing of scientific socialism with the workers movement, which has been taking place for 125 years through various forms and is today at a relatively high level.[7]
As far as we know, no statements of the MLOC’s on fusion go farther than this in presenting evidence of a high level of fusion. Recall what a high level of fusion really is: “When this fusion takes place, the class struggle of the workers becomes the conscious struggle of the proletariat to emancipate itself from exploitation by the propertied classes. . ..”[8] The MLOC’s short proof that socialist influence among the workers is high is difficult to take seriously. First, there is no analysis of the state of the U.S. working class movement in Communist Line #3. The journal contains only a series of reprinted Albanian articles on general theoretical questions. Maybe the comrades thought no one would go back to check on their “analysis.”
Second, how can one possibly contrast “the fusing of scientific socialism with the workers movement” to the “existence of communists in the working class”? What form can fusion take, other than the development of a significant number of communist workers? Or does socialist thought just sort of drift through the workers’ movement, filling the spaces between the human bodies?
Finally, the reference to 125 years of fusion shows a mentality which aims to obscure questions, not answer them. The bourgeoisie has promoted its ideology for three times as long, relying on far greater resources than we have, and–in this country–displaying more professionalism and a great deal more consistency. The question of the influence of each ideology on the class at this point cannot be solved by counting the years since Marxist thought reached North America.
The MLOC came up with one last argument on fusion, one that is not peculiar to them. They discovered that all one has to do is form a party, and the level of fusion leaps:
The level of class conscious struggle on the part of the working class is expressed in many ways, but the most important expression is the existence of the political party of the working class, the communist party.
.. .[T]he formation of a vanguard party is a reflection of the fusion that exists. The formation and development of the communist party is a very high expression of this fusion between Marxism-Leninism and the working class movement.”[9]
Now this might have a ring of authenticity because of its close similarity to what Lenin said about the forming of the RSDLP (see quotation on p. 35, above). But the founding of the Russian party was such a tremendous step towards fusion because it was largely communist workers who formed themselves into a party.[10] No doubt organizing our present forces into a unified party, with a correct line, would greatly increase our ability to deepen fusion. But the task would still have barely begun if those forces came mainly from non-proletarian strata and were only beginning to establish our ties with the workers.
No, comrades of the CPUSA/M-L, the task of fusing communism with the workers’ movement remains very great. And your resort to such flimsy arguments, instead of facts, to prove otherwise strengthens our opinion that the facts do not accord with your wishes. We emphasize the magnitude of the work that faces communists in deepening fusion not because we shrink from that work, but to make sure that communists give it the kind of attention which we must give to a task that we have mainly failed at so far, instead of deluding ourselves about having a high level of influence on the class, or even about being the working-class movement.
Such delusions and pretensions do have real consequences. They lead to underestimating our tasks; producing agitation and propaganda that “skips ahead” of the audience’s capacity to grasp the material’s correctness; obscuring the especially serious need for criticism/self-criticism and for members to engage in a prolonged struggle to remold their outlooks, in any group that is basically petty-bourgeois; and encouraging unfounded confidence in a general line and style of work that have yet to be proven in practice. Furthermore, training communists to evaluate fusion, or any serious question, in a subjective way will inevitably erode their ability to analyze other problems objectively.
There are forces in this country that can mobilize at least some tens of thousands of workers, sometimes many times that, when they want to: the churches, the Democratic Party, the trade union bureaucrats, the right-wing opposition to gun control, etc. Today we have but a small fraction of the influence of the least of these. Tomorrow, as part of a strong proletarian revolutionary movement, we will overwhelm them all, but only if we discover how to do so, on the basis of an objective assessment of where we are now.
Communists agree that the way to increase our influence in the working class, and increase the working-class influence on the communist organizations and circles, is to take our ideas to the workers. But here the agreement ends. There are serious disputes about the relative importance of propaganda, agitation, and providing practical leadership in the workers’ struggles; about the attention to be given to workers who are at different levels of development; and about how much we should participate in struggles outside those where workers face their employers.
A large section of the movement believes that the way to fuse communism with the workers’ movement is to “win over the advanced workers,” making propaganda “the chief form of our work.“ Some comrades use this as a “left” justification for doing high-level “revolutionary” propaganda and ignoring necessary but difficult work among the broad masses. Others use it to justify fear of trying to lead the masses, as part of an overall right line. Still others, perhaps the majority, do their best at combining broad mass work with additional forms that will help raise the level of the most developed workers, but they still drag themselves away from a clear conception of our tasks by hanging on to these slogans, which are wrong.
Before examining the errors, it is necessary to enter the debate over the definitions of some important terms.
In an 1899 manuscript, Lenin argued that the Russian Marxists should devote an important part of their educational materials (a national newspaper) to the most politically and intellectually developed Russian workers. In his article Lenin described three strata in the working class, which in Russia had gone through a strike movement that reverberated in all of society, and which had been exposed to the ideas of socialism for several years. We quote the key passage about these strata in full, because it is influential in discussions of fusion in this country. We have italicized the portions which describe, in general terms, the strata that sooner or later emerge in every capitalist country.
The history of the working-class movement in all countries shows that the better-situated strata of the working class respond to the ideas of socialism more rapidly and more easily. From among these come, in the main the advanced workers that every working-class movement brings to the fore, those who can win the confidence of the labouring masses, who devote themselves entirely to the education and organization of the proletariat, who accept socialism consciously, and who even elaborate independent socialist theories. Every viable working-class movement has brought to the fore such working-class leaders, its own Proudhons, Vaillants, Weitlings, and Bebels. And our Russian working-class movement promises not to lag behind the European movement in this respect. At a time when educated society is losing interest in honest, illegal literature, an impassioned desire for knowledge and for socialism is growing among the workers, real heroes are coming to the fore from amongst the workers, who, despite their wretched living conditions, despite the stultifying penal servitude of factory labour, possess so much character and will-power that they study, study, study, and turn themselves into conscious Social-Democrats–“the working-class intelligentsia.”[11] This “working-class intelligentsia” already exists in Russia, and we must make every effort to ensure that its ranks are regularly reinforced, that its lofty mental requirements are met and that leaders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party come from its ranks. The newspaper that wants to become the organ of all Russian Social-Democrats must, therefore, be at the level of the advanced workers; not only must it not lower its level artificially, but, on the contrary, it must raise it constantly, it must follow up all the tactical, political, and theoretical problems of world Social-Democracy. Only then will the demands of the working-class intelligentsia be met, and it itself will take the cause of the Russian workers and, consequently [Lenin’s emphasis], the cause of the Russian revolution, into its own hands.
After the numerically small stratum of advanced workers comes the broad stratum of average workers. These workers, too, strive ardently for socialism, participate in workers’ study circles, read socialist newspapers and books, participate in agitation, and differ from the preceding stratum only in that they cannot become fully independent leaders of the Social-Democratic working-class movement. The average worker will not understand some of the articles in a newspaper that aims to be the organ of the Party, he will not be able to get a full grasp of an intricate theoretical or practical problem. This does not at all mean that the newspaper must lower itself to the level of the mass of its readers. The newspaper, on the contrary, must raise their level and help promote advanced workers from the middle stratum of workers. Such workers, absorbed by local [Lenin’s emphasis] practical work and interested mainly in the events of the working-class movement and the immediate problems of agitation, should connect their every act with the thoughts of the entire Russian working-class movement, its historical task, and the ultimate goal of socialism, so that the newspaper, the mass of whose readers are average workers, must connect socialism and the political struggle with every local and narrow question.
Lastly, behind the stratum of average workers comes the mass that constitutes the lower strata of the proletariat. It is quite possible that a socialist newspaper will be completely or well-nigh incomprehensible to them (even in Western Europe the number of Social-Democratic voters is much larger than the number of readers of Social-Democratic newspapers), but it would be absurd to conclude from this that the newspaper of the Social-Democrats should adapt itself to the lowest possible level of the workers. The only thing that follows from this is that different forms of agitation and propaganda must be brought to bear on these strata–pamphlets written in more popular language, oral agitation, and chiefly–leaflets on local events. The Social-Democrats should not confine themselves even to this; it is quite possible that the first steps towards arousing the consciousness of the lower strata of the workers will have to take the form of legal educational activities.[12]
Current literature generally substitutes the terms intermediate and backward for average and lower strata, respectively. We adopt this usage as well. It is clear from the context that the word translated as “average” does not mean average in the sense of “the norm,” since “the broad stratum of average workers” is evidently much smaller than the “mass that constitutes the lower strata.”[13] Furthermore, it is clear from other statements of Lenin’s, emphasizing the importance of widespread agitation to win workers over to the views of the communists, that the lower strata, non-socialist workers were an important part of the working class and that it could not be said that the typical worker was an active socialist.[14][15] As for the remaining workers, Lenin elsewhere refers to them as “backward,” and we adopt this term as both more convenient and, for reasons we explain below, more descriptive than lower strata.
If communists decide to adhere to these definitions today, as we think they should, the person considered an advanced worker would probably be leading a rank-and-file caucus, a committee to organize a union in an unorganized plant, or perhaps a community struggle against, say, police brutality. Such a person would read all the socialist literature he or she could find, trying to grasp and answer the burning questions facing the movement, including the more theoretical aspects. The worker would be trying to link up with people with like-minded views. At forums and other places he or she would encourage the communists (or whatever socialists to whom the worker gravitated) to “get their act together” and would state some views on how to do it. In practice, the advanced worker would stand out not only as a respected organizer, but as one who tries to teach fellow-workers the need for socialism. Such a worker would not be difficult to identify: his or her name would come up quickly in conversations with other workers about struggles in the plant or union. We assume that a few such workers must exist in the U.S. today. But local experience, other comrades’ reports, and the evidence concerning fusion cited earlier in this chapter make it clear that there are only a few, certainly not enough to significantly affect the character of the struggles of the proletariat as a whole.
There are undoubtedly more of what Lenin called intermediate workers. These are activists in the class struggle who believe in socialism and would help in any systematic effort to promote it. Left alone, however, their activism and interests usually remain limited to struggles in their own plants and unions. Their contributions to the movements they participate in are invaluable, but they are not the real mass leaders that advanced workers are. Though not “working-class intellectuals,” they read socialist newspapers and books if given the opportunity.
The third category, if we choose to apply these definitions to the U.S., would apply to so many workers that it will also be necessary to define some sub-categories, to guide our practice. For the group of backward, non-socialist workers is obviously the vast majority and runs all the way from active trade unionists who promote the interests of their fellow workers and who can be stimulated to learn about socialism, to died-in-the-wool reactionary, racist, and chauvinist members of the labor aristocracy. We usually describe the group of workers described first in the previous sentence as “progressive activists,” but comparison of nationwide observations concerning the various strata of backward workers will probably produce more scientific sub-categories.
For years there has been disagreement about whether to apply the terms advanced, etc., as Lenin did, or to lower the level that each term refers to because conditions here have produced so few “Retrograde Trend” advanced and intermediate workers. Everyone seems to consider this an easy question, because they say but a few words on the subject. Unfortunately, this has not settled the issue, and each answer appears self-evident to its own adherents to this day. The continuing controversy, combined with the fact that this seeming debate over semantics has important implications for practice, requires us to take up the issue in some detail.
It is incorrect to see this as a question of whether we must automatically “stand with Lenin’s definition”[16] or redefine the term because concrete conditions have changed. A decision on how to use a word should be based on what best serves our need for theoretical clarity on the subject to which the word applies. Clarity, not just dogmatism, requires using the word as Lenin did, because the context of the discussion is the same as Lenin’s, and our movement frequently relies on Lenin’s concepts about the advanced and the role they play. It is important to make sure that we are talking about the same kind of people Lenin was, when we turn to him for lessons about what we can expect from such workers.
Those who disagree are generally against “dogmatically impos[ing] Lenin’s description of an advanced worker in 1899 Russia on to today’s situation without taking into account the differences in development of both the working class and communist movement as well as the state of fusion.”[17] Such dogmatism is often thought to cause comrades to “set off in search of the ’advanced’–not the advanced workers of the U.S. proletariat, of course, but the advanced workers of books.”[18] Comrades who hold these views often provide their own descriptions of those they consider to be the most developed workers in the U.S.[19]
Yet these comrades invariably adopt Lenin’s view that “advanced workers” play a central role in fusion, despite the fact that they are not talking about such workers as those of whom Lenin spoke. “It is the advanced who will constitute the key bridge between the communist movement and the working-class movement.” “[T]hey. . . determine the character and level of the workers’ movement.”[20] Now it is obvious that fusion will be much greater when conditions produce a significant stratum of workers “who can win the confidence of the labouring masses, who devote themselves entirely to the education and organization of the proletariat, who accept socialism consciously” and can “become fully independent leaders of the Social-Democratic working-class movement” (Lenin). For these will be people who have the dedication, breadth of vision, intellectual development, and leadership skills to have an extraordinary influence on the masses of workers. (Lenin observed that “the advanced workers, as always and everywhere, determined the character of the movement, and they were followed by the working masses because they showed their readiness and their ability to serve the cause of the working class, because they proved able to win the full confidence of the masses.”[21] They will also facilitate the merging of the two movements by their effect on the communist organizations which they join, since, as Lenin pointed out, they should form an important part of party leadership, presumably at all levels. Such leaders will, hopefully, help rectify the petty-bourgeois tendencies which so badly hinder our efforts to build a party that leads the working class.
Although intermediate workers will obviously help in the process of fusion, too, the crucial functions just described can be truly fulfilled only by people who have the leadership qualities and breadth of vision of those advanced workers which Lenin noted every working-class movement brings forward. It is for this reason that we oppose changing the meaning of advanced worker.
Most comrades who utilize the concept of advanced workers at all are aware of the key role that they (or, rather, the real advanced workers) will play. Accordingly, such comrades recommend that a great deal of special attention be paid to those they consider the advanced. We will speak more of this shortly, but for now we should make clear that we agree that in communists’ practice, special work must be done with those who are firmest in their class stand and most progressive in their outlook. However, calling such people advanced workers, regardless of their real level, usually leads to errors, because comrades forget that, having redefined the term, they must discard the ideas which Lenin taught regarding “his” advanced.
