National Committee Plenum document
This pre-plenum document is based on four separate talks presented by Comrade Sam Marcy between April 7, 1993, and May 15, 1993. With the exception of the talk on April 9 to the New York branch, the other three presentations were made to the Administrative Committee of the NC Staff. Although this document includes some material that was sent out as the “very rough transcript” of the April 9 talk, we encourage all NC comrades to read and study this entire document in preparation for the June Plenum.
If there is one thread that runs through the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, it is the unity of thought and action. Theory and practice. I think it was best expressed by Lenin when he said that there can be no revolutionary action without revolutionary theory. This is the crux of our discussion.
We have done great things in the period of our existence. As the leading force in the progressive U.S. left, certainly in the revolutionary left, we are recognized to some extent as a world force – by Cuba, the DPRK, and by others in the working class movement. We have made great strides from the days when we were just a handful of people meeting at 21st Street. We now have a wonderful new headquarters made possible by the tremendous work and sacrifice of many comrades.
But today we face a great crisis. It is a crisis not made by us, but one that threatens our existence as well as that of the world movement of revolutionaries, of class conscious workers, and of national liberation movements. The collapse of the USSR has politically offset the progressive ramifications that stem from the deep capitalist recession and has long-term consequences that will be additionally negative if there is not a response to it in some way. Our Party faces very grave and very serious decisions.
In the 70 years since the October Revolution of 1917, the USSR was considered a fortress that could aid the national liberation movements and the working class everywhere. It held the bourgeoisie in tow. The bourgeoisie was never able to raise its head in such a threatening way as it does today precisely because of the absence of the USSR.
The collapse of the USSR has its own momentum which takes all other groups by the neck and pulls the along even against their will. It is an objective development that we have tried to cover in literary and propaganda terms over a number of years.
But our literary efforts alone are inadequate to overcome the objective effects of the collapse. If we are remiss in taking cognizance of this avalanche of reaction, we might be driven along the same road without being conscious of it. The road of accommodating to trends – especially ideological trends in imperialist society – is always paved with the best of intentions. Developing resistance to such accommodation is most difficult.
As a revolutionary party of the working class we have to base our tactics and strategy on reality in order to take the offensive. Otherwise we will be washed along with the tide without having fully realized the problem.
We must recognize the new reality and adjust our political and theoretical perspective. There have been many setbacks to the working class movement in world history. The working class is not a new class. It’s been in existence for several centuries but has always been the exploited class. It’s always been the oppressed class along with the colonial masses.
The question is whether the working class can rise above its oppression and exploitation and become the ruling class on behalf of all the oppressed. This task seems to be dim at the moment. It is only our recognition of the difficulties that will give us the impetus to take on the tasks that are necessary.
When the collapse took place, there were hardly any demonstrations or significant protests in the working class camp. We were the only ones in the U.S. that had even a small protest. I can still remember Comrade Rebeca [Toledo] shouting “Down with the counterrevolution” outside the Soviet mission. The demonstration may have been small, but they will be remembered in history.
Why the collapse? Why did it take place? We gave the best literary analysis as events unfolded. This is inadequate, however, for the historic task of a revolutionary working class party. Why did the Soviet Communist Party capitulate in such a demoralized and shameless way, to the great satisfaction, to the malicious delight, of the bourgeoisie?
There is a highly significant difference between the setback in the USSR with other defeats that have befallen workers’ revolutions or many national liberation uprisings – where there is a fight to the end in an armed struggle. The classical example is in the West. But the examples are not necessarily in the West alone. There are probably many examples in the national liberation movements in the Third World countries. But the most important one is the Paris Commune of 1871.
The bourgeoisie challenged the workers and the masses took up the gauntlet. They fought an historic battle which cost the workers 70,000 lives in a city of barely 2 million. The workers lost the struggle for power. But it was the first time in history that the working class took power – the first time in history that workers said “we are taking power in the name of the workers and for the workers.”
A workers’ state was established and it aroused the anger of the bourgeoisie not only in France but everywhere. The essential points, though, are that the workers took up arms, established the first workers’ state in history, and fought arms-in-hand against the world bourgeoisie. While they lost the struggle, it was not followed by a humiliating defeat that demoralized the working class for years and years to come.
The great lesson of the Paris Commune is not only that it established the first workers’ state, but that the battle was fought in a way that laid the basis for further victories. It was not a demoralizing defeat that left workers disgusted with socialism, with the idea of a Commune, or the idea of a workers’ government.
This is what distinguishes the defeat of the Commune from what has taken place in the Soviet Union. The counter-revolution in the former Soviet Union seized power and not a single shot was fired to defend the workers’ state. That is an important difference. It was a capitulation from beginning to end. As such, it demoralized the whole working class camp. It scared workers to death and for no good reason. They all had arms in their hands or they could have gotten them very easily. But the arms were never used. This is a difference of world-historic significance.
Instead, there was a process of accommodation with the counterrevolutionary situation. There was no struggle. Inside of a few weeks, communist party after communist party shuddered and changed their names as though they would not be recognized. This happened all over. Where the name didn’t change, they went along with the essence of the retreat.
It is not the first time that a workers’ movement was led by leaders who were trained in accommodation and compromise, who did not recognize the existence of a momentous challenge that demanded a response. And who, having been unprepared for the situation, consequently lost the struggle.
In Germany in 1933, the Nazis took power and destroyed all the workers’ organizations. At that time, the communists had arms in hand as did the social democrats. The bourgeois liberals had arms in hand. These sectors were all threatened by the Nazis who had the backing of the bankers and industrialists throughout the world to crush what was regarded as an inevitable attempt by the German workers to take over in 1933.
As a result of Stalin’s policy and its acceptance by the German CP, when the moment came to recognize that Hitler would strike, the proletariat was paralyzed and did not take up arms to respond to the Nazis. The movement of workers – communists and socialists and progressives – was crushed even though they had arms.
I could give more examples, but aside from the fact that they are gloomy, it is enough for educational purposes to mention those we did.
The purpose of this discussion – of taking this issue up anew – is that the significance of the collapse of the USSR is not over. It is rolling on. The return of bourgeois ideology – rather, it’s strengthening in the workers’ movement – is strong. It is formidable. It has to be resisted with all the might that we can gather.
It’s not like resisting the police at a demonstration. We can do that easier. Resisting an ideological onslaught that is carried out universally by the capitalist press, by the bourgeois liberals and by the present day communists, such as they are, is another matter.
