First Published: July 23, 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Dear Comrades,
This letter is to explain why the staff of Closer To It, a “revolutionary” newspaper in the Akron-Canton area of Ohio, has decided to suspend publication indefinitely, We are speaking only for ourselves.
LET NO ACTIVE WORKER TAKE OFFENSE AT THESE FRANK REMARKS, FOR AS FAR AS INSUFFICIENT TRAINING IS CONCERNED, I APPLY THEM FIRST AND FOREMOST TO MYSELF. I USED TO WORK IN A CIRCLE THAT SET ITSELF VERY WIDE, ALL-EMBRACING TASKS: AND ALL OF US, MEMBERS OF THAT CIRCLE, SUFFERED PAINFULLY, ACUTELY FROM THE REALIZATION THAT WE WERE PROVING OURSELVES TO BE AMATEURS AT A MOMENT IN HISTORY WHEN WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SAY, PARAPHRASING A WELL-KNOWN EPIGRAM: “GIVE US AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES AND WE SHALL OVERTURN RUSSIA!” AND THE MORE I RECALL THE BURNING SENSE OE SHAME I EXPERIENCED, THE MORE BITTER ARE MY FEELINGS TOWARDS THOSE PSEUDO SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS WHOSE TEACHINGS “BRING DISGRACE ON THE CALLING OF A REVOLUTIONARY,” WHO FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THAT OUR TASK IS NOT TO CHAMPION THE DEGRADING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TO THE LEVEL OF AN AMATEUR, BUT TO RAISE THE AMATEURS TO THE LEVEL OF THE REVOLUTIONARIES. (LENIN, WHAT IS TO BE DONE?, FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS: PEKING, 1970, p. 156.)
* * *
We feel that we, too, have been rank amateurs, as evidenced by the content of our newspaper.
In issue number 1 we had a cover story on a union recognition struggle at a small plastics plant where one of our comrades was working. What were the mistakes? First, it was a small insignificant plant and there was nothing particularly important about the struggle in terms of lessons for the class. Therefore it is very questionable that we should have printed ANYTHING and certainly not put this forward as the main thing we had to say. We tailed the masses in their desire to have an independent union free from the control of international hacks. In other words, two errors: We saw the issue as freedom from control instead of the issue of control by whom (which class). This is the idealism and individualism of the petty-bourgeois. We committed the classic syndicalist error of trying to form an isolated “honest” union instead of organizing the workers into URW where they would have been at least minimally connected to thousands of workers in the same industry. Of course we could only have won over the workers to this position by boldly putting forward the reason for such a line– part of a strategy for seizing state power. This was not done.
In issue No. 2 we had an article on the 12,000 jobs at BF Goodrich that have been taken out of Akron since 1947. We put forward the line that those jobs should stay in Akron, period. That’s it. We didn’t talk about why wages are higher in Akron than in Tennessee or Kenya (superprofits, imperialism, bribery) and that it is correct to oppose jobs leaving town but only if we raise demands concerning the liberation of the colonies and all workers. To just oppose runaway shops in an isolated manner is blatant national chauvinism (Fuck those niggers in Mississippi! I just want to keep my job!)and as communists, proletarian internationalists, this was and is impermissible. Further, we put forward the idea that the way to fight runaway shops is by militant trade union actions. We gave the example of the sugar workers in Hawaii. While we certainly do not oppose militant trade unionist actions (forcing jobs and other concessions from the company and getting such things in contracts) that is not the way to really fight runaway shops and can never be that successful. The only way to fight runaway shops is to destroy imperialism and liberate the colonies and dependent countries–overthrow the rule of capital. We didn’t even bring up these ideas.
