ROAD TO REVOLUTION IV: A Communist Manifesto (1982)

Despite the bosses' whining denials, communism thrives today in the Progressive Labor Party. In 1848, Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism." He was right! And now that specter haunts the bosses of the world. The struggle between bosses and workers has dominated the past century. Workers have made their greatest advances, such as the Russian and Chinese revolutions, under the leadership of communists.

Although capitalism has been restored to Russia and China, the "specter of communism" still haunts the world's bosses. The battle between bosses and workers rages everywhere. In order to survive, capitalism, the bosses' racist profit system, must exploit all workers and must super-exploit some. This greed for maximum profit sharpens the oppression of workers in every country. Even in a very industrialized nation such as the U.S., workers suffer mass unemployment, racism and even enslavement. The bosses' government harasses undocumented workers, rounds some up for deportation, and jails others in rotten concentration camps.

Millions of workers are cold, hungry, homeless. Many burn or freeze to death in slum housing. Tens of millions of young workers, especially black, Latin, Asian and Native American, are unemployed. Millions of these youth will never find work in capitalist society. Older workers are thrown out like garbage when they no longer have value to some boss. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world

Like all thieves, bosses have no honor among themselves. They are constantly falling out. U.S. rulers have plundered the world in the last century. Now they are losing ground. Bosses from Western Europe, Japan and especially the Soviet Union now threaten their stolen billions and their empire. This dog-fight that is leading to World War III is already causing smaller wars in Central America and the Middle East.

To make workers, soldiers, students and others follow their plans for war, the rulers are imposing forms of fascism around the world. In the U.S., as elsewhere, the greedy bosses are ripping away reforms that workers have fought hard to win. The rulers hope in this way to amass more billions to strengthen their military machines. Capitalists have turned the world into an armed camp so that each one can keep or maximize profits. To make more money, these bosses will fight to the last drop of our blood. The only solution is communist revolution under the banners of the Progressive Labor Party. Otherwise, we will suffer capitalism's endless wars and oppression. Capitalism means the ruination of our class, our families, our friends. Only world-wide communism offers worker, soldiers, and students an alternative to the misery of capitalism.

Our Party fights for an egalitarian, communist society under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the bosses. They hold power through their political parties, their cops, their courts, and their military. They pretend to be democratic, but their "democracy" is a fraud. They point to the secret ballot as the height of democracy. But in the U.S., all parties except the PLP represent the bosses. For us workers bosses' elections mean "heads they win, tails we lose." The idea of bosses yielding power peacefully is a myth. They will never allow themselves to be voted out of office.

Under the banners of its revolutionary communist party, the working class must arm itself and fight to win power. After the Party has led to the seizure of power, the working class must remain armed. To win and hold power, the working class must develop its own Red Army. After workers win political emancipation in one area, the bosses and their agents there and elsewhere will attempt a comeback. Workers need this Red Army to take the offensive against the bosses and crush them. When workers' militias, which will exist everywhere to defend the revolution, need help, the Red Army will provide it.

The Red Army of an area where workers hold power will also assist workers fighting for revolution in other areas. As communism spreads across the world and classes eventually disappear, the need for violence by workers and their party against the capitalist enemy will diminish. This development will correspond to the collapse of the capitalists and their ideas. When workers and communist principles rule the world, when capitalist forces have become extinct, the need for workers' violence will wither away.

We want a society whose workers run everything in the interests of the world's workers. We want a system that encourages every worker to become involved in running society; that trains everyone to act for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to "look out for number one;" that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. We want society to help each person grow, to correct mistakes, to encourage honest evaluation and self-evaluation. We want a system that stamps out such capitalist ideas as racism, male chauvinism, anti-communism and anti-worker attitudes. We want to wipe out the drug addiction that ruins millions of young workers' lives. We want to defeat religion. Religion serves only the interests of the rulers, who use it to mystify workers so that conditions stay as they are. We want a system that corrects or punishes capitalist behavior.

We need communist democracy, based on democratic centralism. This system requires criticism and self-criticism of what we do and don't do. We fight to defeat anti-collective behavior and to help each other become better communists. Capitalist "democracy" means "doing your own thing." Each person supposedly has freedom to do what he or she wants. Capitalist "free speech" really protects racist crap and anti-communism. Capitalist "freedom" means bosses are free to screw us all.

In capitalist society, only the bosses are free--free to hire and fire, free to pillage and plunder, free to make our class fight for their profits. In contrast. democratic centralism, under which we operate, encourages full and open discussion in the exclusive interest of workers and their allies. We will allow no freedom to exploit workers.

Within the party at all times, and within society at large after the revolution, the role of central leadership is decisive. The working class requires a general staff that places the victory of communism above all other goals and that fights to make the party the leader of society.

After the leadership has guaranteed full and open discussion of policy, every party member and worker must develop the discipline to accept and carry out the collective decision. Even those who disagree must hold to this discipline. The effort to put party decisions into action must be united everywhere. Later we can see clearly the rightness or wrongness of decisions, and, if need be, make adjustments or scrap them. In this way, both majority and minority viewpoints will get a serious hearing.

Throughout the process of seizing, holding and expanding revolutionary power, workers need only one leading political force--the communist party. Before and during the revolution, tens of millions of workers, soldiers and students will join or support the communist party. Only a party with such a mass base can successfully lead a revolution. After the revolution, workers and their allies will not need a government separate from the party. Either such a government would be a rubber-stamp for the workers' mass party, or it would represent enemies of communism. Surely a rubber-stamp government is useless and deceptive. And workers must never again share power with class enemies. We propose that after the revolution, the party--composed of tens of millions of workers--lead society.

We said above that the world's workers made great advances with the revolutions in Russia and China. We also said that these revolutions, which had established socialism, were reversed, and that now Russia and China are capitalist societies with new bosses. Marx and Lenin described socialism as the early stage of communism. These great revolutionaries doubted that the working class could move immediately from capitalism to communism. They and others believed that important concessions to capitalism and capitalist ideas were necessary to win enough people to socialist revolution. They thought socialism would eventually lead to communism.

Keeping the wage system was the greatest concession to capitalism. Under socialism, every worker got a wage. Your work determined your wage. Professionals made a lot more than those who worked with their hands. Among manual workers, the so-called skilled made more than the unskilled. Does this sound familiar? The motive for these inequalities was the mistaken belief that many workers had to be bribed to produce.

Wage differences reinforced commodity production--production for sale, for profit rather than for society's use or need . Goods could never be distributed according to collective need because some workers had greater purchasing power than others.

No matter how much well-intentioned planning society does, the wage system forces each worker to think of his or her work in selfish terms. Only communism can change that. Communism will abolish the wage system. In communist society, the principle "to each according to need" will be as basic as the principle "every man for himself" is to capitalism. Children will understand this from the moment their senses awaken.

Under communism, the principle of work will be: "from each according to commitment." People will work because they want to, because their class brothers and sisters around the world need their work--even as people fight in revolutionary wars not just for themselves but for their class. They will share in decision-making, including the distribution of goods and services according to society's needs. They will share shortage along with abundance. If there is selfishness--and there must be some--the party will struggle politically to overcome it, or, if necessary, punish it. However, the day-in, day-out basis of individualism--the wage system--will have been abolished.

The immediate establishment of a communist distribution system makes possible a new kind of party and a new relationship between the party and the rest of the population.

Communist distribution eliminates the material incentive for the emergence of new bosses corrupted by all sorts of privilege. Government or party officials, special workers, or artists will no longer receive more money for work that is supposedly "more important." The measure of work will have nothing to do with what people receive. People should and will get what they need, within the limits of what everyone can produce. Measuring work to set pay directly contradicts communism. The elimination of wages causes the social basis for privileges and a new class of bosses to disappear. For the first time in history, workers will receive a fair share of society's wealth, regardless of the work they do.

Communism will abolish socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. Communism will not need millions of lawyers, advertisers, or salespeople. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors and administrators who oversee and manage us for the bosses. It will free everyone to perform socially useful work, which is the source of true creativity. Capitalism creates the illusion that degenerate superstars and people who have best figured out how to screw others are "creative." The anti-working class values of the profit system pervert all cultures.

The communist organization of society requires the active commitment of millions of workers. Communism will not succeed unless people understand it, agree with it, and vow to make it succeed.

Ending the wage system will reduce the problems capitalism causes inside the working class. Racism, one of capitalism's greatest evils, exploits one worker to a greater degree than another. This super-exploitation and the super-profit from it lead to increased oppression of every worker. Marx said over 100 years ago that, "the worker in white skin can never be free as long as the worker in black skin remains in chains." At all stages of the revolutionary process, the party must lead an unyielding fight against every aspect of racism. However, only an egalitarian society that ends the exploitative wage system in the context of sharp anti-racist political and ideological class struggle can crush racism once and for all.

Failure to eliminate privilege will surely show up inside the communist party. Past socialist societies retained privilege, which quickly found its way into the party. Some party members and many leaders were often better off than others. This practice made many workers cynical by perpetuating the bosses' anti-Communist lie that all power corrupts. A communist society in which millions of party leaders and members live and share the same as everyone else will produce a better communist party. Such a party will develop the healthiest relations between itself and all workers. These relations will ultimately narrow the gap in commitment and political skill between leaders, members and workers at large.

Economic privilege in previous socialist societies maintained the gaps created by capitalism between mental and manual work. The children of professionals, party leaders, and better-paid workers went on to higher education. This practice perpetuated social inequality. In a communist society, the workplace will become the center of education. Students will become workers and workers, students. Workers may have many vocations, careers, trades, certainly more than one. Everyone will work with both brain and hands.

Having rid itself of the wage system, society can also wipe out the special oppression of women and male chauvinism, which serve only capitalism. In communist society, everyone will have the opportunity, the right, and the duty to work. The capitalist exploitation of women depends on the bosses' ability to degrade them culturally. The bosses can pay women less than men or even nothing at all as in the case of housework. Only the destruction of capitalism and the collective fight by men and women workers for communism can free women from this special exploitation. The revolution needs the militant leadership of working class women.

Since its founding, the Progressive Labor Party has fought against retreats from Marxism-Leninism, especially the practice of uniting with "lesser-evil" bosses, usually known as the liberals. All bosses want to keep capitalism; therefore, all bosses, whether liberal or conservative, are class enemies.

COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISM

We oppose nationalism and fight for internationalism. By nationalism, the bosses mean that workers must respect capitalist borders. These borders are artificial; they exist to divide workers and keep different sets of bosses in power. Workers need no borders. Workers in one part of the world are not different from or better than workers in another. Nationalism creates false loyalties. Workers should be loyal only to other workers, never to a boss. We endorse the revolutionary slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Our Party is multi-racial; its members come from around the world. They all unite in the fight for revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

NO MORE RETREATS!

Our members and friends will tolerate no more retreats from the basics of Marxism-Leninism, from communism. Marx proved that an egalitarian communist society would inevitably develop. History shows no need to back away from communism. The bosses would have us believe that communism has failed. Only capitalism has failed.

The bosses use the examples of capitalist countries like Russia, China, and Poland to discredit communism. They cynically pretend these fascist returns to the profit system are communist societies. The bosses protest too much. They hate true communism with a vengeance because they fear it more than anything. If the bosses loathe communism, workers should love it.

Every compromise made by communists to capitalism ended in disaster. History proves that workers want a life free from capitalist exploitation, and that, much to the bosses' dismay, they will fight to the death for it. Workers need communist revolution, not reform. We are all learning from bitter experience that capitalism can never be reformed. It must be crushed.

From the caves of Yenan in China to the battle of Stalingrad in Russia, workers proved that they could fight and work together in a communist manner. We will have to rebuild a society severely disrupted by a third world war. Why should we keep any of capitalism's-deadly trappings in the process?

Our party has confidence in workers. However, we remain too timid in spreading communist ideas and practices among them. Some of us may retain illusions in capitalism or have fallen for the bosses' cynicism. The bosses pretend "human nature" can't change. They really mean that workers will endure capitalism forever. Bosses believe human instinct is capitalistic, that every one is born selfish, and that nature determines wealth and poverty. These ideas are false and vile. Workers have fought and shared for the common good over the centuries. tens of millions have long sought communism. The very thought makes the bosses tremble.

To lead a communist society, the party must win millions of workers into its ranks and develop close ties with millions of others. We must start now to build a base among all workers. In the course of revolutionary battle, millions of workers, soldiers and students will come over to communism. When the revolution and its communist ideas triumph, the party will already have won countless millions to launch a communist society, with no retreats to capitalism.

The growth of a large working-class communist party requires much more than handing out leaflets. It means organizing battles, large and small, against all the rulers' injustices. Within these battles, we must hold revolutionary ideas and goals in the forefront. Organizing for revolution means educating masses of workers, soldiers and students with communist ideas. To agitate successfully, to fight and win battles, to educate people politically, we must know workers very well. We must build long term relations that can lead to the total transformation of most individuals, including ourselves, as we become convinced that we can no longer live in the old way, that we can no longer tolerate capitalism.

For our Party to wipe out world capitalism and to prevent concessions to it by communists, we must have confidence in the international working class; and the international working class must have confidence in their party. This mutual confidence will develop only through long class struggle and political debate. Millions of worker-communists, living and working in an egalitarian society, will never permit a return to capitalism.

The rulers fear communism most. Its specter still haunts them and will destroy them. Only the growth of the revolutionary party can ensure the future of the international working class. Our Party is no secret society. The PLP is open to all workers, students and soldiers. JOIN US!

A scientific evaluation of history must have as its core the study of revolutionary movements. We seek to draw upon what is positive in these experiences and to learn from the negative. Four great revolutions have marked the forward thrust of humanity: the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). Workers and oppressed people have been able to advance because and only because of these revolutions.

These momentous revolutionary movements were not mystical events. They were all made and led by masses of people and their leaders. The revolutionary movement of the past hundred years has been a series of attempts by workers to wrest control of their lives from the ruling class. Revolution determines the class that holds state power, and each of these four revolutions attempted to resolve this central question in favor of the proletariat.

