Published: Guardian Clubs Newsletter, November 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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To all members of the Guardian Clubs
From Irwin Silber
Dear Comrades:
As all of you know by now, I have resigned from my position as executive editor of the Guardian. In addition, I have left all other posts with the Guardian which I held by virtue of being executive editor. I am also no longer a member of the Coordinating Committee (CC) or the Clubs Subcommittee, the body set up by the CC to be responsible for the direction of the Club network.
My decision to resign as executive director as announced to the Guardian staff on Monday, Oct. 9. I had been weighing this possibility ever since the staff adopted, by a very sizable majority, Jack Smith’s amendment to the “Trend” document and, by the same margin, rejected the amendment that I had proposed. When it was decided to proceed immediately with publishing the revised document, I concluded that it was necessary to resign from my position at once since it was the line on building a Guardian political organization (GPO) announced in the final section of that document which was the reason for taking this action. It was important for the members of the Clubs and for the movement as a whole to understand that the reason for my resignation was the adoption by the Guardian of what I consider to be a sectarian line on party building.
I also felt that it would be best for the Marxist-Leninist forces with the Guardian and outside – and for the left as a whole – if a frank, political explanation for my resignation were immediately made known. This would serve to dispel unfounded rumors and all of the gleeful gossip and sly speculation that always accompanies events of this kind. Further, it would offer the movement as a whole the opportunity to draw its own conclusions about the internal struggle within the Guardian – a struggle which, in my opinion, is internal in only a very narrow, formal sense, since the Guardian is a newspaper which (more than any other institution in the Marxist-Leninist movement) belongs to the movement as a whole. Not only the line it ultimately decides upon, but the essence of the struggle waged and the process developed in forging that line is, in that sense, the legitimate concern of all Marxist-Leninists.
Accordingly, I made my resignation and the reasons for it the subject of my regular “Fan the Flames” column and submitted it to be run in the same issue of the Guardian which contained the “Trend” document (issue of Oct. 18). An on-the-spot production decision was made not to carry the column that week pending a full discussion by the Coordinating Committee. I agreed to a week’s delay and submitted instead a “Ruling Class” column for that issue. When the CC met at the end of the week, it decided against carrying the column, a decision subsequently affirmed by a majority of the Guardian staff. Instead, a news item announcing my resignation and quoting some paragraphs from my column–along with comments by Jack Smith on behalf of the staff position–appeared in the Oct. 25 issue.
But before turning my attention to the substance of the political differences that have come to the fore, I want to say a few words on the significance of this discussion for the members of the Clubs.
First of all, these remarks are being addressed to you, the members of the Guardian Club network, for two reasons.
The final section of the “Trend” document lays the political foundation for what the future of Guardian Clubs will be. It is essential, therefore, that members of Guardian Clubs be made fully aware of the different views and the theoretical ground-work for them. Up until now, my only direct communication with the Clubs on this question came in the form of my introductory remarks to the amendment which I proposed to the Guardian staff. The purpose of that amendment was primarily to forestall a decision (and public announcement of that decision) by the Guardian staff on the future of Guardian Clubs until this question had been more thoroughly discussed and debated by the Clubs themselves as well as by the staff. As you know, that amendment was rejected.
It is obvious, therefore, that I have a responsibility to Club members to make my views known as thoroughly as I can–especially since the process of implementing this course of action is itself very much a political question.
But beyond your right to have these views before you, there is another consideration of M least equal importance. Guardian Clubs number in their ranks some of the best, most developed Marxist-Leninists in our movement, people who have demonstrated a hundred times over both in their theoretical contributions as well as their practical work, a deep seated commitment to party-building and to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. You are the people who stepped forward when the Guardian first announced the formation of Guardian Clubs. You understood and grasped the challenge posed by that move. You recognized that it was a daring and imaginative attempt–one may even say a novel attempt–to develop a new kind of organizational form appropriate to a period in which fundamental theoretical tasks of the communist movement remained uncompleted and that efforts to develop new forms that would contribute to the goal of uniting all Marxist-Leninists on the basis of a leading political line were to be welcomed.
It was no small thing for you to reject the “fusion” line on party-building with its inherent appeal to the backward state of our movement and to the way in which it reinforced our whole woeful legacy of anti-theoretical prejudice. There were many individuals and organizations who jeered at the Clubs and at your decision to join and build them. Even some of you had doubts about what was being proposed. But you also saw the great potential that the Clubs represented as a means for promoting a widespread movement for the rectification of the general line of the U.S. communist movement and as a means of training a body of Marxist-Leninist cadre who would be capable of tackling the theoretical, political and organizational tasks of reestablishing the party. You did not think that you were the only ones who would take up this work, but you saw the particular contribution this work could make, especially since it was linked to a national newspaper which was playing a leading role in the struggle against revisionism and dogmatism and because it would be part of a network, of like-minded comrades.
