First Published: May 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Spontaneity in Party-Building
Party-Building Line and Political Line
Summary of P.C. Line
The Forces We Address
Our Vagueness on the Main Danger
Theory and Strategy
Theory for Program and Tactics
Theory for Propaganda and Agitation
Lenin and Mao on Theory
Priorities for Theoretical Work
Overestimation and Underestimation of the Need for Theory
Can We Solve Theoretical Questions Before Party-Formation?
How to do Theoretical Work in a Pre-Party Network
Summary
III. Practical Tasks: Promoting Fusion, and Other Functions of Mass Work
The Need to Fuse Communism with the Workers’ Movement
How to Deepen Fusion
Strata Among the Workers, and Fusion
“The Vanguard” or “The Advanced”?
Some Relative Terms
Agitation and Propaganda
The Importance of Broad Mass Work, Including Agitation, for Developing and Winning Over the Vanguard
“Win Over the Advanced” or “Fuse Communism With the Workers’ Movement”?
“First Win the Vanguard”—True, but Misleading
Other Key Reasons for Agitation
The Vital Role of Propaganda
Is Propaganda the “Chief Form” of Our Work?
The Relationship Between Deepening Fusion and Party-Building in General
Focusing Practice on the Working Class
Can We Promote Fusion Now?
But is Practice Party-Building?
Partial Summary
IV. Organizational Tasks: Uniting Party-Building Forces
A Higher Form of Organization
Organizing the Network
Why Not a Democratic-Centralist “Pre-Party”?
Program
Where do Correct Leaders Come From?
A Third Condition for Democratic Centralism: A Grasp of Organizational Principles
The Experience of the “Pre-Party” Parties
Can We Accomplish Our Tasks in Such an Organization?
Are Polemics Useful? (Or is Unity Impossible?)
Other Positions on the Question of Organization
A Network Adrift
The OCIC
The Iskra Plan
Guardian-Building or Party-Building?
Summary
V. Who Should Unite in a Party-Building Organization?
How to Determine the Unity Required
Why Not “The Highest Level of Unity”?
Political Lines as Demarcators
Before We Can Unite. . . We Must First of All Stop Quoting Out of Context
Defeating Opportunism by Temporarily Tolerating Differences
Lines of Demarcation or Opportunism-Detection Devices?
The Metaphysical View of Opportunism
When Can We Agree on the Main Danger?
Leadership, “Ideological Centers,” and Unity
How Leadership Will Develop
A Whole Organization as a “Center”?
Summary
VI. The Struggle for a Party-Building Organization: A Practical Proposal
VII. Uniting With Marxist-Leninists: Those Outside the Party-Building Organization
VIII. The Interrelationships Among Our Tasks
Making Theory Primary
IX. Preconditions for Party-Formation
Is Fusion a Precondition?
Is Communist Unity a Precondition?
When to Call a Party a Party
Still Another Party?
Summary
A. Real History, Versus Scattered Quotations, on “Propaganda as the Chief Form”
B. Proposed Level of Unity for a Party-Building Network