We have to rise to the occasion and resistant an ideological influx which threatens the fiber of progressive, revolutionary response to capitalist oppression, to imperialist exploitation and to the domination of the globe by U.S. imperialism. In short, an ideological penetration of the movement that can undo capitalism. This is the fundamental lesson that we draw from our analysis. This is what confronts us.
From a practical standpoint, we must consider whether to continue to proceed in our practical work from day to day like we are doing now. And we are doing good. Just look at some of the places where the Party is working – all over, in the localities. While we have had setbacks in some areas, the Party is doing far better than any other tendency. While the situation is difficult, we are holding our own, making some advances, and our influence has increased.
The objective situation, however, works against us. It is not against us from the point of view of economic trends. The economic trends of capitalism favor us because they bring on capitalist recession, unemployment, wage cuts, and the disintegration of the hallowed jobs of the labor aristocracy. All this is in our favor.
It is in the struggle against the dominant bourgeois trends with respect to the development of socialist class consciousness that we are being rolled back. Although the economic situation my favor us, our biggest obstacle lies in the realm of political struggle for socialism as against capitalism. This objective political situation works against us.
It is like being on a train that is rolling in one direction. We are on top of that train and we are running in the other direction – in a progressive direction. We are running fast but the train is taking us someplace else. We cannot but lose in that kind of struggle. The train in this analogy is the objective situation. We have to get off the train and find our way to the revolutionary struggle. This is what we are faced with.
What can we do that we haven’t done?
Ours is an ideological struggle. It is different from a struggle with the police, with the bosses, with the fascists – different than hand-to-hand combat with them. It is an ideological struggle where we are being forced to accommodate ourselves to them. If it goes on like this, Marxism will be liquidated on a world scale. There will be no opportunity to revive it except in a later struggle that will be much more costly in human lives.
Moreover, this setback has had a deep impact on Marxist theory and Marxist strategic conceptions. The development tends to liquidate Marxism as the ideology of the working class. In this sense it hurts us the most because we are the inheritors of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, as well as Trotsky.
What is important is that Marxism is an objective reflection of the needs of the class struggle. Of course, the bourgeois idea that Marxism can be liquidated is ultimately ludicrous. They are attempting to do that. But Marxism represents the class consciousness of the workers which arises from the point of their exploitation.
Marxism may be fundamentally liquidated as a doctrine only when the class struggle has ended and class oppression has been eliminated. Then it is conceivable that political thought may go to a higher form of materialism, whatever that may be. But Marxism cannot be liquidated by force or disregard. The bourgeoisie, however, may be able to accomplish this for a period of time until there is an awakening from the most class conscious elements in society.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is a threat to the very existence of the Party. It is a more serious threat to us than a criminal indictment. We have not fully appreciated the profound impact of the collapse of the USSR.
For instance, the AFL-CIO is immediately less important to the ruling class since its anti-communist role in the labor movement (worldwide) is no longer needed. And there are innumerable other changes resulting from the collapse. More than we know.
This is our problem. What is the perspective of the Party given the erosion of our class camp? If we cannot halt that erosion, the question is how can we halt our own. We, to, can suffer from this slow disease.
From a practical point of view, in the realm of ideology and theory, we are weakened by our activism. We have activities here in New York on the Upper West Side, in Washington Heights; we had the April 29 action; we have activities in cities where we have branches and friends. These are all good. But can work on these activities alone stop the broad sweep of bourgeois, counterrevolutionary ideology?
Being determines consciousness. Unless stern, heroic measures are taken I cannot see the Party surviving – even as it presently is.
What do we have to do that we are not doing? Certainly we have our propaganda, our literature. We are in the forefront of the anti-imperialist struggle. We alone had the courage, the willingness, and the cadres to bring together 35 nations – mostly from the oppressed countries – during the struggle against the imperialist war against Iraq. The revolutionary élan of our organization was illuminated when we view our size compared to the tasks that we undertook – and we were successful.
And again with the International Peace for Cuba Appeal, we were able to organize the largest mass rallies for Cuba in decades at a most critical moment for the Revolutoin.
What is it that we have to do now?
Now it is not only an action that have to undertake. That we will. The purpose of our existence is to struggle. In action alone can we overcome capitalism and imperialism. But what do we have to do to overcome this worldwide ideological onslaught which goes unanswered from the other tendencies?
We could decide to go on as we have before. We can continue to largely ignore China, for example. We can say precious little about the real situation facing Angola, or Vietnam, or Cuba, or Korea. How many really have a grasp of the problems facing the movement in South Africa? There are those who want to condemn Mandela. But do they really understand what he is up against?
Our task is much more than that. At the very least we must formulate what the real problems are and where we and the world movement are going.
What do we need most? The Party and the movement need a comprehensive review of Marxism starting with the Russian Revolution up until the collapse. We have covered the developments in our newspaper but it would be presumptuous to say that we have really explained and then answered the question, “Why did it all happen?”
We must first of all address ourselves to a comprehensive review of Marxism. It is Marxism that is under attack. It is Marxism that is being less and less referred to.
Undertaking this review of Marxism will enable our Party to come out as an organization of the working class that can fight reformism and uphold Marxism. In the current period of reaction, our task is to fight reformism by conducting polemics against alien class forces of all kinds.
There was an international meeting of communist parties in Portugal. But nothing came from it. The communist parties will go on as they have been, with each CP on its own.
The collapse of the Soviet Union makes such a polemical undertaking necessary. The CP is trying to revive itself through combinations with others – but these combinations are all social-democratic in character. They are not proletarian. The organizational combinations do not speak in the name of Marxism, in the name of the working class.
Since Stalin, polemics in the international communist movement were put aside. They were stifled to give one version of events. We must revive the polemical method of Marxism. We were hampered from doing this in earlier years. We didn’t have enough cadres. But it is now necessary to take on tendencies that are older, more experienced, and have superior organization.
Only in polemics do the real issues come out on both the theoretical and practical levels. Polemics make Marxism a weapon in the working class movement – it is the vehicle by which Marxism gets clarified.
The gestation period of the Party is over. We have cut out a corner in the international communist movement and have earned respect. Now it is time to polemicize with the other tendencies.
For example, Marx during the Franco-Prussian War advised the Parisian working class that for the proletariat of a single city – even one as great as Paris – to take on the army would be folly. Marx and Engels, even though they were German, gave advice to the French workers.
Of course, when the Paris proletariat seized power and set up the first dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx supported them, championed their struggle and gave a revolutionary working class analysis of the Commune, which became the basis for subsequent struggle of the proletariat. When the proletariat was defeated, he wrote to the International to eulogize the heroism of the French working class.
