Much of the time of the genuine communists in the U.S. has been spent in merely re-establishing what the classic teachers of scientific socialism, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, said and stood for, and in the struggle against new forms of age-old deviations. Particularly sharp has been the struggle to establish the dominance of orthodox Leninism, which, as Stalin taught, “is Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.”[1] Just as Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought for orthodox Marxism and against the revisionist “freedom of criticism,” so today must the followers of Lenin in the U.S. fight for orthodox Leninism against all its sundry enemies. Only by securing the dominance of Leninism can a genuine party be built that can lead the working class and the toiling masses on to socialism and communism.
The fight for Leninism in the U.S. has been fierce. A ruthless struggle against all shades of opportunism has been required to completely route all these revisionist “theories” and lay the foundations for a genuine vanguard Marxist-Leninist party. We have fought against the economist “build the mass movement” line, for seeing party building as our principal task and theory as primary, for the Marxist-Leninist line on the right of oppressed nations to self-determination up to and including secession and for the correctness of the 1928 and 1930 Comintern resolutions on the Black national question, against the American exceptionalist “third period” of the national question and “nation of a new type” lines and other social-chauvinist and: nationalist currents, for the Leninist conception of propaganda and advanced workers, against the so-called “anti-revisionist theoretical premises” which denies that Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? is the ideological foundation for the Marxist-Leninist party, against those who denied that dialectical and historical materialism is the world outlook of the proletariat and its vanguard party, and against innumerable varieties of the theory of spontaneity. More recently, there has been the historic struggle against the anti-Leninist “theory of the three worlds” and against “Mao Tsetung Thought,” which seeks to replace Leninism as the Marxism of’ this era. And at present there is also the battle to route the “unite to demarcate” line and re-establish the hegemony of the Leninist line that “Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.”[2]
While the anti-Leninists also talk of “unity,” they are not talking of the same kind of unity the genuine Marxist-Leninists are. As Lenin said in response to the liquidators and the conciliators: “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists and opponents and distorters of Marxism.”[3] And so today, what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Leninists, and not the unity of the Leninists with the opponents and distorters of Leninism, all the centrists, social-chauvinists, liquidators, and conciliators.
The battle for Leninism in the U.S. has thus not been nor is a smooth and easy one. The developing Bolshevik trend has had to fight every step of the way for its existence, on every question and against every imaginable shade of opportunism. While this struggle has been complicated because the proponents of orthodox Leninism have not always been consistent, have made mistakes, and have been organizationally fragmented and often submerged to the Rights, nevertheless, more and more lines of demarcation have been drawn between the genuine Leninist line and all the varieties of opportunism and social-chauvinism, against all the political descendents of Bernstein, Kautsky, Browder, and Foster.
Despite their majority over the Leninists among U.S. communists, the anti-Leninists have been time and again exposed as having a bankrupt theoretical arsenal. The fact that what they say is the opposite of what Lenin has said and is actually what all the economists, Mensheviks, liquidators, social-chauvinists, and modern revisionists have historically said, has been a big embarrassment to them. Thus, when confronted with the Leninist line, or even anything close to the Leninist line, they are driven into a frenzy. Unable to respond in a principled and scientific manner, their own ideological poverty forces them to resort to the typical bourgeois methods of slander, abuse, and innuendo. In this way they hope to obscure the ideological and political questions by reducing the struggle to petty personal attacks. They want to draw others into this trap, too, to struggle about anything other than ideology, line, principles, program, organization, and strategy and tactics. They prefer all sorts of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip about sex, drugs, and the like, to principled ideological struggle. It appears as if these favorite themes of the anti-Leninists have been borrowed wholesale from the television soap operas.