An extreme form of the right error corresponding to confusion on these terms would be to build an entire party at the level of the redefined “advanced,” even to rely on them as leadership. This objectively means substituting a mass organization of today’s most active and progressive workers for a party firmly guided by Marxism-Leninism, and there are anti-Leninist socialists in this country who have advocated doing so.
The “left” error is to treat these workers as if they are the “real heroes,” the “working-class intelligentsia,” whom Lenin called advanced. It means overestimating both their commitment to the practical struggle and the level of their interest in study, leading to unrealistic demands on them in both areas. This has happened with ourselves and with other comrades locally, when the term advanced was applied loosely. For some workers it was mistakenly assumed that discussions of the correct position on an issue facing the union would lead to their engaging in verbal agitation for that position, when in fact they needed strong encouragement and real training to see themselves as agitators and organizers. There was also an overestimation of some workers’ dedication, as would be manifested in tolerance of long meetings or in a consistent commitment to the struggle even in difficult conditions. Regarding theory, sometimes we overlooked the limitations of general works on Marxism-Leninism (e.g., Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism) for workers who were neither stimulated nor very comprehending without propaganda employing a more concrete and factual analysis.
Furthermore, reserving the terms for such workers as Lenin described is important for keeping before us the image of the kind of workers who must and will come forward in this country. Failure to do this will encourage those with rightist tendencies to fail to work to develop advanced workers, or to ignore their intellectual needs as they do come forward. And those with anarcho-syndicalist (e.g., R.C.P.) or Trotskyist tendencies to forever see workers as the militant mass and intellectuals as the leaders, the ones with the ideas, will also have a theory that encourages their deviation.
Moreover, redefining these terms obscures some of the differences between the state of the working-class movement in revolutionary Russia, where many advanced workers did exist, and in the United States, paving the way for dogmatic application of the Russian party-building experience.
We see little means for people who misuse these terms to consistently escape all of the potential erroneous tendencies, since such comrades certainly do not struggle to put Lenin’s lessons about the role of “his” advanced workers out of their minds as they develop plans for working with “their” advanced workers. On the contrary, they consciously link the terms to Lenin’s descriptions of the process of fusion.
Formulations are not all-powerful, of course. We probably would not repeat the errors we have made before, no matter how we labeled the workers whom we work with. But poorly-formulated theory is a poor guide to action, and there is no reason for communists to encourage mistakes by the use of confusing terminology.
Comrades who want to drop Lenin’s definitions generally say that Lenin was simply describing workers in Russia in the 1890’s. Certainly parts of A Retrograde Trend. . . are such descriptions. (E.g., on p. 260 he says that the advanced workers of the 1890’s were Social-Democrats, i.e., not just any socialists, but Marxists.) But the description quoted above clearly covers a category of workers which was already historically defined: “Every viable working-class movement has brought to the fore such working-class leaders. ... And our Russian working-class movement promises not to lag behind the European movement in this respect.”
But we are lagging behind in this respect, and the fact that we are is a measure of the effects both the Communist Party’s revisionist betrayal and our own backwardness, as well as of the difficulty of revolutionary work in our conditions. It is this backwardness and these difficulties which many comrades want to avoid when they redefine advanced so that we can have our “advanced workers” here, too. (The Workers Congress, incidentally, has provided a very revealing explanation of their reasons for redefining the term. They explain that they first used the expression as Lenin did, but “[t]his undialectical approach led to demoralization within the ranks of our movement, especially when comrades found that workers from the class did not ’live up to’ their expectations.”[22] The problem was not in using Lenin’s terms, but in assuming that today there are many workers to whom the terms apply. Should we redefine revolutionary situation so that comrades need not be demoralized by finding that we are not in one now?)[23]
As we said previously, it is certainly necessary to develop an analysis of the different levels of understanding, ability, and commitment among U.S. workers and agree on some labels that allow us to conveniently describe a worker’s level. But as we do this for the most progressive workers who exist in any significant numbers in this country, why choose the label that is guaranteed to confuse us about how to work with those workers and what we can expect of them?
Moreover, communists will always be faced with a perplexing multiplicity of definitions of advanced, etc., if we try to use the words as relative terms. For every few years, as the influence of communism within the workers’ movement grows, the level of the most developed stratum will be higher and we will have to again redefine advanced to fit the new conditions. But of course new definitions would not be adopted unanimously, any more than current ones have been.
The last reason why it is misleading to call today’s most progressive workers “advanced” is that many communists then assume that these are the same workers who will, in time, become the advanced workers of whom Lenin wrote. This mistake seems common among those who think that the chief form of our work in this period should be propaganda to the (redefined) advanced. The assumption can lead to over-concentration on today’s “advanced,” i.e., concentration beyond that which is justified, to the neglect of others who can become the real advanced workers.
The dialectical law of uneven development applies to human beings. Different workers find themselves in different conditions at different times and places. Even if they were, somehow, all in the same conditions at any given time, they would react differently because it is a worker’s internal contradictions that are the basis for his or her development. Some of today’s most developed and dedicated workers will become advanced workers. Many others lack the leadership qualities and breadth of understanding and will always be intermediate workers–hard-working socialists, but not those unusual leaders who play the role of the advanced. Still others will become discouraged and slide back, as defeats, our errors, pressures and privileges from the bourgeoisie, and their own internal weaknesses take their inevitable toll.
By the same token, many workers who do not even think about socialism today have the kind of character that will cause them to undergo “leaps” in their development and eventually become advanced workers, when they become involved in sharp class struggles and are reached by socialist agitation and propaganda. Dialectics teaches that what is strongest and most developed today will not necessarily retain that position tomorrow. This is true of people, too.[24] As we shall see, ignoring this fact and overemphasizing work with today’s “advanced” on the assumption that they will be tomorrow’s “Retrograde Trend advanced” will inhibit the absolutely essential work of creating the conditions for real advanced workers to develop.
Similarly, we think that the term backward should continue to be applied to non-socialist workers. This is common in Marxist-Leninist literature on doing broad mass work, and, again, it would be confusing to start switching terms just because so many U.S. workers are presently backward. Furthermore, the term is a good, objective description. Proletarians who do not yet understand that capitalism is the system that oppresses them and that socialism means liberation are deeply enslaved by the backward ideas promoted by the bourgeoisie. This is not a “put-down,” of course. Backward workers do not possess their present illusions through any fault of their own, and a great many of them are capable of developing into intermediate or advanced workers. But their present backwardness is a fact, and one which we must face. Those who tell themselves that the most progressive non-socialist workers they know are advanced or intermediate would do better to adopt a term that reminds them of the backwardness that must be overcome before such workers will have an elementary grasp of what social system oppresses them and what kind of system can serve their interests.
This also settles the question of who should be called intermediate. If we continue to apply the concept of advanced to those special, relatively rare leaders whom Lenin spoke of, and continue to consider non-socialist workers backward, then those left in the middle, the intermediates, must be the same as Lenin’s middle category. “These workers, too, strive ardently for socialism, participate in workers’ study circles, read socialist newspapers and books, participate in agitation, and differ from the preceding stratum [the advanced] only in that they cannot become fully independent leaders of the Social-Democratic working-class movement.”
One reason why many comrades resist using Lenin’s definitions is a mistaken belief that only advanced workers can join a communist party. This misapprehension is often tied to using advanced and vanguard synonymously (as in “win over the advanced” or “win over the vanguard”). Certainly the traditional use of vanguard refers to all workers who are or should be organized into the communist party, e.g.:
The immediate objective of the class-conscious vanguard of the international working-class movement, i.e., the Communist parties, groups, and trends, is to be able to lead the broad masses (who are still, for the most part, apathetic, inert, dormant and convention ridden). . ..[25] Stalin spoke of the vanguard in the same way. (See p. 156, fn. 7, below.)
The party workers surely include thousands more people than those special proletarians, “real heroes,” whom Lenin called the advanced. Lenin wanted advanced workers to be leaders of the RSDLP: “This ’working-class intelligentsia’ already exists in Russia and we must make every effort to ensure. . . that leaders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party come from its ranks.”[26] But the rank and file is far broader. This can be seen from the membership requirements of the party (agreement with the program,[27] payment of dues, work under the direction of a party organization),[28] Lenin’s writings on its methods of organization,[29] published memoirs of Bolsheviks,[30] any good works on the Chinese revolution, and a little thought about what a revolutionary party must do and who can help carry out one or another part of its work. All these make clear that the proletarian vanguard drawn into the party must include many from the intermediate workers, who “strive ardently for socialism, participate in workers’ study circles, read socialist newspapers and books, participate in agitation.” It would be senseless not to bring as many of such workers as possible into the party, while continuing to develop them theoretically.[31]
While it is important to recognize that the advanced workers, who play such a key role in fusing the two separate movements together, must meet certain absolute requirements to play that role, there is also a set of relative categories that apply to our mass work anywhere, in any period:
The masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts, the relatively active, the intermediate, and the relatively backward. The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements.[32]
Our own modest practical experience confirms this. The “relative activists” generally know their fellow workers better, and have more credibility with them, than communists who are newer to the situation, especially those with non-working-class backgrounds. Thus close work with these activists is essential for communicating our ideas to the broad masses. Furthermore, the most progressive contacts are invaluable sources of information about what all the workers are thinking, including what their criticisms of us are, and there is plenty which they can teach us about class struggle. We are firmly convinced, therefore, that in any mass work, special attention must be paid to the “relative activists,” even if they are only the most progressive among many backward workers.
Moreover, such workers will be open to a higher-level analysis than their more backward brothers and sisters, and our close work with them should definitely include exposing them to whatever agitation and propaganda is appropriate for their particular level. (We return to this subject below.)
But note that, unlike the categories of advanced, intermediate, and backward as applied to workers who play particular roles in the process of fusion, the categories pointed out by Mao are entirely relative. They vary widely from place to place. We have worked in a plant where the most which the relative activists would do–with some fear and trembling–was serve on an officially-sanctioned strike preparation committee that did criticize the union leadership for hindering its work. (And in doing so they were definitely ahead of their co-workers.) In contrast, at another place, a number of workers have actively helped build an opposition newsletter and, we think, will help build a caucus aimed at toppling the union bureaucrats. In addition, in all likelihood there are places where the “relative activists” among the workers are socialists.
Lenin’s identification of the advanced workers, who play such an important role in fusing the communist and workers’ movements, and Mao’s explanation of the method of leadership that takes into account the relative positions of different people among the masses in any struggle, are both important tools. But confusing the two concepts creates as many problems as either can help us solve. Mao never said to treat the best “relative activists” who come forward in any situation as if they can all play a central role in helping create a communist workers’ movement, or as if they are all ready to study Marxist-Leninist propaganda.
Comrades with the most diverse views on other questions believe, mistakenly, that in this period propaganda must be “in the forefront” or be “the chief form” of our work with the workers, in order to accelerate fusion. Generally this position is connected to a redefinition of advanced worker, and the main method of fusion is described as “propaganda to the advanced.” Before considering this question, we must once again digress to defining terms, namely agitation and propaganda. These refer to two broad types of communist work in communicating our ideas to workers. Lenin’s explanations of these forms of work are very helpful, so we quote them at length.
A propagandist presents many ideas to one or a few persons; an agitator presents only one or a few ideas, but he presents them to a mass of people.” . . .[T]he propagandist, dealing with, say the question of unemployment, must explain the capitalist nature of crises, the cause of their inevitability in modern society, the necessity for the transformation of this society into a socialist society, etc. In a word, he must present “many ideas”, so many, indeed that they will be understood as an integral whole only by a (comparatively) few persons. The agitator, however, speaking on the same subject, will take as an illustration a fact that is most glaring and widely known to his audience, say, the death of an unemployed worker’s family from starvation, the growing impoverishment, etc., and utilising this fact, known to all, will direct his efforts to presenting a single idea to the “masses,” e.g., the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and the increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, leaving a more complete explanation of this contradiction to the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means of the spoken word. The propagandist requires qualities different from those of the agitator.[33]
The socialist activities of Russian Social-Democrats consist in spreading by propaganda the teachings of scientific socialism, in spreading among the workers a proper understanding of the present social and economic system, its basis and its development, an understanding of the various classes in Russian society, of their interrelations, of the struggle between these classes, of the role of the working class in this struggle, of its attitudes towards the declining and developing classes, towards the past and the future of capitalism, an understanding of the historical task of international Social-Democracy and of the Russian working class. Inseparably connected with propaganda is agitation among the workers, which naturally comes to the forefront in the present political conditions of Russia and at the present level of development of the masses of workers. Agitation among the workers means that the Social-Democrats take part in all the spontaneous manifestations of the working-class struggle, in all the conflicts between the workers and the capitalists over the working day, wages, working conditions, etc., etc. Our task is to merge our activities with the practical, everyday questions of working-class life, to help the workers understand these questions, to draw the workers’ attention to the most important abuses, to help them formulate their demands to the employers more precisely and practically, to develop among the workers consciousness of their solidarity, consciousness of the common interests and common cause of all the Russian workers as a united working class that is part of the international army of the proletariat.
. . .In conducting agitation among the workers on their immediate economic demands, the Social-Democrats inseparably link this with agitation on the immediate political needs, the distress and the demands of the working class, agitation against police tyranny, manifested in every strike, in every conflict between workers and capitalists, agitation against the restriction of the rights of the workers as Russian citizens in general and as the class suffering the worst oppression and having the least rights in particular, agitation against every prominent representative and flunkey of absolutism who comes into direct contact with the workers and who clearly reveals to the working class its condition of political slavery. Just as there is no issue affecting the life of the workers in the economic field that must be left unused for the purpose of economic agitation, so there is no issue in the political field that does not serve as a subject for political agitation. Both economic and political agitation are equally necessary to develop the class-consciousness of the proletariat. . ..[34]
Knowledge develops from a lower to a higher level, and people must be brought step by step to a clear understanding of all that communists have to teach them. Therefore agitation frequently begins at quite a low level and may center around ideas that would not be recognized as uniquely communist, but which nonetheless would not be promoted unless communists took them up.