The struggle for state power is inseparable from the struggle between correct and incorrect ideas about how to win. keep, and consolidate it. The ideological struggle against revisionism--the ideas and practice of the class enemy within the communist movement--has taken place since the beginning of the struggle for proletarian revolution. Revisionism attempts to distort the revolutionary content of Marxism-Leninism. It assumes many forms; it seeks to ride the revolutionary tide of world history by appearing in increasingly militant disguise, but its counter-revolutionary essence remains the same.

We believe that the struggle against revisionism has not nearly ended. The struggle rages in every Marxist-Leninist party and group in the world. No party has avoided it in the past. No party can avoid it now. No party will avoid it in the future. It will continue to rage until the realization of world communism. The long term error of the international communist movement has been right-opportunism.

We should welcome the destruction of the bourgeoisie's ideas just as we welcome the destruction of the bourgeoisie. If the military struggle for state power must be protracted, the ideological struggle to keep it will be even more so. In the course of this fight we will face many twists and turns, many ups and downs, many victories and defeats. This is not a cause for resignation, passivity, discouragement or cynicism. The fight against revisionism is a life and death struggle. It cannot be avoided. It has always advanced the cause of workers and oppressed people. In each period, new advances are made as revisionism is progressively unmasked. Because the political understanding of the masses increases, their fighting strength grows. They wrest power from and expose the ruling class. In the course of ideological and political struggle, they rip away the red fig-leaf from revisionist bosses. As the battle against revisionism intensifies, the people prove that they can win and hold state power. The struggle against revisionism is a protracted process. It is a good thing.

In the context of revolutionary advances and the continuing fight against revisionism, revolutionaries have made serious errors that have allowed the local capitalist class and its imperialist allies to regain state power temporarily in some countries. If we understand them, we can avoid them and defeat revisionism qualitatively. We do not look to minimize the great accomplishments of the revolutionary movements. Obviously, we could not carry out this task if others--many others--had not preceded us. We wish especially to credit the millions in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) who opened new ideological horizons for us. We know, however, that revisionism reversed the Soviet revolution. We know that revolutionary movements in eastern Europe that followed the Soviet path have all ended badly. We know that the GPCR all along was a mass movement to defeat China's "red" bourgeoisie and re-establish proletarian dictatorship. And now we view the spectacle of the Mao Tse-tung leadership pursuing right-wing policies with a vengeance. Current policies of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have reversed the revolutionary process in China, and have taken China back on the path of capitalism. How can such developments occur? How can they be reversed?

THE PARIS COMMUNE

The Paris Commune of 1870-71 was the first great proletarian revolution in history. Ultimately, it failed and was ruthlessly smashed by the combined efforts of the French and German bourgeoisie. However, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others were able to draw heavily on the experience of the Commune. The Commune clarified in practice for the first time the content and forms of working class power. It taught Marx and later Lenin four profound lessons about the revolutionary process:

1. The need to smash (as opposed to taking over or "appropriating") bourgeois state power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
2. The need for equality--particularly economic equality--between revolutionary cadre and the masses of workers. In one of its first acts, the Commune abolished the gross discrepancy between the wages of working people and state functionaries.
3. Immediate recall of leadership by the masses if leaders fail to carry out the desires and aspirations of the working-class.
4. The abolition of a bourgeois-type standing army and the distribution of arms to the masses of people. The Commune correctly foresaw that a standing army could serve as a "special repressive force" only against the workers and other oppressed people and not against the bourgeoisie. The workers had made the revolution: they and only they could defend it.

In State and Revolution, Lenin raised and expanded these points at some length. He also showed that the class struggle would continue after socialism. The rich experiences of the Paris Commune provided a source of inspiration to all revolutionaries. They enabled the world communist movement to take a giant stride forward.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The Russian revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold, and consolidate state power. Prior to the revolution Lenin had written the historic What Is To Be Done? to fight the right opportunists who would have frittered the revolution away by relying on spontaneity, by engaging in reform struggles without introducing communist ideas, and by agitating for a bourgeois-democratic revolution instead of socialism. Between 1919 and 1921, the revolutionaries made a magnificent and victorious stand against military intervention by foreign imperialist powers. The masses showed great courage and determination to defend and build their revolution. It showed that the masses, the leadership of their revolutionary party, and revolutionary violence on the part of the working class and peasantry were vital to the seizure of state power.

From its onset, the Russian revolution drew an endless series of attacks from the international bourgeoisie. The sharpest external form these attacks took was the fascist invasion of the Soviet Union in 1940. The Soviet struggle against the invasion was a key factor enabling other revolutions--particularly the Chinese revolution --to develop. Communists all over the world led the fight against fascism and Nazism. The Soviet Union was the bulwark of this fight. The armed might of the Nazis, supported by the fascist "master race" theory, seemed invincible. Yet, the Red Army, the Soviet people, and the world communist movement smashed this "master race" of fascist imperialists and its Wehrmacht.

However, this tremendous mass struggle to defeat fascism, which involved hundreds of millions who were led mainly by the communist movement, did not result in socialism. The leadership of the international communist movement, led by the Soviet Union, did not advocate socialism--the dictatorship of the proletariat--as its primary goal. So after the war western Europe, particularly France and Italy, were handed back to the bourgeoisie. This was wrong. The workers were armed. They believed in socialism. And they would have carried the class struggle through to the end. Instead communist leaders advocated the turning in of guns to the Allied military government, and winning socialism through the parliamentary process. So capitalism was put back on its feet in western Europe, and it eventually engulfed eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In the case of the Soviet Union and these other countries, the roots of revisionism all converged at the point of granting concessions to the bourgeoisie, concessions that either allowed the old ruling class to reconquer power or paved the way for the emergence of a new, "red" bourgeoisie:

1. In the course of revolutionary struggle prior to the seizure of power, the revolutionary party falsely divides the bourgeoisie into a "left" and a "right" camp, calls for an alliance with the "left," and consummates this alliance by granting the "left" certain privileges such as immunity from expropriation.
2. This alliance is maintained after the revolution, and the privileges granted to the "good" wing of the bourgeoisie are extended.
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4. Many of the privileges granted to the bourgeoisie inevitably assume other than purely economic forms. Economic concessions require prior ideological concessions: if you pay an architect far more than a bricklayer, a general a lot more than a private, or pay a mayor 20 times more than a peasant, you have to come up with a theory to justify the discrepancies. One of these ideological concessions is the promotion of nationalism ("Let's all be a little less piggy--all of us, that is, except the bourgeoisie--for the sake of the nation.") Nationalism is a bourgeois theory. Like the bourgeoisie, it has no progressive aspects. Lenin and Stalin were consistent in defining nationalism as a totally reactionary ideology. But they often wrongly suggested that a little nationalism could be useful.
5. Revolutionaries view the united front as an alliance between themselves and the "better" section of the bourgeoisie. Thus, the front unites around a bourgeois nationalist line as opposed to a revolutionary line for the dictatorship of the workers. As part of this deal, communists make the biggest concession of all by renouncing the struggle to win the masses to a socialist program.
6. One of the principal reasons offered for the above concessions is the assumption that a large section of the masses--particularly the peasantry--cannot be won to socialism. The argument is put forth that the socialist revolution must pass through a two-stage process, the first stage of which will be something other than socialism. The Chinese called this first stage "New Democracy." Others argued for a-period of bourgeois democracy that would somehow transform itself into socialism.

The writings of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are filled with warnings about the inevitability of a comeback attempt by the bourgeoisie after the revolution. The historical experience of revolutionary movements seems to validate these warnings without exception. The bourgeoisie's desire to reverse socialist revolution is constant. Its ability to reverse socialism depends upon the amount o~ leverage and maneuverability it is left with. Every time revolutionaries have made concessions to the bosses, the bosses have been able to use the concessions to regain power.

After the revolution, Russia was decimated. After the defeat of the interventionists, the Bolsheviks undertook the task of building the first socialist society. Before long, the leaders of the party decided that the slow pace of socialist construction would lead to ruination. They contended that the revolution would go down to defeat unless they could win the "more advanced" members of the old ruling class to cooperate in building the workers' state. Therefore, sweeping class concessions were in order. Accordingly, in the twenties, the Bolsheviks began implementing a policy known as NEP (New Economic Policy).

The NEP called for the reintroduction of capitalist methods, capitalist competition, and capitalists into the government and economy. The program sought to restrict the development of capitalism. But communists were assigned to control and nurture this base of capitalism. Obviously, communists administering capitalist concessions is at least contradictory. Profits and there fore exploitation were allowed. High living was tolerated. The equalitarianism that Lenin had admired in the Paris Commune and that he had called an indispensable aspect of socialism in State and Revolution never truly came into being. Communist cadre and leaders soon began aping the old bourgeoisie. As the economic gap increased between them and the people, the ideological gap followed suit. As this disease progressed, the CP ultimately restored full-blown capitalism to the Soviet Union. This time the bourgeoisie consisted of CP leaders and the managerial class they represented. But this new bourgeoisie could not have developed strength to take power without the concessions initially granted to the old bosses in the twenties. The seeds of capitalist restoration were already inherent in the NEP.

The transition from socialism to capitalism was a protracted process that unfolded over many years. The working class held fundamental power during this period. As in all developments, however, quantity turns into quality. The process of capitalist restoration was completed around the time of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Led by Khrushchev, this congress set forth a systematic revisionist program. It called for unity between the Soviet Union and any party or nation calling itself socialist. According to Khrushchev and the Twentieth Congress, it was possible and even desirable to envision a peaceful transition to socialism, because a new period had dawned in which socialism and imperialism could co-exist non-antagonistically. Socialism would triumph not by force but by example.

Khrushchev formulated a right-wing attack on the Stalin cult for use as a battering ram in demolishing Marxism-Leninism. He capitalized on bad errors made by Stalin and other revolutionaries to obscure his own reactionary ideas. Over the years the Stalin leadership committed wholesale errors:

1. Making concessions to the old Russian ruling class.
2. Introduction of material incentives instead of political-moral incentives.
3. Relying on nationalism to defeat the Nazis--thus making the policy of the international working class subservient to the interests of the Soviet Union. So, nationalism triumphed over internationalism.
4. This policy led the Soviets into alliances with the international ruling class. This was most evident during the war against the Nazis. U.S., British, some French and other bosses were pictured as progressive forces.
5. Democratic centralism, which is the only system of revolutionary organization, was reduced to arbitrary centralism. Friends were not distinguished from enemies. Thus, many good revolutionaries were killed by the Stalin leadership because they might have had differences. Many counter-revolutionaries who should have been put down were able to slip through because of these abuses
6. Probably the most important error Stalin and others made was not winning masses of people to Marxism-Leninism. So, an elite held power without much participation by workers and peasants. Socialism was for the party leaders. The masses were only involved in carrying out this or that policy. Because these policies seemed progressive at the time, there was little resistance to them.

When the Khrushchev gang came to power there was only a slight adjustment needed to consolidate capitalist ways of life and production which had developed over the years. He capped off his revisionist program by asserting that the Soviet Union had completed socialist construction and could now undertake the transition to communism and that therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat had become an obsolete concept to be superseded by the "state of the whole people." In the space of two generations, the Soviet Union had turned from a socialist state that allowed "limited" capitalist enterprise into a fascist dictatorship.

ARE CAPITALISTS MORE WINNABLE TO SOCIALISM THAN PEASANTS?

Soviet concessions to capitalism were predicated upon the assumption that the peasantry could not be won immediately to socialism. Communist theoreticians devoted many treatises to the peasants' "backward mentality." Marxist-Leninists claimed that the peasant was petty-bourgeois, either in his orientation or in his relation to the mode of production. Given this estimate, revolutionaries reasoned that the peasantry was unwinnable to socialism without initially passing through a "stage" of bourgeois democracy. According to this theory, each peasant first had to receive his own plot of land. Next, some of these plots would be turned into cooperatives. Then the cooperatives could be developed into collective farms. But even within these transitional phases, each peasant was entitled to his "own" land, cow, horse, chickens, donkey, etc. In reality, this bourgeois- democratic "revolution" consigned the vast majority of peasants to capitalist exploitation. Capitalist production relations breed a capitalist and nationalist outlook.

When peasants and oppressed people rebelled against imperialism in alliance with "anti-imperialist" local bosses, Marxist-Leninists supported this alliance. The theory was that since the fight against the imperialists took precedence over everything, local bosses in competition with the imperialists could help in building the united front. In practice, this produced two irreconcilable contradictions: in the first place, it called upon communists to win the peasantry to capitalism; secondly, it rejected nationalism as an ideology but often embraced it as a "tactic."

Virtually all the world's peasants and oppressed people are proletarianized. The vast majority own neither land nor the means of production. This is certainly the case today, and we believe that it was also the case during Lenin's lifetime. As a worldwide system of exploitation, imperialism proletarianizes people, whether they work on the land or in factories.

This development is particularly obvious in our own country. Millions of agricultural workers in the U.S. are fighting the bosses, not for individual plots of land, but for higher wages, shorter hours, improved working conditions, etc. These are proletarian class demands. If properly led, the struggle to win them can help develop socialist consciousness. In the case of the so-called "colonial" and "semi-feudal" countries, tremendous economic growth has taken place. It is true that this growth has developed unevenly. It is also true that workers in the colonial countries are far more exploited than workers in imperialist countries. But why should communists attempt to convert these conditions into national capitalism, when this type of exploitation affords ample opportunity for winning workers and peasants--especially the most oppressed--to socialism?

History has proved many times that once national liberation movements seize power, they remain the pawns of imperialism. Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, and other cases all demonstrate that liberation without proletarian dictatorship is a fairy tale. History has also proved the futility of attempting to sneak socialism in through the back door. The wreck of Cuba stands as a living monument to the theory of socialism by deceit. As its economy sinks yearly and it becomes increasingly dependent on the revisionist Soviet Union, the Cuban revolution must pay dearly for failing to win the masses to a socialist outlook during the war against Batista. Withholding socialist ideas from part of the oppressed population because these ideas appear too "advanced" fatally undermines the development of socialist society.

