The development of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook took place over a considerable period of time. In the framework of world history it developed very rapidly, but much of it preceeds our lifetime by several generations. In its struggle for maturity it has had to pit itself against many erroneous views and define itself in relation to these views. This struggle did not take place in the sky; it grew out of conflicting analyses of and attempts to change developments in the real world.
The battle does not reside in the ideological struggle alone, nor there primarily. The ideological struggle develops for the purpose of gaining clarity around a correct approach to the practical struggle. The test of a correct or incorrect understanding of Marxism-Leninism is made in the application of our views to concrete problems and the carrying out of such analysis in practice. Only by learning through our mistakes to correctly apply Marxism-Leninism, do we learn Marxism-Leninism.
Nonetheless, Marxism-Leninism is also a body of revolutionary principles arrived at in the course of practical as well as ideological struggle, the summing up of historical experience. These principles define the Marxist-Leninist world outlook.
But, principles are one thing and the tactical application of principles is another, always more complex. A correct application avoids either the abandonment of principle or its rigidification into dogma.
Dogmatists forget that Marxism-Leninism is a guide and not a prescription for the struggle of the proletariat. Pragmatists, on the other hand, tend to think that everything, if one talks a little of “tactical flexibility”, can be called Marxism-Leninism. The art of revolutionary leadership is the combining of a principled overall course with a likewise principled, yet flexible, tactical approach to changing conditions. Such a leadership can see the reality of today and turn events, on whatever level possible, toward the advancement of the overall objectives.
Of the two contradictions, that between dogmatism and Marxism, and pragmatism and Marxism, today’s Marxist-Leninist movement errs most in the direction of dogmatism.
Marxist-Leninists cannot be concerned only with the ultimate interests of the people and only shower upon the people revolutionary slogans and calls. We must have policies that respond to the pressing needs and desires of the workers themselves. We must champion every battle for temporary reforms and concessions. Although the bourgeoisie concedes reforms with the hope of diverting the people from revolution, it is only when the people have learned the inadequacy of reformist solutions, from their own experience, that revolution can become a possibility. It is in the battles for reforms that the people educate and organize themselves, with the leadership of Marxist-Leninists, toward the only possible final outcome, socialist revolution.
Reformism is the absolutizing of the struggle for reforms, the failure to deal with questions of reforms in historical motion, as part of the development of a revolutionary movement. Reformism avoids carrying its exposures far enough to lay bare the antagonistic class basis of society; it fails to prepare the masses for the more difficult struggles that move toward the resolution of this antagonism by the overthrow of the capitalist class.
Of these two contradictions, i.e. that between sectarianism and Marxism-Leninism, and reformism and Marxism-Leninism, today’s Marxist-Leninist movement errs primarily toward sectarianism.
This tendency exists partly in reaction to the overwhelming entrapment of the American class struggle in reformism and the dominance of the reformists over the people’s movement. As well, it is a reaction to the degeneracy of many communist parties around the world, including the Communist Party USA, into reformism with a socialist cover, i.e. revisionism. Marxist-Leninists, however, cannot base their policy on reaction. To do so would be to remain isolated from the people, lacking the flexibility to unite with the people to expose the enemy. We would remain small sects.
Marxism-Leninism holds that the people are unable to develop, out of their own immediate conditions of struggle, a consistent socialist outlook. A revolutionary socialist outlook requires revolutionary theoreticians capable of summing up the totality of the experience of class struggle, both in its present as well as its historical development. Therefore, there exists a distinction between the outlook of the class as it exists at any particular time, and its correct scientific expression; sometimes a great distinction. Our task is to combine revolutionary socialism with the real, living movement of American workers. This is a revolutionary principle.
The requirements for making this combination are not completely the same, and sometimes quite different, as those of other and previous revolutionary movements. The requirements can only be found in an objective analysis of today’s conditions in the U.S. and of the real state of today’s Marxist-Leninist movement. We must learn from the experience of other revolutionary movements, but we must learn to distinguish what is universally applicable from that which is particular and conditional.
The character of today’s working class movement is that it tails the bourgeoisie, politically and organizationally (although grudgingly and critically at times). It lacks even the hint of independent political activity and organization. It has been imbued with an almost superstitious fear of communism and although this has now been somewhat weakened, it has quite a distance to travel before it can accept socialist leadership.
Not surprisingly, in these conditions, the main problem among Marxist-Leninists is their lack of understanding of how to join with, and lay the basis for providing leadership to, the workers’ own struggles. There is a tendency to rely on various schemes and ”pure” concocted organizational forms instead of learning to come to grips with the real basis, embryonic as it is, of the working class and popular movements. Lying at the basis of these idealist schemes, is an evident lack of concrete analysis of U.S. conditions.
In this paper we will try to lay out what we see as important historical and present conditions that must be taken account of in our work. We can only make a beginning in regard to this task and deal here with these questions only in their broadest form. We will also draw what we feel are necessary conclusions for our practical work and attempt to show that political mistakes made by the Marxist-Leninist movement reflect an incorrect understanding of the situation and our tasks.
No revolutionary situation or revolutionary mood exists, as yet, in the U.S. U.S. Imperialism is, however, in the initial stages of descent from its long held favorable economic and political position.
The U.S. emerged after World War II as the chief imperialist power, the exploiter of the greatest section of the capitalist as well as colonial worlds. The profitability of U.S. investments and growth of U.S. influence and domination over the world expanded at unprecedented rates, its position supported by the world’s most expansive military machine. U.S. Imperialism rose to become the single most hated power in the world, the main enemy of the world’s people.
At the same time, the U.S. imperialists were extraordinarily successful in mitigating and restraining class struggle at home. The imperialists needed to lessen the level of conflict with the American people in order to free its hand to concentrate on broadening and expanding its power. It needed to concentrate on stabilizing its hold on its various spheres of influence, to secure its hegemony from the forces of national liberation and rival imperialisms, and to contain and undermine the then expanding socialist camp.
The granting of concessions to the working class at home was only partially by conscious design on the part of the ruling class. The American labor movement had experienced a tremendous awakening during the pre-war depression and its valiant struggle and organization played no small part in the winning of these reforms.