Then in issue 3 we decided to really get down and put out our ideas up front with a big centerfold article on what a great thing communism is. Well, we tried. Two pages on communism without ever mentioning what Marxism-Leninism is and what its role is or even talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat, We based our line mainly (as we always did) on getting people to relate to communism on the basis of what great places to live China, Korea, etc. are. As one comrade from another organization put it, we were like used car salesmen selling a bourgeois commodity. While it is very important to use our very fortunate historical situation – a billion people liberated from the rule of capital – to the maximum propaganda advantage, the PRIMARY aspect of winning people over to communism must be Marxist-Leninist education. Otherwise where would you be if China went revisionist, (Mao Tse-tung has often pointed out that at this stage of history it has not yet been finally decided who will win out in China – capitalism or socialism.) We must educate workers about the inevitable motion of history and how we can accelerate it.
We subtly refined the CPUSA line of “Communism in 20th Century Americanism,” to “want to realize the American dream? Let’s go communist!” This stemmed from aiming our propaganda at middle and backward elements and not at advanced workers. In there a significant number of advanced workers in the United States of North America (USNA)? Workers who are definitely interested in overthrowing the rule of capital, even if these thoughts are only– at this time– very crudely formulated in their minds? Workers who would READILY become communists if only someone would put forward communism to them in a disciplined, systematic manner? Our experience has been that this is indeed true. Fortunately, we did not always make the same errors in some areas of mass work that we made in the paper and have attracted a small number of advanced workers. And our discussions with people around the country has further shown to us that the ability of communist groupings (and of course the coming party) to recruit advanced workers is directly related to the degree to which they correctly put forward Marxism-Leninism both in the course of mass struggle and in general in analyzing the local, national, and international situation.
We realize now that Closer To It was bowing to spontaneity and putting out a generally bankrupt political line (in so far as a line could be discerned) and most importantly that it did little or nothing in helping to accomplish our central task– the building of a multi-national anti-revisionist communist party.
We were not making communists out of workers or out of ourselves, we were not participating in the party-building movement or drawing others into it. Wd were just trucking right along putting out an interesting, clever newspaper which objectively was anti-communist and directed at middle and backward elements. Mao Tse– tung described us perfectly in Combat Liberalism: “To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction; to work perfunctorily and muddle along – So long as one remains a monk, one goes on telling the bell.” We believe that any communist who does not firmly grasp the central task and direct the bulk of his efforts towards accomplishing it is not a communist – he is a monk!
But why did we make these mistakes? Was it because of a lack of practice? No. Most of us have had a great deal of “practice” and experience in struggle (up to 20 years). In school, the workplace, the military and afterwards in veterans movements. Prison work. Anti-war, Political trials. And on and on. No, this is not the problem.
Are we isolated from the masses? No. We all work in large-scale production, through various comrades we have close ties with a broad base in the working class and have always gotten a lot of feedback regarding the paper from the class.
Well then, why don’t we fret anywhere, develop correct ideas, embrace the central task with all our experience and contact with the masses?
Because we do not have a proletarian (i.e. communist, Marxist-Leninist) understanding of the world we are unable to correctly proceed in making the USNA into a dictatorship of the proletariat. What do the great Marxist-Leninists have to say on this subject,
Chairman Mao teaches us that the ’correctness or incorrectness of line decides everything.’ (TENTH NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, FLP, Peking, 1973, p. 17.)
The role of a vanguard fighter can only be fulfilled by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory. (LENIN, WHAT IS TO BE DONE? p. 29.)
Socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be treated as such, i.e., that it be studied. (ENGELS)
Compare this to the line of the October League/Guardian cabal as expressed by Irwin Silber on page 9 of the July 17, 1974 issue of the Guardian: “Winning the confidence of the masses is not the result of announcing oneself as a communist or EVEN OF ADVANCING THE “CORRECT” POLITICAL LINE.” (Emphasis added.)
Or, in direct opposition to Stalin, who taught us that socialist ideology develops independently of the spontaneous movement and in fact In spite of it, we have the line of the Revolutionary Union which holds that correct line does develop out of involvement in the spontaneous struggle. We can certainly see that they arc serious in this regard: Their cadre we know spend little or no time studying and are seldom able to express a coherent Marxist-Leninist view of the role of communists, the situation in Ethiopia’, or anything else.
