Issued: As a typewritten document, March 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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COG was formed in the early summer of 1978. Its origin was a study group initiated through the New World Resource Center in conjunction with independent leftists active in the 18th st. community. This group began to develop unity with the then emerging critique of the “new communist movement” as ultra-left, and saw the new anti-dogmatist trend as potentially providing guidance to their political work. Several new individuals, together with the study group, formed the organization (later named Chicago Organizing Group) coinciding with a visit by Clay Newlin of the also newly formed OCIC.
Most of the original members had worked together in the anti-imperialist movement centered around New World, and the student and national minority movements at Chicago Circle Campus. Some had experience in mass socialist formations such as MPOC, NAM and tenant organizations; many had had some experience working with communist groups; few had previously been members themselves of M-L organizations. Most were white and college-educated, with a Latino minority. One-third of the original members worked in traditional working class jobs.
The original principles of unity were the 18 points of the OCIC. It was agreed that COG should be a member’s highest political commitment, taking precedence over mass work and other organizations. It was soon added that no significant new political responsibilities should be undertaken by any member without first consulting the group. It was decided to raise the level of unity by a further study of the 18 points, especially those which appeared to raise the most controversial questions. The first point completed was Pt. #8 on democratic centralism. The readings and discussion around this point produced a high degree of unity which was summarized in a paper. It was agreed that while the organization did not have sufficient unity to operate on democratic centralist procedures, it was important to begin moving in that direction. Accordingly, a leadership body was elected for the first time. Subsequently extensive discussions on security were held, producing a set of guidelines.
In order to assess COG’s potential for directing practice, and to familiarize members with each other’s work, a process was begun of giving work reports on current activities along with “biographies”. Also COG established the practice of attending various political events in the area and giving reports on these to the organization.
A recruitment proposal was passed which stressed the importance of selectively recruiting people from working class and national minority backgrounds to the extent possible, and requiring mass practice in the working class, national minority and women’s movements. It was felt that these criteria would help correct existing weaknesses in the group’s composition, and counter spontaneous leadership of people whose primary work was in the left itself. Several new members were recruited, and a basic M-L study group was established for people new to the left. For a time meetings were held with other close contacts. By fall of 1978 our original tasks had been largely completed and political differences began to become primary in the life of the organization.
The first major political debate concerned the sum-up of Pt. 5 and the concept of the key role of the industrial proletariat. This debate clearly had major implications for the practical work of the organization. One line in this debate emphasized the centrality of pt of production organizing, the strategically key role of trade unions and the emerging rank and file movements in the political life of the working class, and the need for communists to develop working class leadership in all the mass movements. This view also tended to emphasize the difficulties and contradictions of other forms of mass work as compared with workplace organizing.
The opposing line was critical of the New Communists Movement’s history of “left” economism which likewise emphasized the centrality of factory organizing. This view saw a variety of forms and locations of political work as an essential ingredient to combat the narrowness and dogmatism of the left parties. This view also argued that many formerly intermediate sectors are being proletarianized and the U.S. working class is becoming more highly diversified. A diversified approach to political practice was seen as especially necessary because of the increasing relative autonomy of super-structural and ideological relations in advanced capitalism.
The debate on Pt. 5 suffered from a superficial and inconclusive study of class analysis and political economy. There was also a sectarian tendency to stereotype and categorize opposing views as either dogmatist, or petit-bourgeois social-democratic, A third tendency emerged which while tending in theory to support the diversified organizing line, saw the debate as essentially irrelevant pending the adoption of a party-building perspective.
As time went along, however, the opposing sides in the debate perceived the non-antagonistic nature of their differences. It was agreed that the organization both could and should put a combination of both views into practice. A political synthesis was adopted in the “Statement on Pt. 5” paper. It was proposed that workplace and non-workplace committees be established to initiate group practice.
In the fall of 1978 the organization began to take up party-building line as an elaboration of Pt. 10, and its reference to “fusion”. Here two lines began to contend, leading three members to leave the organization in early 1979.