Just prior to the war, the American labor movement succeeded in organizing the majority of the large scale enterprises and most essential industries. There developed a significant left-progressive wing, led and organized by the then revolutionary Communist Party. This demonstrated to the U.S. rulers and to the world the enormous power latent within U.S. Imperialism’s own domestic grave diggers. U.S. Imperialism conceded what it did because the complexities of its bid for world dominance made possible and, in turn, was assisted by a more stable situation at home.
The immediate pre-war and post-war period was, by no means, a steady upward trend of reforms. In general, however, this period can be characterized by a most extensive reliance on reforms toward the domestic working class.
U.S. Imperialism’s success in turning the labor movement from a progressive direction and in weakening the degree of class consciousness that had developed in the pre-war years was facilitated by the alliance between the labor movement and U.S. Imperialism during the war (a requirement of the worldwide effort to defeat international fascism and defend the Soviet Union), and the inability or unwillingness of both the labor movement and the Communist Party (CP) in particular to maintain their own independence and initiative during that alliance.
The class capitulation here of the CP was particularly important. The situation certainly called for extreme flexibility but the absoluteness of the antagonism between the imperialists and the working class was abandoned in the process. Within the CP a misunderstanding of the nature of pre-war ruling class concessions, a misunderstanding of how the international united front against fascism tactics should be applied to the U.S., and later, and especially, the complexity of the war-time alliance, allowed a revisionist line to develop that preached collaboration with U.S. Imperialism. The working class was without revolutionary leadership. The ruling class’ attempts to stabilize the homefront was made that much easier.
After the defeat of the Axis powers, the U.S. rightfully saw the strength of the socialist countries, together with the emerging national liberation struggles, as the greatest impediment to its world-wide ambitions. In order to lay the ideological groundwork for its anticipated world conflicts in the coming period, a climate of anti-communism had to be created. The ruling class was also uncomfortable having communists, tame as they now seemed, in leading positions and respected in the trade unions.
Taking advantage of their new strength, and exploiting the national patriotism forged among workers during the war, the ruling class combined their age of reform with a general onslaught on communism. The post-war age of reform was at one and the same time an era of political reaction.
All of these factors combined to allow for a strengthening of bourgeois illusions among the American people. With the general betterment of the standard of living that large sectors of Americans experienced from the war through the 60’s, it was not difficult for the ruling class to delude the masses with the view that capitalism could resolve its many contradictions and bring prosperity to everyone. Then the reasoning went, “If capitalism wasn’t so bad, if it could resolve its problems, then communists were just rabble rousers. Communists are not really concerned with workers’ interests. They want to deny us our freedom, they want to dominate the world. They are no different from the Nazis and Stalin is no different from Hitler.”
Such was the capitalists’ propaganda and its influence was deep and widespread. Most labor unions eventually passed rules making It illegal for communists to hold office.
Many people were brought up before investigative committees. A number of cases of espionage were manufactured, the most important being the trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
The role of the CP during the McCarthy era was one of defense of democratic rights but increasing capitulation or, at least, weakening in its ability to maintain a correct communist political line. (The party had denounced the outright class capitulation theories of its chairman, Earl Browder, after intervention of the international movement in the late 40’s. Its struggle against revisionism, however, had been very temporary and very partial.) The CP now over-reacted in a defensive way, thinking that fascism was coming this time for sure. Much of its organization went underground. It abandoned its positions of leadership in the trade unions, in many cases, without much of a fight, rather than come forward and face the political challenge. It relied on the legal profession and not its strength in the working class to preserve itself and softened up its political line in the hopes that the ruling class would ease up. The ruling class did eventually ease up, but not until they had decimated the base of the CP, particularly in the labor movement.
It is unlikely that the CP could have prevented the general success of the reactionary drive because the imperialist’s position was too strong. They could, however, have made it far less extensive. They could have maintained a greater prestige among the workers, particularly among the most oppressed section who were least effected by the age of prosperity, and had been in a good position to lead as the upsurges of the 60’s began.
The American working class does not exist in a vacuum. The conditions of its existence and struggle are effected by international developments, just as its development effects the international scene.
The Marxist-Leninist movement also does not exist in a vacuum. Just as the theoretical and practical errors of the CP facilitated the success of U.S. Imperialism, the international success of imperialism and the domestic maneuverability afforded thereby made the work of communists tremendously difficult. In response to external changes and problems, the internal factor, opportunist and revisionist ideas, were able to become the dominant aspect of the CP’s outlook.
The principal cause of the setbacks in the labor movement was, likewise, the greater development of bourgeois ideas made possible by objective conditions, not simply the lack of revolutionary leadership.
There exists a strong tendency within the new communist movement to place too much emphasis on the role of the subjective factor in an analysis such as this. In this case, such a mistake would take the form of blaming the success of the reactionary drive primarily on the degeneration into revisionism on the part of the CP. We believe that this tendency is part of the overall ultra-“left” refusal to recognize the effects of the concrete conditions of class struggle. If the obstacle to revolution was merely the degeneration of the CP, then we simply have to build another CP, only this time “anti-revisionist”. Important as building a new communist party is, if the analysis of present tasks is viewed in such a narrow and ahistorical manner, we will continue to lack a concrete analysis of conditions and a correct strategy based on such an analysis. Nor is this tendency unrelated to the tendency of present Marxist-Leninist organizations to inflate their own significance in the class struggle.
A similar type of overestimation of the subjective factor is when the ability of reactionaries to hold sway over the labor movement is explained only in terms of bureaucratic and undemocratic control. While undemocratic and often outright illegal methods are an important factor to deal with, the chief reason that reactionaries remain in their posts is that the workers have not yet seen fit to remove them. The time will come when their control is principally by hook or by crook. That factor alone (bureaucratic control), at this point, cannot explain the relatively low level of rank and file fightback.
The sixties saw several important political developments. The most significant, and particularly the most significant for U.S. Imperialism, was its aggression and then defeat in Vietnam. It became evident that the U.S., despite its massive military might, was weak in comparison to a small country with a unified and determined people. Mao Tse-tung’s statement, “The will of the people is greater than man’s technology”, was demonstrated to the world more clearly than ever before as the Vietnamese persisted in protracted struggle to liberate their country.
The Vietnam War represented a giant step in the political isolation of the U.S. on a world scale, particularly in regard to the strengthening of Third World opposition to U.S. Imperialism. That fact in itself has had vast repercussions on the strength of the U.S. economic position. The U.S. economy, though temporarily bolstered by the war, later underwent and is still undergoing severe strains as a result of the war. Some of the effects are the huge government debt, the insecure position of the dollar and the balance of payments problems (due to the outflow of currency for military spending), and high inflation (again exacerbated by enormous military spending). The worldwide offensive of U.S. Imperialism was turned around by that war and its capacity of world domination was severely weakened. Repercussions were felt sharply within the U.S. as well.