. . . [T]he spread of their agitation brought the Social-Democrats into contact with the lower, less developed strata of the proletariat; to attract these strata it was necessary for the agitator to be able to adapt himself to the lowest level of understanding, he was taught to put the “demands and interests of the given moment” in the foreground and to push back the broad ideals of socialism and the political struggle. . . .[Several factors] naturally led to a gross exaggeration of this (absolutely essential) aspect of Social-Democratic activity, which could bring some individuals to lose sight of the other aspects. . ..[35]
One might think that agitation would be a particularly important method of work when the political level of the workers is relatively low and the conditions in which they hunger for higher-level communist literature, classes, etc., have yet to be created. (Cf. the quotation from The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, about agitation coming to the forefront in mass work “at the present level of development of the masses of workers” (p. 51, above).) Another translation is clearer on this point:
Agitation and propaganda are inseparably linked. Agitation, however, takes the foremost place today [1897] due to the present political conditions in Russia and due to the low political level of the working masses.[36]
However, large sections of the communist movement have believed, or do believe, that we must concentrate on propaganda, or on “propaganda to the advanced.” The PRRWO-RWL remnant of the “Revolutionary Wing” took this to the extreme of entirely opposing agitational work and issuing (its idea of) high-level propaganda to all the workers (for the advanced to read). Since then, most comrades who think propaganda should be in the forefront have also stated, following Lenin, that propaganda should be inseparably connected to agitation.
A real understanding of that connection mitigates much of the confusion generated by the belief that propaganda should be the chief form of our mass work. Propaganda informs the agitators, helps develop new agitators, and provides “a fuller explanation” to the audience created by agitation; while agitation does indeed develop an audience for propaganda, helps recruit new communists to spread more agitation and propaganda, and provides those close ties to the workers’ daily struggles, without which the propaganda would betray an uneven grasp of reality and amount to purposeless “self-cultivation” for those studying it. But even comrades who grasp these connections between agitation and propaganda can be misled by the “propaganda-is-the-chief-form” confusion, and for others the slogan is a barrier to a grasp of the connections in the first place.
We do not know who brought that slogan into the U.S. movement. Our first knowledge of it came from the organizations that originally declared themselves the “Revolutionary Wing” of the movement.[37] While they made some true statements about the functions that propaganda must serve, their conclusion that it must be the chief form of our activity was not well explained in terms of concrete conditions here. Instead they, and others since them, relied heavily on their interpretations of the history of the Russian communist party, without explaining why that history would be universally applicable. Moreover, as we explain in an appendix, they totally misread that history and proclaim as a virtue what the Russian communists quickly recognized as a weakness. We think that the real history is instructive to anyone, but we especially urge comrades who do accept the “propaganda-as-chief form” line to read Appendix A before proceeding further.
Here we speak of work among the broad masses, but we do not mean just any section of the people. We have not investigated the various strata of the U.S. working class, but we know that conditions for heightened class struggle and openness to socialism vary among its different sectors. We do think that communists’ trade union work in this period should generally be concentrated in sectors where class struggle is fairly intense and openness to socialism is relatively higher. (See pp. 32-33, above.) Therefore, when we speak of “work with the broad masses,” we mean only as opposed to confining the work to the few advanced or most progressive workers in a particular trade union setting.
With the foregoing in mind, we believe that even in this period communists must devote substantial time and attention to work among the broad masses. We devote considerable space to explaining this position here because of the strength of the “propaganda-is-chief-form” line. We discuss the vital role of propaganda separately, and we ask the skeptical reader to wait until he or she has read that section of this chapter as well, before deciding whether we negate the importance of propaganda.
Too little mass agitation and involvement in the workers’ struggles will cripple the work which most communists describe as “winning over the advanced.” Of course ending the separation of the communist and workers’ movements means, among other things, winning over a significant number of advanced workers to communism; but downplaying extensive work among the masses will both retard the development of a significant stratum of advanced workers and isolate us from the few advanced who do exist today. These statements are even more true of intermediate workers, who, as active socialists, will be the main force (in numbers) of the vanguard party which we are trying to build.
Significant numbers of workers become advanced workers only when two conditions exist: (1) sharp class struggle, which produces working-class leaders, and (2) socialist agitation, which, when based on advanced theory, brings socialist ideas to those who are or will become the leaders, as well as to other members of the class.
The first condition is what creates devoted and talented leaders. A Chinese historian writes, “[H]eroes are outstanding figures who can only emerge from the people’s revolutionary struggles. . . .[H]eroes in various periods are those who come to the fore to answer the needs of the struggles of the masses.”[38] Lenin: “As the spontaneous rise of their movement becomes broader and deeper, the working-class masses promote from their ranks not only an increasing number of talented agitators, but also talented organizers, propagandists, and ’practical workers’. . ..”[39] Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife): “Leaders are formed in and grow out of the struggle, from which they draw their strength.”[40] Furthermore, only intense class struggle can provide the context in which people “devote themselves entirely to the education and organization of the proletariat.” Such struggle is the basis for Lenin’s repeated statements that it is a “working-class movement” that brings advanced workers to the fore.[41]
We lack an overview of the development of such a movement here. We do think, however, that both its present manifestations (rank and file reform movements; more, and more bitter, strikes; the union bureaucrats’ failure, obviously based on inability, to try to sell wage/price guidelines) and the deepening distress of the economy make it likely that the kinds of struggles that produce working-class leaders have begun to develop and will do so increasingly in the next few years.
The fact that agitation is another factor needed to produce advanced and other socialist workers is also clear from Lenin’s writings. What is to be Done? argued a position that has been proven many times over: The spontaneous struggle of the working class cannot alone lead the workers to socialist ideology. The narrow economic struggle does not normally give rise to such consciousness, and that struggle takes place under conditions of the bourgeoisie’s ideological hegemony in capitalist society. What the spontaneous struggle gives rise to is trade-unionist consciousness, in the absence of a systematic attempt to bring socialist agitation to the class from outside it. This is why Lenin wrote that advanced workers come from those who “respond to the ideas of socialism more rapidly and more easily. ”[42] Describing the work of the Russian Social-Democrats in the 1890’s, Lenin said clearly, “Widespread agitation, naturally, brought to the forefront a growing number of class-conscious advanced workers. ”[43] Socialist agitation is an important condition for the development of advanced workers, for it is usually the spreading of socialist ideas among receptive sections of the class generally that permits a socialist vanguard, including the advanced, to come into being and to be attracted to our propaganda. In 1899, six years before “propaganda” stopped being the “chief form” of the work and the conditions were supposedly laid for serious agitational work, according to the other line on agitation and propaganda, Lenin insisted that agitation was required to win over the vanguard:
Agitational activity among the masses must be of the broadest nature, both economic and political, on all possible issues and in regard to all manifestations of oppression whatever their form. We must utilize this agitation to attract growing numbers of workers into the ranks of the revolutionary Social-Democratic party. . .. Today our agitation is too hemmed in. . .. It is our duty therefore not to legitimise this narrowness but to try to liberate ourselves from it, to deepen and expand our agitational work.[44]
This is one reason why it is important to oppose an idea discussed earlier, the undialectical belief that the most progressive of today’s workers who are not advanced are automatically the group that will become tomorrow’s advanced. Some of them will and some will not, but if we concentrate on them too much, we will fail to add widespread socialist agitation to the crucible of class struggle to bring forward many other potential advanced workers who are in the proletariat now.
We also think that work directed to the broad masses, in a setting where they are in struggle, is helpful in finding advanced workers, and intermediates as well, and that such work is necessary for attracting them to communist leadership. Workers who involve themselves deeply in the class struggle and “devote themselves entirely to the education and organization of the proletariat” will generally not be interested in just any of the socialist intellectuals who have some ideas to teach them. Armchair revolutionaries would not appeal to such workers. They will be interested in those communists who show in deeds that we take the same stand, that our concern for the masses is genuine, that we are in touch with their needs and desires because we are working with them, and that our line and methods of work really do promote the work of educating and organizing the class.
Conversely, those of us whose forms of work among the masses isolate us from them will appear foolish to advanced (and all) workers. Yet many comrades would still agree with the statement that “[propaganda and agitation, though directed at the advanced in terms of political content, will reach intermediate and backward workers through distributions.”[45] This line was put into practice in its most extreme form by the ultra-left “Revolutionary Wing,” now the U.S. Leninist Core, and by the former Communist League; but others still distribute materials to the masses that are written only for a select few. At present in this country most workers are backward enough so that materials aimed at explaining scientific socialism to the advanced, passed out in a way that looks like we are aiming them at everyone, will isolate us. (We have seen this happen locally, with the predicted effect.) We do not think that advanced workers would, or should, want to work with revolutionaries who do not mind antagonizing the masses or who are just so out of touch as to not recognize that their materials are unwanted. Those of us who do good mass work, on the other hand, putting out socialist ideas in a manner calculated to penetrate the thicket of bourgeois ideology, will find that advanced and other more developed workers will be open to studying our propaganda with us. This can be done on the side, without mass distribution of the written materials to be studied.
The revolutionary duty of communists is to educate and organize[46] the working class. Our attempts to do so will bear limited fruit before communist workers are part of our forces, but we will not bring such workers into our ranks without learning to speak to the other workers at the level where they actually are. If we act on our theory that it takes mobilization of the masses (not just a few intermediate and advanced) to win even partial victories, if we–and our best working-class contacts–can demonstrate skill in accomplishing that mobilization by helping teach the workers what they must do and why, if we show that we can also remove in turn each of the obstacles to the workers’ understanding of their historic mission, if our practical experiences give us a chance to learn to do these things, then those who are most dedicated and class-conscious will surely want to work with us, learn from us, and teach us.
It may be evident that we do not consider “Win the advanced to communism” an adequate slogan for describing party-building tasks in the workers’ movement. The abbreviated characterization of those tasks should be “fusing communism with the workers’ movement” or “deepening fusion.”
In the first place, speaking of “winning over the advanced” assumes that a politically significant number of truly advanced workers exists today. As we have said previously, there is little evidence that this is the case.
A subjective conclusion that substantial numbers of advanced workers do exist now leads to lowering in practice, if not in words, the concept of who the advanced are. For there is no other way to tell ourselves that we are working with advanced workers where hardly any exist. Such a conclusion also voluntaristically minimizes how much patient work we will have to do in the class to help more advanced workers develop, while also minimizing the likelihood that the workers’ struggle itself will have to continue to intensify as well. Again, concluding that the (redefined) “advanced” are the key to fusion and that our task in the workers’ movement is to win them over, even if they are not the influential leaders of working-class opinion whom Lenin described, would encourage concentrating one-sidedly on propaganda work with these workers. (Of course with any real advanced workers, tremendous attention should be devoted to drawing them into our ranks.)
Moreover, it is not only those broadly influential leaders, “working-class intellectuals,” called the advanced, who must be won to communism, but the entire class vanguard as it develops. In the previous few pages we spoke of the role of agitation in bringing into being and winning over advanced workers in particular, in order to prove our point to those who have been accepting the slogan, “propaganda to the advanced.” But each reason why work with the advanced, or potential advanced, requires agitation applies even more forcefully to intermediate workers. If we narrowed our sights to the advanced, we would cripple our ability to deepen fusion, because we would neglect the majority of the vanguard-to-be. The advanced are uniquely critical to fusion, but the intermediates are indispensable as well.
On the other hand, thinking that the “vanguard” who can be won to communism and the party are only the advanced creates one more reason for communists’ lowering their views of who can function as an advanced worker. They naturally try to work with people whom they see as potential communists, so they tend to call them “advanced” if they think that only advanced workers can be in the party.
In addition, locally we have noticed that other comrades, more careful about maintaining the definition of advanced but still focusing on “winning them over,” tend to forget the role which our most progressive contacts, most of whom are only open to socialism, can play in deepening fusion when it is at such a low level. Searching for imaginary advanced workers who for some reason are not visible to us through their role in the class struggle, they too often forget to seek the knowledge, advice, criticisms, and help in propagating at least parts of our line, which the best workers whom they do know can provide.
Communists have a many-sided task in fusing communism with the workers’ movement, and it includes propaganda and agitation and helping the workers organize in their practical struggles. Describing that work as “winning over the advanced” begs the question of the existence of such workers and narrows, or tends to narrow, our conception of our tasks.
There is a variant of the “propaganda to the advanced” or “win over the advanced” line: “win over the vanguard” of the working class. The P.U.L., like most comrades who use the expression, ties it to the line of propaganda as the chief form of our mass work. If it could be separated from that line, speaking of “winning over the vanguard” would bring into relief a useful distinction between the character of communist work before and after the party is actually the vanguard detachment of the working class. For we must remember that communists cannot expect great success in leading the workers’ movement until we have built an organization that includes the best forces from that movement, and that we must bend every effort towards the building of such an organization. Certainly no organization that remains a group of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, because it has been unable to help develop and recruit the most progressive workers, can expect to shoulder the far heavier burden of leading the working class as a whole.
On the other hand, the slogan “win over the vanguard,” as a description of our task in the workers’ movement, is part of an over-simplified stages approach to communist work. Comrades familiar with the quotations from Lenin and Stalin printed in part on p. 158, below, often assume that the difference between activities that “win over the vanguard” and later practice that “wins the masses to the side of the vanguard” lies mainly in whether we aim our mass work primarily at the vanguard or not. As we have shown above, there is such a dialectical connection between the forms of mass work aimed at the broad masses of proletarians and the development of a socialist vanguard, and between such mass work and the winning over of that vanguard to communism and the party, that any slogan that implies that we can win the vanguard by looking for its members and doing propaganda with them is bound to be misleading. In our movement that misleading implication has been ensured, through long association between the lines of “win over the vanguard” (or “win over the advanced”) and “propaganda is the chief form of our work in the workers’ movement.”