Marx could play this dual role – polemicizing with the French workers as well as defending them – because he had tremendous prestige. Can we do this? Can we take on the task of engaging in polemics with our opponents on the burning issues of today? We still have limited prestige and standing. We gained the position we have because we’ve carried out our program through actions.
The challenge now is to do what is necessary in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changing world relationships. Only by going through a review of Marxism in light of the unprecedented setback can we emerge victorious in the struggle against the liquidation of Marxism.
This review will bring enlightenment on all issues. Take the question of Waco. Marxism could explain a great deal about this. Our leadership should have had two or three comrades illuminate the questions by showing how Marxist analysis could unearth the class causes of all significant phenomena in modern society, including Waco.
What was involved in Waco? It was a continuation of the struggle between the church and state. The capitalist state has subjected all major religions to itself – made them subordinate – Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc. But some religions are hostile to the state. Waco was a utopian attempt to preserve an older form of society. This brings up our knowledge of the U.S. and utopian societies – also in the Caribbean and Latin America. Many religions were crushed in the struggle. This is a secondary issue, but such an analysis could bring prestige to the Party.
We have to carefully put polemics in our press. The other tendencies do not want to because they do not feel the pressure to preserve Marxism. On the contrary, they lend themselves to the current of liquidationism. The CP and SWP, at least in practice, really reject the elementary Marxist tenets.
Our task is to find a way to fight this current and to ensure that our Party leadership and all Party members become schooled in all aspects of Marxist doctrine and able to defend it against all opponents, whether they be openly bourgeois of whatever persuasion or social democratic.
Marxism is being vulgarized and adulterated. Our task is to revive real Marxism, to resuscitate it, and to imbue our Party, our cadres, and first of all our leadership with revolutionary Marxism.
Remember Engels and Marx were still studying the French Revolution many decades later. We need a comprehensive review of Marxism, but how many comrades including leading comrades have read “Capital” or even a chapter of it? We all accept the tenets of the Marxist view of the class struggle but can we really defend it?
What is it that we are proposing? Since Marxism is every day being disregarded, we have to rejuvenate it in our Party first and foremost. We have to see to it that the leadership of the Party gets the message and takes the necessary action. We need a school that will retrain and develop our leadership in the struggle to revive Marxism.
The review will raise the ideological level of the leadership and the Party as a whole. It will show the superiority of Marxism over other tendencies. The review will not only raise the level so as to compete with other tendencies – but it will make it possible to be victorious in the struggle.
You’ve heard that big executives in the largest capitalist corporations go back to school to retrain and revive themselves, to acquaint themselves with new technology. After getting millionaire salaries and running the biggest corporations like IBM, AT&T and the others, they go back to Harvard to retrain themselves and to prepare for new tasks that come up every day.
Our Party needs the same thing. It needs it for the first level leadership. It needs it for the second layer leadership. And it needs it, above all, for the rank-and-file. What am I saying? I am saying that we need a school to retrain our leadership because what we know is inadequate to deal with the issues of today. It may need to be a full-time school. It is as serious as that. We can’t go on with the old tools alone. We need new tools that exist but which are not yet available because of our personal and political situation.
Marxism has to be revived. We cannot go along with its downslide, where it becomes less and less the doctrine of proletarian class struggle and of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, and where it becomes a milquetoast thing. Our Party has to recognize that we cannot go along the same lines.
There was a Socialist Scholars Conference where we sent some comrades with our literature and paper. That was humiliating. We should have given time to develop a full document to distribute instead of just a leaflet. Better yet, we should have been the ones to hold a socialist conference because we are the ones who uphold Marxism. That was not a conference of socialist scholars – it was a mockery. But 1,200 attended.
Our Party is too much imbued with activism at the expense of theoretical elucidation of our doctrine, of our revolutionary purpose. Please don’t mistake this to mean that we are going to stop the activities of the Party. We just have to put activities in perspective so that they will be more meaningful, so that we will not miss opportunities in the class struggle or remain on the sidelines not knowing what to do.
For a period of time, the leadership of the Party must go through a schooling to prepare for the struggle ideologically. The secondary level of comrades will necessarily have to take over to the extent that they are capable so that the Party does not lose the lasting significance of important struggles. The rank-and-file have to be imbued with the spirit that this is a propagandist organization first and foremost, to promote the tenets of the revolutionary class struggle and not simply activist on one lone aspect after another.
Our comrades have done splendidly in the class struggle. But in the struggle, we as Party comrades can be compared to stewards in a trade union – working on the low level of grievance procedure rather than as representatives of the working class as against the capitalist class on the all-important burning issues of the day.
Although we have led many struggles, we have to ask, can we defend Marx’s view of the class struggle? We have the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky – and some of our own – but is this enough to stop the flood of bourgeois ideology?
We have roundly attacked the political renegades – but it is a far cry from the kind of comprehensive answer that is found in the earlier Marxist workers.
Some people have proposed that I write another book about the USSR. That would be good. But it won’t be a sufficient answer for the crisis that Marxism faces.
Surely we can organize the best demonstration over anybody. If there is an outbreak of racist violence, we will respond. If there is an imperialist onslaught like the one in Panama or any other imperialist attack, we have learned how to wage an anti-imperialist front. We know how to do it. Now, comrades on the secondary level can do it.
Comrade Gavrielle [Gemma] mentioned to me the important need to set up a committee with respect to the bombing of the World Trade Center when it occurred. It could have had a great deal of significance. I said surely we should do it – but not necessarily you or the other leading comrades. We have enough comrades on the secondary level who can do it. The leadership is doing too much of what others can do. We are neglecting what the others cannot do.
Comrade Pat Chin wrote a splendid pamphlet so that we could have it at demonstrations of Haitian workers. That is good and it is important. But it is not enough from our Party. It is not significant to the Haitian movement. It is good because it explains our support and why it is necessary. But if we have a sitting National Committee, more is required. What is required is a political statement, a theoretical explanation of the new challenges in the Haitian struggle and its relation to the United States.
We need to throw light on the meaning of the struggle. Where is it going? Who is in charge? Just saying that we are with them in their struggle is inadequate. If we hope to be the leaders of revolutionary Marxism, we have to produce more. We have to have a group of leaders within the Party who have as their task for the next six weeks to produce a document so that every class conscious, thoughtful Haitian will have a tool in his or her hand that say more than “we support you.” A document that throws a powerful searchlight on the basic issues confronting the Haitian movement. The same with the South African struggle. We have only one small pamphlet on South Africa and we have a terrific staff who can do a lot more.