Arising out of the fifties and into the early sixties, the Black people’s movement for freedom, equality, and self-determination underwent a strong and widespread upsurge. Initially, it took the form of passive resistance to Jim Crow laws in the South, hundreds of thousands of Blacks and many white supporters, particularly students from the universities, marched, demonstrated, and sat in against discrimination throughout the South. Massive voter registration campaigns were launched. As Black people drew inspiration from the unity and strength that grew out of their struggle, they became impatient with the compromising and legalistic tactics of the reformist leaders. The people increasingly took the struggle into their own hands. This happened particularly in the northern cities where the hold of reformist Black politicians was not so strong. Here Blacks had come to escape the Jim Crow South and find employment. Instead, they found themselves confined to decaying ghettoes and surrounded by discrimination and exclusion from economic, social and political institutions. Life in the ghetto resembled an occupied colony. The gap between the economic status of Blacks and whites was growing even greater while the country as a whole was undergoing its greatest relative prosperity. One effect was the eruption of massive, spontaneous rebellions.
Out of more than a decade of heightened reformist struggle, arose a new revolutionary mood in the Black communities and a new leadership. The new leadership developed an outlook that was most often revolutionary nationalist, and often socialist as well.
The determined struggle and victories of the Vietnamese, African, and other national liberation struggles had a great effect on the revolutionary direction of the Black movement. The Black revolutionary leadership of the sixties was able, to a large extent, to bring the Black movement into the worldwide united front against U.S. Imperialism and thereby educated many of their generation to the roots of their oppression and the requirements of their liberation.
Educated by the revolutionary direction of the Black movement and even more by the lessons of the Vietnam War, a very broad anti-imperialist movement developed among students. Many of the students had received an education regarding the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy as they participated as volunteers in the massive voter registration drives and other civil rights campaigns of the early sixties. Very soon they were faced with the realization that they or their brothers were to be drafted to fight a war whose illegitimacy was becoming increasingly apparent.
The students were confronted with serious moral decisions about the war, about the Black people’s struggle, and their faith in “democratic” institutions came into question. At first they saw these events as the exception to a democratic and progressive tradition. But the totality of the U.S. commitment to suppress the Vietnamese people and the Black people in the U.S. blew away many illusions. The youth also began to question and reject much of the emptiness of bourgeois life and the unthinking conformity to bourgeois values.
Closely tied to the student movement, and given great impetus by the civil rights movement, the new women’s liberation movement also questioned bourgeois ideology by raising issues of sex as well as race discrimination and oppression. During the post-war period, there was a move by the ruling class to push women out of the industrial jobs they had held during the war into lower-paid service or clerical jobs or into unpaid labor in the home. Thus, as with the Black people, though to a lesser extent, during a period of overall rise in the standard of living, the relative wages of women in the work force declined.
Just as many students first came into the anti-imperialist movement through personal, moral questions about the Vietnam War, so did many women initially come to feminism through moral, personal experiences of sex oppression. These experiences led some women to take radical feminist, separatist, or anti-male positions, thus raising the contradiction between men and women to the primary contradiction. Other women concentrated on gaining reforms in the professional workforce and became careerist or bourgeois feminists. Other women, most of whom were a part of the anti-imperialist student movement, began to recognize immediate sex oppression as the subjective reflection of the objective economic status of women. These women began to do work around women’s health care, day-care programs, and welfare. As they began to develop a political analysis of women’s oppression, some became “socialist feminists,” and a few became Marxist-Leninists.
The women’s movement in the late 60’s, taking its lead from the civil rights movement, was able to gain many reforms such as anti-discrimination in employment, day-care, and welfare legislation. Some of these reforms directly addressed the needs of working class women. With the economic recession of the 70’s there have been massive cutbacks in social services, including those which were important to working class and Third World women, such as welfare programs and day-care centers. Also, women who had just recently been hired into traditionally male work sectors such as the auto industry were immediately laid off as those industries cut back workers with lowest seniority.
Working women’s struggles around these issues have risen in response, and there is much more potential for struggle, since more cutbacks in social services are threatened and unemployment remains high. Now, because of the gains of the women’s movement of the 60’s, even though large sections of it were under petty-bourgeois leadership, there is also a general awareness among the people of women’s issues and an acceptance of their importance.
By and large, the working class remained outside of the anti-imperialist and progressive movements and was not able to understand them. Many, if not most of the workers, especially the white sectors, felt threatened by these developments. Many took the “unpatriotic” nature of the student antiwar movement and the militancy of the Black movement as a threat to what little security they had, or were striving to have.
Some factors in the student and Black movements helped to perpetuate this division. These factors included anti-working class attitudes among many of the students and their leaders, some of the destructive extremes of student tactics, narrow nationalism within the Black movement, and the fact, of course, that activity in this period was not guided by a revolutionary party that could point toward breaking down these divisions and raise the same issues that the anti-imperialist movement was raising, in a way that at least some workers might be more willing to support.
The more fundamental reason, however, was more directly rooted in the objective conditions of the working class at that time.
The Black movement and the student movement came upon the imperialists quite suddenly and the initial reaction was violent suppression. The ruling class did not anticipate the depth of these movements, just as they had not expected to get tied up in and eventually lose the Vietnam War. But contradictions for the imperialists are many, their system being fundamentally unstable.
As time went on, the Imperialists learned to respond to these movements with a combination of violence and reformism. Faced with isolation from the working class, tremendous repression of its more militant leaders, and the granting of numerous reforms during the late 60’s (many of which were withdrawn in the 70’s), both the Black people’s and students’ movements began to lose much of their force.
The student movement had only a taste of the repression faced by the Black movement and its leaders. Nevertheless, after the Kent State shootings, students became more conscious of the seriousness of the struggle they had become involved in. To a certain extent, the shootings had the effect they were designed to have.
As the war ended and recession began, students began to realize that their own economic future was not so certain. Even many of the leaders of the student movement turned to either escapism or their own careers, some of them looking for a career in the “mainstream” of the Democratic Party.