Stalin’s description (in the quotation just mentioned) of the periods in the history of the Russian party is certainly true. There was a period of building up the party, including recruiting the best representatives of the working class into it. That period preceded the revolutionary upsurge in which this vanguard was better able to win a following among the masses in general, to get them to take political action under the party’s leadership. But it is important to note that during the earlier period no one was trying to encompass the party’s practical tasks in the slogan ”win over the vanguard.” Rather, Lenin described himself and those who worked with him on the Iskra newspaper as “[t]hose who make nation-wide political agitation the cornerstone of their programme, their tactics, and their organizational work.” Moreover, he ridiculed an opponent who “imagines that troops in the course of systematic organization [the workers and intellectuals trying to unite into a party] are engaged in something that isolates them from the masses, when in actuality they are engaged exclusively in all-sided and all-embracing political agitation, i.e., precisely in work that brings closer and merges into a single whole the elemental destructive force of the masses and the conscious destructive force of the organization of revolutionaries.”[47] Similarly, the Albanians, beginning with a party of 200 members who were largely isolated from the mass movement, did not set aside a special period for work with a vanguard. Rather, in 16 months of widespread propaganda, agitation, building mass organizations, and leading political and military actions, they greatly strengthened their ties to the people. What about winning over the vanguard building the party? In the same brief period, their membership doubled and nearly doubled again.[48]
The conditions that permitted such remarkable success were far different from what exists in the U.S. today. (The P.L.A. was leading the resistance to a fascist Italian invasion.) The point, however, is that it is wrong to think that the historical experience of the Russian party compels us to identify a period where we tailor our work to “winning over the vanguard.” The need to develop and win over such a vanguard certainly exists, and developing it and winning it over means broad agitating and organizing, as well as propaganda for those who respond most favorably to the broader work or who come forward on their own. What will be different about a later period, a period in which further building of the (already-formed) party will no longer be primary? Not that we will be serious about agitational and organizational work for the first time, but that such work will be more effective, consistent, and organized; will spread far beyond the industrial proletariat; will be far more successful because of the proletarian character of the party carrying it out; and will place before us the welcome duty of planning mass demonstrations (let us thank the people of Iran for reminding us what real demonstrations are!), strikes, and insurrections, i.e., the kinds of actions that develop as the vanguard effectively leads the masses.
We have explained why agitation among the broad masses is essential for deepening fusion, including its part (shared with propaganda) in bringing into being and winning over advanced workers and a working-class vanguard as a whole. Before moving on to the role of propaganda, it is necessary to consider another whole set of reasons for broad agitation, reasons which are less directly connected to our work of fusing communism with the workers’ movement.
The first reason is a matter of class stand. Practice–providing ideological and practical leadership to the struggles of the proletariat against capital–is the reason for our existence as communists in any period. It should be limited “only” by our weaknesses at the present primitive stage of our movement’s development and by the demands of our other tasks–doing theoretical work, struggling to unite communists on the line flowing from that work, developing necessary organization, etc. These demands are, of course, extremely heavy in this period, and they do place real limits on our mass work, a fact that the existing parties practically ignore. So does our lack of experience in carrying out such work. While in a later period writing a good agitational leaflet or making a tactical decision for the mass work may be fairly routine for some people, now the process–if taken seriously–often requires painstaking struggle each step of the way.
There are, therefore, important factors limiting our ability to work with the mass movement. But on the question of devotion to the needs of workers facing the economic and political attacks of capital, the correct stand means that communists should pull back only as much as we have to from trying to give the people the guidance which they need. We do not have a lot of trust in those revolutionaries who are short on love for the people.
Second, practice raises the questions which theoretical work must answer. We do not mean this narrowly, e.g.. that communists should only study those questions which the day-to-day work of a few individuals raises. The practice of the movement as a whole should provide direction to our theoretical work. For example, when some comrades study the operation of the many-sided state apparatus and the changes that it is undergoing, they should base their priorities on the need to refute whatever particular forms of bourgeois reformist ideology on the state are common among the workers (e.g., government as a restraint on capital, the reliability of OSHA, the strength of civil rights enforcement).
The same applies to study of the economic system and its decline. That study should be built around the particular questions and illusions that the workers have about what is the present and future of the U.S. capitalist economy. Communists’ progressive worker contacts will be able to help us understand the main forms of bourgeois ideology which we must address if our theoretical work is to be directed towards increasing our ability to educate and organize the proletariat. But for them and for us, knowledge of the backward viewpoint comes mainly from real participation in the class struggles of the masses. The particular bourgeois lines which we must focus on will be expressed most openly as we put forward a correct line, in a manner truly aimed at winning the workers over. Then we will learn what the obstacles to acceptance of that line are, and we can orient our theoretical work accordingly.
We do not, of course, see this as the only criterion for establishing theoretical priorities. Marxism-Leninism also allows us to predict questions likely to become burning practical issues to the working class, such as events unfolding in the international arena, and begin now the work of developing the needed basic grasp of the issues involved. Other kinds of questions for study and investigation were discussed in Chapter II. The fact remains, however, that we must be well grounded in practice if we want to aim our theoretical work at the target, as Mao would say.
Third, mass work, including widespread agitation, is an important part of the investigation on which our theoretical work must be based. As Mao had to emphasize repeatedly, “If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.”[49] Study of Marxism-Leninism and of materials about U.S. society to be found in the libraries is a big part of knowing the outlooks of different classes in our society, the perspectives of different strata among the workers, and the ways the state functions, for example. But if we stopped there, that knowledge would be bookish, incomplete, and full of enough mistakes to really disable us in communicating with the workers. At many points what we have to say will inevitably diverge in one way or another from the reality which they experience, particularly since we come from the petty bourgeoisie and cannot shed the petty bourgeois outlook through desire alone.
What must be added to the book-learning, to truly know the reality of a stratum’s typical outlook, or the forms in which state employees carry out its tasks both of cooptation and reform and of repression? Participation in the struggle to change that reality. Learning the views of different classes and strata by participating in the class struggle with them, or against them, as the case may be. Experiencing the complex role of the state by being part of the struggles in which the state intervenes. “Marx undertook detailed investigations and studies in the course of practical struggles, formed generalizations and then verified his conclusions by testing them in practical struggles–this is what we call theoretical work.”[50]
Furthermore, as Mao explained in his teachings on the mass line, much of our knowledge will come from the people themselves, if we go among them and participate in their struggles. (We will, of course, be able to raise that knowledge to a much higher level if we synthesize the people’s scattered and separate ideas, gathering them from many sources and applying the science of Marxism-Leninism and knowledge of history and politics.) The minimum demands of a party program, those points that communists fight for and use to guide their agitation and propaganda on a day-to-day basis, must especially come from a thorough familiarity with the masses’ own perceptions of their needs and of the ways in which they experience oppression. The close organic contact with the working people that is required to apply the mass line in any consistent way is rarely, if ever, possible without participation in their struggles.[51]
Fourth, practice in the class struggle is the test of the correctness of the different lines on how to move that struggle forward. For this to be a real test, participation in struggle cannot be “on the fringes” by working with the most progressive workers in a way not directed to leading the whole group involved, or by passing out propaganda that will mean something only to such workers. As we struggle to learn the correct line for party work that will lead the masses, we must make some attempts to lead the masses now, though our ability to do such work is far less now than it will be after a party is formed.
Fifth, most communists today are intellectuals (educated people trained for “mental work”), and we frequently come from petty bourgeois backgrounds. This class background gives rise to a whole complex of very serious opportunist tendencies, and practice among the masses is an essential element of the struggle to remold ourselves, overcome those tendencies, and develop a working-class outlook. We take this up at some depth at this point, because the problem is seriously underrated in our movement (except when denunciations of an opposing group are tied to its class character).
Lenin minced no words about the tendencies of intellectuals: “With large numbers of radical intellectuals in the ranks of our Marxists and our Social-Democrats, the opportunism which their mentality produces has been, and is, bound to exist, in the most varied spheres and in the most varied forms.”[52] “A tight hold must always be kept on the intelligentsia. It is always the instigator of all sorts of squabbles. . ..”[53] He quoted Kautsky on the individualism of the intellectual:
As an isolated individual, the proletarian is nothing. His whole strength, his whole progress, all his hopes and expectations are derived from organization, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels big and strong when he forms part of a big and strong organism. This organism is the main thing for him; the individual in comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, doing his duty in any post he is assigned to with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognizes the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter.[54]
The same circumstances, plus the fact that students are given their training in order that they may serve the exploiting classes, incline intellectuals to the view that “these classes and that intelligentsia which serves them, have the right and the duty to manage, make laws, plans and projects, to command, whereas the working masses have only to execute, to produce, to fight. . ..”[55]
Furthermore,
. . .[A]bstraction, the separation of mental work from manual work, means that the intellectual is not in contact with things, but with their symbols. This brings idealist illusions. His being between classes makes him think that he is not impelled by any class interest and that everything is determined by his judgments and knowledge alone. He thinks that he stands above classes and represents a morality independent of the economic forces and class antagonisms. This thought, divorced from manual work, from life, makes him think of himself as the supreme force of order in the world. This takes the intellectual out of the sphere of reality and makes him think that all contradictions should be solved not through violence, but through intellectual conciliation, through peaceful evolution. These views predispose him to opportunism.
. . .[I]ntellectualist concepts and practices have their basis also in the size of incomes and in the way of life of the intelligentsia.[56]
Not that these opportunist tendencies are manifest in their extreme form, in conscious elitism and idealism, in all or even most revolutionary intellectuals. But the tendencies are certainly there, and they are certainly destructive. Engels even said that the German law outlawing socialist activity had the great merit of getting the intellectuals to drop out of the movement![57]
If we have gone a little overboard in the use of quotations about the opportunism of intellectuals–most of which, by the way, would apply to the petty bourgeoisie in general–it is not because of a passion for flagellating ourselves or the rest of this movement. It is because fusion is all too often seen solely as a process of winning over workers, neglecting the equally necessary work of transforming ourselves. And that neglect is only furthered by a one-sided emphasis on the propaganda work with which some are far more comfortable than closer involvement with the people and their struggles.
Mao explained that intellectuals’ knowledge of the world, and even of Marxism itself, is one-sided and distorted until they have integrated themselves with the masses and actually participated in the class struggle and begun remolding their outlook.
Many intellectuals in Yenan were very confused in their thinking and came forth with all sorts of queer arguments. . .. Until an intellectual’s book knowledge is integrated with practice, it is incomplete or indeed very incomplete. It is chiefly through reading books that intellectuals acquire the experience of our predecessors. Of course, reading books cannot be dispensed with, but by itself it does not solve problems. One must study the actual situation, study practical experience and factual material, and make friends with the workers and peasants. ... If the intellectuals do not discard the old and replace it by the proletarian world outlook, they will remain different from the workers and peasants in their viewpoint, stand and feelings and will be like square pegs in round holes, and the workers and peasants will not open their hearts to them. If the intellectuals integrate themselves with the workers and peasants and make friends with them, the Marxism they have learned from books can become truly their own. In order to have a real grasp of Marxism, one must learn it not only from books, but chiefly through class struggle, through practical work and close contact with the masses of workers and peasants.[58]
(This is related to the third point above. There we discussed the need for practice as part of theoretical investigations, to provide an all-sided view of the facts. Here we are emphasizing the aspect of keeping the intellectuals firmly enough rooted in the reality of the class struggle to develop and maintain a proletarian outlook.)
Practice in the class struggle is important for steeling the characters and firming up the class stands of those of us who are from non-proletarian backgrounds. We do not want to be the kind whom Mao described like this:
Some have read a few Marxist books and think themselves quite learned, but what they have read has not sunk in, has not taken root in their minds, so that they don’t know how to use it and their class feelings remain unchanged. Others are conceited; having picked up some book-phrases, they think themselves terrific and are very cocky; but whenever a storm blows up they take a stand very different from that of the workers and the great majority of the working peasants. They waver while the latter stand firm. They equivocate while the latter are forthright.[59]
These aspects of remolding the outlook of intellectuals and other petty-bourgeois revolutionaries comprise the fifth reason, besides deepening fusion, why serious attention to practice among the masses is important today.
Sixth, teaching Marxism to workers requires applying the theory to day-to-day practice. Mao’s words about what it takes for intellectuals to grasp the theory apply to workers, too: “In order to have a real grasp of Marxism, one must learn it not only from books, but chiefly through class struggle, through practical work and close contact with the masses of workers and peasants.”[60]
Seventh, we must try to lead the broad masses in struggle in order to train ourselves to be leaders. Not all communists in a party, particularly among those of non-proletarian origin, will be leading either mass struggles or units of the party, of course. But many certainly will, and for developing the ability to do so there are no shortcuts; what is required is experience. Study and discussion can teach a great deal, but they do not teach us to be rousing orators or good popular educators; cool judges of situations and of people’s characters; expert listeners; quick, decisive, creative, and sound tacticians; or consistent models of steadfastness under attack.
Finally, serious involvement in the day-to-day struggles of the masses– which surely includes agitation aimed at those who are struggling and assistance in their organizing–is going to be essential in building Marxist-Leninist unity, particularly unity between the party-building forces and those in other parties and tendencies. Opportunism and the struggle against it are inescapable in a living communist movement. What are not inescapable, however, are the following features of this struggle, which are characteristic in the U.S.: failing to distinguish between degrees of opportunism; always carrying out polemics as debaters who want to destroy their opponents, never recognizing that we are often in a teaching-and-learning struggle for unity with people who should be allies; failing to examine other lines all-sidedly, to look for what is true even in those that may be incorrect overall; lack of patience or desire to win over communists thought to be committing serious errors; failing to encourage members to read the polemics of other organizations; declaring an organization that has unified only a small part of the movement as the party, which assumes most communists to be so opportunist as to be outside the communist movement; etc.
These are all manifestations of serious “left” sectarian confusion about who are our friends and who are our enemies, and it is easy for ex-students to develop such confusion. Many of us learned to promote ourselves through academic papers and classroom debates. Moreover, the desire to be 100% correct and have those who disagree seen as 100% wrong is typical of the individualism of the petty bourgeois. But in real struggle against a real enemy, people must choose between being badly beaten, or uniting with all who will fight on the same side, despite serious differences stemming both from varying degrees of opportunism, and also from different experiences. Such struggle will teach many people that sectarianism is a luxury which we cannot afford when we declare war on the imperialist bourgeoisie of the United States of America.