All this mud-slinging is nothing new to the international communist movement. Lenin, when accused of being a “usurper” by the liquidators, the Trotskyites, and others, explained the slander this way: “In politics abusive language often serves as a screen for utter lack of principles and sterility, impotence, angry impotence, on the part of those who use such language.”[4]
We have encountered precisely the same thing when it comes to the attitude of various forces to the U.S. Leninist Core.[4a] Of late the WCC and KCRWC have been the vanguard in making these slanderous attacks. These “creative” Marxists, who strive to “develop party building theory,” have come up with another “new” theory – that in analyzing the U.S. Leninist Core, and the struggle in the “revolutionary wing,” the key area is the “form of struggle.” In their letter of March 10,1979, sent to Demarcation and circulated in their first “MULC” package, they write: “However, the line struggle is not the subject of this letter: the form of struggle is, since this is the chief thing that prevents us from engaging in comradely struggle with the ’Core.’” So even if there was a correct line, if the “form of struggle” does not suit their fancy, then there can be no “comradely” relations with WCC and KCRWC! What touchy folks, this WCC and KCRWC must be.
What then follows is an outburst of unsubstantiated accusations. Without even recounting one concrete event, we are told that the struggle in the “wing,” and especially on the part of PRRWO and RWL, was “unprincipled and of an agent-provocateur-type.” They conveniently neglect to mention that neither PRRWO nor RWL exist any more, that many of the leaders of PRRWO and RWL had been since purged as opportunists and provocateurs, and that the group in question now is the U.S. Leninist Core. The “revolutionary wing,” which was in fact an alliance of Marxist-Leninists and opportunists, and in fact a centrist wing, no longer exists, either.
But more to the point. WCC and KCRWC think it sufficient to merely level the serious charge against the U.S. Leninist Core of agent provocateur activity without a shred of evidence. They cover up that it was the Marxist-Leninists in the “wing” itself that began to expose the agent-provocateur activity, and who uncovered numerous incidents pointing to the activity of the political police (examples of which were given in the past and more of which will be publicly recounted and summed up very shortly). They repeat vague charges, with no specific examples or analysis, of “unsubstantiated attacks on comrades, unwarranted interrogation-type struggle, physical assaults, frequent charges made against other comrades as being police spies (one such instance in which KCRWC was implied) without evidence, etc.” Done by whom? And done to whom? Charges of agent provocateur activity must be substantiated with convincing evidence. If they are not, they remain only vicious slanders. If you are so sure of your accusations, then why do you resort to whisper campaigns and resort to such vague rumors and slanders? And of what incidents that did happen, where is your concrete analysis of who was responsible, the causes, etc.? And just look at what is said – it was “implied” that KCRWC were agents. To accept this kind of vague rumor as truth just because it is asserted is to abandon all principles. It is apparently permissable for KCRWC and company to level charges of agent provocateurs in the “wing,” but not for others to do so! No attempt is made to sort out just what happened. Instead, the absence of Leninist norms in the “wing” is blamed on the U.S. Leninist Core alone, and this makes them “agents”!
Yes, there were police agents in the “wing,” who could reign supreme precisely because of the absence of Leninist norms. But to WCC and KCRWC there is no room for inexperience and amateurishness in combatting the political police, which can only be done by an organization of professional revolutionaries, which the “revolutionary wing” most certainly was not. In fact, Lenin even spoke of the struggle against the police being an art – “the art of combatting political police”[5] – and this art had not been mastered by the genuine Marxist-Leninists in the “wing.” But instead of correctly summing up both the strengths and weaknesses of this struggle against the political police, WCC and KCRWC accuse of being agents in the “wing” those who actually fought the political police! What is this but a betrayal of the fundamental interests of the working class?
This also amounts to a defense of all the purged elements, all those proved to be Mensheviks and/or police agents. And since, according to this new “party-building theory”, analyzing the line struggle is unimportant, WCC and KCRWC attempt to rehabilitate en masse all those purged as mere victims of a police ploy, regardless of the line they held.