Were these leaders always as thoroughly bourgeois as some of them turned out to be? No, usually they played a very progressive, even revolutionary, role for a time. They gave the clearest expression to the mass sentiments of the more anti-imperialist-minded students.
They were not, in most cases, Marxist-Leninists. When the conditions of the struggle changed, when new and different advances had to be made, they lost their bearings completely.
A good section did become Marxist-Leninists and either continued to participate in the struggle independently, formed local collectives, joined one of the opportunist parties or one of the new communist groups. (See the “Political Trends” article in this pamphlet for an analysis of these organizations.)
The weakening of the base of the Black movement was also due in no small part to the mistakes of its leadership. Many of its earlier leaders, often from the campus themselves, never moved significantly beyond a reformist and narrow-nationalist outlook. Those who were influenced by this trend were easy prey to the ruling class’ carrot-and-stick tactics (granting of some reforms and use of repression at the same time). They often retreated into cultural nationalism and into theorizing about “return to Africa” schemes.
The Black Panther Party had gone beyond reformism and narrow nationalism and developed an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist outlook. They took up and advocated some Marxist-Leninist principles but never seriously adopted a Marxist-Leninist outlook. This reflected itself particularly in their class analysis, in which they tended to write off the working class (even, to an extent, Black workers), in favor of basing themselves on the lumpen. The military adventurist trend that flowed from such an idealist analysis dovetailed with adventurist and terrorist trends in the white movement at the same time.
Their revolutionary outlook, partial though it was, allowed them, for a certain period, to ”seize the time” and gave expression to the revolutionary potential of the Black masses. By doing so, they were in fact the vanguard of the revolutionary movement and played a very impressive role in educating the Black people, the students, and a lot of the American people to the nature of imperialist society.
After suffering the most murderous planned attack on its leadership that any American revolutionary organization has ever experienced, and after its ties with the masses began to suffer from its incorrect lines and inconsistent work, the Panthers were in a weak position to deal with the change in conditions in that period. Militant struggle alone could not be maintained. The Panthers needed to develop the political outlook of their members and supporters and engage in broader forms of struggle, particularly forms of struggle aimed at gaining some base among workers.
Not being firmly rooted in a Marxist class outlook, the dominant section of the Party turned from terrorism to reformism (once again demonstrating the complimentary nature of terrorism and reformism, Doth of which fail to understand the revolutionary potential of the masses). Some others turned further toward terrorism.
As in the student movement, many of the leaders of the Black movement failed to grasp Marxism-Leninism and use it to analyze correctly the changing and developing conditions of the time and needs of the struggle.
Others continued to struggle and to develop their nationalist and anti-imperialist perspective into a revolutionary nationalist perspective, grounded in Marxism-Leninism.
What the rise and decline of the revolutionary upsurges of the 60’s demonstrated was the inherent instability of the domestic structure of U.S. Imperialism. It reaffirmed the revolutionary potential latent in society and shattered the illusions for many of the absolute power of U.S. Imperialism. To revolutionaries, it demonstrated many of the dangers of both reformism and adventurism and clarified the need for a new Marxist-Leninist movement. By the end of the decade, such a movement had begun to develop.
The roots of the new communist movement were primarily in the “New Left” period of the 60’s and from two distinct, though related movements The two sources were the student and the Third World movements. Two forms developed: 1) multinational, but predominantly white, formations, and 2) formations based on Black or other minorities.
The dual development was a natural course because of the historical conditions leading to this period. The Black movement had developed among Black people based on their common recognition of their special oppression in the U.S. It developed out of an American culture that is quite divided. With no communist party to provide an overall revolutionary unity to the struggles of the American people, separate development was all but inevitable and, given the circumstances, correct.
In particular, those who began their involvement in the Black movement in the civil rights period had the negative experience of the attempts of white liberals to dominate civil rights organizations. Also, after experience with opportunist multi-national organizations like the CP, Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), Progressive Labor Party (PLP), many Third World activists were justifiably leery. While in some instances this disinterest in establishing unity with whites was incorrectly raised to a principle, overall it was a legitimate concern based on real, not imaginary, considerations.
At that time, most white communists recognized this reality and realized that the road to multi-national unity would have to take place on the basis of mutual experience and mutual respect, particularly the respect of the white communists for the seriousness and particular needs of the Black struggle.
PLP attacked this development as “bowing to bourgeois nationalism”. This was a natural development of PLP’s concocted contradiction between the national and socialist aspirations of oppressed nationalities and thus, pitted the national movements against the struggle of the working class for socialism. The Revolutionary Union (RU, now called Revolutionary Communist Party) later made this same mistake.
Related more closely to the student movement, although in some sense another source of the new Marxist-Leninist movement, was the anti-imperialist section of the women’s movement. Having developed as Marxist-Leninists out of the women’s movement, many women joined the new communist organizations and ceased to relate in any way to the mass women’s organizations.
In some of the new communist organizations, there was a tendency to downplay work around the special oppression of women because they recognized the need to combat “narrow feminism”. This reflected the kind of one-sided, non-dialectical approach that has sometimes been taken towards Black and Third World struggles. In attempting to combat the effects of narrow nationalism, they go to the extreme of discouraging any special attention to issues of national oppression.
Because of the absence of any working class participation in the anti-imperialist struggles of the 60’s, many revolutionaries made the mistake of writing the working class off as hopelessly backward. It was the lack of a clear Marxist-Leninist overview that allowed them to fall into this empiricist mistake (i.e. raising only the apparent, being blinded by limited experience, not seeing things in their history and development). They did not understand the basic antagonism between the workers and the capitalists and did not realize that events would soon aggravate that antagonism.
Others began to study more thoroughly the history of revolution and class struggle. The late 60’s and early 70’s witnessed a widespread growth of independent communist collectives and organizations.
The principal struggle that led to the early consolidation of a Marxist-Leninist trend was the struggle against the view that sectors other than the working class were capable of leading the revolutionary struggle, and against many anti-working class and new working class theories.
Marxism-Leninism holds that only the working class, led by Marxist-Leninist ideology and a Marxist-Leninist party, can lead the people in revolutionary struggle. No other class as a whole has the thoroughgoing interest in the destruction of capitalism, nor the power and potential organizational force that the working class has. It is the socialized conditions of oppression of the working class that bring it into fundamental contradiction with the individual and private conditions of ownership that characterize capitalist society. This contradiction can never be peacefully and non-antagonistically resolved.