You also understood the necessity for conducting a sharp but always principled struggle with our comrades in the various “Trend” organizations who were still mired in all of the political and organizational consequences of the “fusion” line. We all shared the vision that all of us–in the Clubs, in the Guardian staff, in the “Trend” groups, in other independent Marxist-Leninist organizations, and many individual Marxist-Leninists active in the mass movement–were part of the same movement and that we had sufficient political unity with each other to conduct a struggle over our differences in a genuine party spirit of unity-struggle-unity.
So you in the Guardian Clubs who read this constitute one of the moat precious assets of the party-building movement– the human material which has emerged out of the spontaneous mass movements of the recent past, from the legacy of Marxism-Leninism which still lives in the U.S. from the two-line struggles with revisionism and dogmatism and are preparing to step forward to tackle the principal task of this period, the reestablishment of a vanguard working-class party. The only way in which you will become equipped to address this task is if you are trained as Marxist-Leninists. That training clearly doss not consist of study alone–although organized and conscientious study of Marxism-Leninism is part of the preparation that will enable you to become communists in practice as well as theory. Just as important as the study– perhaps more important–is your participation in the actual ideological struggle among communists as it unfolds. It is in this sense that the present internal struggle in the communist movement, against the incorrect political line of the CC and now the struggle around the Guardian staff position on the state of the party-building movement can be a classroom and training ground which, if I can paraphrase Lenin, will be more valuable than six months of study group sessions based on “What Is To Be Done?”
Now let us take up the principal questions posed by the recent events in the Guardian staff and Clubs.
The essential task for Marxist-Leninists in an ideological struggle is to identify the principal question at stake, if we fail to do that properly, we will pursue secondary questions and matters which, while possibly important in their own right, do not clarify the actual struggle that is taking place.
In the present case, the principal question is fairly obvious: Is the general line of the “State of the Party Building Movement” document as amended and finally adopted by the Guardian staff a correct one?
The question is not nor can it be, whether or not the idea broached by Melinda Paras and Max Elbaum of the Bay Area Club concerning “a leading center of individual Marxist-Leninists” is a good strategy for party building. It may be good or bad or in between, but it is irrelevant to the question of whether the general line of the Guardian staff document was correct or not.
A moment’s thought will demonstrate why we cannot judge the merits of a line primarily by the positions of some of those who may be in opposition to it – although an exploration of this aspect may, under certain conditions be useful. Take the struggle against Trotskyism, for instance. The revisionists are certainly opponents of Trotskyism along with the Marxist-Leninists. But we would obviously not judge Trotskyism to be correct because it is opposed by revisionism.
A second, closely related question, is the process by which the line of the document was develop, discussed, criticized, amended and finally adopted – particularly in regard to the relations between the Guardian staff and the Clubs. The reason for this should also be fairly evident. While the Guardian staff obviously will develop the general political line of the newspaper, it cannot arbitrarily and on its own develop the line for the future of the Guardian Clubs. This is not said in any moral sense of what is “right” or “wrong” but from the standpoint of historical materialism; that is, a “decision” regarding the future of the Guardian Clubs in which the Clubs themselves do not fully participate is likely to be removed from reality. Such a decision will be made with little knowledge or regard for the actual conditions in the Clubs or the consequences of the decision for the human material in the Club network. Indeed, we already have considerable evidence demonstrating that the Guardian staff “decision” is fatally flawed precisely by this failure to proceed in a genuinely dialectical materialist fashion.
In my opinion, this error is not an accident but is a reflection of the same political errors which inform the general line of the “Trend” document. So let us examine the document more closely.
The document may be correct in 90% of its particulars. I believe that its most elaborated section, the critique of the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center (OC), is essentially correct – although even in this section there are does creep in some hints of the basically sectarian line which the Guardian staff is now placing before the party-building movement.
But the 90% of the document which may be correct is merely a quantitative measure. In its final published form, the correct political critique of the OC has become a device by which the Guardian staff hopes to justify its decision to build its own national political organization. This organization would be the concrete expression of the Guardian “left” trend in what has now been designated the “4th tendency.” This organization would do many things – engage in local political activity, study, Guardian support work – but what is of special interest to everyone is what it will do in the party-building movement.
Before exploring this question, however, let us consider the matter of the Guardian “left” trend. And here we must note a fact that, I am afraid, is all-too-typical of the completely unscientific way in which the general line of the “Trend” document has been developed. The formulation of the Guardian as the “left trend” in the party-building movement – and the precise designation of the OC as a “right trend” – makes its first appearance in this discussion in Jack Smith’s amendment to the first draft of the “Trend” document. That amendment was submitted to the Guardian staff on Monday afternoon, Oct. 2. In the general staff discussion that evening, the question of whether or not this was an appropriate and correct way of summing up the state of affairs in the party-building movement was nor discussed by anyone but myself. Needless to say, the Clubs never discussed this point since it had never been put forward before. In other words, not only did the Guardian staff adopt this important formulation without any prior discussion, but the Clubs never had an opportunity to offer their comments on it.
