First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 4, No. 7, July 1978.
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.
Four hundred people attended a debate on the main tasks in party-building between Irwin Silber, Guardian Executive Editor, and Clay Newlin representing the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee. The June 23rd debate was sponsored by the New York Guardian Club and continued the exchange of views between the two organizations.
The speakers expressed general unity on a number of points. Both agreed that the central task facing revolutionaries was the resuscitation of a viable vanguard party for the US working class. They agreed that previous party-building efforts, particularly the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist, (formerly the Revolutionary Union and the October League) had been run aground by dogmatism with little chance of sailing again. Both stated their identification with the emerging anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist trend.
In the context of this agreement the speakers developed their differences. First, they differed over the essence of party-building. Newlin argued that party-building was essentially a question of joining revolutionary theory with the advanced elements of the working class and oppressed nationalities.
This process divides into two inter-related tasks which must be pursued simultaneously: 1) the independent elaboration of Marxism-Leninism for the US and 2) winning over the advanced workers. The fusion of these two would be accomplished primarily by theoretical struggle and thus communists should concentrate their energies on the theoretical struggle at this time. Just as the down-playing of theory leads to economism, Newlin asserted, the denigration of the role of the advanced workers in party-building bows to the spontaneity of the revolutionary intellectuals and inevitably produces voluntarism.
Silber argued that the struggle for political line was the essence of party-building. Pointing out that only political line can provide the foundation for communist unification, Silber advocated that revolutionaries should focus their energies on the development of a general line for the communist movement, and then proceed to unite Marxist-Leninists and form the party.
Maintaining that only a party could fuse communism with the working class movement, Silber said that to argue for fusion in the party-building period inevitably leads to reducing communist tasks to “practical integration in workers struggles,” and, thus, economism.
A second point of disagreement was over the relationship between theory and practice in the party-building period. Comparing the party-building process to the “open period” immediately prior to a party congress, Silber argued that theory is primary. He asserted that our main task was to resolve questions of line and formulate policy and thus theoretical work must be given precedence over practice.
Newlin maintained that theory could no more be primary in relationship to practice in party-building than it could in any strategic period of communist activity. Practice, he asserted, must remain primary for two reasons: 1) the practice: of fusing communism to the class struggle in the US defines both the questions theory must address and the order in which they should be taken up, and 2)practice still provides the sole verification for revolutionary theory.
The question of the main opportunist danger facing the communist movement was a third point of disagreement, but the differences were only indicated. Silber asserted that the right danger had come to the forefront in the party-building movement, manifested particularly in the “fusion strategy”. Newlin said that “left” opportunism was still the main threat, as exhibited in the continued influence of the ultra-left party-building line espoused by the Guardian and others. (Implied were different conceptions of the communist movement; Silber seemed to feel that the ultra-left forces stood outside the communist movement, whereas Newlin indicated a broader view.)
Those attending the debate were generally disappointed by it. Most said that they felt both Newlin and Silber focused too much of their initial presentations on reviewing their general positions, instead of developing the differences between them as well as the concrete implications of those differences. It was only during the brief 15 minute rebuttals that the clash of views really began to emerge.
In addition, the question and answer period did not really serve to advance either side of the argument. Only a few questions focused on party-building and these were interspersed between queries on trade union line, relationship between racism and sexism, etc. The session was also successfully disrupted numerous times by a string of long-winded outbursts delivered by members of Spartacus League, a Trotskyist organization.
Hopefully, the Silber-Newlin debates will continue since the first round did not really serve to take the exchange beyond what had already developed in written polemics.