First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 6, No. 9, September 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Take the situation of the advanced workers...who you want to win to form a party. Now you are asking them to take a big step forward, you ’re saying, ’come on, step out of line, put yourself out on the line, challenge the ruling class forthrightly’, and yet you have an organization which does not yet have a coherent strategy that you have tested in practice and demonstrated before the world as an organization of dedicated revolutionaries with a consolidated, clear-cut worldview. I don’t think that they are going to take a chance on you. –Irwin Silber, Rectification vs. Fusion debate, San Francisco, 9-78
Silber’s real message would have been clearer if he had said this: “Most workers are not brave enough to want to play a role in building the party. Even those few who could possibly be brought to understand the need for a party are too timid to participate in constructing one; they are afraid to oppose the government unless they have a lot of backing and support. Given this, it is absurd to even encourage workers to join the communist movement at this point. It is better to rely on such proven and reliable communists as myself and the rest of the current party-builders.”
Ironically, Silber made these statements less than six months after the conclusion of one of the most bitter strikes in the history of the Miners’ union. During this confrontation literally thousands of miners confronted not only armed local and state authorities, but even a Taft-Hartley injunction backed by the threat of deployment of federal troops. Though their leadership was riven with factionalism thus putting their union in a weakened position, the miners showed ample readiness to confront state power when their vital interests were at stake.
Such demonstrations of the courage and fighting capacity of US workers apparently made no impression on Silber or the other future leaders of the rectification circle. To them, the miners’ strike and numerous similar examples of worker combativeness had no particular significance for those active in the party-building movement.
Their inability to appreciate the fearlessness of the workers comes from a special kind of arrogance. It stems from the self-conceited illusion of superiority which infects petty-bourgeois intellectuals in our society.
Petty-bourgeois chauvinism consists in the view that those who live a middle class existence are superior to those who are forced to work with their hands. Instead of seeing their privileges as an outgrowth of the oppression of the working class, petty-bourgeois elements view their position as befitting their advanced mental and intellectual powers. Their easier jobs, more comfortable lifestyles, greater social status – all are due to their innate mental advantages.
This attitude of superiority is especially strong is among intellectual strata. Since their social status is most bound up with their ability to harness their mental capacities and place these capacities at the service of the existing social order, their tendency to justify their privileged existence as rooted in their intelligence becomes almost a compulsion.
While rooted in the material privileges of the middle strata, petty-bourgeois chauvinism also serves, and is therefore fostered by, monopoly capital. Apart from blinding the petty-bourgeoisie to its own oppression by imperialism, it also teaches it to look down on the workers. Clearly, the ruling class has every interest in feeding disdain for the only class capable of threatening its rule.
The bourgeoisie nourishes petty-bourgeois chauvinism in many ways. Through its monopoly on television and other mass media, art literature and culture, the monopolists continually project the image of the boorish and backward Archie Bunkers on the one hand and the intellectual and socially progressive Michael Stivics (Archie’s son-in-law) on the other.
Given the prevalence of this chauvinism in society at large, it should come as no surprise that petty-bourgeois chauvinism influences the communist movement. After all our movement does not exist in an airtight state. Just as becoming a communist does not make us immune from white chauvinism, so too the adoption of Marxism-Leninism does not automatically inoculate us against petty-bourgeois chauvinism.
Though anti-working-class bias affects all segments of the US left, it is a particular problem in the party-building movement. This results, in the first place from the composition of our movement.
The class composition of party-builders is – as is readily apparent – overwhelmingly petty-bourgeois. Though only a significant minority has an essentially petty-bourgeois relation to the process of social production (e.g., intellectuals, professors, teachers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, etc.), the vast majority do not view themselves primarily as workers, even if they may temporarily have a proletarian job.
This is true even of those comrades who come from working-class backgrounds. They may have come from working-class families and have grown up in a working class neighborhood, but the majority of these comrades were effectively declassed during their period as students. Though raised in a working-class environment, by the time that they completed college, they saw themselves as petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
And it is also true of the bulk of national minority cadre in the communist movement. While the numbers of these comrades who come from proletarian families is greater than that of whites, most nevertheless entered the party-building movement as ex-students.
Just how extensive is the petty-bourgeois composition of the party-building movement is shown by a survey of the forces in the OCIC taken about two years ago. Typical of the communist movement as a whole, working-class comrades (excluding the large numbers of those who sought proletarian jobs on the basis of political commitment) comprised merely 3.4% of the membership.
Not only does petty-bourgeois chauvinism find fertile soil in the movement’s class composition but it is helped along by another important factor – the isolation of communists from the class struggle.
This isolation dovetails nicely with the prejudices of most intellectuals. For in the absence of contact with the workers, the isolation appears to stem not primarily from the weaknesses of the communist movement but chiefly from the backwardness of the working class.
Fusion with the working class movement, of course, cuts against this prejudice. Instead of the mythical Archie Bunkers, it brings revolutionaries face to face with real workers. It thus puts communists in a position to grasp both the real strengths and the genuine weaknesses of the workers.