As to the content of the question, there is no doubt that the OC is characterized by right opportunist errors–chiefly expressed in the “fusion” strategy for party-building and a tendency toward conciliation of revisionism. But everyone in the party-building movement knows that this “trend” is hardly the trend it thinks it is. At the same time, we should recognize that the OC is far from being consolidated either politically or organizationally, and that several influential groups would undoubtedly share much of the Guardian’s political critique of the line of the PWOC. One crucial weakness of the OC is that it is dominated by the leading line of the PWOC and most other groups are either too weak, underdeveloped or backward themselves to lead a struggle against it.
Objectively, it is an open question as to whether the OC really constitutes a “trend” or not. Surely a genuine trend would not have encountered all the difficulties of uniting around a political line or creating an organizational form that the OC has.
Be that as it may, what about the Guardian “trend”? In one sense, this is the more pressing question for us–since even if the OC does represent a trend, it does not necessarily follow that the Guardian does, Here we must note how simple life would be if “trends” could come into existence by pronouncement. And a genuine “left” trend at that! Unfortunately, no one outside the Guardian staff has yet been able to discover this trend in the real world. Still, we must take it seriously, not because the Guardian trend is real–clearly it is not–but because the Guardian staff decision to build an organization around itself is based on that thesis.
This is not a new question in the history of the communist movement. Lenin had occasion to deal with this question in 1911: “We can call a trend only a definite sum of political ideas which have become well-defined in regard to all the most important questions of both the revolution and the counterrevolution; ideas which, moreover, have proved their right to existence as a trend by being widely disseminated among broad strata of the working class As for small groups not representing any trend, there have been plenty during this period, just as there were plenty before. To confuse a trend with minor groups means condemning oneself to intrigue in Party politics. [Emphasis added–I.S.] The emergence of unprincipled tiny groups, their ephemeral existence, their efforts to have ’their say,’ ’their relations’ with each other as separate powers–all this is the basis of the intrigues taking place abroad; and from this there is not nor can there be any salvation, except that of strictly adhering to consistent principles tested by experience in the long history of the working-class movement.” (Vol. 17, pp. 271-272.)
I am not suggesting that the statement above is the last word on the question of ’trends.” Far from it. Clearly Lenin was writing in the context of a particular set of historical circumstances confronting the Russian party at that time. But there is this much that is applicable: a “trend” even in a preparty period, must demonstrate some internal theoretical coherence; further, it must prove its existence in the real world by the fact that its leading line–particularly its answers to the principal questions before the movement–have some currency.
Can we say that this is the case with the Guardian “trend”? On the principal question before Marxist-Leninists–a strategy for party-building–the Guardian staff has not put forward any kind of answer. (Up until recently I thought that we were developing a strategic conception which I articulated as promoting a widespread rectification movement among Marxist-Leninists, a movement that would not be bound or defined by existing organizational forms but would develop in a wide variety of forms. Guardian Clubs, in my view, were an excellent and appropriate organizational form–among others–for the development of such a movement. Such a movement is essential in order to prepare the conditions for the organizational task of re-establishing the party. This is a much larger question, however, sad one that should be explored at much greater length and in greater depth on its own merits. For the moment, we must confine ourselves to an evaluation of the Guardian “trend.”)
In a paper signed by five Guardian staff members (Donna Lamb, Jonathan Bennett, Dan Cloak, Lynora Williams and Malaika), it is said that “it is the Guardian’s responsibility not only to criticize the OC, but to point out what we believe to be the correct road in party-building and to lead the party-building forces actively, not just theoretically.”
Unfortunately, this is an empty statement. If these comrades–or the Guardian staff–already have a “correct road in party-building,” they have managed to keep it a secret from everyone else up until this point. As to leading “the party-building forces actively, not just theoretically,” it would be good if the Guardian staff displayed a little more theoretical leadership before rushing on to the task of “active” leadership. (Why do they think that theoretical work in a preparty period is not “active?” Look how “active” the present theoretical struggle within the Guardian Clubs network has become!)
Now it is not a bad thing to aspire to give leadership to the party-building forces –provided that leadership really is prepared to tackle the enormously difficult tasks of overcoming the present divisions among Marxist-Leninists. solving the principle uncompleted theoretical tasks before the movement, and developing an organizational form which will be constructed in such a way as to bring together the leading Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. whether they are members of the Guardian staff or not.
But to look at the matter this way is immediately to realize that what the Guardian is now proposing to do–or the even more ambitious visions that clearly underlie the proposed course of building a Guardian political organization now–will not solve these questions at all. In fact, to be absolutely blunt about it, what is involved is a conception that the Guardian staff as presently constituted is, in effect, a Central Committee (and its Coordinating Committee a Political Bureau) capable of putting the finishing touches on an already developed leading political line in order to provide a viable basis for establishing a national, democratic centralist preparty organization. Seriously to entertain such a notion is either to grossly underestimate what a leading political line is for a communist organization or to wildly overestimate the political level of the Guardian staff and leadership–or both.