The other day Comrade Larry [Holmes] told me he was meeting an important Latin worker and was going to spend some time with him. I said that’ commendable – but that is not necessarily what he should do. That may have to be done by others so they can learn that which he already knows.
Our tasks are innumerable from the point of view of the strategic approach of U.S. imperialism. We barely touch on the important issues that arouse the workers except in an agitational way. We don’t have the resources that the bourgeoisie has. They have thousands of intellectuals who sit and think. When the capitalist administration of Clinton needs a document, they get a dozen of them. Some two or three are selected – that’s the way they work.
We can’t let the situation go and say that our comrades aren’t capable of all this – that what I am suggesting is not realistic – that a number of our comrades are working – that a number of our comrades are not used to writing and may not be interested in deliberating day and night on issues that they haven’t yet dealt with.
The practical questions are how to get the money and time to launch this campaign. These are questions that Bolsheviks must answer. We need the will to fight like we had in 1959 when we split from the SWP. We had the will to build the Party even when we didn’t know where our next meal would come from.
Comrades were all anxious about the possibility of another rebellion if the verdict favored the LA police. But by and large if the rebellion had happened, we were not prepared for it. We would not have been more than interested bystanders by sending a half dozen people down and organizing demonstrations in some cities. It wouldn’t have changed the situation, however, because there was also a theoretical, a political problem that we needed to deal with which went beyond understanding the national question in an abstract way. The issue is the nature of spontaneous rebellions. There have been almost 200 of them since the 1960s – all of which have come and gone and remain generally immune from our influence.
Prior to a rebellion – in advance of developments – the dynamics of the struggle have to be studied. We have to prepare the leaders in the community for it. We need more than just leaflets. We need serious literature that directs itself to the vanguard elements – those who are most conscious of the struggle and know the limitations of spontaneous rebellions. Spontaneity is an ever-present phenomenon in every liberation struggle.
It is only a Party that can give the revolutionary struggle guidance. In order to do so, we have to address ourselves first and foremost to those in the movement, to those among the rebellious, who are susceptible to revolutionary Marxist literature. They will have to be drawn to revolutionary Marxism – just like we will have to be – just like workers everywhere will have to come to Marxism if we are to survive as a class under the onslaught of imperialism, which is disintegrating our class camp and the political consciousness of our class.
We need the rebellions to develop from spontaneity to pre-planning. First, we must recognize the significance of spontaneous rebellions. A revolutionary workers’ party must do more than just run after the masses the day after the rebellion. We have to theorize about it in advance. We have to analyze what happened in previous uprisings and understand why Black leaders who are competent and have their origins in the struggle cannot harness their energies to take spontaneous rebellions to a higher level.
We have to view a potential rebellion from another angle. How can we influence an inevitable event of a spontaneous character and guide it into a conscious struggle? Such a struggle has its ups and downs in the same way as a military struggle does in other times. This is what we have to do.
Our problem is how to change course and how will the change affect rank-and-file comrades. A rank-and-file comrade in Workers World Party must be a leader. Workers World Party is a vanguard party in accordance with the Leninist understanding of that term. It is composed of the most class conscious, dedicated, and the most active from the class. Our comrades are not the equal of the ordinary workers. They are the essence and the representation of working class interests.
I’m drawing a little too much on the practical aspects of what the Party will do in the course of making a transition from what we are today to what we hope the Party will be at a later date. But the main point is that we have to make a transition. There will have to be more sacrifice in order to accomplish the transition. There can be no real advances without tremendous sacrifices by Party comrades for this transition.
Our current discussion on the need for a radical change of course can be compared to only one other historic discussion in the life of our Party. It was when we were still a tendency in the SWP.
When we left the Socialist Workers Party we saw the development of a worldwide camp of the working class, while the SWP leadership saw only the Stalinism within that camp.
We were a political tendency within another Party which began to promote a revolutionary understanding of the emergence of a world class struggle divided into two great class camps. Our tendency saw the camp of the oppressed headed by the USSR and China and others, while the SWP saw only Stalinism in this whole block, and refused to see anything progressive – or only occasionally.
We had all the opportunity for propagandizing our views in the SWP. We had all the advantages. The national leadership of the SWP was fearful of our influence but they were respectful. At that time we had one of the strongest branches. The SWP leadership never bothered us even when we took initiatives that were not really appropriate for a branch because they were national in character. We took initiatives on surplus food, on the Willie McGee case, prenotification, defended the Rosenbergs, and others. We were really very comfortable in Buffalo. Some comrades did not want to split. We lost some, but we gained others.
Leaving Buffalo and coming to New York was dangerous. It was taking on a hoard of enemies. We almost lost everything because we had so few comrades. There were many groups which tried to form a revolutionary workers’ party only to fall apart and disintegrate within a short period. Others turned to the right in order to be able to continue. But if we hadn’t made the decision to leave, there wouldn’t be a Party – a Party that is recognized 30 years later by progressives worldwide.
Together with Youngstown and Cleveland, we represented the proletarian wing of the SWP. Why should we split from them? They allowed us to propagate our view and didn’t suppress them. We were making slow progress. Buffalo was a nice city with a moderate climate during the spring. It had a beautiful park and many nice places and we were very comfortable there.
Splitting away and bringing the revolutionary leadership to New York seemed like a dark prospect – New York with its multitude of political tendencies and its smart-alecky people as compared to Buffalo, Cleveland and Youngstown. An argument could have been made that maybe it was better to stay where we were. But staying offered no opportunity to build a revolutionary party.
When we decided to split and move to New York it was a drastic move and we faced disaster many times.
In a certain sense, I have the same apprehension in proposing what we want to do now – which is to take another step in building a revolutionary workers’ party that can challenge revisionism, that can challenge all the alien tendencies that are hostile to Marxism, and that can reestablish Marxism as the doctrine of the proletariat. We are the agent that can undertake this task.
The bourgeoisie and others tell us: “You can’t do that. You’re too small. Marxism is a vast field and it’s complex. It takes professors years to study it. You have only a handful of cadres who are fulltime. The others work and they have to run to distributions, picket lines, service other organizations all that – well, you can’t do it. Obviously, it’s unrealistic. What you propose is for a mass party to do. Not for an organization like Workers World Party is today.”
It would not be the first time we have heard such an evaluation. When we first came to New York we went to a May Day demonstration organized by the CP. I met Arnold Johnson from the CP there, who happened to have read our paper which came out once with 16 pages and the next time with only 4 pages. He said, “You have a hopeless task – you can’t make it. You see what the CP has here and we in the CP have a hard time making it. What can you do that we won’t do?” It was pretty tough to answer all that.