Any honest appraisal of these strengths and weaknesses can only lead to the conclusion that the primary weaknesses of the communist movement are internal. Its lack of perspective on its own aims and how it is to realize them, its immature and narrow practice and its small and weak organizations soften its appeal to both workers and petty-bourgeois strata alike.
Fusion cuts against petty-bourgeois chauvinism in an even more, important way. By defining the essence of party-building as the maturing and ever deepening merger of revolutionary program and strategy with the advanced workers, it turns the face of the communist movement directly towards the class struggle.
Instead of allowing party-builders to stew in their own (petty-bourgeois) juices, the fusion line encourages them to transform themselves. It demands that they become a genuine vanguard force by merging with the leading elements from the working class movement.
And it demands that both existing party-builders and the advanced elements undergo significant changes in the process. On the one hand, the petty-bourgeois intellectuals must become working-class intellectuals by directing their efforts towards solving the difficult problems facing the proletariat. And on the other it demands that the advanced workers also become worker intellectuals by adopting Marxism-Leninism as their guide to action.
Petty-bourgeois chauvinism is inevitably an obstacle to this process of transformation. In the first place, the communist movement must recognize the need to transform itself. The petty-bourgeois elements must realize that in order to become revolutionaries they must abandon their self-satisfied illusion of superiority and put themselves in the service of the working class. And they must also grasp the fact that along with having something to bring to the working class they have something to learn from it as well. Otherwise they will have no desire to really merge with the advanced workers.
Petty-bourgeois chauvinism is also an obstacle from the advanced workers point of view. While anxious to take up their own liberation, the most class conscious workers have no desire to subject themselves to the outrages of those who view them as inferior. A movement that in the name of communism neither respects their real strengths nor, faces their real weaknesses but treats them as second class participants at best and undesirable children at worst will have no real appeal.
It is precisely the pursuit of fusion with the class struggle which forced the PWOC to face the anti-working-class prejudice within its own ranks. In summing up our all too slow progress towards fusion with the advanced workers we came face to face with the following reality.
Our members continually underestimated both the workers’ openness to communism and their ability to grasp communist theory. There was one recruitment process for the petty-bourgeois intellectuals and one for the advanced workers; the intellectuals were brought in speedily whereas the advanced had to practically beat down the door.
Those workers who were recruited suffered even more. Within the organization they had a second class status. While our petty-bourgeois members were willing to accept them as members, they drew the line at following their leadership. When it came to formulating policy, the comments of working-class comrades were listened to politely and then just as politely ignored. Viewed as incapable of moving beyond mere membership, workers were only assigned the most practical tasks and certainly never theoretical ones. And they were promoted into leadership only by way of exception.
Our summation of this practice brought us face to face with a rather unpleasant truth: while favoring fusion in theory, in practice we had sought to protect and preserve the hegemony of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals (especially the white ones) in the PWOC.
However, while fusion cuts against petty-bourgeois chauvinism, the rectification line not only is consistent with it but positively builds upon it. This can be seen in several ways.
In the first place, the rectification line liquidates the need to forge worker intellectuals. It does this from two points of view. On the one hand, it regards attempts to mold revolutionary intellectuals out of the advanced workers as premature. In their view, fusion with the advanced elements should only be taken up after the party has been formed.
And on the other it sees no need to really transform the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. In its view the process of molding these intellectuals is merely the straightforward logical progression .of their previous development. Like a Catholic converting to Protestantism, they have solely to replace their bourgeois thinking with Marxism-Leninism learned through study and discussion.
The rectificationists’ liquidation of the need to forge worker intellectuals has serious consequences. By viewing the process of molding revolutionaries out of intellectuals as an essentially evolutionary progression, they belittle the real difficulties involved.
Far from just evolving from intellectual to revolutionary, the process of becoming a communist demands a qualitative break with the past. It demands a thorough and protracted struggle against bourgeois ideology, a radical separation from the deeply ingrained habits of individualism and egotism and particularly a total severing of the illusion of petty-bourgeois superiority.
Contrary to the self-congratulatory illusions of the rectificationists, the experience of the party-building movement has shown this transformation to be an extremely difficult process. Study and discussion are only the first steps in a lengthy cycle demanding in addition criticism self-criticism, practice, renewed study and struggle and so on.
Moreover, in stark contrast with the process of maturation from advanced worker to revolutionary intellectual, the petty-bourgeois comrade’s transformation is one for which neither his socialization nor his concrete relation to the means of production provides much help.
It is indicative of their basic idealism that the rectificationists liquidate the material effects of socialization and relation to production. In their view, a whole movement of aspiring communists with a petty-bourgeois socialization and relation to production can transform itself into a proletarian vanguard without either attempting to alter the socialization of its members or changing their relation to the means of production.
While no one can assert that it is impossible to achieve such a transformation, as materialists we must hold that it is highly unlikely. For however strong the subjective desires of petty-bourgeois elements to adopt a proletarian line, their daily existence and relation to production will inevitably provide a powerful counterweight.
In addition to underestimating the difficulty of forging revolutionaries from intellectuals, the rectificationists also deprive the communist movement of a powerful, bulwark against opportunism. By denying the advanced elements the opportunity to participate in party-building, they isolate the communist movement from its most stable potential base for proletarian ideology.