Should Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. agree that the task of formulating the general line for the party and taking the leading role in bringing into being its organizational form at this stage will be best undertaken by the staff of the Guardian? There are dozens of capable Marxist-Leninists in other organizations–and many not in organizations–who should be involved in this process. And by the same token, mere membership on the Guardian staff is hardly qualification enough to be charged with the enormous responsibility of making those decisions which will “lead the party-building forces actively, not just theoretically.”
The Guardian staff–the ultimate decision making body in this whole process, is composed of individuals who work full time at the Guardian and are hired by the collective to perform certain specified tasks. Agreement with the general political line of the Guardian is a requisite, but every Marxist-Leninist knows that there is a world of difference between “agreeing” with a line and being capable of formulating it, developing it, executing it and making all the necessary summations of social practice required of the leading body of a political “trend.”
And yet, this is precisely the situation that would characterize the Guardian’s political organization. In other words, a group of people assembled more or less by historical accident, would constitute the decision-making body of the “left trend” of the party-building movement. The leadership they–and they alone–elect would be the actual operational leadership of the “trend.” Can anyone imagine a communist organization, one that will “lead the party-building forces actively, not just theoretically,” established on such a politically precarious basis?
Further, the political experience of the Guardian, valuable as it is, is still one-sided and will continue to be one-sided so long as our principal task is the publication of a weekly newspaper. The answer to this one-sidedness is not for Guardian staff people to acquire more practical experience – although this would be a good thing. It is in broadening our conception of where the leadership in the party-building movement will come from.
Here let me anticipate one response; namely, that none of what I have been describing has actually been proposed and that the Guardian staff is only planning to establish a “limited” political organization. It is also said, in the introduction to Jack’s amendment, that the proposal is not predicated on any particular strategy for party-building and that such matters as building a preparty formation are not on the present agenda–although it is likewise not ruled out as a possibility. Aside from the somewhat agnostic approach this indicates, it would seem that a scenario for party-building does indeed underlie the proposal, a scenario which would appear to be half prediction and half strategy. It is anticipated that “a number of political currents or trends will emerge to engage in struggle and unification” on the road to party-building. This may well happen, especially if every organization and grouping follows the example of the Guardian staff and designates itself a “trend.” The development of the Guardian political organization then becomes a step–however “limited” and “careful”– to stake out a claim on this process in anticipation of the time when the organizational strength of each of these “trends” will determine not only the correct leading line for the tendency as a whole, but–and here organizational questions indeed come to the fore–the allocation of positions and designation of personalities to the Central Committee of the party.
To say that the organization is “limited” is meaningless. All organizations are limited– by the level of their political unity, by their size and resources, by the objective conditions in which they work. More to the point, what will this organization be “limited’’ to? The Clubs in their new form are clearly to become all-sided political organizations, taking responsibility for guiding the political practice of their members, acting in a concerted fashion not only in mass movement but in the party-buildup movement.
All this might have some political legitimacy–and I emphasize “might” because there are other considerations that would have to be taken up–if the Guardian did indeed represent a “trend.” But the Guardian “trend”–and I do not care how many times the word “left” is put in front of it–is clearly not a trend at all. It is a political invention designed to promote organizational cohesion before the proper foundation has been laid. Loyalty to a particular political organization under these circumstances becomes primary over loyalty to the interests of the communist movement as a whole. Politically speaking, this inevitably leads either to a federationist approach to party-building (all unity, no struggle) or to power struggles between competing Marxist-Leninist organizations in which political differences are magnified in order to justify continued organizational exclusiveness (all struggle, no unity). We have correctly criticized the OC for the first error, which is essentially opportunist. We stand in danger of making the second error–also opportunist –ourselves.
To sum this section up, the question everyone must answer is this: Is the Guardian analysis of two trends in the party-building movement at this time correct? More to the point, is the postulation of a Guardian trend correct? And further, if one believes that there is indeed a Guardian trend, can it accurately be summed up as a “left” trend?
Clearly, my own position is that the analysis made by the Guardian on this point does not correspond to reality.
But if the underlying theoretical premise of the Guardian’s line on this question is in error, how can its implementation be sound? The view announced by the Guardian staff that the task before the Clubs and the paper is now the implementation of this line– because, presumably, the line itself is a “settled” question–is, therefore, a matter of serious concern for the whole movement. It was one thing for this line to be put forward in a somewhat general and abstract fashion as has been the case heretofore’ It is quite another for it to be projected now as a concrete task on the agenda of the Clubs and the Guardian.
Now it is true, as Jack and others have argued, that this view has been put forward previously on several occasions–although a careful examination of the quotation from the June 1977 party-building supplement cited by the five Guardian staff members in their paper would readily reveal that the “organization” Being talked about is the party itself. Nevertheless, it is obvious that a number of leading members of the Guardian staff have held this view for a long time.