These comrades had been reluctant to commit the organization to any directed form of mass practice until questions of party-building line were resolved. They disagreed with the view of PWOC and others that fusing the Marxist-Leninist and mass movements was the “essence” of party-building in this period. They thus initially opposed the creation of work committees as implicitly an endorsement of the fusion line.
The anti-fusion group saw the party-building process as taking place essentially outside the arenas of work in the mass movements. They argued that (contrary to the fusion line) many critical theoretical questions which had to be resolved in the party-building process were not posed by the problems of mass work. The process of forging principled ideological unity amongst the scattered and disorganized M-L forces was seen as primary.
They argued that only until this process led to a higher degree of theoretical consolidation (primarily through study and polemics within the communist movement) could communists hope to play a meaningful role in mass work. Until then these efforts would be foredoomed to empiricist and pragmatic deviations since there was no general line to guide practice. In particular doubt was expressed that the trade union caucus work that characterized Trend groups such as PWOC could be undertaken on a “communist” basis or had any special importance. They did, however, see a need to be active where advanced workers were to be “found” so as to have the possibility to recruit certain of these individuals. Their approach to this activity thus emphasized propaganda work rather than building and providing leadership to the mass movements. It was stated that only after a greater number of “worker-communists” were recruited would such work be successful in any case.
As differences began to emerge in the group a great deal of confusion developed. There was a tendency towards a circular “theory vs. practice” argument i.e., “How can we have practice without theory to guide it” vs. “how can we determine what are correct theories outside of testing them in practice,” etc. In order to move the debate forward and clarify the opposing lines, it was agreed to undertake an extensive study of party-building. The workgroups would be set up simultaneously so as to indicate how party-building differences affected our approach to mass work.
The party-building study took many weeks to prepare. It consisted of three parts: a study of various historical experiences of the formation of communist parties (with presentations of the histories of 5 separate parties), a survey of current party-building lines in the U.S. movement, and finally a polemic between the , two positions covering an analysis of current objective and subjective conditions in the U.S.
Before this study plan was even underway, the group was forced to take up debate on Pt. 18 in order to participate in the OCIC national conferences. Several members of the anti-fusion group did not support the content of pt. 18 (targeting U.S. imperialism as the main danger to the peoples of the world.) They definitely opposed making agreement with Pt. 18 a “line of demarcation” with the ultra-left. They opposed excluding from the OCIC forces like PUL who believed the Soviet Union was an “equal danger” but who also professed opposition to ultra-leftism.
In the debate around these issues further differences were revealed in the summation of the errors of the communist movement to date. The anti-fusion comrades (who were joined in debate by several other members – who agreed with their opposition to Pt. 18 as a line of demarcation for the OCIC) argued that sectarianism around organizational line was the primary error of the New Communist Movement. This error was reflected by “premature” party formations. This view was opposed by the pro-fusion advocates, who saw dogmatism around political line resulting in ultra-left theory and practice as the key problem.
When applied to Pt. 18 these differences produced diametrically opposed positions. Certain of the anti-fusion comrades saw the exclusion of groups sympathetic to the three worlds theory of the CCP as a further manifestation of sectarianism – in this case reflecting “premature” consolidation against a particular view on the class nature of the USSR. The pt. 18 advocates saw it as a practical test of the trend’s ability to define itself through a split with those comrades still maintaining a dogmatist conception of reality and following the line of the CCP.
The first meetings of the work groups exacerbated the emerging differences. There was clearly no ability to carry out unified work, and all that could be agreed upon was further study plans. At this point the three main advocates of the anti-fusion-line decided to leave the organization. While this reflected a recognition of the impasse that had developed in COG, and the lack of agreement with their “unite the MLs” strategy, it was before final resolution of the Pt. 18 debate, in which several other members leaned towards their positions, and prior to taking up the party-building study of which they had been the main architects. While COG later took up this study, it was never completed or summed up as a position going beyond the 18 Points.