Just who are these “innocent” victims today being defended by WCC and KCRWC? Their “comrades” in LPR? Richie Perez and Co., who are unashamed supporters of the theory of “three worlds” and Chinese social-imperialism? Paul Sanders, once a leader of the Panther-murderer U.S. organization of Ron Karenga, and a former RWL leader? Don Wright, formerly of the National Security Agency? Robert Johnson, expelled for being a liquidator, who was widely known for provocative actions, and who came from the Nation of Islam to RWL only to allegedly become a Sunni Moslem after being purged? The Menshevik John Spearman who openly advocated an old-type social-democratic party? The factionalists Daryl Bright and company who ran and hid when the ideological struggle sharpened up? Just whom are you protecting, WCC and KCRWC? These and others were exposed as Mensheviks and either paid agents of the bourgeoisie or objectively agents of the bourgeoisie. All we can conclude is that WCC and KCRWC are rushing to the defense of them all.
Notice how WCC and KCRWC are so silent when it gets to specifics. They can reprint old documents about agent-provocateurs, but cannot speak concretely about the present. Yes, we heartily approve of your reprinting old Comintern documents on agent provocateurs – but we will use them to show just how your activity actually aids the political police by slandering the struggle against them. WCC and KCRWC conveniently ignore the lessons of Operation Chaos and Cointelpro, the disruption of the Panthers, and all the general Marxist-Leninist teachings on the nature of the state in capitalist society as being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They deny that there were agents who were exposed and expelled, and not just opportunists. To the social-democrats, to those lulled to sleep by the bourgeois songs of “democracy” and “freedom,” the only ones who fit their description of “agents” are those who took the lead in unmasking the activity of the actual agent provocateurs. WCC and KCRWC work overtime to slander and discredit the struggle that did take place against the police and the Mensheviks. It is true that there were mistakes and that a few were purged who shouldn’t have been. But where the struggle was inadequate or mistakes were made in the past, we will be and have been learning from our own mistakes so that we will get better in the art of fighting the political police. But the attitude of WCC and KCRWC is not to assist the struggle against the Mensheviks and the police, not to make constructive criticism, but instead to tear down the whole thing, ridicule it all, and objectively cover up for the police and Mensheviks that were exposed. This objectively assists the police and the Mensheviks in their battle against the Marxist-Leninists. This sort of conciliation is downright criminal, for it only serves to lower our vigilance against the disruptive activities of the political police and the treachery of the Mensheviks. While WCC and company like to talk of building an organization of professional revolutionaries, their slashing attack on those who actually struggled against the political police shows these claims to be utterly hollow and absurd.
The struggle waged by the genuine Marxist-Leninists in the “wing” against the political police and the Mensheviks was a righteous, justified struggle against the bourgeoisie and its paid and unpaid agents. It was a ruthless battle to Bolshevize the ranks that deserved the support, sympathy, and assistance of every genuine Marxist-Leninist and class-conscious worker. Where errors were made, it was more under the international influence of the “gang of four,” the Maoist heroes of the Maoist WCC and KCRWC. The “campaigns” of the “four” were largely unprincipled factional struggles that used the hatred of the masses for the other revisionist factions in the “CPC” to promote madness, emperor-worship of Mao, and an attack on the science of Marxism-Leninism. Among the preferred methods of the “gang of four” were physical defiling, defacating and urinating on people, and parading them around with dunce caps. Within the “wing,” it was the likes of Robert Johnson who supported the “gang of four.” So here we also find a common platform between WCC, KCRWC, and the elements purged from the “wing.” Another source of errors was that the police used the situation in which the genuine Marxist-Leninists were scattered and submerged to the Rights in the “wing.” They were also aided by OL, who declared that the “wing” was in “shambles,” while defending the Mensheviks, most notably the revisionist Richie Perez. Or perhaps WCC and KCRWC would agree with the likes of Hardial Bains and “WVO,” who both denied that their organizations could ever be infiltrated by the police, and thus deny the overall importance of combatting the political police in the first place. So where errors were made, WCC and KCRWC defend them, and where correct actions were taken, WCC and KCRWC attack them.