The notion that the masses cannot understand socialism and will not fight for it is a myth that leads to elitism: "only a select few of us can understand such lofty, complex ideas." This error also compounds racism, because it vindicates the bourgeois idea that non-white people are too backward and stupid to exercise full social responsibility. Socialism does not belong to a chosen few; it belongs to the masses. They must develop socialist ideas, fight for them, and put socialism into practice. Superficially, this approach may appear more protracted than the old two-stage approach. In the final analysis, however, it may well prove to be the shorter route. In any event, we believe, it is the only route.

THE SEVENTH WORLD CONGRESS

The Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935 marked another turning point for the international communist movement. As the Congress opened, fascism was spreading throughout Europe. But neither the Congress nor the communist movement in general called for armed struggle, people's war, or revolution as the only method of defeating fascism decisively.

Fascism did not arise in Hungary, Italy, Germany, or Japan by fluke or default. Since these countries all had feeble economies, bourgeois democracy proved too weak a form for effective political control. The Bolshevik revolution and the world communist movement it helped generate made fascism necessary for the bourgeoisie. Intervention in 1919-21 had failed to destroy the Soviet Union. Consequently, the world bourgeoisie decided to establish fascism in certain strategic countries as a more violent form of anti-communism than bourgeois democracy. The imperialists armed Germany and Japan to the teeth. They entrusted Japan with the mission of fighting communism in Asia and Germany with the mission of fighting it in Europe and destroying it in Russia.

The Seventh World Congress divided the imperialists into fascist and anti-fascist camps and proposed a united front with the same bourgeois-democrats who had helped bring fascism into being. The social-democrats--the most rabid anti-communists on the pseudo left--were viewed as co-leaders of the united front.

In reality, both fascism and bourgeois democracy are forms of capitalist dictatorship. Both are equally counter-revolutionary. Neither can be smashed without proletarian revolution. If revolution was not imminent at the time of the Congress, revolutionary preparation and agitation--not alliances with "good" bourgeois democrats--should have been the order of the day. The parliamentary tactics adopted by the Seventh Congress served only to create the fatal illusion that fascism could be prevented without armed struggle. By systematizing unity with the "better" section of the bourgeoisie, the Congress strangled the communist movement and substituted opportunism for communist tactics. A world war was necessary to defeat fascism. Although the bourgeois-democratic imperialists intervened with their armies, communist-led armed struggle by the masses was the decisive factor.

However, the communist movement failed to give this struggle revolutionary leadership. Because the Seventh Congress did not make a correct distinction between friends and enemies, it put forth the revisionist "main danger" theory. The Soviets tried to forestall Hitler's invasion by making a pact with him. He double-crossed them. Then they entered into a full-blown alliance with the liberal imperialists who had initially sponsored Hitler and whom Hitler had also double-crossed. This alliance served to deepen illusions about qualitative differences among imperialists: since Hitler was the "worst," the others must be "better." The Chinese Communist Party still pursues this idea.

The line of the Seventh World Congress and the line of modern revisionism are essentially the same. They fail to grasp that although contradictions exist within the bourgeoisie, bourgeois class unity always predominates in the case of opposition to communism. This was a big lesson from the Paris Commune. Therefore, they fail to see that liberal bourgeois democracy feeds and develops anti-communism and fascism. Now, after decades of "lesser evil" imperialists, the CCP has taken the theory a step further by advancing the concept of "lesser evil" revisionists: the Soviets are the "worst;" the others are "better."

The "lesser evil" line has two main consequences: it either prevents revolutionary movements from seizing power or causes parties in power to restore capitalism. Today's Soviet Union furnishes a developed example of the latter consequence. Today, the only struggle conducted by the Soviet bosses is for a senior partnership in the international bourgeoisie. They are aided in this quest by the opportunism of the CCP.

The Soviet bosses must be treated like any other section of the bourgeoisie. Lenin's idea of recall by the masses might have been feasible when the Soviet Union was still a socialist state, but the party leadership had eliminated this idea in the earliest stages of the revolution. Since the masses were too "backward" to understand socialism, they were also too "backward" to understand the "need" for reintroducing limited capitalism or for allying with the "lesser evil" section of the bourgeoisie. In a word, they couldn't be trusted.

Today, the Soviet bosses have less reason than ever to trust the masses, because the masses now need to "recall" all of them by means of violent revolution. Overthrowing the Soviet leadership is a necessary and desirable goal. Revolutions are bound to erupt in all the former socialist countries.

THE CHINESE REVOLUTION

Once proletarian dictatorship had been established in Russia, one-sixth of the world's land surface, the international relationship of forces changed irrevocably in the direction of revolution. Millions of communists and their supporters were actively engaged in political struggle from one end of the earth to another. A vibrant communist movement had begun to develop in China. Despite certain key mistakes in the initial period, the party and the revolutionary masses had grown in numbers and strength. By the late 1940s, they had won control of the Chinese mainland and established the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Chinese revolution proved conclusively that a non-industrial country could move directly to socialism. Heretofore, many Marxist-Leninists had thought that socialist revolution was feasible only in countries with an industrial development at least on a par with Russia before 1917. Although China had some industry and therefore also a small working class, the number of city-dwelling workers was small before and during the revolution. But Mao Tse-tung and others understood that the peasantry could be a revolutionary force and unite with workers in the cities to seize power.

Nearly thirty years elapsed between the founding of the CCP and the seizure of power. Therefore, Mao correctly pointed to the need for an outlook of protracted struggle. Organized armed struggle led by a communist party was one of the main aspects of the struggle. And Mao always insisted that revolutionaries must never surrender their weapons to local nationalists.

This titanic battle helped clarify and enrich many other important revolutionary concepts, such as party building, cadre training and development, inner-party struggle, etc. The success of the Chinese revolution threw imperialism--especially U.S. imperialism--into a panic. By 1949, another huge section of the world had gone over to the revolutionary camp. Asia had taken its first qualitative step away from colonialism and imperialism. Mao's statement that the "east wind prevails over the west wind" summarizes this historic development.

However, the Chinese revolutionaries never broke with the old policy of concessions to the so-called "progressive" bourgeoisie. On the contrary, they implemented it with a vengeance, so their revolution stood on wobbly legs from the outset. In the Soviet Union, this policy did not begin to develop fully until after the revolution. In China, on the other hand, it reached maturity well before the seizure of power. In the course of the anti-Japanese war, the CCP made alliances with large sections of the "national" bourgeoisie. As usual, these alliances required serious ideological and economic concessions. One of the most important was the CPC's willingness to curtail its open advocacy of proletarian dictatorship and socialism.

After wresting power from the "right-wing" nationalists, Mao called for a period of "New Democracy," a supposed joint dictatorship of four revolutionary classes, including the "progressive national bourgeoisie." We do not believe that a state commonly ruled by several classes ever existed in China or any other country, or that it will ever exist anywhere. In the modern epoch, either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, and no one else, is capable of wielding state power. What actually existed in China during the "New Democratic" period was essentially proletarian dictatorship. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was led by communists, and the party was the only effectively functioning political instrument in China.

The "theory" of New Democracy served merely as a tactic to justify the serious concessions made by the party to the bourgeoisie. New Democracy was nothing more or less than the Chinese version of the NEP. New Democracy enabled the bourgeoisie to acquire footing and maneuverability in the party, the state apparatus, and the economy. Small wonder, then, that educational institutions never changed their class character or that after nearly twenty years of proletarian dictatorship, Chinese culture was primarily bourgeois.

THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Like the Paris Commune, the Soviet revolution, and the first Chinese revolution, the principal question raised by the GPCR was the class nature of state power. By the early sixties, the ferocity of class struggle in China had begun to intensify dramatically. The concessions granted to the bourgeoisie by the policy of New Democracy had enabled a new ruling class to emerge and gain ascendancy. It differed in form from the old ruling class, but its capitalist essence remained identical. The heart of this new ruling class was the party itself. In the space of a few short years, the CCP had turned into its opposite. Virtually all of its leading cadre had become a "red" bourgeoisie. The GPCR therefore constituted an effort on the part of the masses to win power back from these revisionists.

The GPCR erupted within the framework of a worldwide anti-revisionist struggle apparently led by the CCP. In the late fifties, the CCP launched a significant attack against Soviet revisionism and Yugoslav opportunism. But this attack was not comprehensive. It took aim at several branches of revisionism without digging deep enough to ferret out its roots. The Soviet Union had become revisionist because it had repudiated armed struggle and was now calling for peaceful coexistence with imperialism. This criticism was correct-- but only as far as it went. During this entire period, the CCP never critically examined socialist construction in the Soviet Union or China, never repudiated the theory of concessions to the bourgeoisie, and never conducted an all-out ideological struggle against nationalism and the 7th World Congress.

Given the nature of the CCP, a thorough evaluation of these questions was inconceivable. Why should China's "red" bourgeoisie have put into question the very principles that had helped foster its development as a class? China's red bourgeoisie didn't fundamentally oppose revisionism; it attacked the Soviets because the Chinese masses were too advanced politically to swallow the obviously right-wing line of the CPSU. A more militant left cover was necessary in order to restore capitalism in China. The only hitch came when the Chinese masses began to take seriously the idea of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and reconquering state power.

The GPCR helped inject a number of vital ideas into the world revolutionary movement:

1. The absolute primacy of political incentives over material incentives. From the earliest days of the Bolshevik revolution, Soviet leaders were convinced that the masses could be won to socialism only if they were impelled by the promise of special material rewards. The Soviet leaders reasoned that a worker would be willing to increase his production if he received additional pay for producing over the norm. Correspondingly, it was felt that peasants would also produce more if they owned a part of the land they worked. The same system had developed in China. In the course of the GPCR, the left mass movement tried to smash it.
2. The primacy of politics over technique. The GPCR demonstrated that the prime requisite for socialism was not a bevy of "experts" or technocrats but rather the masses' understanding and implementation of socialist ideas.
3. Intensified struggle against revisionism. One of the slogans advanced by the left during the GPCR was "no aid from revisionists." China's own experience had shown that Soviet "aid" would lead to its opposite by creating illusions about revisionism and diluting the class struggle. The left also stated its opposition to negotiations with revisionists and imperialists.
4. Intensified struggle against imperialism and its nationalist stooges. The left and the masses led a series of attacks on imperialist diplomats residing in China. Chinese workers laid siege to the British "crown colony" of Hong Kong. These developments helped strengthen revolutionary movements in Asia and the West. The revisionists and imperialists were always babbling that Peking was "isolated from the community of nations." The left said that isolation from imperialists like DeGaulle or stooges like Sihanouk was just fine because it was a necessary condition for unity with revolutionary forces, workers and oppressed people around the world.
5. The revolutionary doctrine that the masses are more important than weapons and can defeat any imperialist war, including nuclear war. The U.S. imperialists and Soviet revisionists increased their war provocations against China during the GPCR. The GPCR was not intimidated. It took the line: "China will never launch a nuclear war or any war of aggression. Despite the apparent superiority of your weapons, the Chinese people and the workers and oppressed people of the world are invincible. Imperialism and revisionism will be crushed. Start your war--we will finish it."

The Chinese masses took many of these ideas in dead earnest and attempted to act upon them. A large organized movement developed against Soviet aid to Vietnam. Shipment after shipment of Soviet arms was derailed by left forces in the GPCR. The purpose of these actions was to show revolutionary solidarity with the people of Vietnam by opposing the machinations of the revisionists. Only the direct, violent intervention of the Mao Tse-Tung controlled People's Liberation Army was able to put a stop to this movement.

Underlying the GPCR was the premise that the class struggle grows sharper after the seizure of power. The GPCR was a struggle for state power. It proved that workers and revolutionaries must fight back to win power away from the "red" bourgeoisie and keep the red flag of revolution in the vanguard of the mass movement.

Various forces allied with Mao Tse-tung have portrayed the GPCR as "personally led and initiated" by Mao. This is a myth. The GPCR really began in the late fifties, when masses of people rebelled against the new "red" bourgeoisie and attempted to implement a program for drastic change in Chinese society. The commune movement of the fifties was one of the first expressions of this struggle. Although the commune movement was identified with Mao, it was crushed while he dominated the Chinese political scene.

Two distinct elements participated in the GPCR: a left, represented by certain forces in the party, by the Red Guard movement, and by revolutionary workers' councils; and a right, represented by Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi. The initial actions of the GPCR had nothing to do with Mao. One of the first struggles launched by the pre-Red Guard movement was a rebellion against revisionism at Peking University. This movement and the workers' movement rapidly grew into huge mass phenomena. Mao and the forces allied with him used them in a struggle against the more exposed rightists like Liu and P'eng Ch'en.

The only differences between Mao and Liu centered around the question of whether or not China would continue its development along the Soviet line. Some of Liu's friends who were Marshals in the PLA wanted to build the Chinese army with Russian weapons, thereby making China economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union. Mao and his allies wanted the Chinese economy to develop independently of the Soviet Union. They wanted to produce their own brand of national revisionism. Led by Mao, they used the revolutionary mass movement as a battering ram to drive the very exposed right-wingers like Liu out of the party. But the masses wanted to drive out the entire party leadership. This was the necessary condition for seizing back state power and the means of production. Mao uttered left formulations and issued left directives to ingratiate himself with the masses and win their confidence. But every time the masses went "too far" in carrying out his instructions, he immediately called upon the PLA to beat them into submission.

Liu and his associates were used as scapegoats. Many of the errors pinned on the "black gang" were errors made by Mao Tse-tung. During the thirties Mao had said not to advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat; Mao advocated concessions to landlords and other businessmen in order to win them to the anti- Japanese struggle; Mao called for. alliances with every kind of nationalist fink.