So, to eliminate the material basis for our mistakes, we have recently embarked on a program of serious study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Tse-tung Thought. But what is our role in party building? The motion of the entire group is towards the Continuations Committee for a Congress to Form a Multi-National Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and the upcoming Congress this fall. Some of us have already decided that this is the correct path; others are at different stages of checking things out. Let us explain this in terms of the history of our relationship to the Communist League (CL).
Most of us had never heard of the CL until very recently (which we feel reflects the fact that the “movement” press refused to mention the CL until they thought their survival demanded it). A few of us used to get People’s Tribune, (the national CL newspaper) in the mail and immediately threw it away. Terrible layout. Too much theory, what worker would want to read it? The fact was of course that we ourselves did not really want to deal with theory.
Groups like OL and RU have been pushing the idea that CL, was engaging in no practice, spent all their time isolated from the masses and was all around just a bunch of crazies. A couple of months ago we decided that we should get a line on party-building ourselves, so we began to study the positions of OL, RU and CL. Whereas the documents of other groups were shallow, superficial, and easy even for us to poke holes in, those of the Communist League wore very thorough, dialectical, and backed up by Marxism-Leninism. While we are still struggling to develop a coherent line on the national question, we do agree that the CL press is the only “movement” literature from which we have learned, anything about how the world actually works.
It was about this time that we realized that our newspaper wasn’t doing anything to accomplish our central task. We received some very scientific criticism from a comrade in the Continuations Committee concerning Closer To It which helped us reach our decision. And when we finally did some investigation of the Communist League we were surprised to learn that these other “revolutionary” groups had been lying. They told us that CL was divorced from practice. But why didn’t they tell us about CL’s role in the 1973 Detroit Forge wildcat, in housing struggles in Brooklyn ghettoes, in high school walkouts in Los Angeles and hundreds of other things we are only beginning to find out about, like the going-door-to-door-as-an-open-communist method of mass work which these other groups are afraid to do?
We already knew that groups like RU and OL are composed of mostly white ex-students which may be why they didn’t want us to know about the existence of a national organization composed primarily of Black and Latin workers (the Communist League). Another slander was that CL will do anything to build their organization, but we have found that in fact they are not at all interested in bringing a given person into CL until that person thoroughly understands what that means in theory and practice. Compare this to such events as a person we know being recruited into the RU merely by happening to find herself in a room full of people where the question was asked “Now who wants to join RU?” Is this any way to build a Leninist party of iron discipline?
Also, why is People’s Tribune the only newspaper of a national organisation which has all its articles translated into Spanish, or, as is sometimes the case, into English? The RU national paper, Revolution, sometimes has a small section in Spanish and OL’s the Call always has a few pages. The Spanish articles in these papers arc usually about the struggles of Spanish-speaking people and almost never are theoretical articles translated. Who are these national chauvinists, these white chauvinists, to decide that Spanish-speaking people want to read only about UFW or Bolivia and that they should not be allowed any role in ideological struggle? In other words, RU and 0L are saying Spanish-speaking people must work only for “their own” liberation and not that of the multinational working class. This shows their unity with reactionary cultural nationalism and simultaneously with the CPUSA.
We would like to re-emphasize that we are speaking only for ourselves and not for CL or the Continuations Committee, organizations none of us belong to at the present time. We urge you to check things out for yourself and act on it. Don’t trust someone’s paraphrasing of Lenin, CL, or anything else. Go to the source. We realize we have not laid out a position on questions such as fascism, national question, trade unions and many others. We certainly don’t want to avoid these questions, it is simply a question of time and priorities.
We would like very much to hear from you get your response to what we have laid out or on anything else.
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL ANTI-REVISIONIST COMMUNIST PARTY!
In struggle
The Closer To It Staff
July 23, 1974