Only those with some grasp of Marxist-Leninist principles were able to approach the problem of the working class in a fundamentally correct way and point to a plausible direction for the deepening and broadening of the movement. In so doing, they drew many adherents and their organizations began to grow.
The events of today are clearly demonstrating that U.S. Imperialism is losing ground to the national liberation movements, the movements of smaller capitalist and Third World countries for political and economic independence, and to its new rival imperialist power, the Soviet Social Imperialists.
The weakened trade and financial position of the U.S., which had resulted from the dislocations caused by such massive military spending, was a major factor that led to over-production crises, to one extent or another, throughout the capitalist world. These crises, of course, resulted in exploding unemployment rates. This was especially true in the U.S. where, like many of the other countries, inflation continued on dangerously high levels. This high inflation rate made it difficult for the capitalists to take action to revive their economies or cut into unemployment.
Availability of raw materials has now also become an increasingly serious problem for the U.S. and other capitalist countries. Taking advantage of the weakened position of U.S. Imperialism, the oil-producing countries of the world united to demand a change from the imperialists’ practice of buying their oil at low prices and selling them industrial goods at high prices. This, together with poor planning and sabotage on the part of the imperialists’ oil concerns, resulted in a severe energy crisis in the U.S. and a rapid increase in the price of gasoline. Auto sales plummeted and contributed to the rising unemployment rate, aggravating the general crisis. Other raw material-exporting countries followed in the oil countries’ path and united to demand equity from Imperialism. There emerged for the first time, a united effort of underdeveloped, non-industrialized, agricultural and raw material-producing countries to stand up and demand an end to the exploitation of their economy by Imperialism.
This encouraged some of the lesser imperialist countries likewise to demand equity.
The other major factor in the weakening of U.S Imperialism is the development of the Soviet Union as an imperialist superpower. Beginning in 1956, the Soviet Union had turned from Marxism-Leninism to revisionism and began to seek big power hegemony. Throughout the 60’s it became increasingly clear that capitalism was being restored in the Soviet Union. It was clear by the 70’s that the Soviet Social Imperialists were in a position to challenge the U.S. for world hegemony and that they are the superpower that is growing stronger and more aggressive.
Clearly the objective conditions surrounding U.S. Imperialism are much different now than they were in the 50’s or 60’s. Rather than its maneuvering room expanding, it is being restricted by the combined forces of the national liberation movements, the Third World independence movements, the rising contradictions with the emerging workers’ movements in its own country, and an aggressive Social Imperialist rival attempting to move into every pocket the U.S. Imperialists are forced to abandon.
This changed international situation is having significant effects on the conditions of class struggle within the U.S. Just as the dream of the U.S. Imperialists for continuous world domination was shaken, the “American dream” of domestic stability was also shaken. The 70’s ushered in one domestic crisis after another and the standard of living of workers began to take a noticeable dive. Inflation combined with high unemployment and recession to erode the purchasing power of the American people.
Workers began to fight spontaneously for their standard of living and a wave of strikes spread across the country. In its attempts to bring back stability, the Imperialist government intervened directly in labor-management disputes, openly on the side of the employers. One-sided wage controls were imposed on labor. The capitulation of the labor leaders to this reactionary move caused a reawakening among broad sectors of workers. Wildcats began to occur in numerous areas.
Even the reactionary capitalist labor leaders were forced to rally sixty thousand rank and file unionists on behalf of the growing ranks of the unemployed to a demonstration where Hubert Humphrey, the so-called friend of labor, was booed off the podium.
The booing of Hubert Humphrey had a further significance. It indicated an element of doubt arising among many workers as to the actual ability of bourgeois-democratic institutions to serve and be accountable to the people. The backdrop to this, of course, had been the Watergate scandal and other exposures.
Open bickering had broken out among the ruling class. Different approaches to the problem of defending the U.S. world position and differences over the proper handling of the domestic crises were opened up before the American people. (This contributed to the loss of confidence in the U.S. rulers by many of its junior partner capitalist countries and puppet regimes of its neo-colonies. The developing rift within the U.S. ruling class heightened world tension and encouraged the various enemies of U.S. Imperialism to advance in their struggles.)
Though it would be too much to say that the American people had begun to reject the whole hypocrisy of their bourgeois-democratic political system, they did begin to question it. This openness to radical ideas was a significant reversal of the tendency to accept most everything American. Bourgeois mythology had begun to lose much of its grip.
These developments greatly encouraged the growth of the Marxist-Leninist movement. It proved the validity of the criticism of the empiricism of the sixties and opened the minds of many more to scientific socialism.
This favorable situation should by no means lead us to think that revolution is just around the corner or that the masses of workers are about to leap into revolutionary struggle. As with many turns and partial developments, this new situation has had the tendency to dazzle many communists. Justified though our optimism is, it should not blind us from recognizing the still non-revolutionary nature of the situation in the U.S.
During the late sixties and early seventies many Marxist-Leninist collectives “began the process of integrating themselves with the workers’ movements and developing a theoretical understanding of this task. In time a few relatively larger organizations were formed out of many of these collectives and a more crystallized political line and internal organizational structure developed. Also, a number of revolutionary nationalist organizations adopted a Marxist-Leninist perspective and re-oriented their work on this basis. More and more the movement became characterized by the strengths and weaknesses of its major organisations. Its principal weakness has been sectarianism, sectarianism of each organization toward the others, as well as sectarianism toward the mass movement.
How did this sectarianism develop? How did it manifest itself? What have been its effects in regard to the task of merging socialism with the American workers’ and popular movements? What has been its effect on building a new communist party?
As we pointed out in earlier sections, an understanding of the origins of the new communist movement and its actual relationship to the class struggles of the American people provides a necessary backdrop to an understanding of the problems we now face.
Most of the cadre and leadership of these organisations began their political involvement in the student movement of the sixties. This is particularly true of the multi-national but predominantly white organizations. It is also true, to a certain extent, of the third world organizations, many of whose cadre and leadership developed out of third world campus organisations.
In both the student and third world movements, a level of militancy existed which did not exist in the workers’ activities of that time. Also, there existed a concern with and willingness to take up political issues in these movements that did not, and does not yet, exist among many workers.
Any talk of “going to the workers” was considered by many, even some communists, to be copping out from where the real struggle existed, what most communists today consider to be essential tasks, for example, taking part in trade union level struggles, would have been considered near-lunacy, based on doctrinaire conservatism and inevitably leading to out-and-out “pork chops” economism.