The left of the GPCR wanted to model socialism in China after the principles of the Paris Commune. By establishing himself as the "symbol" of these principles, Mao was able to deceive much of the left. His own apparatus and many honest forces in the mass movement worked swiftly to elevate him to the status of demi-god. He became the "red sun in our hearts" and it was discovered that he had never said or done anything wrong. He got away with this by giving lip service to the revolutionary aspirations of the masses.

Mao helped put his man Lin Piao in charge of the armed forces. In this way, he succeeded in creating the impression that the GPCR was being carried out within the PLA. According to opportunists, the PLA had already become "a great school of Mao Tse-Tung Thought"; therefore any disruptions in it would be harmful to China's stability and would render China vulnerable to external attacks from the imperialists and revisionists.

After Mao's rapid ascension to divinity, his authority was enormous. The political self-reliance of the masses could not possibly have developed in these circumstances. Bit by bit, Mao methodically whittled away the reforms initiated by the GPCR and dismantled the organizations that had led the fight to win them. He dispersed the Red Guards and other leftists. He removed those leaders of the GPCR who opposed him or who "mistakenly" persisted in "ultra-leftist" thinking. He distorted the great slogan "serve the people" until it became indistinguishable from the slogan "serve Mao."

In the initial phase of the GPCR, when the masses said they wanted to drag out all the power holders, they meant concretely that 90 percent of the senior party cadre should "stand aside." Mao claimed, however, that only 5 percent of the cadre were hopeless right-wingers. He said that since 95 percent were good, they could be rehabilitated and re integrated into the party. This fable completely contradicted the aims of the GPCR. In addition, Mao called for a non-violent revolution, although he accurately described the GPCR as a class struggle for state power. But Marxist-Leninists, including the left of the GPCR, know that there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution. The class struggle for state power has never been peaceful; it was not peaceful during the GPCR and it will never be peaceful.

Backed by the prestige of Mao's vast authority and the power of the PLA, the opportunists were able to impose the old revisionist methods in China. A clearly revisionist foreign policy began to emerge. Since then, it has rapidly progressed further rightward. In 1967, masses of workers and students threw snowballs at the French ambassador in Peking. In 1968, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Peking to support the French worker-student rebellion. But by 1970, the leaders of the Chinese party and state were holding "cordial talks" with Pompidou's emissaries, and Chairman Mao "personally led and initiated" the sending of a heart struck letter of condolence to Mme. DeGaulle. This loveletter was the symbol of New Democracy on a world wide scale. According to the CCP, DeGaulle had been independent of U.S. imperialism. Therefore his memory should be revered. His role in suppressing the same worker-student rebellion that the Chinese masses had rallied to defend was conveniently overlooked. The Chinese leadership has now entered into negotiations with the Soviets, whom the GPCR characterized as "worse than Hitler." The CCP gave Yahya Khan $20,000,000 worth of aid for the Pakistani bosses. Then the Pakistani army met rebelling workers on the steps of the palace in the capital with Chinese tanks and guns. The CCP had given arms to the Pakistani rulers because of their feud with the Indian bourgeoisie, which was allied with U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism. The Pakistani bourgeoisie was in competition with it. Therefore, the Pakistanis were "better," and the Indians were the "bigger enemy." But as is always the case when this revisionist line is applied, the main enemy of the opportunists in Peking proved to be the masses themselves.

Because the CCP never really broke with the old policies that eventually led to revisionism, some of the ideas it now advances to explain developments in the Soviet Union and China are inadequate. The CCP says that the "black gang" of capitalist roaders (i.e. the right led by Liu) have been rotten for decades, and that a "handful" of them usurped power before the GPCR. Mao's only self-criticism is that, some years ago, he allowed himself to be outmaneuvered by them and kicked upstairs. Although Mao's critique of Liu contains many correct points, it fails to explain how Liu managed to become top dog in the state. This critique is unprincipled and opportunist, because Mao nowhere explains why he and Liu held many of the same political positions during the thirties and forties. Because the CCP never correctly analyzed its own development or the development of revisionism in the Soviet Union, it has not solved this problem.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the GPCR has been crushed and the changes fought for in China have been reversed. It is no surprise that the momentary left direction of China's foreign policy has turned into its opposite? and that Chinese foreign policy is now to the right of the right-wing Bandung Conference program of the fifties. Additionally the CCP never mounted an anti revisionist attack on the Cubans, the North Koreans, or the North Vietnamese. Why should it? Le Duan, Castro, and Kim Il Sung are faithfully carrying out Chairman Mao's thesis of New Democracy.

Consequently, it is a very logical development that the Mao Tse-tung leadership moves for accommodation with U.S. imperialism. How ironic that the CCP feverishly tries to get into the U.S.-Soviet imperialist's UN, after giving the ex-Indonesian leader, Sukarno, roses for leaving it. During the GPCR the CCP attacked the UN. They carefully explained the class role it played in the world. And they were emphatic that they had no intention of trying to get into this nest of vipers. Obviously, the CCP has changed its policy of reliance on the masses to reliance on the world's bourgeoisie. The rationale is to prevent an attack on China, but this policy has never worked on its own terms. It has subverted, confused and held back revolutionaries.

We would be guilty of the same error committed by the CCP in analyzing the roots of revisionism, however, if we ascribed the defeat of the GPCR and the present right drift of Chinese policy to Mao's errors alone. The key error in the GPCR was made by the left, when it failed to separate itself ideologically and organizationally from Mao. It tolerated and in some cases encouraged the anti-Marxist Mao cult. The principal task in China remains the overthrow of the "red" bourgeoisie. If the left is to give leadership in accomplishing this task, it must regroup and irrevocably split from Mao & Co. This is the only course that can lead to the realization of the excellent slogans advanced by the GPCR: serve the people; no "aid" from revisionists; no negotiations with revisionists and imperialists; support only the broad revolutionary masses; bombard the headquarters; drag out the power-holders; draw a clear line between us and the enemy; and no unity of action with revisionists.

We are convinced that the defeat of the GPCR is temporary. This profound revolution enriched Marxism-Leninism and enabled the international communist movement to advance. We would never have been able to discuss many of the ideas in this report without the forward thrust of left forces during the GPCR. True, Mao and his group were able to turn the left's own weaknesses against itself, but in order to do so, he had to popularize left ideas and slogans to millions. We believe in these ideas and slogans. They light the way forward for our party, and we must strive to carry them out.

INFALLIBILITY AND THE CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL

We have already attempted to show how this bourgeois concept helped reverse the GPCR. The myth of leaders' infallibility has been a millstone around the neck of the communist movement for decades. Cultism and the doctrine of infallibility did not originate with the struggle for proletarian dictatorship. They have appeared down through the ages and have affected every aspect of social life. This reactionary doctrine thwarts the political development of the masses. Since someone "up there" does our thinking for us, why should we bother to do it ourselves? It takes political power out of the hands of the masses. It encourages bourgeois individualism, by urging the masses to seek individual self-improvement through emulation of the "infallible one."

Khrushchev attacked the Stalin cult from the right, in order to discredit Marxism-Leninism and secure political power for the new Soviet bourgeoisie. We attack the cult from the left, in order to serve the masses and win socialism. We believe in a revolutionary working-class party directly tied to the masses and controlled by them. We believe in democratic-centralism. We believe in leadership that sets proletarian dictatorship and socialism as its goal. We believe in criticism and self-criticism by all party members and leaders. We view infallibility and cultism as class questions.

Today the U.S. ruling class consciously uses cultism to impede the growth of the left. The bosses are only too happy to use their media to build up a left leader. They would like to turn his head, transform him into a celebrity, and thereby separate him from the masses. By using cultism, extreme egoism, and individualism, the bosses try to determine the identity of the people's leaders and the content of their leadership. The bosses choose certain "leaders" and slate them for instant stardom. Suddenly, everyone is reading their books or watching their interviews on the tube. Then, when the bosses decide they need a fresh image, they shunt these gurus into oblivion by shutting them off the tube and publishing someone else's books.

In the final analysis, we must decide once and for all who is the prime motive force in history: individuals or the masses.

PERIOD OF WARS AND REVOLUTIONS

Many people will say that PL is arrogant and cruel: "They sit on their asses and say it was wrong to make this concession or that one. Do they want people to fight and starve endlessly?" The masses--not we--have already answered this question. If everything had been hunky-dory in China, why did the GPCR erupt? How come the people of Vietnam rebelled and built their revolutionary movement after the 1946 negotiations with the French? How come they rebelled again and built an even stronger movement after the Geneva accords? Both China and the Soviet Union signed the 1954 Geneva agreement to break up Vietnam. They relied on imperialist promises of free election guaranteed by the UN. But the South Vietnamese people never went along with this sellout. Before the ink had dried on the Geneva agreement, they were organizing and fighting. Ho Chi Minh didn't organize them. He and the other Vietnamese leaders latched onto their movement only after it had become the fact of life. These revisionists made sure the Vietnamese revolution would remain well within the bounds of nationalism and bourgeois democracy.

The people never accept betrayal. They always see through it and fight back. Even on its own terms humanism fails, because every time "humanitarian" arguments are induced to bring about negotiations, the people have to pay a stiffer price after the inevitable sellout. They are left with the same rotten, murderous exploitation that they attempted to smash in the first place. They often have to rebuild their movement from scratch. Their fight for socialism becomes longer and harder than it would have been without the betrayal. But no deal, no concession can stop this fight. Nothing can.

Every time revolutionaries foist a nationalist hack like Sihanouk on the backs of the people, the people must pay a high price to get rid of him. How many Indonesians did Sukarno's line enable the bosses to slaughter? Yet the. Chinese hailed Sukarno. There is no correct way to unite with nationalists or imperialists. Where did such unity ever advance the cause of revolution? During the GPCR, the masses rejected this old, wrong, despicable policy. They will do so again.

In this period, the mounting contradictions faced by U.S. imperialism are embodied in its economic, political, and military weaknesses. Contradictions in revisionist countries are helping to intensify class antagonisms. Revolutionary ideology will strengthen its foothold among the masses, and the revolutionary process will spread internationally. Imperialism and revisionism cannot stop this process. For this reason, we say that the present period is one of wars and revolutions.

We hope and work for more revolutions. We welcome mass armed struggle. Conditions for sharper, more serious struggle are constantly maturing in the U.S. We believe that nuclear blackmail as it was used by the Soviets during the Sino-Soviet border clashes won't work. It may have scared Chou En-lai & Co. to back down. But it will not intimidate the masses. The left in China and the rest of the world will not be bamboozled by any kind of blackmail. The GPCR and the initial stages of people's war in Vietnam have shown that in the period that has seen great increases in the sophistication of imperialist weaponry and in imperialist ferocity, revolutionary struggle has taken giant strides forward.

UNITED FRONT AT ALL TIMES

We reject the concept of a united front with bosses, revisionists, Trotskyists and the herd of various fakes on the left. We believe in a united front from below that takes the form of a left-center coalition. Many people in our country are ready to grasp socialist ideas now. The contradictions between them and their leaders are increasing daily. In addition, there are many millions of good people who have no basic organizational or political allegiance to the bourgeoisie. In some cases, the party can help organize groups and work with them around questions of immediate interest. In other cases, we can attempt to ally with groups that already exist. We may also ally with formations within national or state organizations that separate themselves from the policies of their liberal-imperialist or revisionist "leaders." The united front necessarily assumes the organizational form of an alliance between ourselves and other groups. Within this alliance, we must implement the policy of "struggle with--struggle against."

We also work within reactionary groups if they have a hold on significant numbers of people. But this is not united front work. The purpose of our presence in such groups is to win their membership to socialism and our party, not to build the groups.

The political basis of the united front is our mass line on whatever issue workers and others deem important at any given moment. At present, the fight against racist unemployment constitutes the principal aspect of our mass line. Our participation in this fight enables us to make a united front with many different forces. Without a mass line, the united front is meaningless. We know that the masses are always embroiled in struggle. We attempt to raise the level of political consciousness both within and outside the mass movement. We should never separate ourselves from the people by abstaining from the class struggle. A party that doesn't fight dries up and dies. A party that doesn't bring communist ideas into the movement isn't a communist party: at best, it is a reform group.

We can best support the people's struggles by fighting for socialism and by defeating revisionism. This approach is as applicable to wars of liberation as it is to the fight at home for more jobs. The best support we can give our comrades in Vietnam is to struggle for the U.S. to get out now, to organize for the defeat of imperialism at home and in Vietnam, and to reject revisionism in the U.S., Vietnam, and everywhere else.

The united front is a critical form for winning people to socialist consciousness. Ultimately, no struggle can succeed unless its goal is proletarian dictatorship and the only way to win proletarian dictatorship is to defeat imperialism and revisionism.

There are many questions around which the mass struggle is raging. These include: unemployment, wages, prices, taxes, more schools, improved medical care, racism, war, and living conditions. Within these struggles we can link the fight for reforms to the need for socialism. Most people in our country are not yet for socialism. However, many more people than we ever dreamed of are open to struggle for working class ideas for workers' power. In doing this we can avoid the old error of creating illusions that capitalism can reform itself; and we can avoid the old Trotskyite error of separating ourselves from the struggle of all people. We are a working class party. No struggle is meaningless to us. No struggle is something that belongs to other people whom we are just helping out. We need to fight on all questions of principle. Socialism is not just something we need: it is necessary for the survival of our class.

OUR ERRORS

In the past, we have been too reticent in seeking out and working with other forces in the international movement. We have been slow in raising support for the class struggles conducted by workers in other countries. However, we know that each struggle abroad is interrelated to struggle in the U.S. We also know that communism can't advance with a bad line.

Over the years we have been guilty of many of the same errors made by the CCP. In our earlier period we supported many nationalists at home and abroad. We were unable to make the correct link-up between nationalism--the "militant" variety--and capitalism. We believed that "revolutionary" nationalism as espoused by a Malcolm X, Robert Williams or a Sukarno or Boumedienne type would be a transition belt from capitalism to socialism. Sometimes we arrived at these erroneous conclusions ourselves, or we were guilty of following the CCP policies unquestioningly.