But one thing that I regret is that we didn’t reclaim May Day as the revolutionary working class holiday where you come out for socialism as against all the evils of capitalism – not just against some of the evils of capitalism. But to come out against capitalism altogether. We also have let May Day go. Even this May Day could have gone by the board if we didn’t catch it in time. It’s part of adapting ourselves to the regressive current political situation.
No, we’ve got to move forward. We must not surrender that which is still in our hands. So what if we couldn’t get 1,000 people. If we could get 100 and make it a revolutionary demonstration, it would be important.
As it turned out we had a very successful May Day rally with messages from around the world and hundreds of workers and youth attended. That is what is needed until more forces come. Otherwise, all tradition will be lost. What will remain is a mere activist organization that tags along and really is irrelevant since other organizations can do the same thing – not with the same ideology maybe – but organize similar activities.
So we have to arrest the regressive tendency and move it back in a revolutionary direction. Our first step must be to realize what’s happening.
We should be confident that events will help us. The nature of the racist capitalist oppression will move the workers ever closer to our view but only if we ourselves do not abandon our revolutionary position. We must not restrict ourselves to that which is permissible under the capitalist system – to come out against racism, the oppression of gays and lesbians, the oppression of women. All these struggles are very important but we cannot confine ourselves to them alone.
We must raise the banner of revolutionary socialism. In order to do that correctly, efficiently and with our eyes open, we need a class for the leadership. We need for the secondary level of comrades to take over the Party organization and for the rank-and-file to move up to where the secondary leadership was. This moves the whole organization upward.
If we didn’t have the forces to change, I wouldn’t bring it up. But looking at ourselves nationally – and we have to view the leadership nationally – we must assert that we are capable of undertaking a comprehensive review of Marxism.
All this is recognizing the increasing pressure to abandon Marxism – to accommodate to the current trends of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois liberals. At the same time, we face the danger of possibly overlooking a tumultuous development which could take us by surprise when we are not ready and not able to take advantage of it.
Our comrades – all comrades – have got to learn to write. Not just a few comrades. Remember what Lenin said – don’t say you can’t write, say you won’t write. If you won’t write, you’ll be less of a communist. If you have revolutionary thinking, you must learn how to put paper and pen together. Communists are above all propagandists. Without propaganda, we don’t have our most important tool.
A critical point is that we have to have confidence in ourselves. The bourgeoisie knocks it into the heads of the workers that they can only absorb so much and that’s it. The more abstract thinking, the more developed Marxist concepts are for professors and professionals, it’s not for workers. They say workers can’t read “Capital.” That’s a lie. That’s not true.
Our own organization has neglected the teaching of it. How many comrades among the leaders have read “Capital” or even the first chapter of the book? It’s not so hard. The reason why they haven’t is because we are too immersed in revolutionary progressive activity that doesn’t give us time for anything else. But we can’t carry on the class struggle without thoroughly understanding Marxism.
We must take serious organizational steps to implement this perspective. If we do nothing until we meet again in two weeks, the situation will have only moved two weeks further to the right. Concretely, we have to drop the everyday tasks we are doing and let a secondary leadership take it on, otherwise we will lose everything. We are all Marxists here, but not practitioners of theoretical and political Marxism. If we do not change this, the bourgeoisie will be teaching us what Marxism is.
I think it was Lenin who said that the workers grasp Marxism better than bourgeois professors because they have to overcome bourgeois thinking first. We don’t have to do that. We have a greater advantage. We can make it easily understood if we apply ourselves to it.
Who said that “Capital” can’t be understood by workers? The renegades and bourgeois professors might make such an assertion. But no workers’ leader who has studied “Capital” has ever said workers can’t understand it. The job is to make “Capital” and Marxism and socialist economics come down to earth. They tell us we can’t read the business section of the New York Times. But we cannot only read it but analyze it better than they do. We must apply ourselves.
The school for the Party and Party leaders is not an original idea. Please keep this in mind. It started with Lenin. After the defeat of the 1905 revolution, the Party scattered. Before the revolution, many intellectuals recognized that the revolution was coming and a great many joined the Party. But the workers were the predominant force. After the defeat of the revolution, a lot of the intellectuals deserted and went back to making a living, writing or whatever.
Lenin started a school on the island of Capri in Italy for a number of cadres. He did this because he thought the leaders should not only be people who had a formal education and revolutionary desire to be leaders – that alone would exclude workers. The school was started by Lenin and continued to his last days so that workers would not be excluded.
For a number of years, the SWP had a school – they called it the Trotsky school – which was a very good idea. However, they studied only “Capital” because at that time they were fearful if [they studied the] Russian Revolution, the nature of imperialism, and what the communist parties were, they would become so factionalized they would not be able to do anything. But I dare say, the school was a progressive development.
Comrade Dottie [Dorothy Ballan] went to that school. She learned a great deal. Nothing would have stopped her from going there, no matter what the situation was in Buffalo. It was very important for her political development. The next time, our branch send Comrade Deirdre [Griswold] and Comrade Lewin. I don’t think it is an accident that Deirdre is the editor of the Party newspaper. She leaned quite a bit during those six months.
I think we will have a very successful school – a workers’ school. It need not only be for leaders. We are at a crossroads. This will be a time-consuming process. It will be slow. But if you think about it, and how to do it – we don’t have to lose a lot of what we have achieved organizationally. Of course, the initial transition to a new organizational form might be rough.
We need to start. It’s been a long time preparing this necessary transition. The hard part now if really to get started. We were compelled towards activism in the 1960s and the Party grew. We had to do it. But today if there is a period of revolutionary reawakening and activism – bourgeois intellectuals will take over the movement.
That’s our challenge, the revival of Marxism and having leaders who can do it. To be a Party of the proletariat we have to raise ourselves up and measure ourselves against the big guns of the bourgeoisie and all other schools.
The way we are organized must be reassessed. For instance, Deirdre should not be editing. Bukharin, who was the editor of Pravda, didn’t really edit the paper – he was responsible for the political line.
The analysis of current events is very important as reflected in the newspaper. But it needs more thorough political discussion in what would be the National Committee of the school.
For instance, one of the issues that should be taken up is a more detailed assessment of the Reagan and Bush administrations and an analysis of the Clinton program. The Clinton administration should be asking for an accounting from the last two administrations – it should ask Bush and Reagan, how did they spend $4 trillion in twelve years when only half that was spent in the first 200 years of the Republic? They all know that so much of it went for graft and corruption, which discredits not only the Republicans, but the entire capitalist system.