But the new turn of events marked by the publication of the “Trend” document and the struggle that has broken out over it represents a qualitative change–namely the consolidation of this line within the Guardian staff as a theoretical proposition and an effort to reshape the Guardian Clubs to correspond to this view in practice.
A great deal of surprise–even “shock”–has been expressed by some Guardian staff members over what they regard as my sudden shift in position on this whole matter. The only thing surprising, however, is their “surprise,” since they are well aware of the fact that there has been a developing struggle within the Guardian CC and the Clubs Subcommittee for almost a year on questions that are clearly related to the overall conception of Guardian Clubs and party-building strategy in general. Barbara Miner notes in her paper to the Clubs that my views were put forward as long ago as last November in the article, “Guardian Clubs and Party-Building,” which was the first document sent to the Clubs for discussion after they were formed. (This document, incidentally, was sent out after being unanimously approved by the CC.) She and others also know of the struggles within the Guardian over the columns I wrote on “the nature of our theoretical tasks,” the preparations for the Study Guide, the question of guidelines for Clubs’ local political activity, the question of my role at the “Trend” conference in Detroit last February and the differing evaluation over the NY debate with Clay Newlin. These struggles over a considerable period of time had developed to the point where even people off the staff were becoming aware of them. It is ingenuous, therefore, to act as though Irwin has had a sudden change of heart in recent months. True, it was not possible to begin to summarize these differences in a more thorough fashion, until recently, but that is the way most political line struggles actually develop in practice within an organization.
Two events brought the struggle to a head. One was the discussions in July and August in the Clubs Subcommittee over the future of Guardian Clubs after the adoption of the first published document. The other was the criticism of the first published draft of the “Trend” document that began to come in from the Clubs at more or less the same time that I began to grasp the full significance of the changes that had been made in the original version of that document which I had written and submitted to the staff in early June. As originally written, the document was primarily a critique of the OC. In the course of staff discussion, the opening section (on the numbered “tendencies”), the closing section on the future of Guardian Clubs and some additional political criticisms of the OC were added.
It was obviously an error on my part not to have realised then the political significance of these changes. I continued to have my vision so much focused on the critique of the OC–which I had always regarded as the principal political purpose of the document –that I failed to recognize the fact that the document was undergoing a qualitative change in its actual political purpose. I am not accusing those who offered these changes of any act of deception. They spoke openly of their political purposes–albeit in a rather general way, It simply went by me and I will not offer any excuses for this political lapse on my part. The best I can do is try not to repeat this error, a task to which I have devoted myself quite vigorously in the course of the present struggle.
In any event, as the future of Guardian Clubs was being discussed in the Clubs Subcommittee and as fairly well-developed ideas began, to emerge on the basis of the “political decisions stated in the ’Trend’ document,” I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the line being developed. Meanwhile, a number of people in the Clubs who demonstrated a greater measure of political acuity than I had, were also calling attention to the very same sections of the “Trend” document that I was beginning to reconsider as well. So far as I am concerned, this latter fact underscores the importance of the political input from the Clubs and serves to highlight the error of having sent the document out to the OC at that time and then repeating (and compounding) that error by putting the revised document into print before we had the full benefit of Club criticism.
I have gone into the matter of the historical development of this struggle at some length because the question of “precedent” has loomed rather large in the debate–and also because some examination of the way in which this struggle unfolded is part of what must be studied if we are all to learn the immediate lessons from it.
In the long run, the fact that some phraseology concerning a “Guardian trend” has appeared in print for almost a year and a half adds nothing to its political validity except age. If anything, the fact that this “trend” still remains so elusive in real life after having been publicly proclaimed in June 1977 would suggest even more strongly that the original announcement was somewhat premature.
Now let us look at the proposal to establish a Guardian political organization more closely. Here we must note a strange contradiction. On the one hand, it is argued that there is nothing qualitatively new in the decision “to build, expand and consolidate the Guardian trend on the basis of the political line summed up by the Guardian and as a means of giving that line an organized political expression, principally through the growth of Guardian Clubs” (next-to-last paragraph of “Trend” document). On the other hand, it is generally acknowledged that the decision is in fact “a momentous one,” at least in the realm of “implementation.” This is a strange dichotomy, a form of homage to ideological consistency in the abstract, as though the actual social practice of the first year of Guardian Clubs is secondary to a fidelity to an original and obviously vague conception. And yet this mechanical duality is argued by those who are critical of others who, it is charged, are guilty of “leaning almost entirely toward theory without reference to political practice.” Jack Smith, for instance, is critical of the “leading center” concept which, in his opinion, “makes it a point of principle to ignore practical and organizational work so as not to disturb its deliberations.”
We would agree that those who conduct themselves in this way are surely not practicing Marxism-Leninism. But isn’t this an all-too-accurate description of a view which separates theory from practice to the extent that it puts the establishment of a “principle” on one level and its “implementation” on another? Which feels it is enough to “reaffirm” a theoretical principle a year-and-a-half after it has been put forward without making a concrete examination of the actual political practice that has transpired in the interval?