In doing this we deluded ourselves into taking incorrect class positions. This cop-out from the ideological struggle often led us into making racist errors. It was our belief that most black and minority workers couldn't be won to socialist ideas. Hence, we didn't engage in sharp ideological struggle. Many black and minority people who were won to the party drifted away as they recognized that the party had two standards for black and white. White members had to believe in socialism; minority members could believe in anything they wanted. Naturally, they reasoned if the party had a nationalist outlook why did you need a party in the first place. After all, many non- communists in the mass movement advocated many national reforms.

The other side of the coin was reached when we rejected nationalism as a bourgeois outlook. Then many of our members developed a racist pattern. Many considered everyone an enemy who had a nationalist outlook. In every section of the people there is acceptance of many ruling class ideas. If they all were our enemies we would all disappear. To the extent nationalism is a mass phenomenon it is a response to racism. We have found that it isn't that difficult to win many people away from a nationalist outlook. Not to do so would result in the vilest racism. Additionally, if we accept the point that many, if not most, white workers are racists whom we should have nothing to do with, we would lose by default. This inverse racism would be an acceptance of the status-quo.

Another serious error we made was to take a superficial view of the CCP's fight against Soviet revisionism. We didn't seriously question the limited nature of the struggle against revisionism. We were too content to hear the Chinese berate Khrushchev instead of analyzing, ourselves, the fundamental reasons for Soviet opportunism.

So when the GPCR was launched we didn't question it sufficiently. While we questioned the adulation of Mao, and the fact that workers were not immediately in the leadership of the GPCR, and that many of the errors attributed to Liu were errors made by Mao, we were satisfied that Mao and Co. were going in the right direction. We weren't able to see the trends in the mass movement, or that Mao and others were really right-wingers wrapping themselves in a red flag. We couldn't see how the Mao Tse-tung leadership was taking away the initiative of the left in order to put over a right line.

We weren't sharp enough in drawing the proper lessons from Mao's one-sided support of the Hanoi and National Liberation Front leaders, who held many positions which were contrary to the CCP. For example, the Vietnamese supported Soviet revisionists and took Soviet "aid." They supported counterrevolutionary actions like the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Hanoi opportunists never fought revisionism. They always sought to unify Peking and Moscow. Obviously, they knew more than we did. We had illusions about the Mao leadership. Ho Chi Minh must have understood that the differences between China and the Soviet Union-- as well as differences between Mao and Liu--were secondary.

Another area in which we erred for some time was our method of relying on the masses. Our practice was limited. In the past two years we have begun to reach out to workers and all people opposed to the ruling class in a much larger way with communist ideas. The response has been excellent. More workers have come into or drawn closer to the Party. While we have improved in putting forward our ideas in a much more vigorous and consistent way we have not yet achieved what is possible.

Still too little time is spent in winning workers to communism, either through mass agitation or mass struggle. And only by overcoming our weaknesses in building united fronts and base-building can we correct this shortcoming. Either we rely and have confidence in workers or we perish. Either we become communists where we work, live or go to school or we will be reduced to perpetual outsiders.

Thus, the main way revisionism appears in our party is to the degree we do not implement our line on basebuilding. It is to the degree our sectarianism separates us from the workers. The kernel of our line is reliance on the workers. But how can we rely on them if we have little or no base among them? While we have made important strides these past two years, many people are still lagging by the wayside.

During the last two years we made an important breakthrough in the battle against revisionism. We brought socialist ideas to masses of workers, and we involved ourselves with thousands. Workers, by the thousands, are interested in our party and socialism. However, most workers are not ready to launch a socialist revolution now. They are ready to fight like hell on many immediate grievances. To abstain from these fights would be to reduce socialism to an abstraction. There would be no way to win people to the need for socialist revolution, and to show how the fight for reforms by itself can never solve workers' problems.

If we are sectarian or without ties to people we can spout our line all we want. We will get no place. We will dry up and disappear. Too many people still have a "metoo" outlook--that is, a capitalist outlook. They hide their anti-working class feelings or their fear of the workers behind "correct" slogans. A holier-than-thou attitude sometimes prevails. Secondary matters become primary in the absence of a base. Many people still view Marxism-Leninism as their property. They are unwilling to bring it to workers, learn from them and enrich Marxism-Leninism. We cannot tolerate isolated members. We. cannot tolerate members who hang onto their base like money. The purpose of a political base is to bring more workers into leadership in the fight against the bosses. Most of our subjective weaknesses like fear and individualism can be corrected within the framework of base-building.

Our party wants to be involved and leading events. But we want to involve millions in the Marxist-Leninist process. Only the workers have the power and understanding to win and secure state power. History has taught us the bitter lesson that a party can grow, can lead struggles, and even hold power temporarily. But it will lose out if millions upon millions of workers aren't imbued with socialist consciousness, and take part in the political planning and direction of the party. The more people who are involved in leadership and party building the better. We reject socialism by deceit, by inches, by an elite, etc. We reject reliance on the ruling class--any section of it. We rely only on workers all over the world. The working class is one international class with the need to crush each section of the international bourgeoisie until the entire ruling class is finished. This is not a bookkeeper's approach. It is an approach which demands the unity of all workers at the highest level. It calls upon all workers to be won to Marxism- Leninism.

SUMMARY

Undoubtedly, our ideas will be attacked as heresy. However, we have the ability to act on our mass line. Carrying out our line in practice is the decisive way to prove its validity. Every time we move our asses one tiny bit to bring our line to workers, they receive it enthusiastically. Our confidence in our ideas and our ability to make progress are closely tied to continued basebuilding for the party in the working class. Our party won't grow if it doesn't initiate struggles, if it doesn't stand in the forefront of all struggles, and if it doesn't build united fronts with those who are prepared to join with us on specific issues or sets of issues. If we don't serve the people, we are useless or harmful to them. Therefore, in the coming period, we must carry out the following tasks:

1. Root out all ideas that lead to alliances with the ruling class. Reject alliances that lead to ideological concessions now and economic concessions later. They can only turn us into a revisionist organization.
2. Steel ourselves and our friends to recognize and avoid nationalist traps. This can best be accomplished by fighting racism.
3. Make sure that the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism are always put forward in all party agitation.
4. Wipe out all vestiges of cultism. Intensify the struggle against individualism in ourselves. As a start, the Central Committee has approved the idea of suppressing the glorification of individual images that may arise in the party. Every member of the party must be able to present the party line. We do not believe in relying on the verbal or political dexterity of a few "experts."
5. Intensify our mass work. Struggle on issues. Build the united front as a left-center coalition. Win people to the Party. Build the unemployment movement.
6. Improve and expand our international work. Build international unity.

We have every reason to believe that by discussing, applying, and enriching this line, our party will deepen its ties to workers in this country and internationally. We have a world to learn--and a world to win.

 Build a Revolutionary Political Base

If our party is to continue to make slow but steady progress there are several things we must curb and eventually defeat. Sectarianism, the main way revisionism appears in our party, is the main weakness in our party today. This is reflected in the low level of basebuilding in all of our work, in each area. We must say self-critically that we could have done much better these past few years than we have done. We could not have become a mass party, nor could we have become decisive in any area of work. We could be bigger and with more influence than we now have. A careful examination of almost every member of the party will show that he has a limited political base and is not doing a hell of a lot to change this situation. How can you serve the people if you have no relationship, or extremely limited relationships, with them? Under these circumstances, membership in the party is primarily a selfish act, and while that may be a valid point of departure it isn't good enough if we are talking about defeating U.S. imperialism. Selfishness, or a "what's in it for me" attitude, is the essence of revisionism. Lack of a base can sometimes be dismissed as mere ineptness. More often, it manifests an ideological deviation. Unwarranted isolation is diametrically opposed to class consciousness, Class consciousness has nothing to do with how well you can vocalize Marxist-Leninist propositions. It has everything to do with your relations to people, and how they can eventually be moved into battle against the class enemy.

WHOM DO WE SERVE?

At each step of the way we must evaluate our commitment to building the party and serving the people. Our fulfillment as individuals can best be accomplished to the degree we make the party the central thing in our life. Sectarianism can best be described as fear of the people, or lack of confidence in the people. Since we aspire to be a working class party, lack of ties, no matter in which area you work, means a lack of confidence in the working class. And, while you may verbally oppose all the middle-class notions in other groups or periodicals you essentially share their outlook. Moreover, we do not want our members to view their participation in the party as a "sacrifice." Being in the party is a great opportunity to do something useful with your life. It can give you an unprecedented opportunity to serve the people. If you view your activities as an infringement on your personal prerogatives--hence a sacrifice--you are still completely under the influence of the enemy. You are not making very much progress. Your progress can best be measured in terms of your relationships with other people, especially non-party people. To overcome individualism and to achieve collectivity means defeating narrow selfish motives. For most of us developing relations with the people is an effort. Bourgeois ideology trains us to be loners, cynical of everyone else, particularly with people who do not fall over to agree with us.

If we want to overcome narrow "craft" interests in the various areas in which we work, if we want to win people to think in terms of how their actions should be designed in order to aid the entire class, then obviously we must train ourselves to view all of our actions from the point of view: "Is it helping the party to build and grow?" If we cannot do that, then we will be unable to win the masses to our line. When we go among the people and tell them we are communists they usually take us at our word. They evaluate us far differently than they evaluate other people. After all, we give them new yardsticks for judgment. If you claim you are for all the good things, but in your actions are not, the people will see this. This will compound their cynicism and reduce their desire for change. To the people you will simply be another guy who talks big and acts small. Workers have plenty of experience with this phenomenon in the unions. Many students and intellectuals are already using this yardstick to evaluate various bourgeois institutions.

We have a great responsibility to overcome our shortcomings and win a commitment to long, protracted revolution. In the past we tended to leave the matter of evaluation of one another to ourselves in the party. We have partially developed self-criticism and criticism. But even if we developed it fully within the party this would still give us an insular view of one another. In the coming period we should encourage people whom we know personally or work with politically and know personally to give their impressions of us as communists. We should train ourselves that being in the party means loyalty to the people. We should train ourselves to encourage the people's participation in our development. This would also tend to prevent the party from becoming a club. The party would be better oriented to improve its work and the work of its members if we had more insight into what non-party forces thought of us. We should encourage this no matter what the "risks" !

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS KEY TO BASEBUILDING

In our quest to build bases we should take a closer look at one another. We should start from the ground up. Like, "who do you know?" "What is the nature of the relationship?" In doing this we should take a broader view of what constitutes a political base. Many of us come from campus activity where the action is usually hot and heavy, and personal living is less than stable. We think in terms of knowing people solely on an action basis. However, if you live in a community or work in a shop you build your relations based on a long range commitment to the shop or neighborhood. The pace of struggle now may not have the intensity of campus struggle. While we should certainly try to know and work with those who are active, it is important to have many relations in the shop or community with people who may not be active at all now. It is impossible to predict who will rise to the fore in the long run. It is valuable to have relations with people of a "purely" personal character. The fact that people like you on a personal basis, knowing you are a communist, is important to you and them. Even if they do not agree with you politically, their relationship with you will often lead them to defending your right to function. This can often lead to enhancing your ability to function in any area.

At a later date, under different circumstances, experience with you and confidence in you could lead to a transformation in someone you thought to be passive. Having a wide circle of relations gives the party more maneuverability. Your relations with people should lead to enlightenment for them. As a communist you should impart confidence in the eventual overcoming of this society, which destroys the fabric of life. You can help people change, just as they help you change. Don't forget, we are not building a narrow minority movement. We are opposed to an elitist concept of historical change. Eventually we hope to involve tens of millions in sharp struggle. Where are they to come from? They are not about to fall from the sky. They are going to be those who at the moment don't often seem interested in changing society. But we say that sooner or later objective processes will sharpen the contradictions between most working people and the system. Then whom will the people work with and trust? Those whom they know and have confidence in.

What are we doing today to make trust in us a reality tomorrow? Are we becoming "tribunes of the people"? In other words, do we participate in all the seemingly endless struggles the people go through until their consciousness is more fully developed? Do people see us as totally interested in the affairs of the people? Are we respected, if not necessarily agreed with? Can anyone in our shop, school, or community come over to us in complete confidence on any matter, knowing that he will be listened to and helped? Do workers say about us, "I don t agree with that guy, but you got to respect him because he always tries to help. Maybe I better pay attention to his ideas."

WE MUST GO FURTHER IN INTEGRATING WITH AND STIMULATING THE WORKING CLASS

We have brought into the American scene way beyond our ranks the idea that if you want to make a revolution in this country, then you had better win the working class politically. And we know that during the last few years, we have carried on political battles to win people to this idea, because this idea was generally alien, certainly in our student and intellectual movement. And the working class itself, because it has little or no political consciousness, and doesn't necessarily conceive of itself as that class which will be the key, the instrumental class, in bringing about revolutionary socialism in our country. This is one of our biggest contributions in our country, and this is something we have to pursue with a lot more vigor and skill than we have. That is to say, to make the PLP a party of the working class and win other sectors of the population to understand that it is on the shoulders of the working class that socialism will triumph in the United States. We made a little start in this direction but we have to go much further.

Certainly anybody reading about the political situation in France can see this proposition a lot more clearly. That is to say, a lot of people can start the revolutionary process. But it is only the workers, in the modern industrial countries, that are going to finish it. When we were kids we used to say "Before you start something, you better see who's going to finish it." If we want to start a revolutionary movement we'd better have a clear idea of how it is going to get finished, upon whose shoulders it is going to be finished.

France certainly refutes the notion, which has been spread around by all sorts of forces that the working class in capitalist countries is so hopelessly corrupt that it is not going to make the revolution, and revolution can only come in the more oppressed sections of the world, and therefore, our task is simply to somehow or other assist these colonial revolutionary movements. They say we should write off our own working class. This is, of course, one of the biggest victories the international bourgeoisie can accomplish. Nothing would make them happier. Well, I wouldn't say nothing; it would make them very happy if the workers in all the capitalist countries would just stay put, so they would only have to fight colonial workers. Then they wouldn't have to fight on both fronts.

