First Published: Guardian April 4, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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First of two articles
The correct summation of political experience is a cornerstone of the theoretical development of Marxism-Leninism in general and the indispensable tool for solving the outstanding theoretical and practical questions facing U.S. communists today.
Particular summaries and precise formulations not only reveal the true political character of communist experience; they also reveal the general political outlook of those who make the assessments.
The failure of the party-building movement to date to arrive at a unified political summary of the “new communist movement” period thus remains a roadblock to the struggle for unity on a common party-building perspective. For out of differing assessments on the errors of the new communist movement flow different concepts of the key conditions and criteria for solving our own party-building tasks. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that out of the different conceptions of the party-building tasks of communists in the present period flow differing summations of the experiences of the past–and that the latter is used to justify the former.
For some years now, the party-building movement has been referring to itself as the “antirevisionist, antidogmatist” trend. This formulation has become popularized and accepted more because of the felt need to draw firm lines of demarcation with the principal deviations from Marxism-Leninism than from a thorough-going and all-sided summary of previous history. In general, therefore, this has been a more or less acceptable formulation.
Until recently, during the period when it became urgent for Marxist-Leninists who had already drawn a firm line of demarcation with revisionism to draw yet another such line from those who had adopted the reactionary class-collaborationist line offered as an alternative by the Communist Party of China (CPC), the precise formulation was less important than the fact of the break itself.
The debate around Angola in 1975 and Wife where the practical consequence of the CPC line was drawn out in a way that was not fully possible before created a political urgency in our movement with a tempo of its own. The ensuing struggle over international line flowing from the issue of Angola transformed the movement. It was no longer a matter of conducting a debate “within our ranks” over different approaches to party-building, conflicting views on various unsettled questions, criticisms of ultra-“leftism” in relation to reform struggles and soon.
Angola–and all the political, theoretical and organizational consequences flowing from the stand taken on China’s general line–of necessity split the antirevisionist movement. No longer could one debate the correct approach to party-building with the October League (OL) from the point of view of trying to arrive at the best way of uniting Marxist-Leninists in a common party-building strategy. No longer could one criticize the Revolutionary Union (RU) for their sectarianism from the point of view of trying to correct the errors of a communist organization. For what good is it to improve the style of work of an organization or assist it to increase its influence either in the Marxist-Leninist movement or among the masses if it has a class-collaborationist political line?
There still remain a few die-hards in our movement who struggle against drawing this more recent line of demarcation–although one would think that the recent qualitative deepening of the class-collaborationist content of China’s international line, culminating in the invasion of Vietnam, should have settled the question even for these political malingerers. Perhaps it will even settle the matter for those undaunted reconciliationists in our ranks who are fearful of recognizing a decisive political break in words even after it has taken place in life.
In any event, the break with the class-collaborationist line was, at the moment, more important than the precise formulation used to describe it. And summing up the incorrect position as “dogmatism” had the merit of identifying at least part of the problem–particularly the prevalence of lackeyism to the CPC in our movement.
But as a concentrated political expression of the principal deviation which came to characterize the new communist movement, dogmatism is clearly inadequate. Nor is it completely accurate.
That there was dogmatism aplenty in the new communist movement can hardly be argued. But if there were periods in which various groups went to the working-class movement with a rigid ideological stance that did not take into account particularities and periods, there were other periods in which the very same groups swung wildly over in the opposite direction, liquidating any pretense at a communist stance in a mad scramble to gain some momentary influence in the reform struggles of the working class.
Likewise, one can hardly deny that a tendency toward quotation-mongering became one of the more unsavory features of the ideological struggle among Marxist-Leninists, usually accompanied by that stale style of ideological bureaucratese which inevitably signifies a paucity of thought. But to say that and nothing more is insufficient. The charge of dogmatism suggests the tired application of established theoretical formulas without regard to concrete circumstance.
The political errors of leading forces in the new communist movement, however, were hardly confined to the realm of glorifying rote. In fact, the RU’s major theoretical position on the Black National Question (Red Papers 5) was characterized by “creative” and noteworthy departures from established Marxist-Leninist theoretical principles. The originality of the thesis of “a nation of a new type” did not protect the RU from error, but its essence cannot fairly be characterized as dogmatic.