Well, what will this Guardian political organization do and look like? It is argued that this cannot be answered precisely yet since the discussion on “implementation” has just begun. But how can serious political people determine whether or not the thesis is a correct one without an actual plan as well as an evaluation of the forces who will make it up? Further, as materialists, how can we really determine if the thesis is correct until we have a better idea of what it might look like in practice?
Now this is not an insurmountable difficulty internally in an organization. It is acceptable practice to put forward a political hypothesis and proceed to develop a plan for its implementation in, the course of which it may become apparent that the original concept was incorrect. This is a form of the living, dialectic between theory and practice. But the Guardian staff has proceeded in a somewhat different way. It has publicly announced and–just in case people had forgotten–reaffirmed a principle before it has developed a serious plan of implementation and even before it has convinced the very cadre who must undertake this task of its correctness. In other words, the Guardian has committed itself publicly to a certain course of action, before it has ascertained whether or not it can carry it out. This was bad enough when the staff might be excused for net having realized that there would be significant struggle against the idea within its own organization. But once this struggle broke out, once it became clear that there was strong opposition within the Clubs, that the struggle might well result in the resignation of its executive editor, that the very future of the Clubs might well be imperiled by this turn of events, it was inexcusable to have continued on the same path–especially since all these events cast doubt on the ability of the Guardian to carry out the very course of action being discussed. To have proceeded in stubborn fashion at that point, as the Guardian staff did, evidences a reckless disregard for reality that does not bode well for the future of any political organization the Guardian staff hopes to establish.
(And, as both the Boston and Bay area Clubs have pointed out, to rush this document into print just before the 30th anniversary events further compounded this error on an immediate practical level.)
Unfortunately, there is other evidence to tell us what a future Guardian political organization might look like. In the name of centralism, it is likely to be commandist. There has been a marked tendency in this regard during the first year throughout the network, evidenced most sharply in the New York Club where Guardian staff members often attempted to “impose” decisions on the Club instead of conducting political struggles to win comrades to their positions. This criticism has been brought before the Guardian Clubs Subcommittee. It has never been seriously discussed or acted upon and has definitely been a source of demoralization in the New York Club.
The failure of the Guardian staff to accept the eminently just criticism from the Clubs over the simultaneous distribution of the “Trend” document to the OC and the Clubs is another indication of a commandist approach, now in effect escalated to the point of a principle by the decision to publish the revised document containing many significantly new ideas never aired before without any time for the Clubs to register their views.
Another troubling sign: within the Guardian staff there have been expressions of great anguish over the “anarchistic spirit” which some people feel now prevails in the Guardian Clubs network. Leading people are critical of the Clubs for having distributed their various criticisms throughout the network instead of having them channeled through the center. The Guardian staff has gone on record as saying that I do not have the “right” to put my views before the Clubs on the present questions; that this is a “privilege” which has been granted me under the present circumstances.
But a “privilege” can be withdrawn at any time and makes my ability to engage in the political discussions within the network subject to decision by the Guardian CC that my contribution is “appropriate.” And what of the “right” of the Clubs to receive the views of people with some measure of experience in the Marxist-Leninist movement? Or do they have this “right” only when such a person is not on the Guardian staff? Again, in this case we are not even speaking of views being put forward publicly, but only before the Clubs. Is this the way we are going to train cadre to become Marxist-Leninists? Is this the way in which the ideological struggle should unfold in the preparty period? What does this methodology tell us of the way in which the Guardian’s own political organization will function in the party-building movement as a whole?
Nor is that all. In the introduction to his amendment, Jack says that one purpose of the new organization will, be to “sharpen the struggle organizationally as well as theoretically against right opportunism in our movement.” Who could quarrel with such a seemingly worthy objective? But what does it mean? In the theoretical struggle, Marxist-Leninists seek to defeat an incorrect line by drawing out its full implications and showing what its practical consequences would be in terms of both immediate and long-term questions of our revolution. The assumption is that if all participants in the struggle are starting from acceptance of Marxism-Leninism, this struggle can lead to higher and higher levels of unity as a means of building the party. But what does one hope to achieve in the organizational struggle? Is the Guardian now announcing a plan for defeating its rival organizations? Does it intend now not just to attack the incorrect line of PWOC or other such groups, but to attack these organizations as well? Hasn’t the Guardian already complained that some of the criticisms put forward by the PWOC are verging on the organizational – and that such attacks inevitably lead to splits? Such a position may be permissible when different “trends” are so consolidated that one must vanquish the other m order for Marxist-Leninists to unite. Is this an accurate assessment of the current state of affairs in our movement? Is it not prescription for sectarianism and factionalism?