Furthermore, we will have to learn some lessons sooner or later from the oft-repeated experience of hearing frustrated workers ask us why we cannot iron out our differences, as they drop out of struggles dominated by the battles of communists seeking to “expose” each other.
None of this means that unity can be built only among local forces engaged in joint practice, a view that we criticize in a later chapter. Just the same, though communists can surely unite into nationwide tendencies, the barriers between those tendencies will probably only be breached through the unifying effect of practice. And we mean broad mass work, not just competing to get the same few workers into study circles or “fightback” organizations.
The first portion (pp. 22-98) of the History of the Party of Labor of Albania details a graphic example of this process. The small, sectarian circles of Albanian Marxists moved forward in a long struggle to unite in a party only when the need to resist invading Italian fascists threw the rank and file of these groups into real class struggle, side by side. There they overcame their major differences, put their minor ones in perspective, cast aside most of their leaders (who still had a stake in maintaining the small-circle spirit), and finally formed the party. One way to lessen the risk that a similar disaster (like the next world war) will have to befall U.S. workers before the communists place ourselves in circumstances encouraging unity is to engage in the practical struggle in a serious way now. And, of course, to the extent that our practice brings worker-communists into our movement, the conditions feeding petty-bourgeois sectarianism will be weakened by the addition of the proletarian element.
These, then, are the reasons why communists need to carry out broad mass work now, along with much propaganda, as we also take up the theoretical work needed to make our agitation and propaganda more correct and persuasive.
Agitation without propaganda would lead to a dead end. Even if it were somehow effective, its greatest achievement would be the creation of indignation towards the abuses of capitalism and, perhaps, towards the capitalist system itself, along with a general consciousness of the need for common struggle. But the struggle would have no direction.
We know of no influential line in the communist movement that openly argues for putting propaganda on the back burner. Lacking a need to criticize anti-propaganda doctrines, comparable to those denigrating agitation, we can present the reasons why propaganda is essential without a lengthy series of polemics. Briefer treatment of the need for propaganda does not, however, make it any less important.
Chapter II of this book, on the pressing theoretical tasks of communists in this period, is a good beginning on the functions of propaganda, for the full results of our theoretical work can only be communicated through propaganda. Only propaganda can express serious study of basic questions of Marxism-Leninism, analyses of conditions in this society and the world, and the political line to guide the struggle of the proletariat. Furthermore, the necessary struggle over disputed issues can only be conducted through propaganda, whether in polemical articles on a fairly narrow question like the E.R.A., or in books, articles, and forums on party-building, the national question, and the international situation.
Moreover, when we call (as we do in Chapter II) for the writing of a book that analyzes the state apparatus in this country, or for one elucidating a class analysis, or for one proving the decline and inevitable collapse of U.S. capitalism, we are talking about propaganda. This kind of propaganda is needed to carry out what Engels called the theoretical form of the class struggle, the struggle against bourgeois ideology, which he placed on the same plane as the economic and the political forms of the workers’ struggle.[61] While agitation in the course of the economic and political struggles is a major weapon against the bourgeois world-view, it is not enough without serious, full-scale studies that dismantle the bourgeois myths.
Propaganda is also required to provide agitators the knowledge that will make agitation effective. Agitators dealing with the Bakke and Weber cases, for example, need propaganda to arm themselves with the facts and analysis needed to fill the gap between, say, Marxism and the National Question and what the bourgeois newspapers tell us about the cases. Otherwise they must rely on “example-based” rhetoric, which we spoke of in Chapter II, to make their points about the source and severity of national oppression and about the role of the state.
And if such agitation were somehow effective, it would, as we said above, be able to create only heightened indignation and a clearer sense of the target of that indignation, but not a scientific grasp of the class relations of this society and the operation of its institutions. Without forms for providing that grasp, communists could never win the working class to the political line that will show, strategically and tactically, the way out. Even now, as events in the world, developments in the class struggle in particular industries, and communist agitation make more and more workers want to learn how the communists explain what the workers experience and see around them, fusing communism with the workers’ movement requires an ample supply of books and pamphlets, the creation of study circles, and the use of lectures, forums, and films. In our own fairly undeveloped mass work, for example, we have found a crying need for popular pamphlets that would explain to progressive, though backward, non-socialist, workers what communists are, the causes and effects of various divisions in the working class, the connection between sell-out bureaucratic unions and capitalism itself, etc.
And we, like many other comrades, have found some workers willing to study scientific socialism with us; what we lacked were our own skills in conducting such study and materials suited to the level of the interested workers. Neglect of such propaganda work, to teach the most progressive workers the correctness of the communist program and to teach them Marxism-Leninism itself, would amount to keeping communism the preserve of the revolutionary intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie. This would be as fatal to the building of a vanguard workers’ party as failure to pay due attention to agitational work. Because we would be maintaining the serious handicap of having mainly petty-bourgeois communists trying to communicate with and lead the workers, overemphasis on agitation would, ironically, delay the tremendous boost our agitation will receive when workers are doing much of the agitating. We would also be maintaining the fertile soil for opportunism that is found in a communist movement which is not yet a communist workers’ movement.
Our own experience shows that it is easier to polemicize against the error of too little attention to the development of communist workers than to avoid it, especially for small circles. The error can take right forms: servicing the day-to-day struggle in the hope that its gradual growth will lead to socialist consciousness among the workers; seeing fusion simply as communists’ integrating ourselves in the workers’ movement at its present level; or not recognizing differentiation among the workers and the need to do forms of education that rise above the lowest common denominator. Though, as we said, we know of no influential and open justifications for such an approach, it does exist. For example, the Movement for a Revolutionary Left, one of the “anti-’left” groups, even forgets that we are to teach the workers at all. It describes our principal task in the workers’ movement as follows: “to integrate ourselves in the struggles of the working class and other oppressed people, learning from them, molding ourselves in these struggles and win the respect and confidence of the masses. ...” Later, in a more detailed breakdown, the M.R.L. remembers to add “[a]gitation and propaganda in the working class to raise the level of class consciousness and understanding of what socialist revolution means.”[62] But there is still no hint that we need books, pamphlets, study groups, and forums to take the more developed workers to a higher level than the broad mass work can do. A tendency to see the consciousness of all workers at the level of the average also emerges in statements of the Bay Area Communist Union,[63] and in practice they are not at all consistent in trying to develop those who are most active and progressive.
Too little attention to the development of communist workers can also take “left” forms: the R.C.P.’s anarcho-syndicalist tendency to believe that very militant, even adventurist, struggle will give the workers all the consciousness they need about “the rich man”; or tendencies of others to be content with acting as the vanguard themselves, rather than recognizing the crucial importance of assisting a workers’ vanguard to develop.
In any case, the result is the same, and it is at odds with the whole idea of fusing communism with the workers’ movement. For these reasons, we would oppose snatching the real quotation from Lenin about agitation “coming to the forefront” when the workers’ consciousness is low,[64] as a shorthand slogan guiding communists’ work, as much as we oppose such use of the distorted quotations about “propaganda as the chief form.”
Supporters of the line that propaganda is the chief form of our mass work in this period do occasionally go beyond dogmatic application of their inaccurate history of Russia and provide concrete arguments for our supposed inability to do significant agitational and organizing work. (However, we have seen no one who takes this position independently of a misreading of the historical quotations.) Although in general the line has little vitality among anti-“left” communists, the P.U.L. does support it. Since, once more, they seem to have made the most serious attempt to support their position with some actual reasoning, it is their arguments that we will take up. They make four main points, most of which have also been put forward by others:
(1) Propaganda is the main method for training the vanguard (p. 17). Or, as the Marxist-Leninist Collective has put it, “How else to train the vanguard, if not through a thorough study of the communist movement, and detailed analysis of concrete conditions?”[65]
(2) While trying not to liquidate all agitation in this period, they basically believe that the social forces who are today’s communists are incapable of agitation to the workers. Only (redefined) advanced workers who become communists will be able to do this (p. 53).
The revolutionary ideologues from the mass movements of the ’sixties by and large cannot match the advanced workers for either their knowledge of working-class life or their ability to agitate among and lead the masses. Fusing the working class movement with Marxism-Leninism therefore demands focusing on propaganda work among the proletarian vanguard, so that the communist forces can successfully pass over to widespread agitation.
(3) Only “an extensive organization,” consolidating intellectual and working-class communists, can conduct widespread and consistent agitation (p. 15). The Guardian takes this a step farther, stating that no steps towards fusion can be taken until the party is formed, so that all communists can be united on what to do and say when we go to the workers (3/16/77, p. 21).
(4) We need propaganda to struggle for the correct line on the questions dividing the communist movement, and to propagate the studies we must do of concrete conditions in the United States (p. 29).[66]
Each of these statements has an important element of truth in it, but that element is treated one-sidedly by those who use these arguments to justify either right fear of going to the masses at all (P.U.L., apparently) and “left” predispositions to go to them with materials entirely inappropriate to their level (“for the advanced”)(“the Wing,” some collectives which we know).
The first point was answered previously. Yes, propaganda is definitely needed for teaching advanced workers (and, we would add, intermediates) so that they can play their role in educating their class. But we will have neither the ability nor the context in which to train them as agitators and organizers if we do not also engage in such work ourselves and with them.
On the second, third, and fourth points, clearly our agitation will be far more extensive and better when our forces include more workers, when we have a party to make the work consistent and organize the development of the best materials, and when our movement is united more, along a correct line. But when all these things are interconnected and depend on each other for their mutual development, it is wrong to just single one out, say that its low level is an obstacle to the development of the others, and conclude that it is the “chief form” of our work. In fact, the same one-sided method can be used to justify the line that broad mass work is primary in this period since, after all, it will move forward both our theory and Marxist-Leninist unity.
The low level of fusion, disorganization, divisions, lack of theory, and prevalence of incorrect lines all greatly hinder effective mass work, but they do not render it impossible by any means. Justifying our own inactivity by citing such obstacles would only help perpetuate them. For one thing, progressive worker contacts can greatly assist us in developing literature that speaks effectively to the concerns of fellow workers–we do not need to wait until there is a communist workers’ vanguard before communists can address the workers with some effect.[67] As for our disorganization, it is not qualitatively worse than that of the local circles of Russian Social-Democrats who did so much to promote fusion by their agitational activities in the 1890’s. A professional, united, nationwide organization can vastly improve our ability to do agitation, as Lenin consistently argued; but making this a precondition for agitational work is just an excuse to justify failure to go to the masses until conditions become more favorable, or failure to develop materials geared for their actual level.
Finally, yes we do need propaganda to struggle for the correct line on the questions dividing the communist movement and to propagate new theoretical knowledge, but nothing in this simple truth requires propaganda to overshadow our other forms of work by becoming our “chief” activity.
We have said a great deal about propaganda and broader forms of mass work, and a summary might be helpful at this point:
1. Since our movement frequently refers to Lenin’s observations about the role of advanced workers in fusing the communist and workers’ movements, we should use his definition of whom he is talking about. With regard to such workers, socialist agitation and organizing are required to:
(a) Permit advanced workers to develop in the first place (in the context of sharp class struggle);
(b) Serve as one means for bringing us into contact with advanced workers;
(c) Attract advanced workers to our leadership because of our stand towards, and effective work in, the struggles to which they dedicate themselves;
(d) Train the advanced with whom we work to become better leaders; and
(e) Teach them the Marxist theory by applying it to the solution of concrete problems of the class struggle.
These points are equally true of intermediate workers, who will also be an important part of the class vanguard.
2. Practice in the struggles of the broad masses, including agitation directed to them, is also important because:
(a) It is always our task to educate and organize the proletariat in its struggle against the attacks of capital, and such work should be limited only by the demands of other work needed to move the struggle forward;
(b) Practice raises the questions which theoretical work must answer, and our limited theoretical resources should be directed to those problems which most need to be studied in order to enable communists to teach and lead the workers;
(c) We cannot study the society all-sidedly without participating in the struggle to change it;
(d) Drawing on the extensive but unsystematic knowledge possessed by the people themselves demands being close to them in a way that is difficult without participating in their struggles;
(e) The correctness of different lines must be tested in practice;
(f) The intellectuals who currently comprise a high percentage of the communists must participate in practice to remold their outlooks, complete their book-learning with practical experience, and strengthen their characters;
(g) We cannot train leaders from among our number without experience in leading; and
(h) Full participation in mass struggles will help overcome “left” sectarianism between communists, through some practical lessons in who are our friends and who are our enemies, and through the pressure of the workers.
3. We need a great deal of propaganda to disseminate the results of our theoretical work, struggle over line, and play a role–varying with the consciousness of the workers–in educating advanced, intermediate, and some backward workers. One-sided preoccupation with agitation could neither produce communist workers nor provide direction to the mass movement. It would even undercut our ability to agitate effectively, on the broadest scale, by limiting the quality of the agitation and by preventing the development of thousands of working-class agitators.
4. (See Appendix A.) Attempts to find historical support for the line that propaganda should be the chief form of our work among the masses err in two ways: they totally misread that history, in which the Russian Marxists in fact rejected a similar concept, after trying it briefly, and they treat the supposed history dogmatically, instead of asking what is and is not universally applicable in the alleged experience of the RSDLP.
For these reasons, we believe that it is crucial in this period for communists to do a great deal of broad agitational and organizing work, work not just “directed at the advanced in political content,” either.[68] Describing propaganda as the chief form of our activity in the working class badly underrates the importance of agitational and organizational work among the broad masses. If actually practiced, such a one-sided approach would, among other things, distort the knowledge we seek to acquire in our theoretical work and make it virtually impossible to help develop and win over advanced and intermediate workers. Making agitation the chief form would badly underrate the role of propaganda in developing and winning over a proletarian vanguard. It would lay the basis for economist errors in practice and for building a party that continues to represent a separate, petty bourgeois communist movement.
Our party-building task regarding the workers’ movement is to overcome that separation by taking communism to the workers’ movement, which we can do only with a balance of propaganda, agitation, and providing tactical and organizational leadership, a balance that must be tailored to the circumstances of each struggle.