That’s the real reason that Greenspan – a right-wing conservative Republican – actually ran to embrace Clinton. That’s why he sat next to Hillary Clinton at the State of the Union address. They don’t want Clinton to expose any of what happened in the last two Republican administrations. The extreme right wing, however, will start asking these questions and it will become a big issue, especially once this small recovery is exhausted.
A solid factual assessment of the last 12 years, embodied in class conscious propaganda, would be a weapon in the hands of the workers.
Another example would be to analyze the issues behind the attempted racist firing of Professor Leonard Jeffries when the Board of Directors removed him as Chairperson of the History Department at City College. Jeffries developed an historic view on Eurocentrism as it is called. Of course we defend Jeffries against the racist attacks and we defend multicultural education, which seeks to reveal the historic achievements and the long proud history of resistance by oppressed people – a history that has been consciously covered up for centuries in this country.
But it would also be good for the Party to develop its own serious analysis of the way history is studied in the United States and why. Those fighting against what they consider a Western orientation describe the formal history taught in schools as “Eurocentric” or centered on Europe. There are many who think this. They argue that since civilization was centered in Africa hundreds of years before it emerged in Europe, the discussion should begin there. That is not the only point, however.
To understand the modern world, it is necessary to start from the point of the development of capitalism, which was in Europe. If you don’t look at the development of capitalism, you wouldn’t understand what happened in Africa for the last 400 years, or in Asia or Latin America in the 19th century, or in the Middle East in the early 20th century. History being Africa-centered or Latin American-centered is not the question. It is where the forces of production led to the development of a new social system that uprooted all the older systems. Marxism is of course a Western product – not because it is Western or Eastern – but because that is where capitalism developed.
History would be centered in Africa or anywhere else if that was where capitalism first developed and then uprooted the older social systems existing in other parts of the world. Marxism looks at the roots of consciousness and ideology, including the presentation of history – be it progressive or reactionary – by analyzing the development of social systems rather than the other way around.
Leading comrades need to give this issue serious evaluation like we would a comprehensive report on the Republican stewardship of the White House.
We also need to critically review Marxist positions. For instance, Marx said that competitive capitalism was progressive in relation to monopoly capitalism. This question could be restudied in light of the downsizing and spinoffs of the biggest corporations.
These will not be abstract classes. We will read “Capital” – but next to it we will have the business section of the New York Times.
The study of Marxism will take at least a small number of comrades that could be relatively free to give principal, very serious attention to it. I know everyone would agree in words – but where are going to get the time and who are going to be the people?
It is easy to focus on all sorts of difficulties in setting up a school based on organizational considerations that need to be overcome. Instead, we should handle these problems just as we would if some catastrophe had taken place in our headquarters and our machines and everything were in disorder. We would get the people to put it all together and fix it. We would address it as an immediate emergency situation and do what was required of us.
It is during a time of adversity that the courage and skill of the Party’s members and leaders come forward because of the very urgency – even some who before were dormant become inspired and act. It is the same with the review of Marxism. We have to do it.
I do not have a firm plan as to how the review would be done. Some comrades have presented proposals outlining ways which could get us started. I want to concentrate on the political subject matter that we should focus on in the first stage of the school.
In the May 27th [1993] issue of Workers World, I wrote an article on Marxist economics. It was a very elementary, short piece that was calculated to alert the Party that we should undertake the study. I went over some elementary conceptions in a brief and popular approach.
The classical way to initiate the study would be with the Marxist conception of economics – to begin as Marx began “Capital” with the study of the commodity. I think classes often get bogged down on the nature of the commodity. People have difficulty understanding the first part of “Capital” and very few go beyond it.
Most comrades, with hardly any exception, would like to study “Capital” because it explains the workings of the capitalist system. It was Marx’s life work. The first 96 pages are most important; even more important than the first 96 are the first 10 pages – especially the first few where Marx discusses what is a commodity.
Marx began the analysis of capitalism by explaining the features of a commodity. He describes the commodity as the pivotal aspect of political economy, around which everything else revolves. Unless you understand the commodity you won’t comprehend the rest of Marx’s economic analysis. The secret to understanding it is the two-fold character of labor in a commodity. It takes some doing to get it. The commodity is the most important kernel that must be grasped in Marxist economics.
Marx himself first mastered the philosophical conceptions that formed the basis of his materialist interpretation of history. He studied economics later. Marx explained that his initial study of economics was the result of work he had to do for an article on the peasants’ struggle in Moselle, Germany, who were fighting the wine manufacturers. At the time he was studying philosophy in school and was the editor of the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung in Germany.
As editor, Marx was confronted with the Moselle peasant struggle as well as the “Wood-Theft Law” that pitted the people in the forest against the lumber companies. He had to write an analysis of the legislation in the newspaper and he couldn’t. Marx said he didn’t understand the issues. It was then that he decided to study economics. You wouldn’t find many editors who would do that – they would bluff their way through.
I think we should begin with a review of the philosophical conceptions of Marxism – of the struggle between materialism and idealism – before turning to Marxist economics. This is somewhat easier but also requires a great deal of serious thought. I would choose to debate these ideas – materialism vs. idealism – in the class. The concrete subjects would include: What is matter? What is being? What is consciousness? Which is prior – consciousness or being?
We would use Marx’s tests on philosophy as well as Lenin’s contribution, which is found in “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.” Lenin wrote it as a polemic against a small group of intellectuals and thinkers in the Party in the first years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution. This grouping of Bolsheviks led by Lunacharsky and others developed an in-between position on materialism and idealism – on being and consciousness – and what comes first.
Among Marxists, it was very early established that materialism was the clue to understanding consciousness and that consciousness was the product of being. That is, whatever one may think or see or believe is ultimately a reflection of material conditions.
When elevated to a philosophical concept, materialism or idealism became the very center of philosophical thinking. This philosophical struggle was not new. It was the age-old axis of philosophical thinking, not just in one or two countries, but throughout the world.
The question is who are we, what is it all about, how did we get here, did religion precede everything, is it god who made all this. Of course, those who generally lean toward a religious view have a subjective, that is idealist, view of history and consciousness.
Marx and Engel’s version of the materialist interpretation of history is the last school in the long, long history of struggle between an earlier non-dialectical materialism and the subjective idealistic one. As an advanced school of thinking, it arose only from struggling, grappling, and a lot of going back and forth and thinking. It might seem very easy to state. In fact, I could state it in an article as has been done many times. However, from the point of view of thinking it over, of really understanding it – there’s a great deal to consider.