Jack say that the new organization, “would sharpen the ideological debate by demonstrating our ability to concretely win a number of Marxist-Leninists to our line in the form of an organizational commitment.” And so the marshalling of the troops has begun. Is this not a declaration on the part of the Guardian that its organizational form is the only legitimate expression of Marxism-Leninism in the party-building movement? There may come a tune when one organizational form does exclusively represent Marxism-Leninism among the conscious revolutionary forces–but is that time now and has the Guardian established that it can lead that organisational form?
Perhaps, though, we should accept (and remember) this criterion for judging the political line now advanced by the Guardian staff on this question. For if the Guardian political organization fails to win a number of Marxist-Leninists to its line, if in fact it loses many of those it already has, perhaps we will then have the ultimate practical test of the correctness of this line. But it would be tragic to wait for that likely situation to come to pass since this failure cannot help but hurt the ability of the Guardian to maintain itself as the leading Marxist-Leninist newspaper in the country.
In Jack’s remarks preceding his amendment we can already see the consequences of the decision to build the Guardian political organization. Dissenters are already being invited to leave the organization. “There are probably many Club people who oppose the idea of building an organization around our trend for one of several reasons.” Jack writes. “These good comrades may well decide to transfer their work to other areas.” Never mind that these “good comrades” include some of the best Marxist-Leninists in our ranks and at this point include virtually the entire Bay Area Club which has certainly been a vanguard club in terms of Guardian news-gathering, circulation, public events, political activity and general concern with the future of the party-building movement.
Jack is “sure other comrades not yet in the Club network may be attracted to such a political organization.” What his certainty is based on is hard to imagine.
Finally, the Guardian staff has offered us one more indication of the role its new political organization will play in the party-building movement. This is in the form of a significant omission from the revised “trend” document. No longer in the document is the following sentence which comprised the second half of the next-to-last paragraph in the first published draft:
In the next period it will be essential for the Guardian, and the Clubs to develop a more concrete conception of a party-building strategy, one that aims at contributing to uniting the most advanced Marxist-Leninists–both in the Clubs and other organizations on the basis of a leading political line and an accumulation of revolutionary experience into the highest expression of Marxism-Leninism, a genuine working-class vanguard party.
What happened to that sentence? Why was it dropped? This was no oversight since the first part of that paragraph remains intact. One point worth noting in trying to understand this omission is that the excised sentence speaks of making a contribution “to uniting the most advanced Marxist-Leninists–both in the Clubs and other organizations–on the basis of a leading political line,” etc. In other words, it asserts that there will be leading Marxist-Leninists outside the Guardian’s own political organization; that the Clubs are not the instrument for uniting Marxist-Leninists but should make a “contribution” to that purpose; and that, therefore, “a leading political line” will emerge not necessarily from the efforts of one organization but through the joint efforts of leading Marxist-Leninists. In the original, the omitted sentence was a signal to the party-building movement that the Guardian was not seeking a hegemonistic role and understood the necessity of subordinating the part (the Guardian organization) to the whole (the party-building movement). Its excision, therefore, sends up an alarming signal to the contrary.
For all these reasons–and others–even though the discussions on “implementation” have just begun, there is abundant evidence to indicate some of the essential features of the proposed Guardian political organisation and why I have concluded that it is bound to play a sectarian divisive role in the party-building movement.
There are many questions that have come up in the course of this struggle that are worthy of further discussions and exploration. These include the completely uncalled-for characterization of the point made by Max and Melinda on “a leading center of individual Marxist-Leninists,” a significant retreat from the thesis on the primacy of theoretical tasks for the party-building movement in the present period and what I can only describe as an organizational fetishism which is sound neither politically nor organizationally. The suggestion that Irwin does not believe in organization would be absurd if it were not advanced with such grim certitude–but it remains an absurdity, But none of this is really relevant to the principal question before us at the moment, so I will save my remarks on those matters for more appropriate occasions and documents.
Concerning the future of Guardian Clubs, I have advanced a number of serious ideas before the Guardian Clubs Subcommittee– but these are all predicated on a view of the Clubs which does not see them as the expression of a Guardian trend.
Rather, I see Guardian Clubs as an organizational form especially well-suited to the present period and able to perform the closely connected functions of moving the party-building movement forward and providing a significant material base for the Guardian itself.
The biggest problem of the Clubs during the first year was in the lack of firm leadership from the national center. But it is now clear that the reason for this was a lack of unity within the leadership on the purpose, function, role and direction of the Clubs. Given the differences which, it is now evident, existed over a considerable period of time, how was it possible for the Guardian to give the kind of leadership required? This is a good example of how, in communist work, theory must guide practice and how when the theory has not been grasped or is weak, the practice in turn is weak and confused.
Unless the Clubs proceed on the basis of a unified purpose, one in which all those involved have more than nominal agreement but deep and enthusiastic conviction, the national center will not be able to give the kind of leadership required.
