First Published: The Call, Vol. 7, No. 22, June 5, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The first year since the founding of the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist (CPML) has seen the Party grow rapidly in the heat of struggle. The first year of the Party has also seen important steps taken to unite the entire communist movement around its revolutionary line and to get the Party planted firmly on its feet.
The first anniversary celebration provides a good chance to sum up this work, to evaluate the Party’s initial efforts to forge a mass, revolutionary working class movement in the U.S.
The best way to evaluate any Party is on the basis of its line. Having struggled without a revolutionary party and program for over 20 years, the working class won a great victory on June 4, 1977, with the founding of the CPML and the adoption of its revolutionary program. As the Party Program has been studied and put into practice across the country over the past year, it has shown itself to be sound.
In contrast, the revisionists and opportunists are continually exposing themselves in the eyes of the people and are finding the going rough in winning mass support.
In its first year, the Parts has played a leading role in defending Marxism-Leninism from attacks by the revisionists and other opportunists. In particular, through the pages of The Call, Class Struggle and other publications, it has firmly and boldly put forth its aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism as the path towards communism, a classless society. Furthermore, the Party has consistently viewed the U.S. revolutionary struggle in light of proletarian internationalism and applied Mao Tsetung’s theory of the three worlds to the concrete conditions for making revolution here in the U.S.
As laid out in its Program, the Party’s work has been directed towards building a broad united front against imperialism. The united front must be led by the working class and, in unity with the people’s struggles around the world, be aimed primarily at the two superpowers -the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Within the last year, the Party has held activities in dozens of cities to especially lend support for African liberation, Palestinian national rights, and other third world struggles, which are the main force in the fight against the superpowers.
In the course of building the united front, the CPML has worked independently to mobilize the workers and unemployed in the class struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression, while carrying out extensive education among the masses about socialism.
From the picket lines during the miners’ strike to demonstrations in support of African liberation the Party has shown itself to he a fighting detachment of the working class as opposed to the class-peacemakers like the revisionist Communist Party U.S.A.
One of the most important fronts of mass struggle this year has been the fight hack against the effects of the severe economic crisis. Fighting to give revolutionary leadership to this movement, the Party has worked to build the National Fight Back Organization and many other mass organizations of tenants, welfare mothers, students and others.
Among the Party’s most important accomplishments this-year was its role in the campaign for “Jobs or Income Now.” which was kicked off at the February 18 demonstration of 2,200 workers and unemployed in Washington, D.C.
In the year since its First Party Congress, the CPML has also strengthened its work in the labor movement, with its forces growing steadily in industrial areas. Workers coming out of the labor struggle have made up most of the Party’s new recruits, and the CPML has played an important role in a number of strikes in basic industry and union organizing efforts.
The Party has also rectified some early mistakes by strengthening its struggle against the reformist labor bureaucrats and in carrying out its policy of building class struggle unions. It has combated the line of narrow propaganda work by practicing the mass line and combining education with mass action.
In its efforts to organize the masses, the Party has boldly taken up the special demands of women and especially the women workers in fighting for jobs, democratic rights and equality. One example was the International Women’s Day events, which the CPML helped to organize in dozens of cities.
The Parts has also led in efforts to construct a mass, militant Communist Youth Organization (CYO) which has made continuing progress in its growth and activity.
The CPML lent support and guidance during the heroic mass rebellion of the Puerto Rican people in Chicago’s Humboldt Park last summer and the Chicano uprising last month in Houston. It has actively worked in the Afro-American people’s struggle against racial discrimination and national oppression, to win freedom for political prisoners like Gary Tyler and to combat the KKK and other white supremacist attacks.
Bringing its Program to the masses of white and minority workers, Party members have raised the slogans of “Afro-American self-determination,” and “Full democratic rights and regional autonomy for all oppressed national minorities.” In fact, the Party’s work has spread these demands more broadly than at any time since the days when the Communist Party represented the real aspirations of the working class.
The recent successful defense of Robert “Smitty” Smith, a Black auto worker from Detroit, is but one example of the Party’s work in linking the struggle of the working class with the fight against national oppression.
Now that the CPUSA has been taken over by revisionists and has abandoned any talk of revolution, the CPML has played a leading role in forging the new single, unified party of the proletariat. Its December 26 call for Marxist-Leninists to unite has drawn a favorable response from many Marxist-Leninist groups and individuals. Together with the August 29th Movement (ATM) and I Wor Kuen (IWK) the Party has helped initiate the call for a Committee to Unite Marxist-Leninists. As proposed, this committee would, work to forge the various groups and circles of communists together in one single party.
The CPML has also taken an active role in helping build unity with the parties and groups in the international communist movement. Along with important fraternal meetings with the leadership of the Communist Parties of China and Kampuchea, the CPML has signed several joint declarations with Marxist-Leninists from across the world.
While the Marxist-Leninist unity trend has grown throughout the world, opportunist pretenders to the name of the party, like the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), have suffered one setback after another. They have increasingly become exposed for their attacks on China and their white chauvinist and reformist approach to the class struggle here at home. Any illusions that they could provide leadership for the working class movement have now disintegrated in the minds of the honest revolutionaries, while the influence of the real Marxist-Leninist forces has grown.
Finally, during its first year, the Party has taken important steps to strengthen itself internally. It has organized cadre schools to train its workers in Marxism-Leninism. Having adopted The Call as its newspaper, the Party within its first year expanded the paper to 20 pages and has developed it into a broadly-circulated weekly, with a high level and a popular style.
The Party study campaigns of the various works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung have reached hundreds of people. Meanwhile, the Party’s publications and a growing number of CPML bookstores across the country have made Marxist readings available to thousands more.
Of course the CPML is a very young party which still awaits many difficult tests which lie ahead. It has often made mistakes in its work and is constantly summing them up and taking supervision from the people. The Party is working to raise its level of Marxist-Leninist education and to combat weaknesses within its ranks such as bureaucracy, subjectivism and sectarianism which have often plagued our movement.
The second year of its work will be an even more important test for the Party. Party-building is still the central task of communists in the U.S., and the CPML’s efforts will be strongly focused on further uniting the forces into a single, unified Party, on building the Party’s ties to the masses and raising its theoretical level.
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Overall it can be said that the CPML has made great progress in its first year. The founding of the Party in the heart of one of the two superpowers has proved to be an event of major importance for all people struggling against imperialism. While the Party and the communist movement still have much to accomplish, the prospects look bright indeed for continuing to move forward in our work. On our first birthday there is much to celebrate.