But if France were repeated in our own country, we might ask ourselves what we'd be doing. Certainly you can see the enormous value such an event would have for the revolutionary forces in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. If the American bourgeoisie was so hemmed in by its own working class here that it could not deal effectively with the oppressed outside its boundaries, and would be forced to weaken the struggle against them, or perhaps even let go. This for all intents and purposes would be the beginning of the end, or the end, for imperialism. So when we talk about being a party of the working class and introducing Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into the ranks of the working class and into the people's movements generally, we are talking about big stakes. And it is not just an abstraction.

You know, some say, "Would you believe that the Progressive Labor Party is going to lead the revolution? Would you believe that?" Everybody would say to himself, "That's pretty funny." Well, it's all right to have a sense of humor about things and to take things in stride but we better understand that that's what we are trying to do! We are trying to destroy the system and we are trying to bring revolutionary ideology into the working class and our outlook is that we can succeed. We can do this because the system that we are fighting cannot satisfy the working class and the people generally, and Marxism-Leninism can help workers achieve a new system. They come into sharp contradiction with the system. We have to have the will, the guts, or whatever you want to call it, to bring our revolutionary ideas into all of these struggles. We should take this perspective very seriously, and we should think from the point of view that "We can do it; it can be done." Not from the point of view of pompousness, but from a point of view of being serious about what we are doing, of seeing that the opportunities are there, and that whether or not we succeed rests on us, not on the enemy, but on us. It's no use crying over spilled milk, like others have done: "We failed because they beat us." "We failed because they were too strong." "We failed because of whatever the enemy did." No! The enemy can do his thing. He does it all the time, to all revolutionaries. He tries to crush and defeat them.

Revolutions fail and revolutionaries don't succeed in carrying forward the revolutionary process mainly because of their own shortcomings, primarily because of their own limitations. If this weren't true there would be no point in starting. There would be no point in organizing to smash the system. Because superficially the system appears much stronger than the revolutionary forces; so, if you are taken in by appearances, you will give up the ghost. Unfortunately, too many of us are still taken in by appearances, although going through the motions of playing revolutionary. After all, it's interesting. It keeps us off the streets. It gives us something to do. It gives some purpose to our lives, it makes us feel noble and that sort of thing. But in our guts all of us question whether it can be done or whether we can do it. As I said, we'd better take the approach that it can be done, that we are going to do it, and that the only one who can defeat us is ourselves. Nobody is to blame but ourselves.

DEVELOP REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

One of our main tasks since our inception has been to bring about this transformation in the party and in ourselves, to become serious revolutionaries and to actively play a certain kind of role. One of our main perspectives, one of our key tasks, has been to develop a core of people who would be considered professional revolutionaries in the traditional sense. That is, to serve the revolution and the party and the people comes first, that is the primary thing in their life. Because no serious revolutionary party can exist and be successful, without serious revolutionaries, without a cadre, without a leadership. During the last three years, I think small steps have been taken along this road. That is to say, there is a number of such people in a growing core in our party, represented broadly by the people at this convention. By and large, this growing core of cadres slowly but surely is making this revolutionary outlook the primary thing in their lives, is trying to defeat the "I" mentality and develop the "We" mentality. This convention is a reflection of this process.

Now are we developing cadre as an abstraction so as to be able to say we have 60 or 100 or 120 or whatever the number is of people who are dedicated? That's nice of course. But what is the purpose? The essential purpose is to bring leadership into the party, to develop revolutionary leadership among the people. There is the tendency in America, and probably in all countries to some degree, to say, "What do you have to be a leader for?" Somehow or another, movements can succeed without leaders. The ability of movements to succeed is based on two things. It is based on the objective circumstances, but also on the subjective circumstances. It's the interrelationship of these two that determines the outcome of the movement. For example, to refer back to France, there perhaps we could say a revolutionary situation existed objectively. But was there revolutionary leadership? There may be revolutionaries, but is there a leadership in the sense that it has that political relationship with the masses that they can take advantage of this objective situation, and consummate that revolution?

What is the role of leadership in the Soviet Union? In Indonesia? What is the role of leadership in every area where the revolutionary movement is moving ahead or retrogressing? Very important. Decisive. Just as the objective situation is decisive. We could all go into the street and cry "Rise up, fellow citizens. Let's seize City Hall." And unless that has some objective basis in reality, people will throw ash cans at us, or laugh at us. I'm not putting forward a superman view of history. I'm simply putting forward what I believe is one of the most important elements of revolutionary ideology, of Marxism-Leninism: the need of the people to have revolutionary leadership. If we think in terms of playing a role among the people and within the party, and in terms of leading the people in struggle, then we better now view it seriously. View it from the point of view that we are undertaking a tremendous responsibility.

What we are trying to do is to develop revolutionary leadership among the masses and win the majority of the working class and other sections of the population to political consciousness, to Marxism-Leninism. This requires, of course, many attributes but it requires, above all, serious devotion, dedication and confidence in the working people. It requires the ability--politically, ideologically and tactically--to develop ties with the working class and with the people which are tight, which cannot be broken by the enemy. Then the revolutionary process develops, and as the people become more conscious, we are able to guide this revolution to its consummation, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, these years of patient, slow winning and training people and developing ties among the masses, no matter how protracted they may seem, no matter how slow they may seem, are vital. They are vital to developing a revolutionary party and a revolutionary leadership among the people.

OBSTACLES WITHIN THE PARTY

Now within the party there are many obstacles to developing revolutionary leadership. What we are dealing with to a great extent is a petit bourgeois ideology, the ideology of the enemy within our own ranks. It manifests itself in many ways. And we know that if we are going to move ahead that we have to fight this ideology even more vigorously than we have till now. Some people say with a certain amount of justification, "Well, if we do that we'll lose people." That is to say, if you really make Joe work in that shop, and he wants to do something else, and you insist, he'll quit. He might. We will see that in every stage of the game, as we develop.

Whenever the party felt it was ready for the next big step, there was always a certain amount of dropping away from the party. This happened even when we formed the party out of the Progressive Labor Movement which was a serious step, because we felt there was enough unity of ideas to form the Progressive Labor Party. This was a serious step because now you are telling the enemy in a sharper way, and you're telling one another in a sharper way, "Look, we are intensifying the struggle." At our first conference a number of people got up, and challenged this idea of a party, raised a lot of ideas to show why it was wrong. And when we went ahead and formed the party, they dropped away. On the face of it, there was no particular reason for them to drop away over our forming the party or not forming the party. They all said they agreed with us on all the main points like dictatorship of the proletariat. They all said they were not defending imperialism, or most of them did. They all said a lot of the right things. But when the party was formed, these people recognized that was a step forward, a sharpening of the struggle and they fell away.

Now, sure, we don't say "That's wonderful, we're losing all our members! " We are trying to win these people. We try and make a fight for these people. But nonetheless this process does go on. When we came out with Road to Revolution there was a struggle in the movement. Because what was Road to Revolution? That was the opening, the public declaration of struggle against revisionism. A lot of people said "You can't do that" When the arguments were raised none of these guys said they were against the dictatorship of the proletariat. None of those guys said they were for the war in Vietnam. They didn't say anything on the surface so terrible. They recognized that Road to Revolution was a sharpening of the struggle against revisionism and imperialism. Some of them dropped away.

When we came out with Road to Revolution II and we tackled revisionism even more sharply, other people dropped away. None of them were raising what appeared to be primary differences. Nobody said that the party was founded on the wrong premise, that we weren't based in the working class. Nobody argued that. They were all for that. But they dropped away. When we start the process within the party of "Look, we have to have more discipline based on collectivity and people have to become more accountable to the party," certain people fall away because the screw is getting turned a little more tightly.

It's not simply a subjective thing. It's not that we decided, "Lets turn the screw and see who we can get rid of this week." It's that our political estimate is that the class struggle is growing sharper, and that in order to just keep abreast of the class struggle we have to do better. I don't believe we are even keeping abreast of the class struggle. I think to some extent, we're lagging behind.

Now, we make our estimate based on our understanding of the international situation of imperialism, based on its growing limitations, based on the growing sweep of revolutionary struggle. The class struggle in our country will grow sharper. We said that several years ago. People laughed in our faces. "Oh, those workers won't even go on strike." "They won't do this, they won't do that." "The students are all rotten." "Black people are all lumpen proletariat." So on and so forth. We didn't come to our estimate out of the blue. We came to it based on a somewhat scientific estimate of the objective situation of imperialism. Our estimate has been proven, by and large, correct. The class struggle has grown sharper, outside the country and within the country. One of the recent articles in PL Magazine on imperialism tries to give a careful economic evaluation of the falling rate of profit as a barometer of the maneuverability of imperialism. If you say the rate of profit is falling, then you are also saying the imperialists' ability to maneuver is growing less and less, and this forces them more and more to attack and tighten up on their own workers, and oppress workers all over the world. We think this is the situation we're in, and we think that the coming period will continue to see the sharpening of the class struggle, continue to see the sharpening of struggles in our own country.

That is the sweep of it. We don't have precise blueprints, but we see that pattern. It will be protracted, the revolution will take time, and it will not succeed unless there's a serious revolutionary party in the field, a party that has a fundamental relationship with the key sections of the misses No gimmick, no sleight of hand, no cute trick is going to pull it off, although in America the gimmick and the sleight of hand is part of the culture. But we are not working with this culture. We are working with a Marxist-Leninist outlook. The revolutionary process is protracted. It's always been protracted, it always will be protracted, and it continues even after the seizure of power.

INDIVIDUALISM

Lack of confidence in the working class, lack of confidence in the party, lack of confidence in Marxism-Leninism, is manifested often in a very individualistic attitude towards what one does. A lot of people say, "I'm going to do what I want to, when I want to do it, and how I want to do it, and I really don't give a damn what you people think." That comes out in a million and one ways. If all of us were to think about ourselves a little bit, and think about most people in the party a little bit, I think you will agree that attitude is still fairly prevalent.

People do this work for a year or two, young guys or even older people. It doesn't matter that much actually. I don't think age is any indication of patience, stability or understanding. It's hard. Things don't move the way you want. The revolution isn't around the corner. You could be doing this for a long time. You don't think of it just that way, but somehow in the back of your mind is the idea "I can be a lawyer, I could be a doctor; maybe my mother was right. I'll give this thing a whirl for another year, and I'll get a theory. I'll come up with some big theory that will speed the whole thing up and get it all over within a year or two. I'll get a theory to go with it. I'll get some guru or somebody who'll come up with some new 'Marxist-Leninist' theory and a bag plan." We've all heard this. It's just another way of creeping out. When ideological differences arise within the party (which is not a bad thing, which is a good thing) we have to be very objective and determine what is the reason for the difference. Is it a serious attempt to influence the movement, or is it merely giving vent to a great deal of individualism?

Now, you want to give leadership to the party, and you want to give leadership to the masses (that's what we're talking about). How are you going to do it, when a good deal of your ideological thinking is based on individualism? "Me, me! My mother told me I was the smartest guy alive, and she was right! I am! Nobody could tell me I'm wrong, because I know everything. No one else in the party knows anything. They don't understand." It may be that the party is wrong, and individuals are right. That has happened before. It's happened in this party. It's going to happen again. The party will make mistakes, an individual or a couple of individuals in the party will say, "Look, the party's making an error" and you know, it won't be understood, it won't be accepted. You have to take a serious attitude to that kind of struggle. You have to take a protracted attitude to that kind of struggle unless you feel that the party renounced the fundamental ideas for which you joined it. If that's the case, then I would say, "Why wait? Split, that's right." But if its a tactical or even a strategic difference, you have to take a protracted attitude in dealing with that. There's always a possibility you may be wrong, and maybe the collective was right. And even if you are right, if you have any confidence in the collective, well, somehow or other they'll get enough wisdom to understand how smart you were, to see maybe you were right. People change.

We have made many changes in the party; and have had many changes in our line and in many of our strategies and tactics. Unfortunately, in many cases it's taken us too long to make changes. But, nonetheless, there have been changes. We have to take a protracted attitude, to fight in a sharp, but principled way, from the point of view of really building the party. If you really want to build the party when you have a difference with it, you have to think about that because it's not so simple. That's a very difficult contradiction. But the way to solve it is not to break up the party, not to try to make the party become the main enemy, and not to beat the party. Because that's a very bourgeois attitude.

Well, we have a lot of that in the party. That's bourgeois arrogance, individualism, thinking of yourself over the needs of the party and the people. Sooner or later this brings you into contradiction with the people. If you're working, as all of us are trying to, among the people, you can't be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Your attitudes will appear in your work among the people. You can't be the bad guy in the party and the good guy among the masses. Maybe for a little while you will be on your best behavior among the masses: you will put on a little better show. You will cover it up a little bit because you have a certain kind of political consciousness. You can keep. a poker face and cover it up a little bit. "Oh, he's a nice guy. But we won't work collectively with the masses, because after all, we know everything. What do these dumb people know? All we have to do is tell them. And if they don't do what I want, they're stupid."

That's how seemingly good people become enemies of the working class. They don't sit down and will it, they don't sit down and say "I'm going to screw the workers, I'm going to screw the party; now I'm going to do it." They are usually seemingly good guys who want to do a good thing, who do what they think is right. But really they are not working collectively. They don't give a damn about anybody but themselves. They have an ax to grind, and they are going to grind it.

We can't take a superficial view of the development of the party. It would be a big mistake. We must dig deeper. We can take nobody for granted. We must take everybody into consideration, and work with one another very closely and collectively to help one another overcome individualism, and to progress in the work.

CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM

Now, I think that one of the biggest weaknesses in the development of the international movement, and it certainly manifests itself in our own movement, is the failure to develop criticism and self-criticism. Without the process of criticism and self-criticism there is no scientific way that the party can correct itself, no way at all. Without it we are robbed of the real ability to correct ourselves. Inevitably if self criticism isn't elevated we will sink into the wrong ideology. We'll develop the wrong ideas, because there will be nothing in operation to fight the wrong ideas.