In my view, Guardian Clubs should be seen as key elements in a far-reaching movement for the rectification of the general line of the communist movement in the U.S. They should be concerned with the theoretical training of their members, developing Marxist-Leninist study groups outside their ranks, engaging in research and study projects around outstanding theoretical questions before the movement, organizing public debates and forums on important political questions of the day as well as the key party questions, writing and circulating positions on different questions before the movement principally within the Clubs network, and developing a program for deepening (and popularizing) the critiques of revisionism and dogmatism. Clubs should develop fraternal ties with other Marxist-Leninist organizations, including local OC groups.
The Clubs’ Guardian work should be enhanced–with main emphasis on bureau work, circulation and fund-raising. More can be done by way of coordinated national efforts–speaking tours for liberation movement figures as well as Guardian staff members as well as cultural tours that can advance the movement’s general ideological level and contribute to fund-raising.
The Clubs should be encouraged–and given the leeway–to play a more active role in the life of the left in each community, joining coalitions, initiating proposals for political activity, etc.–provided these are consistent with the Guardian’s general political line and help to carry out activities which the Guardian itself supports.
A significantly greater measure of democracy and local autonomy should be instituted within the Clubs network. The Guardian staff must, of course, maintain complete control over the line and production of the paper. But insofar as Club work is concerned, the Clubs should have greater autonomy in recruitment, election of local officers, political decision-making in general. The restrictions on the size of Guardian Clubs should be dropped and a plan for developing new Clubs in other cities should be put into effect.
However, this is a much larger subject than can be encompassed here. I have had the opportunity of reading Melinda’s paper on the Clubs and I think she has come up with an excellent vision of what the Clubs could be like and what they would do. None of this can happen, however, unless there is unity of purpose between the Guardian leadership and the Clubs themselves and unless the Guardian leadership takes strong steps to correct many of its own weaknesses which became evident during the first year of operation of the Clubs.
So far as the present struggle is concerned, we should see it in both of its aspects. It is both a bad thing and a good thing.
The bad thing is that the staff of a leading organ of the Marxist-Leninist movement has consolidated a sectarian line on party-building and is moving toward organizational steps which would set back the movement as a whole.
The bad thing is that the actions of the Guardian staff tend to discredit the struggle against right opportunism and the fusion line.
The bad thing is that the Guardian staff actions will reinforce the tendency toward mechanical materialism in our movement since we can expect that the “fusionists” will ascribe the Guardian’s errors to its lack of connections with the working-class movement rather than as errors which Marxist-Leninists are not doomed to repeat.
The bad thing is that the stand of the Guardian will weaken the paper’s important role as a unitary force in the Marxist-Leninist movement and will compromise its ability to give leadership to the movement as a whole.
The bad thing is that the Guardian staff is on a course that will objectively weaken the Guardian Clubs network and may even result in destroying the network altogether.
The bad thing is that the Guardian, whose base of support should come from the M-L forces as a whole, will be weakened as it increasingly sees itself as the partisan voice and head of a distinct trend–in rivalry with other trends–in the party-building movement this rivalry will force the Guardian to magnify the political differences that already exist and will also promise factional responses from others.
The bad thing is that the members of the Guardian staff will shortly become isolated from the party-building movement and are likely to retreat into a “fortress mentality” that will view the rest of the Marxist-Leninist movement as hostile.
What are the good things about this turn of events?
The good thing is that the present struggle provides an excellent test for all the developing Marxist-Leninist forces–both within the Guardian and outside; it offers an opportunity to make a concrete analysis of a concrete struggle where there exists a common pool of knowledge, a common set of political assumptions, a common language and a recognition that the struggle is of great practical consequence.
The good thing is that the unfolding of this struggle will help to identify those who are practicing Marxism-Leninism; new people will step forward (some of them already have) and play unexpected and advanced roles; other will waver and fall by the wayside: everyone in the movement, in the Guardian staff, in the Clubs in the OC independent forces will have an opportunity to be publicly tested by the stands they take and the analysis they make.
The good thing is that Marxist-Leninists will acquire enormously valuable experience in judging the content of different political lines and will have an opportunity to see not only who uses political rhetoric, but who actually practices Marxism-Leninism.
The good thing is that while the form of the struggle would seem to be over such questions as organization and the status of particular individuals, it is actually a significant struggle on the theoretical battlefront and will greatly advance the movement in its task of resolving some of the principal theoretical questions before the party-building forces.
The good thing is that a struggle of this kind can, under certain circumstances, play the role of a catalyst and impose on the Marxist-Leninist movement as a whole a theoretical and practical leap for which it may not have been aware that it was prepared.
However, it would be incorrect to see that the “good” aspect of this struggle as yet has come to outweigh and negate the “bad.” To conclude that would be an expression of subjective idealism. This struggle will not be a good thing automatically. The negative aspects of the Guardian staff decision still dominate the situation. But Marxist-Leninists within the Clubs particularly have the capacity and are well-situated to turn this bad thing into a good thing. There are many signs to suggest that this is already happening.