Are we stopping here, without saying whether agitation or propaganda is “primary,” but simply insisting that they are interconnected, as described on p. 52, and that a great deal of each is crucial?
Yes we are. Perhaps when there is a better assessment of communist forces and what we can accomplish spending “X” man-hours of work on different tasks, we can say whether agitation, the various forms of propaganda, or any of our other tasks demands the most time, if that would serve some purpose, but even that identification would not show primacy in the sense of being the principal aspect of a contradiction or a key link. What is clearly important now is to learn to “play the piano with ten fingers,” as Mao put it, and recognize that all our work will suffer if we neglect any important aspect of it.
As for any supposed “contradiction” between agitation and propaganda, it is a bookish view of dialectics to hold that in every pair of related tasks one must become the “chief form of activity.” Is eating the bread or consuming the soup “the chief form” of taking a meal? Is use of the knife or fork “primary” in eating a steak? In mining coal, is cutting the mineral from the seam or loading it into the buggies “the primary aspect of the contradiction”? Loading the buggies or hauling them out?
Different parts of the job of mining coal, or of the job of raising the consciousness of the working class, can be dialectically interconnected without being in contradiction. A contradiction is a phenomenon which develops according to the internal struggle between its opposite components:
The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their “unity”. . .) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ’ ’self-movement,’’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the “struggle” of opposites. . . a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).[69]
The development of working-class consciousness is indeed a phenomenon that proceeds according to the struggle and interaction between mutually exclusive opposites that comprise it. But those opposites are bourgeois ideology and proletarian ideology. Agitation and propaganda are no more in contradiction, opposites in struggle, than the two horses pulling a carriage. Of course, at any given time and place one may be pulling the load more. Similarly, at one factory a period of agitation may be required before there is any audience for propaganda, while at other times consolidation of a core of worker activists will be required before effective broader work could go anywhere. But the practice of U.S. communists is simply not a phenomenon determined by the struggle between agitation and propaganda, with one of those poles of the contradiction being primary and determinative of the character of that practice for the entire period of party-building.[70]
When one aspect of our work starts to overtake another, when one begins to suffer from neglect, then communists must change our division of labor, our allocation of resources, to correct the situation. Particular circumstances could lead to a phase of communist work where there would be a temporary, nationwide shift to unusually heavy emphasis on propaganda (if, say, it were necessary and possible at some point to use a series of pamphlets and forums to break the influence of the CPUSA over a large group of active workers) or on agitation (e.g., an emergency mass anti-war mobilization, though it is still hard to conceive of the work going very far without propaganda). But we do not see how the present situation either requires or permits an answer to the question of whether propaganda or agitation is “in the forefront” as “the chief form of activity” of communists in the workers’ movement. What is crucial to keep in mind is that communists will have reached only a fraction of our potential for leading a broad mass movement before we are organized into a party, one utilizing advanced theory and one that includes a sizable vanguard section of the working class itself. Our agitation and propaganda must not only be kept in a good balance relative to each other, but they must both be subordinated to the overall task of creating such a party.
Some comrades may wonder about the significance of this struggle over a clear formulation of our tasks. After all, hardly anyone since “the Revolutionary Wing” has tried to literally make “propaganda the chief form” of their work. And most comrades who accept that slogan are by now careful to add such statements as “At the same time, we must establish an inseparable connection between agitation and propaganda.” The concrete view that many such comrades have of what exemplary practice would look like is probably not all that different from our own view. Moreover, clarity on a statement of the correct line is no guarantee of correct work, as mistakes in our own practice have taught us. Thus we enter the debate over these slogans to help end it, not because we think that it should occupy the attention of communists for the next five years.
On the other hand, misleading slogans describing our tasks are bound to do some damage, the damage varying with how seriously comrades take their own words. Those who have tried real agitational and organizational work should know that the demands of genuine involvement in the practical struggle are so great as to render meaningless the idea that something else could simultaneously be the “chief” (“principal, foremost, greatest”–Oxford English Dictionary) form of our work. Any comrades who did honestly apply the formula that propaganda is the main thing we are doing among workers could not possibly take up broader practical tasks in a serious way. Even those who are less consistent and “deviate” towards broader mass work cannot help but be influenced by the incorrect line which they continue to recite. For example, comrades we have worked with have sometimes had trouble tailoring their agitation to their mass audience. They justified their attempts to present too many ideas with too little proof by stating that they were still “mainly aiming at the advanced,” since, after all, propaganda to the advanced is the chief form of our work. . . .Not a logically perfect, necessary consequence of the line, but not surprising, either.
By this point, the significance of the debate over how to use the terms advanced, intermediate, and backward should also be clearer. Besides encouraging less experienced comrades to overrate backward, non-socialist workers whom they call “advanced,” redefining the term produces a vanguard created not by the class struggle and communist activity, but by a verbal maneuver. Then it becomes easy to believe that our mass work should have as its central focus winning over that vanguard, rather than the development and winning over of such a vanguard, which requires a broader and more all-sided approach to the practical struggle. Misleading slogans and formulations may not be an insuperable handicap to that approach, but they certainly do not help.
Our own view of this relationship should be fairly clear by now. For the reasons stated on pp. 60-65, above, even if it were somehow necessary or desirable to seek to first unite the existing communist movement, or a section of it, into a party through ideological struggle alone, relative isolation from practice would defeat the attempt to unite communists, on a correct line. Moreover, the postponement of serious attempts to assist the development of a communist workers’ movement is not considered desirable by any communists, though some consider such postponement necessary. We believe it unnecessary, although the building of a consistently Marxist-Leninist party will certainly permit a qualitative leap in communists’ ability to carry out such work.
To complete this chapter on practical tasks of party-building, we discuss more briefly our disagreements with three other positions on practice: the Guardian’s failure to see the importance of focusing on practice that will most directly permit fusing communism with the workers’ movement; their position that real steps towards such fusion must await the uniting of communists into a party; and the Philadelphia Workers’ Organizing Committee’s view that, on the contrary, party-building essentially is fusion.
The Guardian fails to distinguish between different kinds of mass work and the social strata that each attracts. If we are trying to build a proletarian party, what is needed is a firm focus on deepening fusion, working with workers. This means going first and foremost to workplace and trade union struggles in the most promising and strategic centers. In a period where fusion is so low and the communist forces are so weak, dissipation of those forces by involvement in other struggles should be strictly limited to those that also involve many workers as participants (e.g., a police-repression struggle in a working-class community) or which are particularly valuable for some aspect of the social investigation of this country which we must also carry out in this period. What kind of guidance do we get from the Guardian!
.. .[T]here are a number of areas in which immediate questions take on an urgency to which all Marxist-Leninists should respond [by taking up the struggle]. Among these are solidarity with national liberation struggles (particularly southern Africa today), affirmative action, racism, women’s rights, strike support, environmental issues, antiwar issues and others.[70a]
There are many “questions” which “take on an urgency” as long as capitalism rules, and our agitation and propaganda to the workers should speak of as many of these as possible. But to set no priorities on to whom we should speak, as if it is a matter of indifference whether Marxist-Leninists concentrate on the workers’ movement on the one hand, or spontaneously allow their forces to get diverted to non-proletarian E.R.A. coalitions, anti-nuclear-power groups, or liberation support coalitions, on the other, is to forget that the main way to respond to these “questions” is to develop the links with the class which can eventually do something about them. We must avoid both the right deviation, based on complacently letting the workers’ movement develop on its own until Marxist-Leninists unite (the Guardian), and “left” delusions that liberation support committees that mobilize a few hundred “movement” people and students for a demonstration in a large metropolitan area are affecting world politics. Neither the problem, nor the solution, is new:
The creation of a durable revolutionary organization among the factory, urban workers is therefore the first and most urgent task confronting Social-Democracy, one from which it would be highly unwise to let ourselves be diverted at the present time. But, while recognizing the necessity of concentrating our forces on the factory workers and opposing the dissipation of our forces, we do not in the least wish to suggest that the Russian Social-Democrats should ignore other strata of the Russian proletariat and working class. . . .The Russian Social-Democrats think it inopportune to send their forces among the handicraftsmen and rural labourers, but they do not in the least intend to ignore them; they will try to enlighten the advanced workers also on questions affecting the lives of the handicraftsmen and rural labourers, so that when these workers come into contact with the more backward strata of the proletariat, they will imbue them with the ideas of the class struggle, socialism and the political tasks of Russian democracy in general and of the Russian proletariat in particular.[71]
Certainly the same reasoning applies even more forcefully to the question of involvement in struggles that presently can attract few proletarians of any kind, but involve more the petty bourgeoisie, students, etc. Not that this will always be the case. When there is a well-developed workers’ movement led by a vanguard workers’ party, then we will have forces to send into other strata of the population, to do mass work there and to gather crucial knowledge. Moreover, we will be able to mobilize the proletariat in support of struggles such as those listed by the Guardian; and, on the international situation in particular, we will replace internationalist gestures with the internationalist actions of millions of workers. But we are not at that point today, and we will never get there if we do not now focus our practice on fusing communism with the workers’ movement.
This leads to our next point. Parallel to the MLOC’s happy discovery that fusion is at a high level because communists cannot exist separate from the workers’ movement lies the opposite error. That error is the view that no real steps can be taken towards fusion until Marxist-Leninists unite in a party. This, in fact, is what the Guardian believes, which explains their hit-or-miss approach to priorities for practice in this period.
The Guardian has little to say in supporting its opinion that fusion can only be begun by an organized party. As the PWOC has pointed out, Irwin Silber (apparently speaking for the Guardian as a whole) presents a false pair of alternatives (“which comes first–’fusing’ communism with the workers’ movement or building a new communist party?”). He then finds that “a moment’s thought” is sufficient to prove his own choice correct–forming a party through uniting ideologically on the basis of scientific socialism.[72] The first of the two arguments that “a moment’s thought” produced was that communists cannot establish a base in the working class without being organized as communists and united ideologically. This flat assertion is not rooted in reality. Granted, practical work is very uneven, confused, and restricted in scope when we are organized only in small local forms, compared to when we are in a party, but it is not impossible to carry it out at all. In fact, “a moment’s thought” is enough to recall that the fragmented, amateurish, and often politically misguided circles of Russian Social-Democrats made great strides towards fusion in the Russia of the 1890’s.
Silber’s second argument is that in “developing the connection between the communists and the proletariat,” we must know “to do what?” and that the communists must have a conscious plan for developing this connection. Some important link of the argument is unstated. Silber must either think that only a party can develop a line on trade union work, or that all communists must unite into a party and agree on a line before any can try out the lines they think are correct. But he implicitly (and correctly) rejects both positions a few lines later, for he proceeds to elaborate eight fairly developed principles for trade union work, principles which “are offered as contributions to a discussion on communist strategy within the working-class movement that must be the first order of business for a new communist party–and that may help give some direction to existing Marxist-Leninist groups who are correctly attempting to combine their party-building efforts with their involvement in the working-class and democratic struggles of the present.”
Yet here, in another Silber article May 4, 1977, and in articles on the work of the Guardian clubs, the Guardian still clings to the elimination of deepening fusion from the list of our tasks in this period. These half-hearted and inconsistent arguments seem to stem from the contradiction between the Guardian’s occasional recognition that we can and must do trade union work in this period, on the one hand,[73] and its ambition to lead the movement to build a party (and build the Guardian’s, sources of news and funds) on the other. For if deepening fusion is one of our party-building tasks, it is evident, as the Potomac Socialist Organization has pointed out, that the Guardian lacks the experience, the contacts, and a good form of organization for carrying out communist work in the working-class movement.
A different argument for delaying attempts to deepen fusion with the workers’ movement was elaborated by the Tucson Marxist-Leninist Collective, although the comrades have since told us that they do engage in mass work and consider it important.[74] Claiming to be summarizing (uncited) works of Lenin, the TMLC stated that fusion requires (1) a communist party or “organization developing toward a party,” which has unified the communist movement, (2) a workers’ movement producing the advanced workers described by Lenin, and (3) Marxist-Leninist theory, understood correctly at the general level and fully applied to analysis of concrete conditions in the U.S. and elaboration of proletarian strategy and tactics. We have read nothing in Lenin supporting the first supposed requirement. As we pointed out in considering the Guardian’s line, what the Russian experience actually shows is that a significant level of fusion can take place even when the communist movement is fragmented into small circles, at least under some conditions and with the right kind of work.
The TMLC expanded on the Guardian’s argument by asserting that unless the communists are united into an organization guided by the correct theory, we will inevitably drift into economist fusion, subordinating communism to militant trade-unionist ideology. Like so many of those who hold that we cannot even undertake one or another task until some other work is practically carried out to perfection, the TMLC seemed to think that communists should not try something until there is a guarantee that all of us will do it right. Maybe only a third of us will carry out good communist practice, while another two thirds make serious “left” or right errors that render our work ineffective. If so, a third will accomplish some valuable work, and all of us can learn from the positive and negative examples of the various kinds of practice undertaken. However, if none of us does anything, the mistakes are avoided, but nothing is being accomplished or learned.
Lenin’s writings do not support the second TMLC requirement for fusion, that the workers’ movement must first produce many advanced workers (as if it could do so in the absence of communist agitation), and we explained its lack of foundation in discussing the P.U.L.’s view that the vanguard must be won over before we can really do broader mass work.