The demand is also put on the U.S. Leninist Core to sum up the experience of the “wing” before there are relations with them. While it is obvious that WCC and KCRWC have absolutely no intention of ever having relations with the U.S. Leninist Core, what stands out is the rotten hypocrisy of this demand. The U.S. Leninist Core, as said in the counter-proposal to the “MULC,” will be doing a summation of the “wing,” although, to be sure, not the rightist kind demanded by WCC and KCRWC. But notice that neither WCC nor KCRWC demand this of anyone else.
Let us start with KCRWC itself. At one point, it had some relations with RWL and the “wing.” We have never seen any summation of this at all. We have seen a critique by KCRWC of “WVO” which does not even mention their so-called “anti-revisionist theoretical premises”, which was one of the central issues in the struggle in the “wing.” In fact, we do not even know just who KCRWC sided with when “WVO” was purged from the “wing.” It is not the U.S. Leninist Core who coven, up the past, but the likes of KCRWC. And all, of course, without a word of self-criticism by KCRWC for not having publicly done a summation of the “wing” themselves! Further, when they put out “Let’s Move Party Building Forward” in July, 1978, KCRWC not only co-signed this with WCC, but also with a group called the “Kansas Committee for Proletarian Revolution” (KCPR). Along the way this group “disappeared,” and we were told that it merged with KCRWC. But what was its line and history? On what basis was there a merger? What was its attitude to the “wing”? All of this is a guessing game, since. KCRWC prefers to conceal its views and history and instead level charges at anyone who insists on Leninist norms. We ask the angels of KCRWC: just what was your role in the “wing” and why do you not talk of it today? All we are told today is that “We have certain views in this regard, although this needs to be deepened.” Mentioning the supposed existence of “certain views” but not even very briefly stating them is a typical maneuver of those who want to seem to agree with virtually everybody while evading the burning questions because they hold no firm principles.
Aside from KCRWC, three other circles including people at one time associated with the “wing” or PRRWO were invited to the “MULC.” They are Pacific Collective, Red Dawn Committee, and Sunrise Collective. All of these stand to the right of the U.S. Leninist Core. None of them are required to have done a “M-L summation of their past to the movement.” Why are so starkly different attitudes taken to the Right and the Left? It is because WCC and KCRWC are centrists. To the Right, there is compassion, sympathy, and patience. But to the allegedly “ultra-left,” there is the vilest language, the lowest slander, and total disdain. All centrists subordinate the genuine Left to the Right and unite with the Right to fight the Left. This is why no such demand is placed on these right opportunist forces, who have to this day avoided like the plague doing this analysis. Demanding that the Left write up a summation prior to the “MULC” but not the Right, just shows the naked, open hypocrisy of WCC and KCRWC, and exposes their total lack of principles. The Right is pure as the driven snow, but the Left is most dangerous – this is how WCC and KCRWC talk out of both sides of their mouths. And even if the U.S. Leninist Core were “ultra-left”, which is not the case, even then the attitude to the “infantile disorder” of ultra-leftism would have to be different than the attitude to right opportunism.
Let us look a bit closer at each of these groups. PC advocates sitting down with every social-chauvinist and traitor in order to discuss forming one party. They even deny that right opportunism is the main danger or that there is an international revisionist trend led by the “CPC” and including the likes of “CPML.” But WCC and KCRWC bend over backwards to unite with them, while slandering the U.S. Leninist Core. No sum-up of PC’s role in the “wing” is demanded, because the common platform of WCC, KCRWC, PC, and others is economism and conciliation with social-chauvinism.
Take Red Dawn Committee. They include a former Central Committee member of PRRWO who was expelled because he advocated the “merger” line – that PRRWO, BWC, and ATM merge as the key link to party building. He later pretended to be advocating the “Iskra plan,” when in fact at the time he was kicked out of PRRWO, he had opposed it as “ultra-left.” Another of his many opportunist lines in the PRRWO was that if the Soviet Union attacked the U.S., we should defend the U.S. – an open “defense of the fatherland” social-chauvinist line. Why is no sum-up of PRRWO demanded of RDC? Because WCC, KCRWC, RDC, and Co. all have another version of the “merger” line all over again, this time uniting in opposition to drawing clear lines of demarcation in their conception of the “MULC.”
