First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 1979.
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.
PWOC Note: Michael Simmons is a member of the PWOC Political Committee, was part of the Planning Committee for the Conference of National Minority’ Marxist-Leninists, and chaired the Conference itself.
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Early this summer, some 40 national minority Marxist-Leninists held a weekend conference with important implications for the future development of the anti-“left” tendency.
It is widely recognized that the movements of the oppressed nationalities, as the most advanced anti-imperialist force in the US, contribute a disproportionately large number of fighters to the ranks of the revolutionary movement. At the same time the unity between national minority and white revolutionaries, including Marxist-Leninists, is tenuous and uneven. In varying degrees white communists have failed to fully grasp the centrality of the struggle against racism and this weakness has undercut efforts to build strong multi-national organizations.
The Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center (OCIC), which has sought to bring together and consolidate those Marxist-Leninists in opposition to both revisionism and ultra-leftism, has by no means been immune to this weakness. Coincidental with its founding, the Steering Committee of the OCIC, while recognizing the need for an all-sided theoretical and practical advance in the struggle against racism, also resolved to encourage and support a conference of national minority Marxist-Leninists.
The conference was conceived as a means of drawing more oppressed nationality Marxist-Leninists into organized party building activity and fostering unity with the OCIC. At the initiative of the Steering Committee, a planning committee of both OCIC members and independents was assembled which then conceived and organized the conference. While organizationally distinct from the OCIC, the planning committee had essential unity with the OCIC process, uniting with its 18 principles and sharing its perspective on the need for a single center to promote open, centralized debate.
Meeting in Detroit in June, the conference drew participants from all around the country. The South, however, was seriously under-represented. Well over half the conferees were activists from the workers’ movement, many of them new to Marxism-Leninism. The composition of the conference was predominantly Black with Latin and Asian nationalities under-represented. While strong ties with the working class movement constitute a definite strength, the regional and national composition highlight important weaknesses, weaknesses which are those of the OCIC as well as this particular conference.
The conference focused on three broad areas: 1) the history of the party building movement, 2) the particular tasks of national minority Marxist-Leninists and 3) the struggle against sexism. The presentation on party building, given by Tyree Scott from Seattle, situated the tendency in relation to the history of the effort to build an anti-revisionist communist party. It identified ultra-“leftism” as the primary impediment in this struggle, citing the components of the “left” line as: 1) reducing party building to the unification of Marxist-Leninists around political line, 2). counterposing the reform struggle to the struggle for socialism, 3) liquidating the struggle for democratic rights of the oppressed nationalities and women and 4) flunkyism in the form of blind allegiance to the line of the Communist Party of China.
Leslie Roberts from Detroit, in presenting the particular tasks of national minority Marxist-Leninists, focused on the role of the movements of the oppressed nationalities in the development of revolutionary consciousness in the US. She stressed the interdependence of the tasks of white and national minority communists in forging the unity of the workers’ movement and the national movements, identifying the primacy of white Marxist-Leninists taking up the struggle to win the white workers to fighting racism.
The presentation also discussed the critical need for thorough-going, principled struggle against white chauvinism within the ranks of the communist movement. One form of chauvinism specifically targeted was the tendency to relegate the concerns of national minority comrades to purely racial questions. By way of contrast the presentation stressed the responsibility of national minority communists to address the full range of questions facing the movement.
Sylvia Kimura from San Francisco spoke on the struggle against sexism, addressing the general weaknesses of the tendency in relation to this struggle and the objectively racist manifestations this had in regard to national minority women. She contrasted a materialist to a moralist approach to the struggle against sexism, pointing out that the consequence of this moralism was a failure to grasp the advanced character of many of the historic struggles waged by women generally and national minority women in particular.
Kimura discussed the need for working class, anti-racist content in the women’s movement, noting that the absence of such content held back the involvement of national minority women. Finally she took up the need for national minority men to wage a deeper, more consistent struggle against sexism within the movements of the oppressed nationalities, citing sexism as the principle contradiction within these movements.
After lively discussion in both plenary sessions and workshops, several resolutions were passed, reflecting a high degree of unity on the main themes of the conference among those present. The Conference called for building an ideological center and endorsed the 18 principles of the OCIC as providing the political foundation for this process. It also called for conference participants to play an active role in building local centers to further this work. In relation lo the particular tasks of national minority communists and the struggle against sexism there was unity with the need to take up the special tasks identified in the presentation and a call for further study on their formulation. The resolution also called for further in-depth study of the 18 principles.
The Conference was organized in the context of considerable conflict with leading advocates of the rectification line on party building, centered in the National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs and elsewhere. Having failed in an attempt lo shape the conference to advance their perspective, these forces tried to subvert the entire conference process.
The shifts of these forces in relation to the conference’s purposes and agenda expose their opportunism – their view of the conference as essentially a vehicle to pursue their circle warfare with the OCIC. During their initial contact with the conference planning committee they voiced a concern that the political level of the conference was going to be too low because of the inclusion of advanced workers. Yet after the planning committee rejected their proposal for formal presentation of their party building perspective, they made a 180 degree turn and proposed that party building not be discussed at all. Instead they called for a “third world anti-racist conference” whose objective would be the promotion of “joint anti-racist work”.
Failing in these objectives, the rectification advocates sought to undermine participation in the conference by raising questions about the integrity of the planning committee and ended up boycotting it themselves. In spite of these efforts those comrades who attended the conference came away with a deepened understanding of and commitment to party building. Since the conference, the overwhelming majority have become actively engaged in party building activity in their areas. In some cities it has been these comrades who have played the leading role in developing local centers.
Thus the planning committee judged the conference a success. At the same time this positive result should not blind OCIC members to the continued urgency of combatting white chauvinism within the ranks of our movement and moving forward in winning the workers’ movement to the struggle for equality and thus laying an enduring foundation for multinational unity.