I think that we have to think about this a little more. For example, in almost all the papers written for the convention discussion, how many were self-critical? Who wrote any that said, "I have been trying this work, and I screwed up. And I am not doing what I could have." That at least would be an attempt, weak as it is, to set a self-critical tone. One comrade wrote a list of criticisms of the party. And this comrade, before he got into the criticism, wrote two sentences of self-criticism, but he crossed it out. Crossed it out! Could not bear that everybody in the party should read something of a self-critical character! And yet the whole paper was a critique of the party's line! All crossed out. At first I thought I'd be nasty and just have it photographed, just like that. But fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) Wally saw it and, I don't know why, he thought I crossed it out, so when he pasted it up, he took it out.

Now, that's a little bit of a phenomenon, that not one member of the party, (I might be wrong, maybe there was one) but most members-almost nobody had anything self-critical to say. There was some criticism, which is good. But that's only one aspect of criticism and self-criticism. Self-criticism is very important, because if we don't evaluate ourselves it's very hard for others to get a handle on some of the real shortcomings that we may have. Of course it's easier to "self-criticize" somebody else than to be self-critical of oneself. That's another way of showing that we still consider ourselves to be primary and the party and the people to be secondary.

Now many times people say, "Well, I'm all for that. That's all true. What can we do to change? What can be done to change?" Well, there's no panacea. I think in the first place one has to be aware of this problem. Self-criticism is still the primary thing. One has to have some evaluation of oneself and the people one is working with, and deal with shortcomings self-critically and critically. But after having said that, then of course there are certain procedural things that have political content which can help people change. One of them is check-up. When someone is asked to do something, and he agrees to do it, there should be careful examination to find out whether it is being done. How well is it being done? Examine it. Evaluate it. What was done? What was the person's perspective? Does he have a perspective? What did this thing have to do with the person's perspective? In this way we have some way of evaluating a person's political role. It isn't a mystically psychological procedure with somebody hitting himself saying, "Well, I'm this and I'm that, I'm a bad fellow," and everybody answering, "That's true." No! There is a process by which we help the individual member to make positive changes.

This has to be a constant thing. So that when we are engaged in activity, even in the heat of a battle so to speak, we have to find the time to examine what it is we are doing. Somebody says, 'Ugh, we'll do it later, when it's all over.' Yeah--when we're all dead, we'll examine it. When it's all over, then we'll do it. "I have no time. I have a million meetings. I got to meet this one. I've got to see that one. I'm all tied up." All tied up! Can't stop for a minute to think about what it is we are doing. Can't stop for a minute. Got minutes for everything else, got minutes to write criticism, got minutes for this and minutes for that ain't got five minutes to sit down and ask "What are we doing?"

I have seen it happen in strikes. We had it here in New York in a welfare strike, where our club in the Welfare department was in the middle of a strike. The club hadn't met. The left-wing caucus that they were working with hadn't met. Too busy. I asked why hadn't the club met. "We're too busy." Well what the hell do we need a party for? What do we need a party for? What is the collective process of the party? The left-wing caucus that they were working with hadn't met.

The students at Columbia are tearing up the pea patch. SDS is the organization leading it. The SDS has not met, we haven't gotten it to meet yet. Our people are active members in it. What is the collective? "I went up to Columbia. I went up to the front lines. I showed my face." Yeah that will help a lot at Columbia. You know, individualism. How does one distinguish himself in struggle? He's a hero. That's America. That's how you distinguish yourself in the struggle. You're a hero. Somebody gives you a medal, and when you come back "Boy were you brave. The cops hit you 18 times. Were you brave! " Big bravery. I think we should be brave. I'm not denigrating bravery. But by guts alone you won't do it. You have got to have brains, you've got to think. You've got to work together. You've got to evaluate, and in the middle of a struggle you've got to do it. In the middle of a struggle.

I once read a book about the Chinese Army written by a bourgeois general, and he described how in the middle of a battle they managed to hold meetings. Now they won. So you can't knock that. That's very interesting. How do you hold meetings in the middle of a battle? They figured it out. They worked it out. Guys were having meetings in foxholes. "What should we do now? Let's think it over." Almost ludicrous when I read it. I said to myself, "What a jerk you are, Milt. These guys know that this is part of how we overcome this individualism by working together collectively within the party and with the people we're working with politically outside the party."

Of course, if you've got nobody to work with politically outside the party, you're in trouble. You've got no relationship to the masses, there's no process. The main door is closed. You don't know anybody, that's a problem. And there are still many of us who, by and large, really don't have relationships with the masses that are meaningful. We say hello to the neighbors, but we don't really know them. And I think to a great extent that is the case with many people yet. Relationships are too superficial. We don't know people well. They don't really tell us too much. You know what I think we should do? We should ask people, "What do you think of me? How do you think I am working? What do you think of the role of my party in this situation now?"

It doesn't mean that everything that somebody says, whether he is in the party or outside the party, is correct. But it's interesting to hear what people have to say. You might learn something. That process might help toughen one's skin and make one stop and think. We have-to think about this question of criticism and self-criticism, and not do it abstractly, but to do it in the process of work. Do it in relationship to what it is we're supposed to be doing, what we voluntarily agreed to do, and what everybody else expects us to do. Otherwise, where's the responsibility to one another? None!

FIGHTING FOR CORRECT LINE IS KEY TO LEADERSHIP

We have the responsibility to bring forth the right line in every area. That's leadership. You bring forth the right line no matter how difficult it may be in the short run. That's leadership. Who ever said it was easy to fight for the right line? Who said it is easy? Do you think it's easy? No. That work is hard. It's not easy. It's hard. That's what it is all about. The name of the game is "hard." Not easy. And that's right, most people at this point are not going to agree with us. If they would we'd have to have Madison Square Garden to hold the convention. That was always true with every revolutionary movement. You have to start small and then slowly but surely, with a very sharp upright struggle, get among the people and fight for your ideas.

But the way to win acceptance for your ideas is not by abandoning them. The way for your ideas to win is not by creating illusions among the masses, and helping the ruling class make phony leaders among the masses. Unfortunately, enough phony leaders are already imposed on the masses. Why do we have to make new ones, Doctor Spock or LeRoi Jones, or Mr. Carmichael? What do we need it for? How's it gonna help? Bad enough we got Walter Reuther and George Meany and a host of others who already have leadership in the labor movement. We don't have to help them make new ones.

So part of our job is to struggle against these things. Very often it's unpopular. Very often its very hard to struggle against these things. Very often the people we like the most, the very person we want to win, doesn't like us and will attack it. And will say "I don't want anything to do with you because you're attacking Dr. Spock. And you' re a son of a bitch for doing it. You got a lot of nerve saying that." A lot of people got very angry with me because we took a critical position on King when he was assassinated. "How can you say that? He was such a nice man." Well I'm not saying we should not take into account people's sensibilities or sensitivities but you can't square it by changing the line. You can't square it by retreating from a class position, from a politically conscious position. You can't do it.

You can't resolve the problem of errors in the work by making a bigger error. That's to say in our work in industry, of course there's a danger of economism. Of course there's a danger of right opportunism. You work in this atmosphere, under the nose of the company, under the nose of the state, under the nose of the trade union bureaucrat with the illusions that the workers have, you're more likely than not to make opportunistic errors. How do you cure it? By making a correct political fight. Not by coming out with bigger and better economism. That's not going to solve the problem. Economism is going to be resolved by bringing political consciousness into the labor movement and into the people's movements.

The question of state power. That's not an abstraction. It only becomes an abstraction to us because it is hard. So it seems that it's not relevant to what we're doing. But in the course of struggle the question of state power always becomes relevant. Do you know of one struggle in the country today where the question of state power and the dictatorship of the proletariat didn't come to be essential? At Columbia, on a strike, in the rebellions in the ghetto? Why? Because in every struggle in this country the state moves with all its force, either round about or directly in every struggle. That is the main lesson. What struggle has there been in this country where this isn't a main lesson? That is the lesson we have to pound home, and home, and home again.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all these demands in France that we read in the New York Times today are the true limit of demands. Who in France today is raising the question of state power, from what we can see? Nobody. That's probably true. Some students and anarchists have taken over the factories. So, that's nothing new. That's syndicalism. That's the IWW. Get the factories. The workers, under the revisionists' leadership, want a bigger raise. There's nothing wrong with a bigger raise. They want the taxes reduced. Nothing wrong with the taxes reduced. They want all these things. That's fine. How are you going to get them? How are you going to resolve the problems of the French workers? By seizing state power! Who's going to seize state power? The workers and the students. Who's for seizing it? Probably nobody. Or probably a group, maybe like ourselves, which is so small, and so divided (because of objective or subjective circumstances) from the class struggle, that even if it raises it, it carries little weight. So even there where it almost appears like "here is state power right under your nose," where it looks like "all you have to do is reach out and take it"-- they are reaching for the wrong thing. They're trying to reach out and take the wrong thing. And yet, there it is.

WITHOUT TIES TO WORKERS, THE LINE IS IRRELEVANT

Now I hope I'm wrong. I hope that what we read is wrong. Let's hope that there is a group in France, a political sect in France that has state power as its outlook, and can win the workers to snatch it. Fine. That's great. We'd love it. But in my opinion it's not likely, not at all. Here's the struggle in France. And now it comes down to what are your ties. It doesn't just happen, it's a process. Nobody in France has been advocating seizing state power. The revisionist party in France for the last 30 years has been saying popular front, this front, that front, Mitterand, Mendes-France front, every front but the right thing. And they educated the workers away from the idea of state power. So if you said to somebody in France 20 years ago, why don't you raise state power? "Oh. I'm for state power. but what does state power have to do with the price of tea in India? State power. Let's be practical. Let's reduce the taxes, get better wages, let's get parliamentary representatives elected." Well, you see, this is the background from which the rebellion in France broke out. After 20-30 years there's nobody for state power. And now because ten guys are getting up and saying state power, who's going to listen? What relationship do they have to the masses?

You don't win people just because you make an announcement. If we could then we could close shop now, wait until it happens here and when it happens I'll call you all up on the phone and say, "Here it is." It will take 10 years or 15 years or 20 or tomorrow. Whatever, I'll call you up and we will all go out. But of course people will all laugh in your face and say "Who's this nut? Where do you live? Where did they let you loose from?"

Sure, fighting for the right line seems like an abstraction. Yes, its irrelevant, because we don't see that our essential political task among workers is, yes, to get involved, to win them, to engage in a day-to-day struggle, and to introduce political ideas. Now, when we talk about political ideas we're mainly talking about winning state power.

How do we move the struggle from one level to another? Very often people can't see how to move. It's hard. People don't see what they can do to move the struggle from one level to another. Sell magazines and our other literature, that may be the best thing you can do. You can't get the Columbia students to go and take over City Hall; the workers won't shut down the factories now. Maybe at Columbia or any place one of the biggest things you could do is to recruit people into the party. Why? Because you will politicize workers and you will have more forces to go among the masses to politicize them, and try to improve them. The revolutionary movement doesn't come out of the air. You have to raise political ideas among a lot of people. That is the most important thing you can do. It gives the revolutionary Left, our party, much more strength and footing, and when there's a bigger change in the objective circumstances, we'll be in a position to do a lot more and really raise the struggle to a higher level, going further and if possible, all the way. The essence of our political role among the working people is to advocate class consciousness, unity of the people in struggle, to clear out misleaders, and bring political consciousness into the movement.

CLEAR THE ENEMY'S IDEAS OUT OF THE PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS

How does any movement overcome its obstacles? It has to clear away those within its ranks who have the enemy's ideas. You have to clear away those obstacles in order to move ahead. Now it's true you can make a lot of mistakes. That's right. You can't act indiscriminately; And we have to be careful not to attack our friends, and to know who our friends are. But we are trying to make a differentiation between the people and the false leaders, the misleaders, because the people are our friends and it's often the leadership who are bad. Just to say that the system is bad is not enough. It's good to say this, it's decisive to say this, but it's not sufficient. It's only the first step. We have to fight the class struggle within the movement and within our party. Not because we're trying to dance on the head of a pin, but because we're trying to make the movement and the party stronger, and defeat those obstacles that prevent us from moving ahead. That's why we try to carry on struggle from within.

Now maybe, here and there, maybe on any specific point, the party is wrong. Maybe Dr. Spock is our friend. Maybe Walter Reuther is our friend. Maybe LeRoi Jones is our friend. Maybe we're wrong. How will that be proven, that the party is wrong? How will we prove that the party is wrong and made a wrong estimate of these people? Life, struggle, will show if we're wrong. And if we have a self-critical ability then the party will reverse itself. Then the party will say, "look, we made a mistake." I'm not saying we must consciously go out and make errors. I'm just saying that there's got to be a delineation, a method of establishing who are friends and who are enemies and some method of resolving problems, some method of moving ahead, and some method of self-correction.

IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE IN THE PARTY

We have to see that this ideological struggle, within the party, and outside the party, is basic to giving leadership to the party and to the masses. It is an essential aspect of struggle. It means breaking down lazy thinking, getting off our asses and it means taking the initiative to do things we don't like. That's right. Very often we don't do the best thing in these struggles. We have to learn to fight in the best possible way and respond to these struggles in the best possible way. Even if at this particular moment you're not expert at giving and taking criticism the answer is not to avoid doing it. You will learn how to do it by doing it and that's just as hard as any other work. It's just as difficult. As we said many times, we must begin to curb liberalism in the party. We must intensify the class struggle in the party in a way which reduces antagonisms and contradictions among our friends and sharpens them with our enemy.

This is the class struggle in the party. All these differences of opinion reflect the various trends among the people. These differences don't fall out of the sky. It's got everything to do with working with people. Of course we can't not work with people. That's why you need the collective: to throw all these ideas into the hopper. The collective sorts it out and puts it together, and tries to make a scientific plan based on the various experiences that we all have had.