In fact, describing the Marxist-Leninist forces today as an “antirevisionist, antidogmatist” trend serves to conceal the actual lines of political demarcation that have taken place. To be antirevisionist, after all, is to stand in opposition t > a fundamental ideological and political break with Marxism-Leninism. Revisionism is an all-sided deviation from Marxism-Leninism which comes to the fore in its political expression with the subversion of the general line of the world communist movement. Its theoretical cornerstones are the thesis of peaceful transition to socialism and the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The line of demarcation with revisionism is then, in the first place, a break with a class-collaborationist, class-conciliationist political line and its ideological and philosophical counterparts: subordination of the vanguard role of communists, liquidation of the subjective factor historically and mechanical materialism.
The political content of being antirevisionist, then, is clear enough. But what is the political content of being antidogmatist?
Dogmatism is certainly an ideological deviation from Marxism-Leninism, but when we identify the line of demarcation in this fashion we have not yet gotten at the political essence of the actual break in the communist movement as it occurred in real life. We have only identified an ideological and methodological error made by the new communist movement-–and not the only one by a long shot–but we have not, with this formulation, focused on that principal political and theoretical deviation which requires a line of demarcation every bit as compelling as the line of demarcation with revisionism.
Was the split in the new communist movement over different views on party-building, differences on the character of reform struggles in the present period, debates on the relative emphases to be placed on theory and practice in the preparty period? Much though some people would like to argue that this was what it was all about, the fact is that none of these differences forced a demarcation. Among the dogmatists, there were those who held to a “fusion” strategy of party-building (examine the party-building lines of leading groups in the new communist movement and you will discover a few surprises on this score) and those who held to a greater emphasis on questions of theory and political line. These same differences prevailed among the “antidogmatists.”
The actual split in the new communist movement came over the political content of the international line put forward by the CPC which reached a watershed with Angola, was further amplified with the three worlds theory, went through a qualitative deepening with Deng Xiaoping’s (Teng Hsiao-ping’s) explicit promotion of a U.S.-China alliance against the Soviet Union and has found its most vivid expression recently with the invasion of Vietnam. Lines of demarcation were drawn between those who upheld this line (or its principal theoretical underpinnings and political manifestations) and those who opposed it. Did not the defining question ultimately become the identification of U.S. imperialism as the main enemy of the world’s peoples?
The problem with China’s international line is not dogmatism. It is class-collaborationism. And it is a particular form of class-collaborationism, one which explicitly and openly (as differentiated from modern revisionism) promotes counterrevolution.
The problem with the U.S. groups who adopted China’s line as their own was only partially a problem of dogmatism–and a secondary part at that. The dogmatism took the form of fiunkeyism, of blindly adopting as one’s own the latest pronouncement out of Beijing (Peking) and following every twist and turn in both the line and the leadership changes in China without so much as blinking an eyelash. None of this is excusable, but the problem would not have been nearly so serious–nor would it necessarily have led to the actual split that occurred at the time it did–if it were not for the fact that the line which was being so faithfully adhered to and promoted was a reactionary, counterrevolutionary line.
Making dogmatism our concentrated characterization of the principal error of the new communist movement is, for all these reasons, inaccurate and one-sided. Nor is it any more precise or useful to sum that error up, as some have done, as “left-sectarianism.” Such a formulation suffers from the same difficulty of focusing on methodology with the obvious implication that it wasn’t the line that was at fault, but its implementation. Such a view is hardly the basis for drawing a line of demarcation, and it is no accident that those who hold to it likewise argue that drawing lines of demarcation among “antirevisionist” forces is premature.
Such is the view of the Proletarian Unity League (PUL) which argues that “the present strategic period in the U.S. communist movement [is] the ’left-sectarian’ period,” and that the immediate task of the movement is “the defeat of ’left’ sectarianism.” At the same time, the PUL hides its own position on the burning question of China’s international line although there is a growing body of evidence to indicate that it does not have any fundamental disagreement with it.
If neither “dogmatism” nor “left sectarianism” are adequate characterizations of the principal error of the new communist movement, what is the correct characterization?
That will be the subject of next week’s column.