First Published: Unity and Struggle, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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At the last National Steering Committee meeting of the African liberation Support Committee (ALSC) held in Washington, D.C., the Workers Viewpoint Organization, “administratively” (opportunistically and bureaucratically) purged all members of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) from ALSC. At this meeting the WVO read a resolution on the RCL which read, “Since the National Conference in July 1977, the RCL has intensified their obstructionist and splittist activities in ALSC. They have attempted to hold back and obstruct the work of ALSC by constantly arguing and filibustering the meetings, failing to carry out the work of ALSC and trying to undermine ALSC’s attempts to push the work forward.
We, therefore, resolve that members of RCL and those who support their obstructionist activities be removed from ALSC nationally and that the National Steering Committee (NSC) inform the chapters in writing of this resolution immediately.”
It is interesting that just over two years ago RCL (then CAP and all other chapters ) were purged for not accepting the line of the so-called “Revolutionary Wing” and now here we are again getting purged again except this time we are being purged by another of the members (al that time) of the “Wing”. In fact even more interesting and slimy is the fact that the same people who were in the “Wing” then are now in the leadership of WVO, pulling the same thing as the “Wing”. WVO was an active member of the “Wing” during the time they were trying to liquidate ALSC as a mass organization and make it into “Wing” cadre. What the WVO has done in terms of purging RCL and friends is almost identical lo the “Wing” because they both attempted to squelch real line struggle; both attempted lo “absorb” other organizations into their organizations as part of their “ Party building motions“; both had no understanding at all of how Communists conduct themselves in mass organizations. Though here they differ because the “Wing” made “left” sectarian errors by trying to make everyone in ALSC instant cadre and the WVO made right errors because they have tried at every turn to down play the role of Communists in mass organizations, except for earlier this year when they were running around mouthing the idiotic “ left” line that “ALSC should be built under the leadership of WVO”. This line was struggled against in meetings with them and in RCL propaganda. Perhaps in their resolution this was what they were talking about when they said RCL was “constantly arguing”. Well, if that is what they mean when they say “arguing”, then RCL must plead “guilty” as charged because the RCL does not uphold the bankrupt line of WVO’s that they are the “basis for the genuine Communist Party” or that they have the “overall most correct line”. Pure subjectivist trash. Objective history here in the US has shown that WVO (including open and hidden ones like the ones on the NSC of the ALSC) are right opportunists of a despicable ilk and this latest “trick” exposes them for what they really are: cowardly “communists.” We say this because the WVO wants no real line struggle, in practice the line struggle they want is only through fantacized articles in their newspaper to a certain extent in stacked forums and in closed “behind doors” meetings. Objectively what WVO and the Dangerous Duo before them have done is to serve imperialism in a very spectacular way by liquidating ALSC and keeping it state of chaos so that ii cannot do revolutionary propaganda around the nature of the situation in Southern Africa and its relationship to the revolutionary struggle here in the US. This opportunist line has consistently sabotaged ALSC’s efforts to work for a revolutionary united front between the revolutionary struggles in the US and the revolutionary struggles of the peoples and nations of the Third World.
Unity and Struggle will run a series to clarify some of the things we have just said here and we will lay out the recent history of WVO in ALSC case by case (this is after they were kicked out of the “Wing” and reappeared at the ALSC conference in September in Atlanta, Ga.) so it will be clear why RCL and sympathizers were “purged” by the cowardly “communists”.