This view was maintained not only by young people, but by many of the old-timers who had been around when the CP watered down its politics to little more than militant trade unionism. Many of these people also tended to view any involvement in trade union or plant level struggle as, in this period of time, an absolute dead end alley. The RU was considered by every tendency around to be economist for even proposing and beginning to carry out such tasks.
To sum up, many in the movement did not have the political understanding or the experience to change gears for a kind of work that they were not suited for in class background and temperament and the conditions of which were too different from the type of experience that they had gained. This continued to be the case after many began to recognize that this was a direction that the movement must take.
Others had one-sidedly overgeneralized from the mistakes of the latter period of the CP. The effects of this over-reaction are still felt.
Gradually, with the bankruptcy recognized in every other approach and as more became convinced of the correctness of Marxist-Leninist principles, this attitude changed. Many ex-student cadre entered the working class and the question became not whether we should try to win workers, but how.
Then, should we say that the movement is, and has been for several years, firmly rooted in the working class? No, in our opinion we shouldn’t. Although some cadre have been among sections of workers for several years, have some roots and sometimes have created some level of organization, it is still fairly rare for a significant section of workers to look to communists consistently for direction.
Why does this continue to be the case? Sometimes it is because of qualities of the cadre - class background and attitudes, a poor style of work, an incorrect strategy. The most fundamental reason, however, is related again to the objective state of present conditions.
While there are increasing and notable exceptions in certain industries or workplaces, the spontaneous fightback among workers today is still infrequent and rarely leads to sustained activity or organization. In these circumstances, communists will have a much harder time effectively putting forward and testing their ideas and their leadership before the masses.
Another consequence of this low level of struggle is that our ability to learn from the masses through the testing of political line in practice is very much limited. Many communists, particularly those with little actual organizing experience, have no way of gauging (without falling into idealism) such questions as how willing are workers to break with reformist leaders or union bureaucrats, what types and forms of struggle will workers enthusiastically support. As a result, one line tends to sound as good as another. One communist says, “Theory is key”, another says “Building fightback organizations is key”, etc. Many people try one of these lines for a while; then, in desperation, bounce over to another. (Remember when “armed propaganda” was key?)
While unclarity and lack of any notable success can lead to a more sober analysis of the situation and our work, it often merely leads to further impetuosity and more idealist formulations. This mentality most often results in “left” errors, the errors of over-anticipating the willingness of the masses to break from reformist channels and support communist leadership, of over-anticipating the ripeness of the situation, and of overestimating ties among the masses.
The root of the present day mistakes is political sectarianism, the tendency to aim our work at a level which the broad masses will not support (and for this reason, the “advanced” will not take up).
Rather than coming to terms with the reality that the newly re-awakening working class movement is still quite far from revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary struggle, that a revolutionary mood does not yet exist, some organizations substitute their own subjective idealist good wishes.
The sectarianism of this approach toward the masses comes out in the constant counterposing self-initiated, rather small and relatively ’purist’ organizations and activities for the real live, powerful, yet still reformist dominated movements. The masses of workers can only look at this activity as folly, unable to lead anyone anywhere. This mistake is compounded when these groups constantly attack the reformist movements, not distinguishing the reformist movement from the reformist leadership. Thus, even though these groups claim to be fighting for the reformist demands, objectively they are increasingly outside the actual reformist movements, beckoning to the masses to join their sectarian small groups.
The task of Marxist-Leninists require that they wholeheartedly unite with the real, not their own manufactured, movements. The masses will only break loose of reformism when the road of reformism no longer holds any promise, temporary and illusory though the promise may be.
It is in the course of the day to day struggles, the real struggles and not the manufactured ones, that the reformists are exposed, and Marxist-Leninist leadership is developed. A party that cannot grasp this truth and properly adjust itself to the reformist struggles can never be an actual vanguard of the working class.
This line of thinking on the part of the leaders of these groups is another instance of the underestimation of objective obstacles to class consciousness and struggle in the US and an overestimation of the role of the subjective factor in willing into existence such things.
Such misreading or, more often, failing to take any serious account of the objective situation is at the heart of “subjectivism” and it in turn encourages and lays the basis for other kinds of subjectivist mistakes.
This left subjective mentality takes many forms. It tends toward “purism” (avoiding reactionary-led organizations, keeping it on our own terms), adventurism in tactics, and a one-sided mechanical approach in general that fails to consider all aspects of a situation in its development and fails to consider analysis of concrete conditions.
The tremendous fractionalism, the organizational sectarianism among communists is a reflection of several organizations’ subjectivity (i.e. one-sided misrepresentation of reality) in assuring themselves that they, and they alone, have proven their ability to lead the revolution. “Voluntarism”, wishful thinking, is another way of putting it.
This trend that we have been describing is particularly characteristic of the larger organizations in the movement, e.g. RU-RCP and OL. (A more specific analysis of these organizations and the sectarian trend can be found in other parts of this pamphlet, especially see the “Political Trends” article.)
As the RU, in particular, made a number of serious mistakes, flowing from this incorrect approach, there were many who partially recognized these mistakes but who failed to understand correctly the root of these mistakes and made a move back toward the dogmatism that had been characteristic of an earlier stage of the movement. Their dogmatism is, in itself, more a product of this same sectarian mentality than they realize.
A dogmatist trend had developed several years earlier which maintained that since the movement had not sufficiently grasped Marxism Leninism, that it should hold up on its actual integration with tin workers’ movement. Instead, it should concentrate on getting its line together and winning over the “advanced” to the need for a Marxist-Leninist party.
This trend developed, at least as a minor current, within most of the early Marxist-Leninist groups. It didn’t get much following, at that time, accept within one group, the Communist League (later Communist Labor Party).
The dogmatists attempted to transpose Lenin’s analysis of the conditions and tasks of the Russian Bolshevik experience onto the quite different conditions in the US. To them Lenin’s writing became scripture and from it they saw ready-made recipes for the American struggle. The first six volumes of Lenin’s Collected Works, which deal with the struggle to forge the socialist movement into a united Marxist-Leninist Party, was viewed by the dogmatists as a direct blueprint for the present struggle in the US.