Take Sunrise. They had been in the “wing.” After that, they held joint forums with ‥COUSML,” and later signed “MLOC”’s “joint” statement. Yet none of this is summed up for the movement. Nor is anything demanded of them. Apparently this is not necessary, since WCC and KCRWC do not aim at drawing lines of demarcation anyway, and stand on a common platform with Sunrise in attempting another unprincipled alliance, this time through “MULC.”
Of course, there have been summaries of the “wing” and PRRWO. The rotten pamphlet “The Degeneration of PRRWO”, written by purged elements (and whose principal author, when still in PRRWO, was the one responsible for the beating of Richie Perez), along with various articles in the “three worlds” press, all defend economism, opportunism, social-chauvinism, and their proponents. Any attempt at summing up the “wing” by these forces invited to the “MULC” would automatically invite comparison with all this revisionist garbage. And this comparison would be quite justified, since they all would promote the same Menshevik “build the mass movement” line. To cover up their own economist and social-chauvinist line and conceal their identity of views with all the rest of the economists and social-chauvinists is why PC, RDC, Sunrise, and the rest refuse to put down their views in print in front of all communists and class-conscious workers.
The rule of thumb for WCC and KCRWC is democracy for the opportunists and dictatorship over the Marxist-Leninists. To them, advocating ruthless struggle against opportunism is “ultra-left.” Drawing lines of demarcation is “ultra-left.” What we must instead do is “build the center” as the key link, or, in other words, build organization as the key link, or, in still other words, overcome opportunism from within and build another RU or OL. In short, to WCC and KCRWC, Leninism is the main danger.
All this is not surprising from the political opponents of drawing lines of demarcation. In their “initial sum-up,” WCC tells us: “Demarcation and Some Comrades feel that the advanced groups will be brought out through struggle over line and drawing lines of demarcation. We believe they will be brought out through those who are, most importantly, able to find ways to build the party (of which drawing lines of demarcation on ideological, political, and organizational questions is part of) and secondarily win the broad masses (also involves drawing lines of demarcation).” (p. 3)
Here, as usual, they counterpose drawing lines of demarcation and developing a party building plan, which we have responded to at length before. We have also exposed how this is a typical Menshevik feature of all Maoists, who shed tears against “ruthless struggle and merciless blows” against opportunism, and seek to “unite, don’t split” with all the vermin that crawls on the face of the earth. The one place they do want to draw lines of demarcation is against Leninism, branding all of its defenders as “ultra-left.” This is the common platform they hope to unite around at their “MULC.”
What merits attention here is that they have applied this anti-Leninist method of not drawing clear lines of demarcation through ideological struggle in the extreme in their attitude to the U.S. Leninist Core, whose literature it appears they have not even read. It is the sharp ideological struggle against opportunism that WCC and KCRWC cringe at and oppose and degrade with all their might. It is precisely to avoid this struggle that WCC and KCRWC not only make “theories” to deny the central importance to party building of drawing clear lines of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism, but also engage in their campaign of cheap slander. They hurl all sorts of epithets and insults, especially at the U.S. Leninist Core, to confuse the burning questions, just like the Mensheviks of Lenin’s day did when they cursed the Bolsheviks as “Leninist rams.”[6]
But cheap slanders will never build a vanguard party. We call on all genuine Marxist-Leninists and class-conscious workers to denounce the vile and corrupt activities and slanders by WCC and KCRWC, and to uphold the principled norms of Leninism in the ideological struggle among U.S. communists.