I think that if we don't develop this collective approach in the party, and if we don't see what the essence of our political role is among the masses then we're going to lose the perspective of state power and we're going to become a reformist party. We're going to become like the others. That's a big responsibility that we have, to try and prevent this from happening, to try and see that our party plays its revolutionary role because, as we said before, U.S. imperialism is the oppressor, the main enemy of the peoples of the world and those of us who are Communists have the responsibility of helping to destroy this system.

Up until this point I think we have made some progress. But speaking for myself, I feel that we have been very weak in conducting political and ideological struggles within the party and outside of the party. I feel we have been very lax in allowing a lot of shortcomings to exist, to sort of look the other way. It's hard to struggle within the party. We grow cozy with one another. We're all pals. We all know one another. And when you work with people in the mass movement, that same thing happens sometimes. It becomes a touchy thing to criticize this one and that one. I have certainly been one of the main culprits in the party in allowing a lot of things to go by the board, even many times repressing or diverting political struggle and trying to soft-pedal it.

Naturally you try to use common sense. You don't want to turn the party into a football field where you can have anarchism and everybody just vents his spleen. There's a scientific way of developing political struggle so that it helps the party, so it helps the masses and helps our people to become political leaders. We have an understanding, we have some guidelines, democratic centralism, some sense of Communist discipline, some hatred of the enemy. Therefore, I hope that one of the uses of this convention might serve, besides developing our program in various areas, is to sharpen these political and ideological struggles in the party so that we can get all our party members to work more seriously, more acceptably. And consequently, serve the masses.

When we are talking about serving the masses, this is what we're talking about. We're not talking about bringing them coffee and cake. We're talking about bringing communist political ideas into their ranks so they can conduct the struggle against the enemy in a better way, so they can achieve their aspirations. A lot of shortcomings that exist in the party can be overcome because most of the people in the party, perhaps almost everyone in the party has the desire to do this work. That desire won't be fulfilled unless a collective effort is made.

Very often people hang back and don't overcome their problems precisely because they are not fought with. If you take the easy way with them, they will take the easy way with themselves, and nothing changes. If you don't criticize somebody and raise things with him it retards his ability to develop self-criticism. We are working under the assumption that most people are trying to do a political job and if things are pointed out to them in a constructive political way it will help them reflect on it and make a self-critical evaluation of this criticism. I think that is very important, and not an academic question.

Become a leader to people, a people's tribune, but not a boss. Become someone whom people will rely on and respect and who will recognize your respect and admiration and loyalty and devotion to them. Become someone whom they recognize as a serious, committed person, not somebody who is frivolous, not someone who is like the trade union bureaucrats or the rest of the fakers that exist in the people's movements, somebody that's in it just for themselves. Because you know how people talk about these types. "Ah, he's in it for himself. He's out to get what he can." That's how they think about most leaders, and unfortunately, there's a lot of truth about that.

People say that's the way it is in our country. "Yeah, everybody is out for himself." So, they accept it. But when you come before somebody and you say, "Look, buddy, I'm a communist, I'm not out for myself. I'm out to server the people," and list all the good things, they'll say,"Ah, it sounds good." But they're going to watch you and see if it's true. And the minute you start acting for yourself, they'll say, "Ah, just like the others. Out for himself."

You see that's what people all over the world are saying about the soviet revisionists. That's what they are saying. "Just like the other capitalists, out for themselves, get what they can." Of course that may be the simple man's way of summing up history. But I want to tell you, that's a very essential point because that's the way most of the people's leaders in this country act. They are out for themselves. "What's in it for me?" That's what the guys said about Hoffa. "Ah, I know he's out for himself. But at least he's trying to get me something." That's the way people refer to Hoffa. "Well, at least he's not like Meany. Meany doesn't even bother. Hoffa will try to get us a dime or something. So let him has his million dollars, or whatever it is."

But that can't be good enough for us! "Well, Murray is so-so, but at least he's better than I am." That's a pretty crummy way for people to evaluate us. That would be a real criticism. If people think of us like that then we'd better either change or pack it in.

I think we have the goods to transform ourselves, to really serve the people, to really be responsible to one another, and to really go all the way. Our responsibility is to our party, and our loyalty is to the people and to Marxism-Leninism. It is up to us. Do we really believe that, do we really act in that way, and do everything necessary to make that so? That really means becoming persons of integrity. All of us. I'm talking about myself., because I don't think I am developed to that point. I have a long way to go.

We communists are bitterly opposed to the democracy practiced in capitalist countries, that is, to "bourgeois democracy" based on periodic elections with secret ballots for presidents and parliaments or congresses. Bourgeois democracy is an elitist system that guarantees the capitalists run things while workers have no real say in how society works.

What kind of society do you want? We want a society where working people run everything for the interests of the workers. We want a system where every worker is actively pushed to become involved in running society, where everyone is trained to act for the common good, where putting individual self-interest above the social good is punished. We want a system that helps each worker grow, that corrects mistakes, that encourages honest evaluation and self-evaluation of each person. We want a system that stamps out rotten ideas and punishes anti-social behavior.

To get this kind of society, we need collective organization. That is why we need a Party--to encourage everyone to speak out and act, to draw on our collective strength, to help each other correct our mistakes. Too often we look at the party as restricting us and limiting us ("the Party makes me go to meetings," "the Party makes me talk about revolution at work.") Actually, the Party liberates us and gives us the strength to put our ideas into action. Isolated individuals will never change society; we need organization! This will continue to be true after the revolution just as it is before.

The Party is organized on the basis of democratic centralism. The Party is divided into cells, or clubs, which meet regularly to evaluate members' work and to make suggestions about how to improve it, and to evaluate the Party's positions and make suggestions for change. These suggestions are taken by the club leader to section meetings (made up of the club leaders and other leading comrades in an area, and by section leaders to the Central Committee. Based on the collective experience of the Party, the leadership decides on new positions (a new line) which all Party members are then bound to put into practice. Only if all of us put the same line into practice can we find out if the line works; if each of us goes our own way, we will never have the common strength of a united Party.

Democratic centralism is communist democracy. After the revolution we will run all of society along democratic centralist lines. Let us contrast communist democracy with bourgeois democracy, to show how communist democracy serves the interests of the working class, the great majority of people, while bourgeois democracy serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, the small rich elite.

Democratic centralism forces everyone to speak up. At club meetings, each person must express their opinions, including openly voicing their disagreements. Bourgeois democracy listens only to the silver-tongued stars, the media-fashioned "opinion makers." Most people are encouraged to be passive, to go along with the drift. Nothing encourages you to speak out if you are shy. This builds the elitist attitude that politics is only for the chosen few, that most of us are too dumb to know what is going on. This is inherent in a system based on large-scale elections, without small decision-making groups that meet regularly.

Democratic centralism forces people to evaluate themselves honestly and to listen to the evaluation of others (praise as well as criticism). This lets people grow and improve, and it holds back the liars and braggarts. Bourgeois democracy, on the other hand, encourages the con artist who can hide his failures and his cheating. The system penalizes honesty and thoughtfulness in favor of the best actor. Under bourgeois democracy, politicians are rarely held responsible for their mistakes. This is great for the elite who want to hide how they swindle and exploit us.

Besides drawing on the strength of the collective, democratic centralism also forces us to act in a collective manner--to do what is best for the group. He who pursues individual self-interest at the expense of the common purpose will catch hell at the next club meeting, because he makes things harder for his comrades. This way we learn to help each other. Bourgeois democracy is based on the principle of screwing the other guy so you can get ahead. Telling lies about your opponent is okay as long as you don't get caught. What counts is winning the election, not improving society.

Each Party member accepts the discipline of carrying out the Party line. So once a decision has been reached, we can be sure that there will be a struggle everywhere to put that decision into action. Under bourgeois democracy, there is no discipline except the courts and the jails. There is no system to win people to the common decision. There is nothing to guarantee that the rich and powerful will follow the decision of the legislature, if they can figure out how to avoid it; no one is going to call them to account in front of a mass meeting. Each person may try to undermine the group decision for his own advantage.

Finally, democratic centralism is based on struggling to weed out rotten ideas and anti-social behavior. We want to help each other become better people. Bourgeois democracy is based on "doing your own thing," which is the essence of civil liberties. Each person is said to be "free" to do whatever they want--that is, to screw everyone else, if they can get away with it." Free speech" protects vile racist crap that advocates mass murder. Communists want nothing to do with such "free speech"--we think that seriously dangerous anti-social ideas should be rooted out, not given free play. Bourgeois democracy protects creeps, while only democratic centralism encourages full and open discussion and criticism.

In short, bourgeois democracy helps a small elite that wants to hide its lies; bourgeois democracy encourages dog-eat-dog individualism; it forces most people to be passive while superstars take over politics. The problem with secret ballots, legislatures and civil liberties is not that the rich capitalists cheat on the rules for their own benefit. The problem is that the rules of bourgeois democracy guarantee that the great majority of people, the workers, are frozen out. If we were to institute bourgeois democracy after the revolution, that would only encourage the formation of a new capitalist class.

DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM AND COMMUNIST DEMOCRACY
We can see the need for democratic centralism if we study the experience of past communist movements. For instance, in the Russian Revolution, many leaders thought that bourgeois democracy was the best system, but bitter experience taught them that only through democratic centralism could the revolution advance. When Lenin first proposed the idea of democratic centralism in What Is To Be Done? he was apologetic about the new concept, saying it was unfortunately necessary because of the repression in Czarist Russia. The idea that democratic centralism is an evil forced upon us by capitalist repression is still widespread. This is very wrong. Democratic centralism is communist democracy; it is what we want to replace bourgeois democracy with.

After the revolution in 1917, many Bolsheviks still had illusions about some aspects of bourgeois democracy. For instance, there was considerable unhappiness with the Party's decision to outlaw other parties and later, to ban factions inside the Party. Some people reasoned that if one Party is good, more parties must be better. Lots of parties would allow "freedom of choice." This is a rotten idea which avoids the basic question, "what is the political line guiding the different parties?" The reason the Bolsheviks outlawed the other parties was that all the other parties were being used as tools by the capitalists in their drive to reconquer power. The battle between workers and capitalists will heat up after the revolution, and the capitalists will use every opportunity to organize. The working class needs to be united against the class enemy.

Some people think that having one party stifles discussion and disagreement. Quite the contrary: Having many parties often leads to sham competition based on personalities, as in the U.S., with the Democrats and Republicans. A democratic-centralist party organizes full discussion: each party member is required to express his frank opinion on all party policies, and all workers outside the party are urged to do the same.

Some people worry that the Party may go revisionist. That is a real danger, because revisionism--capitalist ideas clothed in a communist cover--is the form bourgeois ideas take within the workers' movement. But having many parties is only an excuse for revisionists to organize under the cover of another party. If the one party were to be taken over by revisionists, then communists would split the party, found a new party dedicated to the violent overthrow and suppression of the revisionist party.

The Bolsheviks also gave some support to workers' councils (soviets) in 1917-18. These soviets were usually organized on bourgeois democratic lines, and they had the usual faults of bourgeois democratic institutions. The superstar speakers and the best educated and richest (meaning the skilled workers) dominated. Individualism was the order of the day: many factory soviets refused to cooperate for the common good in the spring of 1918, hoarding goods that were vital for the defense of the revolution and for provisioning workers elsewhere. In practice, the soviets were pretty much under the influence of syndicalism," which calls for the workers in each factory to run their plant without any overall organization of society as a whole. Syndicalism is basically capitalism based on workers' cooperatives. We communists want to see a collective solution, with workers as a class running society as a whole, not competing with each other.

THE MASS LINE IN CHINA
The Chinese revolution also had a mixed experience with respect to communist democracy. The Chinese Communist Party made a lot of rotten concessions to the capitalists, including letting them keep some small bourgeois parties. The good thing that the Chinese Communist Party did was to develop the concept of a mass line. The Chinese Revolution advanced to the left whenever this concept was put into practice, as during the Yenan period, the Great Leap Forward, and the early part of the Cultural Revolution. The mass line was summed up in a slogan, "from the masses, to the masses"--which is a good description of how communist leadership works. The communists learn from the experiences of the non-Party workers; the Party distills the best aspects of the workers' views and forms a new line; the communists then go out to win the non-Party workers to support this new, more left line.

Unfortunately the Chinese Communist Party often strayed from this principle and made the Party into something of a privileged elite. The Party must be open to everyone who accepts its principles and its discipline. If entry is restricted, the opportunists will double and redouble their efforts to get in, figuring that membership is a sure ticket to success in a career; ordinary workers will be discouraged. The Party's goal must be to recruit every worker into the Party, to involve every worker in the democratic centralist process. The correct way to resolve the problem of the Party's relation to non-Party workers is to recruit all workers to the Party.

Finally, we should be clear that there is no one thing called "democracy." There are different kinds of democracy, and each kind serves a different class. For instance, there was the "democracy" of ancient Greece, especially Athens. This "democracy" is often paraded as an example of true freedom. What crap! The only people who were allowed to vote in ancient Greece were the "freemen," which excluded the great majority of the people, who were either slaves or voteless women and foreigners. Greek democracy was slave owner democracy.

Bourgeois democracy arose as part of the struggle against feudalism. Feudalism was based on the rule of kings and lords, whose power the new capitalists wanted to overthrow. When the new bourgeoisie said "all men are created equal," they meant that they should be equal with the kings and lords and that privileges should be based on wealth, not on inherited title. Jefferson saw no contradiction between writing the Declaration of Independence and owning slaves; the Declaration only applies to the bourgeoisie. That is why only those who owned property were allowed to vote. Later, as the working class got stronger, the capitalists discovered that bourgeois democracy could be used as a powerful myth to pull the wool over the eyes of workers.

Unfortunately, many workers partially accept this myth and think that the U.S. is a "free" country, where everyone has an equal chance to get ahead, the people choose the government, have freedom of speech, etc. We must step up our work to show that bourgeois democracy is democracy for the capitalist rich, who have a dictatorship over the rest of us, the working class. Our goal is to replace this dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with a dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat will be based on communist democracy among the workers and ruthless dictatorship by the workers over the capitalist.e