As we mentioned earlier, this trend began to enjoy popularity again after many of the movement forces had become disillusioned with the RU. Here we will go into that history somewhat because, in our opinion, the movement is still suffering from much of the confusion which developed in that period.
When the RU decided unilaterally to call for a party, and then attacked the third world based groups who opposed the move at that time, many of these groups and many others began to look deeper into RU’s problems. At first, they defined them correctly as an overestimation of the degree to which communists had united with and begun to lead the struggles of workers and oppressed nationalities. These groups then saw correctly that the RU was tooting its horn and was in fact tending to consolidate the isolation of the movement from the working class, as well as force upon the movement an erroneous view of the national movements. They also recognized in RU’s call for a party a petty bourgeois politicking to beat out the competition, i.e. OL and CL.
However, the clarity of these groups began to falter when the RU opened up its guns and launched a voluminous theoretical attack upon them. The RU proved to be more capable of surrounding its arguments with a seemingly Marxist theoretical shell than the others.
The Communist League, taking advantage of the situation, stepped up to provide the movement with the “theoretical” weapons to fight the RU. A realignment then took place in the movement and CL’s fortunes temporarily fared better. In uniting with the approach of CL, these groups abandoned many of their earlier criticisms of the RU and turned their criticism to RU’s attempt to integrate with the workers’ movement altogether. They joined with CL in characterizing all integration with the mass movement, in effect, as “bowing to spontaneity” and “economist”. They labeled the RU, OL, and the Guardian as an antiparty clique who were covering for the CP.
This view is farther out in ultra-“left” field than the RU, and far more idealist. These groups broke with CL later when they realized that the theoretical level of CL was such that it covered for CL’s idealism by trying to pass of as Marxism the very Hegelian idealist dialectics that Marx had criticized, i.e. “the development of ideas is primary”. Also, many communists came to realize that CL took an increasingly trotskyite line on international affairs. Many of those who broke with CL retained some of CL’s dogmatist views.
These groups have constantly been trying to arrive at unity – but a unity that is based upon abstract formulae, not a concrete analysis of conditions. Their theoretical struggle is to a great extent a struggle to force an analysis of other conditions onto the American conditions of today. Unfortunately, they continue to stay aloof from the real struggles of today, looking instead in the Marxist annals for the “key to unlock” the class struggle. They won’t find any such “key” in this manner.
Let’s look at some of the things Marx, Engels, and Lenin actually had to say about some very similar problems as the ones we face today. We think it would be instructive for both those who make dogmatist mistakes and those who make other kinds of sectarian mistakes. It will also be instructive for all of us in deciding what kind of approach should be taken to the tasks today. We will be quoting entirely from Letters to Americans 1848-1895, K. Marx and F. Engels, International Publishers, which is still in print. Appendix 1 in that volume is Lenin’s Preface to the Russian Translation of Letters to Americans 1848-1895, which we also quote from.
In warning the Russian Social-Democrats against the misuse of quotations, Lenin directed their attention to Marx and Engels’ ability, through their letters, to identify different problems facing the class struggle in different countries.
A comparison of the comments by Marx and Engels on the Anglo-American and German labor movements is highly instructive. This comparison acquires all the greater importance when we remember that Germany, on the one hand, and England, and America, on the other, represented different forms of domination by the bourgeoisie, as a class, of the entire political life of these countries. Prom the scientific standpoint, what we observe here is a sample of materialist dialectics, of the ability to bring out and stress different points and different sides of a question in accordance with the specific peculiarities of various political and economic conditions. From the standpoint of practical policy and tactics of the workers’ party, what we see here is a sample of the way the creators of the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO defined the tasks of the militant proletariat in accordance with the different stages of the national labor movements in various countries. (p. 274, our emphasis)
It is clear that a concrete analysis of concrete conditions is a prerequisite to any clarity on the particular tasks and points of stress for the revolutionary working class in any one country. But assuming the dogmatists accept this much in word, what about their analysis of present day conditions? Most of them stress the struggle for differentiation of views, for the purification of theory, against getting too engrossed with the “spontaneous” movement. Though Lenin could not tell us what and what not to stress in 1S70 USA, nonetheless he provides some guidance for us in this same work. Since the dogmatists so extensively base the “concrete” analysis on Lenin’s writings in the early 1900’s, the following passages from the same period (1907) might surprise them.
In clarifying the two sides of Marx and Engels’ stress toward Anglo-American socialism on the one hand and German socialism on the other hand, he explains:
What Marx and Engels most of all criticized in British and American socialism is its isolation from the labor movement. (Our emphasis.) The burden of all their numerous comments on the Social Democratic Federation in England and on American Socialists is the accusation that they have reduced Marxism to a dogma, to a “rigid (starre) orthodoxy”, that they consider it “a credo and not a guide to action”,(Marx) that they are incapable of adapting themselves to the theoretically helpless, but living, powerful, mass labor movement marching past them. (p. 274)
On the other hand, regarding Marx and Engels’ concerns toward Germany:
What runs like a red thread through all these opinions is something quite different, namely, a warning against the “right wing” of the workers’ party, a merciless war upon opportunism. (p. 276)
Lenin later tells the Russian workers that the situation in Russia in the early 1900’s was by far more similar to that of late 1800’s Germany, as Marx and Engels described it, than to that of the Anglo-American scene. He explains the characteristics of Anglo-American conditions as:
the absence of any big, nationwide, democratic (his emphasis) problems whatever facing the proletariat; the complete subjection of the proletariat to bourgeois politics) the sectarian isolation of groups, handfuls of Socialists, from the proletariat; not the slightest success of the proletariat in the elections among the working masses, etc. (p. 275)
If Engels lays so much stress on the economic organizations of the workers in such circumstances, it is because he is dealing with the most firmly established democratic systems, which confront the proletariat with purely socialist tasks.
If Engels stresses the importance of an independent workers’ party, even though a bad program, it is because he is dealing with countries where hitherto there had not been even a hint of political independence of the workers, where, in politics above all, the workers trailed, and still trail, after the bourgeoisie. (Our emphasis, P. 275)
It would be making a mockery of Marx’s method to attempt to apply these conclusions drawn from such circumstances to countries (and here he is describing late 1800’s Germany and early 1900’s Russia) or historical situations where the proletariat had established its party before the bourgeois liberals, where the proletariat does not have even the ghost of a tradition of voting for the bourgeois politicians, and where it is not socialist, but bourgeois democratic tasks that are up for immediate discussion. (our emphasis, p. 276)
It is quite clear from these selections, if it wasn’t clear already, that Lenin, as well as Marx and Engels, strongly believed that each situation requires a specific and concrete analysis and that a different analysis often implies significantly different tasks.