Nor can we agree that either Lenin’s teachings or anything else shows that no meaningful progress in fusing the communist and workers’ movements can be made (besides an economist integration of communists into trade-unionist struggles) without near-completion of our theoretical tasks. The TMLC expressed views similar to our own on the crucial need for theoretical work and the severe limitations on our ability to raise the consciousness of workers without materials that apply a Marxist analysis to the facts of U.S. society. To us this points up the urgency of communists devoting a sizable portion of our resources to theoretical work and recognizing that remedying our theoretical weaknesses is the key link for moving all our party-building work forward. But the TMLC, in their party-building pamphlet at least, seemed to take this to the point of negating our ability to do any useful work in raising the level of, and winning over, workers in this period. We cannot disprove that view yet, for we have seen communists make only beginning, tentative steps in deepening fusion, but we think we can see how past failures come from serious errors, “left” and right, and not only from the dearth of theory. (Rectifying such errors itself requires a good theoretical understanding of Marxism-Leninism, but it equally requires experience.) Our own trade-union work convinces us of a serious requirement for propaganda materials to assist that work, but we are also developing our influence with a few workers who want to learn more about communism, in part because of our ability to grasp what is going on in the trade union struggles and to provide tactical leadership. Albanian history also provides an example where the communist party, though lacking a deep study of the society and propaganda based on such studies, was able to win broad influence among the masses based on its minimal program of national liberation and democracy. And nothing that we find in Lenin–who strongly emphasized the need to engage in practical work while studying the society[75]–supports the TMLC’s attempt to paraphrase him. While communists should certainly not throw themselves into the mass movement as if the lack of theory and communist unity will be only minor hindrances to our ability to help a communist vanguard develop, we must also oppose relegating practical work to a minor role. Aside from the questionable wisdom of trying to form a petty-bourgeois communist party as a first step and transform it into a workers’ party later, the attempt itself would be futile. It would be defeated by the theoretical mistakes and opportunist deviations which cloistered intellectuals cannot avoid, and by our inability to unify without practice, both to help prove certain lines correct and to bring in workers who will struggle against petty-bourgeois sectarianism.
We have dealt so far with those positions which see little importance in significant mass work in this period, either because they view “propaganda to the advanced” as the primary means of deepening fusion or because they think that we can do little about fusion until after formation of a party or an organization functioning much like one. Among those whom we think are mistaken about the relationship of practice to party-building, comrades who downgrade practice are clearly in the minority. There remain those forces who believe that deepening fusion, mainly through agitational and organizational work, is party-building. This error takes both “left” and right forms.
The “left” form, which forces like the P.U.L. and others in the anti-“left” section of the movement have identified, is for communists of intellectual and petty-bourgeois origin to go out into the mass movement as if fusion were already at a high level and we were recognized working-class leaders, instead of people who have a great deal to learn before our teaching can have much influence. Groups like the Revolutionary Union, often the October League, and, on a smaller scale, the A.T.M., organized themselves like parties and started to act like parties long before developing the nerve to call themselves the party. They have not to this day recognized the degree to which effective practice will be limited until real efforts are devoted to our theoretical tasks; they often tend to overrate our ability to win workers over to our ideas by stating a correct principle and giving an example or two; and they never frankly recognized the extent to which we must learn from the workers and the extent to which we must remold ourselves in practice. The difficult obstacles which communists coming from the intermediate strata face in doing good mass work have generally gone unrecognized, and therefore comrades plunge in without regard for their own limitations. (This also leads to periodic retreats into right errors, as comrades try to overcome their isolation.) For the old R.U. justification for this deviation came in the argument that we needed to build the mass movement before seeking to unite Marxist-Leninists in a party, without recognizing the severe limitations on our ability to influence the mass movement at all. Naturally, those organizations that now admit that they see themselves as the vanguard party of the working class also tend to define their tasks solely in terms of leading the masses.
As an aside, we must emphasize that despite these and other serious and consistent “left” deviations in party-building line, some of these organizations have been very inconsistent in political line and tactics. The October League, now the CP(M-L), went through an uncomplicated rightist period of totally uncritical promotion of unreliable trade union reformists like Arnold Miller, conducting reformist, lawsuit-centered struggles for affirmative action; and tailing reformist Black leaders, before flipping to their anti-Sadlowski stance and taking a cue from the R.C.P. on putting more into “pure” new workers’ organizations than into the struggles within the unions. The A.T.M./L.R.S., despite tremendous “left” sectarianism in their anti-Bakke work and in their policy towards communists with whom they have serious differences, pursues trade union work in our area, at least, that leaves their members practically indistinguishable from the few workers who think that new faces in union office will reform the unions.
And the picture becomes much more complex when line on the international situation is taken into account. The thoroughly elaborated, extreme right rationale for the Theory of Three Worlds’ concept of the united front,[76] and the consistent revisionism of the Chinese leaders whom the CP(M-L), L.R.S., and others follow blindly, produce very strong ideological counter-currents to the “left” tendencies that remain in these organizations, making it foolish to assume that their “leftism,” even if it was once or even is now primary, must remain so.
Lenin and Stalin often wrote that petty-bourgeois revolutionaries are extremely unstable in their principles and vacillate from adventurism to reformism. There is no reason, in theory, why forces pursuing “left” party-building lines could not commit right deviations in their political line and practice, and in fact several do just that.
Among parties that do not call themselves The Party, the clearest expression of the “left” voluntarist line of building the party by acting like one today came from the A.T.M., before it merged with the I.W.K. and included secret negotiations in the CP(M-L)-initiated “unity committee” as part of its party-building work. As we mentioned in Chapter I, the A.T.M. explicitly opposed communists’ evaluating our tasks in the context of party-building and saw no difference in our tasks before and after conditions for forming a party have been created.[77] In October, 1976, they mentioned the need to develop a plan for party-building, and in March of 1977 they said that they were trying to figure out the key link in party-building.[78] They did say that it will be whatever best permits us to develop “nationwide political agitation which exposes the capitalist dictatorship in all its aspects, which points the class in the direction of its own dictatorship, and which shows the class, on the basis of the experience of daily life, the necessity for its alliance with the revolutionary national movements, and other fighters for democratic rights.”[79] It is hard to imagine the A.T.M. and its successor organization puzzling over this for two years; all other Marxist-Leninists know that the way to develop such agitation is to form a vanguard party. The big question is how to do that.
The A.T.M. thought that the answer is some form of evolution from the process of organizations trying to act as much as they can like the party. This lead them to (1) organize themselves in the form of a party, like others, and (2) consider mass political agitation as our main task in this period and as the means ”[t]o build an organization capable of giving political leadership; to meet the upsurge of the working masses, to satisfy their demands for knowledge and organization and directions [sic]. . ..”[80] At the same time, they gave no attention to theoretical work (except to “prove” that there is a Chicano nation) and made no public contribution to discussion of how to struggle for unity within the communist movement, and how to organize that movement to the extent possible under present conditions. They have been content with their own immersion in agitation, urging others to do the same, as if we were already part of an organized, unified party that has done its theoretical homework and can concentrate totally on educating and organizing the class.
They justified this with curious logic. Quoting Lenin, they stated the obvious truth that the kind of organization we will form will depend on the tasks which we set for ourselves. To us this means that we will form a Leninist party capable of doing nationwide agitation only if we see such agitation as one of its tasks. But the A.T.M. leaped to the conclusion that the way to develop such an organization is to take up those same tasks, in the same way, now.[81] This kind of reasoning would have us trying to teach toddlers to give agitational speeches and shoot guns, because we want them to grow up to be good revolutionaries. Thus it is not surprising that the A.T.M. opposed distinguishing between our tasks in the present period and after we have a vanguard party, that their successor group still focuses its work almost entirely on agitation, and that they have nothing to say (or do) about our theoretical tasks. Their rare articles on the tasks of communists in this period deal only with broad mass work. Acting as if we are already a vanguard party is a “left” error, notwithstanding the widespread belief (which we shared until recently) that all varieties of overemphasis on practice are hallmarks of right opportunism only. The comrades are impetuously trying to skip to the stage when conditions will permit communists, organized and united in a party, and possessing a solid base of theoretical study, to turn the bulk of our resources to educating and leading the masses. In this way they are following in the footsteps of the R.U., with its emphasis on building the mass movement (while in fact evolving into an unacknowledged party formation), as well as those organizations openly declaring themselves the party to lead the masses.
Yet there is, in addition, a right deviation which also sees party-building in terms of fusion. Taking this line literally, small local groups would devote almost all their efforts to their practice, hoping that, as workers join our forces, the conditions for forming a vanguard working-class party will somehow be generated. Though we agree that the petty-bourgeois composition of the movement is a tremendous obstacle to the fulfillment of its tasks, the answer cannot be, “Wait until our local practice produces enough communist workers.” What such a conception of our tasks leaves out is the struggle to unite–on a correct line–a core of today’s communists, those who must carry the work out. Equating party-building to fusion also dangerously downgrades our theoretical tasks, making them sound not only not primary, but incidental at best. Finally, such a party-building line ignores the organizational steps which we can take to open up lines of communication and struggle, in order to better serve efforts at unification, theoretical work, and practice. Narrowing our tasks to local practice can leave us plodding along in that form of work forever, and even the stated goal of fusion would meet with little success.
The Potomac Socialist Organization and the PWOC both state our tasks in a way that would at least permit this deviation, although it later became clear that they and others were simultaneously making the quiet initiatives that led to formation of the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center. The P.S.O. has stated conditions for party-formation that involve only the level of fusion, and the PWOC insists that “party-building is in essence a question of fusion” and that the struggle “to fuse communism with the advanced workers. . . [is] the essential (or central) task of party-building.”[82] We are not sure what these statements mean, since both groups speak of our theoretical tasks (PWOC even calling them primary) and both show a recognition of the need for the struggle for unity with other communists, or, rather, with communists who share their views on the international situation.
The P.S.O. does not attempt to explain the basis for its conclusions, but the PWOC does. It gives what are, in fact, three reasons why we must carry out serious practical work in this period, and then makes an illogical leap to the conclusion that building the party is, “in essence,” bringing about fusion. The reasons are that the process of fusion “raises the questions around which we must unite,” that the verification of correct theoretical work in practice will provide the basis for communist unity by proving which line should be united around, and that we will avoid unprincipled unity by only uniting around lines proven in practice.[83]
These statements are all one-sided. Communists must also address questions that will not be raised in our immediate practice, and on many points we will have to at least tentatively unite around answers that come from the historical experience of the world proletarian movement. If not, we would have to wait, e.g., until after the next world war to decide who was correct on the stand the proletariat should have taken on the war.[84]
But even to the extent that the PWOC’s statements are true, none of them shows that practical work, theoretical investigations, ideological struggle, and organizational initiatives aimed at improving our capacity to carry out all of these cannot or should not take place concurrently, with a very significant commitment of resources to each of them. Comrades who see their own local practice as their part of party-building will inevitably give insufficient attention to these other tasks. On the other hand, there are also signs that some OCIC organizers plan to implement the party-building line that the A.T.M. articulated and that all the existing parties have followed: voluntarist unification into an (undeclared) democratic-centralist party, to permit better nationwide agitation (to deepen fusion).
We do not know enough about the PWOC and the P.S.O. to know what their practice is or why they equate party-building to fusion, but at least the potential dangers of this formulation are clear nonetheless.[85] Moreover, associated with the fusionist position are mistakes on the pre-conditions for party-formation (see Chapter IX) which could unnecessarily lengthen the period in which we stumble along without a party.
(We summarized the bulk of this chapter on pp. 67-68, above. Here we continue with the topics discussed after that point.)
We must fuse communism with the workers’ movement using propaganda, agitation, and providing tactical and organizational leadership. The balance between these interrelated forms of work will vary according to the circumstances. Neither agitation nor propaganda should be made the chief form of our mass work for the pre-party period or even for a major part of it.
Since a key purpose of our practice in this period is to deepen fusion, practice must be consciously focused on the workers’ movement or other struggles in which many of the participants are workers. We should not indiscriminately devote our limited resources to struggles that today involve only petty bourgeois strata or the Left itself. This means, for example, that we should generally take agitation about national liberation struggles or equality for women to the workers where we find them and can work with them, not go off into coalitions where we cannot.
In the Guardian-PWOC debate about whether party-building is uniting Marxist-Leninists or fusing communism with the workers’ movement, both groups are one-sided and, therefore, largely incorrect. The Guardian and, in the past, at least, the TMLC, have mistakenly argued that promoting fusion can and should be delayed. The Guardian relies mainly on how handicapped we are in doing such work before we are united around a correct line; the TMLC raises similar objections regarding our theoretical weaknesses and other factors. Both ignore historical experience in which important strides in fusing communism with a workers’ movement were made despite similar weaknesses among the communists. Both seem to want guarantees that all our practice will be guided by a correct line before we learn by trying our different lines in practice. Finally, they ignore the dangers of keeping a petty-bourgeois communist movement divorced from the class struggle and from working-class influence, and they ignore the pressing reasons for practical work listed in the mid-chapter summary.
But trying to promote fusion is not, in itself, party-building either. Party-building is promoting fusion, and studying our concrete conditions, and reaffirming and developing basic Marxist-Leninist principles, and struggling for unity on correct political and organizational lines to guide the party, and alertly watching for opportunities to weaken the hegemony of opportunist lines over the existing parties, and building the pre-party organization that can do these things. Though a more all-sided position seems to lie behind the PWOC line, its statement that party-building is essentially fusion could strengthen the deviation which leads local circles to be satisfied with doing little but their own narrow practice. The PWOC slogan could also promote the deviation of forming now another small, undeclared, democratic-centralist party in which the rank and file focus almost exclusively on practice, despite the unsettled nature of many key theoretical and political questions.
[1] We have seen no thorough investigation of strata in the U.S. working class, but we would expect each of the following to be a favorable condition: large numbers of workers concentrated in the workplace; low pay and poor working conditions, rather than the state of relative privilege that imperialist superprofits permit some industrial workers to achieve; location in a heavily industrialized urban area; a history of struggle in the area or in the union; the industry being strategic (i.e., at the heart of the economy); and high national minority composition of the workforce.
[1a] What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 375-76 (footnote omitted).
[2] A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy, LCW 4: 257-59.
[3] p. 7.
[4] Lenin, too, often wrote of fusing socialism with the workers’ movement, rather than of fusing the two movements. Elsewhere, however, he wrote of two movements. A Retrograde Trend. . ., LCW 4: 260; “Apropos of the Profession de Foi,” ibid., 287-88; ”Draft Declaration of the Editorial Board oilskra and Zarya,” ibid., 325.