COG then went on to unite without opposition in support of the content of Pt. 18. The implications of this struggle on the OCIC are examined in the OCIC paper “The Struggle Over Principle 18 Summed Up”. A minority view continued to oppose Pt. 18 as a line of demarcation in party-building. Failing to follow the SC guidelines for minority representation at the OCIC conference, COG voted to send 3 delegates who supported Pt. 18 as a line of demarcation. But the organization also agreed to defend the right of those who supported only the content of Pt. 18 to remain in the OCIC while adhering to the national decision. This position was accepted by the OCIC as a whole in pt. b of the resolution on Pt. 18 as a line of demarcation. On this question, see “Conciliation of Ultra-Leftism and OC Membership” for the majority view.
Following the departure of the three members, a new leadership was elected. This leadership was chosen to reflect a unified view rather than to represent different tendencies, and to carry out specific tasks. The main tasks were establishing collective practice through the work committees, determining our position in the ongoing debates in the OCIC, and deepening our unity with respect to party-building issues. The projected party-building study was continued, but reduced in scope from the original plan, while more focus was placed on the U.S. experience. We took up Lenin’s formulation of “fusion” and its application to the formation of the Bolshevik party, and examined the origins of the CCP in the Chinese labor movement in the early 1920’s. We reviewed in some depth the history of the CPUSA, criticizing its failures to advance working class politics and organization after the late 1930’s. By midsummer, however, the group was forced to drop the study and turn its attention to preparing for the upcoming OCIC national conference. This involved both political and logistical preparation since COG was responsible for hosting the conference.
Our views of the conference, including criticism and self-criticism, are summarized in the “COG Evaluation of the National OCIC Conference”. We spent much effort coming to terms with criticisms of us which stemmed from our attempts to warn of dangers in the area of the conference site, which were considered by the OCIC as examples of objective racism, further augmented by our defensiveness in reaction to the original criticisms. In our response, we accepted those criticisms which we understood to be correct, while disagreeing with certain criticisms. However, persistent ill feeling with respect to the entire process of criticism of errors of racism within a predominantly white M-L formation, whether committed by us or by others, took a toll upon our organization. It should be noted that COG had never taken up the question of racism in a systematic and all-sided manner, instead focusing on the problems of narrow nationalism, with which a number of comrades had had experience.
After Labor Day the work committees again met regularly. The workplace committee developed criteria for a concentration policy, but was unable to achieve any significant clustering of its members in particular shops. Discussions around individual workplaces were begun, with the group beginning to provide some direction. At this point a majority of COG was in unionized workplaces and was participating in this work group.
The non-workplace committee made a proposal for a practical, rather than only ideological, local center, based on areas of mass work where we knew people close to OCIC politics, but not directly recruitable to COG. There was unity in COG on the long term desirability of this, as a way to give ideological debates a practical grounding, to increase fusion on a rudimentary level, and to increase the impact of the OCIC in Chicago. However, differences around the relation of the practical and ideological aspects of this center were expressed. Doubts were held about COG’s ability to direct such an effort and to involve others in taking it up. Finally, investigation revealed that the proposal was not immediately practical due to lack of participation by forces not already involved in COG, and it was shelved.
A delegation was sent to the health workers conference, made up primarily of activists in health and hospital organizing who were not committed to OCIC cadre work. The discussion at the conference was too advanced for these people, being concerned with establishing a democratic centralist fraction of the OCIC for health workers rather than with sharing organizing experiences and explaining the need for national organization in fractions.
During fall 1979 the frustrations of failing to succeed in implementing collective mass work, combined with the disarray within COG in the aftermath of the Labor Day conference, the disillusionment with the OCIC of some comrades, and conflicting personal commitments of others, brought COG to a turning point. Alternatives were posed among which was that we should divide into a small cadre formation with a unity higher than the 18 points, which would develop an elaboration of the fusion line and put it into practice, and a local center based on the 18 points alone. It developed that such a cadre formation could not be formed from the material at hand, while there was interest in forming a local center according to the OCIC guidelines. Some comrades from the workplace work group also united on the need for a labor study group involving workplace organizers both from within the OCIC and from the broader trend. With these goals in view, COG as a cadre organization dissolved itself in early 1980, with members’ OCIC affiliation retained.