The criticisms of Demarcation by WCC and KCRWC are just as “devastating” as those of the U.S. Leninist Core. Demarcation is criticized for having relations with the U.S. Leninist Core “without them having done any M-L summation of their past to the movement.” First, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that precisely this question was the first one discussed when Demarcation and the U.S. Leninist Core opened relations, and on the basis of the unities of these discussions relations were pursued? Second, if you want this summation so badly, then why did you prohibit a face-to-face meeting as we proposed, where you wouldn’t have had to lift a finger or travel anywhere? This summation will be in a future article for all to see, and we think this will be out before the KCRWC-KCPR merger-unity statement. In fact, you have stooped so low in your double-dealing that you even have distorted why our joint response was late. We have reprinted Demarcation’s letter of March 9, referred to on page 12 of the “initial sum-up.” The letter talks of the delays caused Demarcation by “difficulties with the capitalist printers we were forced to go to” who delayed several weeks the first issue of “Demarcation,” which, unlike the WCC liquidators who see the “MULC” as “the main form for advancing Party building,” has been the first priority of Demarcation. The letter nowhere requests the sum-up be delayed, but only asks that WCC “take this into account” that we will respond, and explicitly apologizes for the delay. They also distorted Demarcation’s criticism of the principles of unity, for we never said that point three should be dropped, and, as all have seen, the counter-proposal substituted a Leninist line on ideological struggle, drawing lines of demarcation, and self-criticism, for the Menshevik-Maoist trash proposed by WCC. You have left no stone unturned in your unprincipled swindling and maneuvering in the “best” factionalist traditions of Maoism, and you have left us no choice but to unmask all your treacherous words and deeds.
Chiming in with these anti-Leninists, and emerging from their political hibernation, is the Red Dawn Committee. They also resort to the same type of innuendo, slander, and back-room gossip. Both in their response to the “MULC” and in the second issue of their magazine, they try to split Demarcation by attacking one comrade and not the others, in a vain attempt at introducing their own unprincipled and petty methods of struggle into our own ranks. After years of avoiding taking a clear position against the theory of “three worlds,” they all of a sudden announce that they too think it is counter-revolutionary. How revolutionary of you! You only wait until after Teng and company had openly and thoroughly discredited themselves, and only after this appeared as a point of unity at this conference to which you careerists wish to benefit from. You have benefited from our errors in not publicly summing you up sooner. This error will be corrected very quickly and very easily, so all the genuine Marxist-Leninists and class-conscious workers can judge you by your years of opportunism and treachery.
The genuine Marxist-Leninists and class-conscious workers will not pay attention to the cheap slanders of WCC and KCRWC. As Stalin said, “Slander must be branded as such and not made the subject of discussion.”[7] Instead, the genuine Marxist-Leninists and the class-conscious workers will study the documents and polemics and demand ideological struggle on a principled basis to draw clear lines of demarcation. They will follow in the footsteps of advanced workers like the Bolshevik G. Telia, who, as Stalin recounted, studied all the documents and mulled over the lines before lining up with the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks.[8] While it will probably be impossible to account for every particular event that has happened, it will not be hard for U.S. communists and class-conscious workers to distinguish between just who is running away from principled ideological struggle, and just who is dedicated to defending and upholding Leninism.
March 26, 1979
DEMARCATION
U.S. LENINIST CORE
[1] Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Peking edition, p. 2
[2] Lenin, “Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra,” CW, Vol. 4, p. 354
[3] Lenin, “Unity,” CW, Vol. 20, p. 232
[4] Lenin, “The Political Significance of Cituperation,” CW, Vol. 20, p. 380
[4a] Our political differences with the Multi-lateral Conference on Party Building (MULC) have been set forth in our Joint Counter-proposal.
[5] Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Peking edition, p. 156
[6] C. Bobrovskaya, Twenty Years in Underground Russia, Proletarian Publ, pp. 92-94
[7] Stalin, “Some Questions on the History of Bolshevism,” Problems of Leninism, Peking edition, p. 562
[8] Stalin, “Comrade G. Telia,” Works, Vol. 2