The expression “fusing socialism with the workers’ movement” helps guard against ”left” tendencies to ascribe real political significance to a communist movement that is not a communist workers’ movement, and right tendencies to see fusion as the integration of petty bourgeois communists into the proletariat without taking Marxism-Leninism to the class. But the other phrase, referring to the two movements, is useful as well, because in this country there is definitely a social movement of ex-students and other petty-bourgeois communists, along with a few workers. Though extremely weak politically, this movement is a separate social phenomenon, with its own origins, social composition, goals, and laws of development. Insisting, as some comrades have privately, that it is wrong to speak of fusing the communist and workers’ movements simply plays into the hands of forces like the CPUSA/M-L, who want to label Trotskyist all discussion of the relative isolation of this communist movement from the workers’ movement.
[5] Unite!, 2/77, p. 10 (emphasis omitted).
[6] Not that the entire class, in its mass organizations, must be putting forward socialist demands, but at least those who are most progressive and are the activists in a workers’ movement would be doing so if that movement had fused with socialism.
[7] Op. cit., p. 10.
[8] Lenin, quoted above, p. 35.
[9] Unite!, 9/77, p. 10.
[10] See A Retrograde Trend. . .,LCW 4: 257-60, and “Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity,” LCW 20: 343.
[11] This particular sentence obviously describes a process then happening in Russia. Those who have the qualities of the advanced would only be becoming conscious Marxist-Leninists in conditions where communism is the socialist trend which they are being encouraged to study.
[12] A Retrograde Trend. . ., LCW 4: 280-82.
[13] As the reader may know, strata is the plural of stratum.
[14] See, e.g., “Left-Wing” Communism–an Infantile Disorder, LCW 31: 52-54, 58-59; “Apropos of the Profession de Foi,” LCW 4: 288, 291-92; What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 428-29, 454, 471 (“Are there not advanced people, ’average people,’ and ’masses’ among the intelligentsia too?).
[15] We refer to “socialist” workers, rather than “communists” in contexts where the issue is not whether the workers are scientific socialists, revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, but whether they favor socialism at all. Similarly, ”socialist agitation” that helps bring workers closer to socialism could come from, e.g., communists, the CPUSA (by accident), or the S.W.P.
[16] Communist Workers Group, Forward, #3.
[17] Workers Viewpoint Journal, #4, p. 2.
[18] P.U.L., p. 55.
[19] E.g., W.V.O., op. cit.; Philadelphia Workers’ Organizing Committee, Party-Building: Against Revisionism and Dogmatism, p. 4; Committee for a Proletarian Party, Principles of Unity, pp. 2-3.
The Workers Congress argues for no definition at all, promoting a set of relative concepts in which we must look for “the advanced, intermediate, and backward” of “every situation.” The Communist, 8/28/76, pp. 5 & 8.
[20] Committee for a Proletarian Party, p. 2, and W.V.O., p. 1. We quote these statements because they typify an extremely common belief, not because the organizations quoted were necessarily influential in promoting it.
[21] A Retrograde Trend . .., LCW 4: 260.
[22] The Communist, 11/17/77, p. 8.
[23] Some comrades, unable to reconcile the reality in this country with a well-known phrase from Lenin, opt for the phrase. Does not Lenin, they ask, say that ”the advanced workers, as always and everywhere, determined the character of the movement, and they were followed by the working masses. . ..”? (A Retrograde Trend. ... p. 260; emphasis added.) Lenin probably meant a role advanced workers always play when there is the kind of “working-class movement” he was writing about, one already shaking the existing social order.
[24] This phenomenon, obvious from everyday experience, is also mentioned by Mao in “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership,” MSR 289.
[25] “Left-Wing” Communism. . ., LCW 31: 93 (first emphasis added).
[26] A Retrograde Trend . ., LCW 4: 281.
[27] Of this requirement, Stalin wrote, “Note that Lenin’s formula does not speak about mastering the program, but of accepting the program. . . .If the Party took the standpoint that Party members can be only those comrades who have already mastered the program and have become theoretically trained Marxists, it would not have formed thousands of Party circles in the Party, hundreds of Party schools where the Party members are taught Marxism and are helped to master our program.” Mastering Bolshevism (Proletarian Publishers), pp. 47-48.
[28] One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, LCW 7: 242. See also History of the P.L.A., p 90.
[29] E.g., Letter to a Comrade on Our Organizational Tasks, LCW 6: 233-50.
[30] E.g., Bobrovskaya. Twenty Years in Underground Russia and Piatnitsky, Memoirs of a Bolshevik.
[31] Lenin referred to “the years 1900-03, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia.” (“Left-Wing” Communism. . ., LCW 31: 33; emphasis added.)
In Albania, five months after the Communist Party (now the Party of Labor of Albania) was formed, its Conference of Activists decided,
“As to admitting new members to the Party, mainly from the ranks of the workers and poor peasants, instructions were given to the effect that the shortcomings of their theoretical and political knowledge should not bar them from becoming members of the Party. These insufficiently schooled but resolute people would be further developed and educated as fiery militants for the cause of the people and communism within the ranks of the Party. History of the P.L.A., pp. 112-13.
It would, of course, be a gross distortion of these works to marshal them in support of a broad, loose-knit “mass party.”
[32] “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership,” MSR 288-89.
[33] What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 409-410.
[34] The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, LCW 2: 329, 332.
[35] A Retrograde Trend. . ., LCW 4: 279-80. Too many in our movement think that What is to be Done? and A Retrograde Trend. . . say that only right opportunists gear much of their agitation to the level of those many workers who will have to be introduced to socialist ideas gradually, step by step, if we want them to listen to us at all. But what Lenin opposed was the doctrine that none of the workers should be taught more than what the backward, non-socialist workers could accept, and that agitation among the latter should be only trade-unionist. “Gross exaggeration” of work where we must put the demands of the moment in the foreground and the broad ideals of socialism in the background leads to Economism. but that does not change the fact that the work itself is “absolutely essential.” See also Principles of Party Organization, a Comintern document written under Lenin’s guidance (reprinted by Mass Publications, Calcutta), p. 16.
[36] A. Markoff, “Lenin on Agitation and Propaganda, and the Tasks of the Communist Party,” reprinted in League of Struggle (M-L), Journal #2, p. 15.
[37] More recently, the best defenses that we could find of the position that propaganda is the chief form of our work appear in The Communist (Workers Congress (M-L)), 6/6/77 pp. 1-2, and P.U.L., pp. 14-17, 29-30.
[38] Tien Chih-sung, “The Masses are the Makers of History,” Peking Review #29 1972 (reprinted in Yenan Books, On Studying World History, pp. 16-17).
[39] What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 473.
[40] Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 7.
[41] E.g., A Retrograde Trend. . ., LCW 4: 280 (emphasis added).
[42] Ibid. (emphasis added).
[43] Ibid.. 279.
[44] “Appropos of the Profession de Foi,” LCW 4: 294 (emphasis added).
[45] Workers’ Press, 9/77, p. 5.
[46] We do know comrades who think that the work of educating the workers can be separated from organizing them and providing tactical leadership in the struggle, but in general we do not think that this view has much influence in our movement, so we will avoid a full polemic at this point. We only note that (1) workers who see only the day-to-day struggle and need the final aim to be pointed out to them will not listen to those whose practice shows disdain for the day-to-day struggle for concessions; (2) we must teach the workers, through their experience, that organized and united they are powerful and can change the world in which they live; and (3) we must train the workers, and ourselves, in the techniques of organization by undertaking that work.
Comrades who disagree should consult What the “Friends of the People” Are. LCW 1: 298; Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party, LCW 2: 112-17; The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, LCW 2: 328, 341; “The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement,” LCW 4: 369; and What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 425.
[47] What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 512.
[48] History of the P.L.A., pp. 99-141.
[49] “On Practice,” MSR 71.
[50] “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” MSR 215-16. Mao develops this further than we should here in “On Practice,” MSR 70-71, where he stresses the need for “personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality,” and pp. 74-76. See also What the “Friends of the People?” Are. . ., LCW 1: 297-98 and fn.
[51] We are speaking, of course, of the need for organizations to engage in broad forms of practice. Not every individual member assigned mainly to theoretical work or some other specialized function must be concurrently involved in practice.
[52] One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, LCW 7: 401.
[53] Speech at the Third Party Congress, LCW 8: 415.
[54] Step Forward. . ., p. 323.
[55] Albania Today, 1975, #5, p. 17.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Letter to C. Schmidt, Aug. 5, 1890, MESW 690.
[58] “Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work,” MSW V: 426-27. Mao also explains the incompleteness of book knowledge without practice in “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” MSR 214-16.
[59] “Speech at Propaganda Conference,” MSW V: 425.
[60] lbid., 427. And further: “If you can apply the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint in elucidating one or two practical problems, you should be commended and credited with some achievement. The more problems you elucidate and the more comprehensively and profoundly you do so, the greater will be your achievement. Our Party School should also lay down the rule to grade students good or poor according to how they look at China’s problems after they have studied Marxism-Leninism, according to whether or not they see the problems clearly and whether or not they see them at all. ”Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” MSR 213.
[61] See What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 370, 372.
[62] M.R.L., A Critique of Ultra-Leftism, Dogmatism and Sectarianism, pp. 86, 88.
[63] In particular, their presentation at a forum they conducted on trade union work April 9, 1978. The presentation is available in pamphlet form.
[64] See p. 51, above.
[65] Workers’ Press, 9/77, p. 5.
[66] The alleged primacy of propaganda over agitation is sometimes defended in part by blurring the distinction between doing this theoretical work and propagating it. (See, e.g., P.U.L., p. 34.) The two are closely connected, but theoretical study–whether in the libraries or through investigating mass movements close at hand–is not propaganda. Cf. What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 410.
[67] While rejecting the P.U.L.’s fundamental belief that it is so difficult for non-proletarian comrades to do broad mass work that it is “left” adventurism to try, we do think that many forces greatly underestimate the difficulties of such work, do not rely on the people, and end up making “left” errors.
[68] Workers’ Press, 9/77, p. 5.
[69] “On the Question of Dialectics,” LCW 38: 359-60.
[70] Our treatment here of contradiction is oversimplified. We are not well trained in philosophy, but we can say that Marxists have used at least two concepts of contradiction in addition to that expressed in Lenin’s article. One is the apparent logical absurdity of propositions which seek to describe living phenomena in static, absolute, metaphysical concepts. Such propositions produce “contradictions” that are “resolved” by use of dynamic, relative, dialectical concepts. See F. Engels, Anti-Duhring (International Publishers: N.Y., 1939) p. 132; also pp. 70-71, 131-35.
Second, sometimes the term contradiction is used to label a problem, i.e., a situation where considering the best course of action from only one side produces a situation diametrically opposed to that produced by considering it only from another side, but where an all-sided treatment of the question produces the correct resolution. E.g., p. 110, below, where we consider the benefits of forming a party-building organization with the highest possible level of unity to start with, and those considerations which point to openness and inclusiveness in such an organization.
In the text above we compare the question of the primacy of agitation or propaganda to that use of contradiction which refers to the internal contradictoriness in phenomena as the explanation for their motion and development, for two reasons. First, we think that Lenin was correct in describing such contradiction as “the essence,” “the kernel” of dialectics (“On the Question of Dialectics,” LCW 38: 359, and “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,” LCW 38: 223, 229). (See also Mao’s On Contradiction.) Second, only with this conception of contradiciton can it be said that one aspect of the contradiction must be primary.
[70a] 9/7/77, p. 12. Once, almost lost in a number of statements emphasizing liberation support work or stating no priorities at all, Irwin Silber did write, “Concededly, just making the workers’ movement its prime arena of political concentration at this moment would be a step forward for communists.” 3/16/77, p. 21. It is a shame that the Guardian declines to make this “concession” when it enumerates the tasks of Guardian clubs, the organizations which it urges communists to join.
[71] The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, LCW 2: 330-31. Later, as the communist forces grew, the same focus on the working class alone would have been a serious error. See What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 429.
[72] See Guardian, 9/7/77, p. 12.
[73] And Silber recently seemed to put his own position on a par with others, stating that ”the time has come for a more refined formulation.” Guardian, 1/31/79, p. 21.
[74] See Party Building Tasks in the Present Period: On Theory and Fusion, pp. 17-22.
In a recent letter the TMLC told us that in fact they do attach importance to practice aimed at raising the consciousness of workers, and they cited their article on the primacy of theory in Theoretical Review, #7. If this is now their position, it is a significant departure from that taken in their pamphlet on party-building. Such a departure is not stated in the later article, either. Perhaps the written position that conditions do not exist “for genuine fusion to begin to occur” is an exaggeration which the comrades slipped into in their polemic against the line that party-building is fusion.
Regardless of the comrades’ current views, the arguments published in their pamphlet are a line in the movement, and we think that we should address those arguments here.
[75] What the “Friends of the People” Are. . ., LCW 1: 297-98 and fn.
[76] See pp. 9-10, above.
[77] Revolutionary Cause, 10/76, p. 5, and 11/76, p. 11.
[78] Revolutionary Cause, 10/76, p. 5; Colorado Organization for Revolutionary Struggle, Denver Forum, Five Organizations Speak on. . . Party-Building, p. 27.
[79] Denver Forum. . ., p. 27.
[80] Revolutionary Cause, 5/77, p. 3.
[81] Ibid., p. 6; Red Banner §2, pp. 12-13.
[82] P.S.O., On the Party-Building Question; PWOC, The Organizer, 8/78, p. 11, and 12/77, p. 10. (The P.S.O. comrades now distribute their 1976 pamphlet along with a statement that it no longer adequately expresses their views on party-building.)
[83] Organizer, 12/77, p. 10
[84] The PWOC even names capacity to improve fusion as the criterion for the correctness of political line (The Organizer, 1/78, p. 12). This is a rightist distortion of the principle that the correctness of a line is tested in practice. It is certainly possible, for example, that a social-chauvinist line on the international situation would, for several years, have more mass appeal than an internationalist line.
[85] Some comrades close to the OCIC think that the PWOC would agree substantially with what we have said about the primacy of theory, and that their role in the OCIC formation shows that they agree on the need for an organized party-building effort. According to this view, the PWOC has backed itself into the corner of saying “party-building is fusion” in the course of its debate with the Guardian line (party-building is basically uniting Marxist-Leninists). If this is so, the PWOC should drop the one-sided slogan for a statement of our party-building tasks that is all-sided and less likely to mislead.