One time I gave a talk in Buffalo on materialism. A student from the University of Buffalo came to the class and participated. His name thereafter among us was “Sam the Unknown” because he was from the special school that is in between materialism and idealism, a view espoused by Immanuel Kant and many others. To them, it is unknown about whether there is a material world or just consciousness ideally. They usually are referred to as the skeptics.
The debate is far more profound than it may appear. Take for instance the French Revolution. A materialist interpretation would begin by examining the rapid growth of the productive forces resulting from new manufacturing processes, the advance of science, and the rapid advance of a world market. This led to the growth of a bourgeoisie. The rapid growth of the productive forces came into contradiction with the stifling feudal property forms. This is what led to the instability of the old feudal regime.
A materialist analysis of the French Revolution would begin with these facts. The skeptic would ask, “How do you know that? It is only through your senses that you know and they are unreliable – they change.”
Materialists say, “Well, we go by experience.”
Skeptics say, “Yes, but you are always changing the interpretation of your experiences.”
We would say, “You are taking a centrist position between materialism and idealism.”
They would say, “No, we just say that the universe is an unknown and we just don’t know for sure.”
We would say, “We don’t know everything – that’s true. But everything is inherently knowable. We, human society, only lack the development, the tools to understand that which we do not yet know.”
There are three schools of thought – materialism, idealism and skepticism.
It’s one thing to state the theories but it’s something else to grapple with them over a period of time. Materialism came in as a revolutionary doctrine. Throughout the age, however, idealist philosophy – based on religion – dominated and held back the thinking of humanity. Universal questions were ask and the answers all ended up somewhere in the sky way above.
The importance of studying materialism is not only to understand and test the materialist approach – but to grasp the methodology used by Marx in understanding the most current phenomena.
Prior to historical materialism, all history was explained on the basis of the rise of an individual leader – Napoleon, Hannibal and so on. Ignored in the analysis, as if it had no relevance, were the broader questions of what class the leaders represented – or from what class or grouping these leaders emerged.
Even within the communist movement, the materialist interpretation has not always been applied when it comes to evaluating leading figures.
Using the broad materialist viewpoint, how do we evaluate the struggle between various groupings and their leaders – some of whom have assumed heroic stature? What material conditions made it possible for Lenin’s leadership? What conditions led to Stalin’s triumph and Trotsky’s decline? The further we are removed from these developments, the clearer it becomes that it was the underlying material conditions that were the decisive factor.
Of course, this way of interpreting developments could be done in a very crude, unskilled and schematic way. What is important is to direct the thinking of comrades to an understanding of philosophical questions.
Throughout the struggles of the communist movement – especially in the earlier socialist movement – was there really a materialist approach or was it just a bourgeois idealist view? We should aspire to understand the individual or the group orientations which are of a subjective character. The whole idea is to raise the level of thinking in a revolutionary way – elevate the materialist approach to all phenomena, including phenomena in the Party.
There are other leaders of philosophy in the movement – aside from Lenin. One is Plekhanov. I don’t know what prompted the Soviet government to publish his writings after an elapse of so many years. That would be good to find out because he was a Menshevik who came out against the Bolsheviks. But Lenin to his last days said that Plekhanov’s writings should be read and studied because they were the best around.
Plekhanov should be studied to understand the struggle between the Marxists and populists which began over the question of idealism vs. materialism. That he became a reactionary during the revolution is not important as far as his earlier writings go. The same could be said about some of Kautsky’s writings. But particularly Plekhanov because he writes about art and literature and tried to win over the intellectuals to Marxism, which was a very important step in understanding their own art forms.
As far as Asia is concerned, I think Mao wrote more on philosophy and on materialism and idealism – several small works are easily available.
In order to get the Party to think dialectically, it is necessary to go through a period of study with the appropriate literature. The best source for understanding it all is “Anti-Duhring” by Engels, of which “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” is a section. “Anti-Duhring” is also excellent because it shows how to conduct a polemic. Engels scrutinized passages from Duhring that were incorrect and took them apart. There is also an interesting section on economics.
Something easily available is Lenin’s “Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.” It is a small piece, but the way he sums up Marxist economics is very important. Marxism did not develop out of thin air. As Lenin points out in the pamphlet, Marx and Engels deepened and developed the earlier contributions from German philosophy, French socialism, and British political economy.
Our study of materialism should include a study of the history of Marxism. Marx lived in a certain place at a certain time. He didn’t live in Egypt or China. Could he have registered the same accomplishments, even with the same intellect, if he had lived in China? Even with the same inclinations, could he have done it if he lived in Egypt or Costa Rica? Of course, he couldn’t have.
Using a materialist point of view, we know it was because Marx was at the right place at the right time that enabled him to produce the major contributions that changed political thinking and became a comprehensive ideological weapon in the hands of workers everywhere.
Marx wouldn’t have been Marx if he had lived anywhere else or at an earlier time. The same person with the same personality, the same intellectual capacity, the same will, and the same opportunities (being sent to school and not having to worry about living expenses, although he lived modestly), would not have been able to accomplish what Marx did under different circumstances. This is an easy way to demonstrate Marx’s conception of the materialist interpretation of history.
Marx and Engels were not workers. If they had been workers, they couldn’t have done what they did. They might not have had any education. They could have had the same intellect, but it would not have been developed. They never would have gotten a chance. There was a whole grouping of people – Lassalle, even Engels himself came from a rich family. Marx could not have developed his ideas in “Capital” – it took years of study.
There is a book on dialectical materialism called “The Positive Outcome of Philosophy” by Joseph Dietzgen. It goes over the materialist conception of history around the same time of Marx and Engels. Some say that it was he who discovered dialectical materialism rather than Marx. Marx and Engels don’t deny it.
From the point of view of understanding dialectical materialism – using a different phraseology and a different mode of approach – this book is very helpful although it was hardly given any attention. The interesting thing about it is that Dietzgen was a tannery worker who arrived at dialectical materialism independently of Marx and Engels. He was a worker who became a philosopher. That is very unusual.
In going over the early history of the Socialist – or Second – International, there is a lot more literature that explains the ABCs of the materialist interpretation of history and the struggle between the idealists and materialists. But as we reach the Communist era a whole lot of it becomes tendentious. Each grouping tries to explain Marxism and the interpretation of history. But each grouping has its own views of the movement as a whole.
For instance, there is a very well composed and brief biography of Marx and Engels by David Riazanov. It explains Marx’s contribution at the time. Riazanov was a Bolshevik who got expelled from the Party and went from one group to another and was later executed during the purges of the 1930s. The book, entitled “Marx and Engels,” is worth reading.