While the fact that a group of workers hold a given position does not make it a proletarian one, nevertheless on the whole workers provide a more reliable base for Marxism-Leninism than the petty-bourgeois does. This is because their daily participation in the class struggle tends to dispel illusions about how to defeat the class enemy in a manner not directly available to the petty-bourgeois intellectual.
That workers provide the firmest bedrock for proletarian ideology is not some vague anti-Leninist and workerist fantasy as the rectificationists would have us believe. There is real significance to the fact that every intellectual prominent in the formative period of the Russian party with the sole exception of Lenin went over to Menshevism whereas the Bolshevik positions received the support of the great bulk of the workers. It is also true that revisionism made the most progress in the CPUSA during its period of greatest petty-bourgeois composition.
Nor should we labor under’ the rectificationist illusion that this basic materialist proposition becomes correct only once the party has been formed. On the contrary, in the pre-party period it has a special importance. In the absence of a firm revolutionary theory which has established its hegemony over party-builders, our forces are particularly prone to opportunism. Under such circumstances, we can hardly afford to deny ourselves any opportunity to strengthen the potential base for proletarian ideology in our movement.
Clearly, both the rectificationist underestimation of the difficulty of the transition from petty-bourgeois intellectual to revolutionary and its denial of the special role of advanced workers as a bulwark against opportunism only nourish petty-bourgeois illusions. These views only encourage intellectuals to downplay the need for a sharp break with their past on the one hand and to belittle the real strengths of the advanced workers on the other.
An additional, and related, manifestation of petty-bourgeois chauvinism is revealed in the rectificationists’ approach to the theoretical struggle. Not only do they maintain that it is incorrect to hold that the actual class struggle in the US should set our theoretical agenda, but they also argue that it is wrong to attempt to test our theoretical work by applying it to that struggle.
To buttress this idealist position, they openly appeal to anti-working class attitudes. In the absence of a party, they assert, the workers are so backward and their struggles so limited that to take up the questions posed by their battles inevitably feeds reformism. And further, it is argued that given the limitations of the workers struggles, to attempt to test theory in practice prior to the formation of a party can also only lead to opportunism.
In order to reveal the petty-bourgeois chauvinism here, it is necessary to be clear on two points. First, it should be remembered that the rectificationists argue that theory is primary in relation to practice only in the pre-party period. But, if the fact that the struggles of the masses of workers lag behind the consciousness of communists is taken to mean that the actual class struggle should neither anchor our theoretical work nor provide the testing grounds for the solutions arrived at, then practice can never be primary.
For does not the primacy of practice in relation to theory mean that on the one hand practice determines theory’s agenda and on the other provides its criterion of truth? And, is it not the case that the practice of the masses will generally lag behind the consciousness of the vanguard elements?
Thus, if the rectificationists were consistent they would have to raise their objections to using mass practice to fix our theoretical agenda or to verify our theoretical work in every period without exception – and not just the pre-party one.
Second, it is necessary to recall that in the rectificationists scheme the party is built prior to fusion with the class struggle. Given the present composition of the communist movement, this view can only mean that the party is built primarily by petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
Having grasped these two points, the rectificationists appeal to petty-bourgeois chauvinism should be clear. In the first place, in order to obscure their faulty logic they speculate on the intellectuals desire to substitute themselves for the working class. The petty-bourgeoisie has an extremely difficult time accepting that by itself it is incapable of making the revolution, that the “uneducated and uncultured” mass of workers are those on whom the future of humanity depends.
Rectification says to them: “Comrade intellectuals, it may be true that the proletariat is the agent of revolution. But do not despair. You can become their leaders. You alone can become their vanguard.”
The appeal to the substitution complex is buttressed by playing on the petty-bourgeoisie’s fears of the workers. To the above, the rectificationists add: “Moreover, comrade intellectuals, you need not include these “Archie Bunkers” in the formative stages of constructing a proletarian vanguard. You can conduct your theoretical work without regard to either the obstacles the workers face or the errors in your thinking that their practice seems to indicate. And, by postponing any attempt to merge with them, you can consolidate petty-bourgeois hegemony over the party, thus ensuring that neither intelligence nor culture is lost.”
There are other examples of the rectificationists’ reliance on anti-working class prejudice. But from what is enumerated above, it should be clear that the rectification line not only roots itself in petty-bourgeois chauvinism but depends upon it for its survival.
Given this, it is no accident that the rectification circle has its base primarily in the least proletarian sections of our tendency. An example of this can be seen in their participation in the formation of the national trade union fractions.
Though not well represented in any of the fractions, support for rectification was strongest in the teachers and health (made up almost exclusively of health professionals) fractions and has been virtually non-existent in either telephone or auto fractions.
Taken together, the chauvinist premises and petty-bourgeois composition of the rectification circle fully confirm a remark I made at the very beginning of the struggle between rectification and fusion, “...the view that party-building and fusion stand in contradiction,” I wrote, “can only be successful to the extent that it adapts itself to the petty-bourgeois intellectual who makes a principle of his isolation from the working class” (Guardian, April 13, 1977).
August 22, 1980