We have not meant to imply that the conditions in the US today are identical to the conditions of American and British societies of 100 years ago. The US today is far closer however, to these conditions than to Germany in the late 1800’s or Russia in the early 1900’s.
The working class today has no political representation, even in the form of a bourgeois democratic labor party. In Russia, the Social-Democratic Labor Party led the trade union movement and the workers voted for it when the Czar allowed elections. Where is the “success”, let alone participation of communists, in the elections today? Today communists, once again, exist in “sectarian isolation” and in “handfuls” apart from and “incapable of adapting themselves to the theoretically helpless, but living, powerful, mass labor movement marching past them.”
The dogmatists have misplaced their criticism of today’s movement. They attack it as rightist, when it is utterly “leftist”. They complain of its “bowing to the spontaneity of the mass movement”, when it exists in desperate isolation from that movement. They themselves are farther afield than the voluntarists who claim greater success with the masses than they have achieved, because they belittle the very principle of integrating with the ”living, powerful, mass labor movement”.
Dogmatists are lazybones, Mao pointed out, meaning that they come up with easy answers but fail to deal with the particularity of problems. Mao also pointed out that dogmatists fail to understand the relation of theory to practice. (“On Contradiction” and “On Practice” were both written to combat the influence of dogmatists in the Chinese Party.)
Such a tendency always underestimates the importance of participation in mass struggle for the development of correct political line. They may understand, in a one-sided way, that “political line determines everything” but they do not understand “where correct ideas come from”.
Many of the smaller and newer organizations, as well as many individuals, are predominantly making this same mistake. We fear that dogmatism is not necessarily a passing phase and, rather than declining, is on the rise.
Partly this is based on the newness of many of these forces to Marxism, to the need for theory and the need for a Party. Partly it reflects a reaction to the mistakes of RU and OL and a desire to study hard so as to avoid these mistakes. Partly it is a reflection of the base of the current movement among intellectuals, at least its leadership, and our lack of roots among the people. Dogmatism provides a perfect forum for opportunist maneuverers, splitters, agents and professional talkers.
Dogmatism and sectarianism, as well as revisionism, take the heart out of Marxism-Leninism. Dogmatism and sectarianism both make use of the “subjective factor” (i.e. the intention or conscious will of communists) to downplay the need for a concrete analysis. They both fail to base their politics on developing a program that can lead the broad masses to revolution, but instead talk only to those who would listen to them on their terms.
The decade of the seventies will go down in history as a decade of decline for US Imperialism. It is being knocked off the top of the imperialist totem pole by the combined forces of revolution, national liberation, third world independence, and rival imperialisms. But the decline does not take place overnight. US Imperialism still packs a horrible punch and though it has become more restricted in its ability to maneuver, it is yet some distance from its rope’s end. The golden era of reforms may be over, but reformism still remains the major prop of imperialist rule. Bourgeois ideology” still holds dominant sway over the minds of the people.
In many ways the communist movement has taken steps toward uniting with the movements of workers, oppressed nationalities, students and other sectors. The recent period has seen some important advances, but these advances are still small as regards the enormity of our tasks and responsibilities.
Communists must not overestimate nor underestimate the rising openness to change among the working class. We must base our politics on an objective analysis, and on the test of our real practice. We must unite wholeheartedly with even the most reformist of movements. In so doing we can catch the awakening ear of the American people. It is by participating in and giving leadership to the people in their actual struggles, that communists will gain the leadership of the class. If we remain confined to our small circles, whether we call ourselves a party or not, the merging of communism with the workers’ movement will remain a dream.
The BAY AREA COMMUNIST UNION (BACU) is a local collective of Marxist-Leninists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Believing that none of the major organizations today provide an atmosphere for a proper concentration on our tasks of integrating with the American workers’ movement, of actively combining socialism with the “living, powerful mass movement”, we have set for ourselves an independent course of development for the time being. We recognize that the American working class ultimately needs a single, united and multinational Marxist-Leninist Party and it is toward that goal that we aim our activity. But we do not believe that the larger organizations, whether they call themselves a party or not, are any closer to becoming such a thing than are the many smaller collectives and organizations. Their lack of a proper political perspective, the overwhelming subjective idealism of their policies, is what forces us to these conclusions.
BACU does not envision itself as the needed party, nor the core of the new party. What we are trying to do is to concentrate on the local conditions in the Bay Area, in order to build up a local model of revolutionary Marxist-Leninist activity. Stalin, in the HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY 0F THE SOVIET UNION summed up Lenin’s early revolutionary activities and experiences in building the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class as follows: the importance of the League was that “it was the first real rudiment of a revolutionary party which was backed by the working class movement.” (Stalin’s emphasis.)
The content of Lenin’s work and the work of the League was principally that of actively joining with and leading workers’ struggles, and in the process, educating workers to socialism. Lenin concentrated on the local St. Petersburg organization and the local workers’ movement, not because he had any illusions that local work is more important than building a national Party. He did so in order to test and prove his theories that the socialists could combine socialism with the workers’ movement. He did it to provide a model for the kind of activity that was needed on a larger, more general and national scope.
Lenin drew on the revolutionary experience of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in his subsequent work of creating a Marxist Social-Democratic Party in Russia, (p. 18, HCPSU, Stalin)
We draw on Lenin’s experience here not because conditions are identical. We do so because our need for gaining experience in class struggle is similar. We hope to build a rudiment of a Marxist-Leninist party in the Bay Area. In so doing we will concentrate primarily on our mass work and socialist education of the workers. Secondarily, we will seek to work with and if possible unite with the many other Marxist-Leninists and Marxist-Leninist groupings in the Bay Area, and eventually throughout the country. We will fight to influence the direction of the existing Marxist-Leninist movement.
Unless the communist groupings, large or small, learn to merge with the ”workers’ movements and the movements of other sectors of the population, unless we are able to build up elements, “rudiments” of the needed revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party which are “backed by the working class movement”, unless we are able to adjust our activity to American actual conditions, a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party on a national level will not come into existence. All calls and proclamations aside, while closer to it, we are yet a distance from the re-emergence of a real Marxist-Leninist vanguard.