To summarize, our study should start with the philosophical conceptions of Marxism, which may seem aloof from the class struggle. But comrades have to go through a period of training – of reading and grappling with the material and matching it to contemporary issues. For instance, when we evaluate a report from a certain columnist, we want to ask and answer the question: does this reporter use a materialist interpretation of history? – even if it’s not a Marxist or dialectical one.
Many right-wingers in the bourgeoisie give a materialist interpretation of developments. But of course they are not Marxists. There are many among the bourgeoisie who regard religion as a figment of the imagination but go along with it. They will pay homage to religion here and there but are thoroughly materialist in their approach. Being a materialist alone is not enough. You have to be dialectical and revolutionary at the same time.
The materialist interpretation of history is revolutionary from the point of view of the class struggle. It’s dialectical because it considers all matter – all that which belongs to material reality, including human society – to be in a state of constant motion, constant change. Marx did not view any part of the material world, including social systems, as static or eternal. Like all phenomena, they were born, evolved, developed and later degenerated and finally passed out of existence as society underwent a revolutionary transformation to a higher social system.
As expressed in the May 27 article in Workers World, bourgeois ideologists regard capitalism as an eternal system. They may say that there is change – but not the change of the system. Not only do they resist the change, but it is a cardinal element of their belief that capitalism is eternal, notwithstanding the fact that there have been three earlier social systems.
Commenting on this recurring theme of bourgeois ideology, Marx wrote in his “Poverty of Philosophy” that for bourgeois thinkers “there has been history, but there is no longer any.” Why do they believe that this system is eternal? Because it serves their interests well to believe it.
We must become expert on handling all questions related to Marxism. Focusing on the philosophical issues is merely a way to begin. Our objective must be to transform the whole Party into a better, greater organization with knowledge.
A propaganda organization that is tied to revolutionary activity is what is needed. The socialist scholars organization was just for amusement. It’s not for the use in the class struggle. The bourgeoisie sets up its labor schools. They send their people to study labor relations. But we can do much better with our courses.
I want the rank and file to understand that while it is necessary for the entire Party to engage in political development, it is critical to find a way for the leadership to detach itself from organizational responsibilities and have others taken them on.
The confidence that we have in revolutionary Marxism is not based upon an estimation of our will alone. It is based on reality. Marxism is the ideological representation of what the working class needs in the class struggle. Because of oppression and exploitation, Marxism is indispensable and can never be liquidated.
The time has come for us to make a transition to a different organization. Not a different political perspective, but to complete the transformation of the Party from what it was when we started in the SWP until today. The need for this transition is dictated by historic circumstances.
When we broke from the SWP, it wasn’t because of likes or dislikes or organizational squabbles with them. In fact, there weren’t any at all. If you look through the record, it was up and down political struggle. The fact that Stalinism dominated our camp at the time was not the essence of the matter. There was a changed world situation because of the emergence of two hostile class camps.
Right now our misfortune is that the camp of the working class as represented by China and the USSR is down. The USSR at the moment is represented by the counterrevolution and China is moving in the direction of bourgeois development. We have to analyze China again. That is where we made our mark.
We were the first in the United States to recognize China as a workers’ state. Now it is time to go over it again to explain China’s difficulties. It’s not in the anti-imperialist current. Years ago, every oppressed worker in the United States could say, China is on our side. That is not true anymore – not for a period of time anyway. The same with the USSR.
We have to be able to say to the world – not that Cuba or the DPRK is on our side – but that we’re on their side. We are the ones that have strength and endurance and no possibility of being destroyed. We’re helping them. That’s a terrific change.
Years ago, getting a letter from Cuba was some recognition. We’ve gone far beyond that. We’ve got to become the revolutionary vanguard on a world scale. We have to demonstrate that we have what it takes. We need more confidence in ourselves.
I think we have the most splendid cadre in the country in the struggle for socialism and we should move every worker up a notch or two who is in the Party and we are not going to be afraid because of a loss here or there. In the transition period it will be difficult. But we will surmount those difficulties.
We have to look at it this way: the great support we the working class have had over the years was the USSR and China. And now, that has broken down. (The movement even relied on these states for the production and mass distribution of basic Marxist books.) It’s like the construction going on at 17th Street. What would happen if we built and built and all of a sudden the whole thing collapsed? What would happen? Do we walk away from the situation and say, that’s too bad? No. That’s renegacy. That’s a surrender.
I want to emphasize that the period we are in includes the discrediting of Marxism on the ideological and political level. But it is not a period of deep anti-communist reaction like the 1950s. There will be opportunities for struggle because of the deteriorating economic conditions. The question is will we have a leadership capable of leading that movement, reviving Marxism.
Twelve parties of the former CPs travelled to New York and met with Gus Hall. If you’d ask them, what about the USSR? They have no answer on it. They met to do the same thing they have always done. In critical times, they will support the imperialist bourgeoisie – especially during election time. They have no analysis of the catastrophe that befell them. They want to forget about it as though this was some small accident. But it is a great big collapse. Just them walking away from it is renegacy. Tomorrow they will be running to elect a capitalist politician in the Democratic Party as they always did. In the European parties they will do the same. They missed their opportunity for a proletarian revolution beginning with the Second World War all the way down the line.
We are the survivors on this. But we need to be strengthened. Only through a critical review of Marxism can we defend the ideological conquests of the working class. And in so doing we will raise our political capability and stature. We do not want to forget the calamity that has befallen the world proletariat. We don’t want to be like the CP that says, well that’s too bad – there are certain causes, but they don’t go into the specific deep and profound reasons why I really happened.
Although we have explained a great deal about the Soviet Union, we have to thoroughly analyze, examine, and explain the evolution of the USSR. By this method we will extend our influence abroad – to Russia, China, and everywhere else. This is the only road open to us because our objective is nothing less than the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist victory.
This is an ongoing discussion that we are just beginning.
Let’s have confidence in what Trotsky finally said about how the U.S. will become the foundry that will forge the fate of humanity. That’s because the revolutionary center of gravity must move to the West – away from Europe and away from Asia to here. Revolutionaries outside the United States are looking to the U.S. We said that the center of the revolutionary gravity has been in the East with China, India, Africa, and for a time in Europe. But that process has exhausted itself.
The political center will move to the U.S., with its vast population, its rich inheritance of national liberation struggles. The only area where a genuine multinational party can exist is in the United States because the revolutionary struggle has not yet taken place and therefore has not exhausted itself. There are still green pastures in the United States.
Here it is going to be much easier. Class solidarity will develop here first. It awaits our historic mission.
Last updated: 11 May 2026