This is the first of two articles produced by the Editorial Board of The Worker to introduce readers to the ideology which acts as command and guide of the paper. This first article lays out The Worker‘s answers to the fundamental questions facing revolutionaries and class conscious workers in the USA today, while the second explains the ideology which The Worker defends, upholds, and applies.
1. The Principal Task of all Class Conscious Workers and Revolutionary Activists in the US is the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of the United States of America
In order for a class to act in its own interests as a class, it requires for itself an independent political party opposed to the parties of all other classes. For working people and the oppressed masses, this can only be the Communist Party. The Party is generated by the class as its most advanced force—it is not separate from the class but part of it. It is the Communist Party which leads the revolutionary people to conquer and defend political power. In all places where the Party no longer exists it must be reconstituted in class struggle. For these tasks to be accomplished, revolutionary theory is needed—specifically the teachings of the founder Karl Marx, his closest comrade-in-arms Friedrich Engels, the great V. I. Lenin, Comrade J. V. Stalin, Chairman Mao Zedong, and Chairman Gonzalo. These teachings will arm the movement to reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA with the theory necessary to overcome all obstacles.
In 1919, the working class movement in the United States generated for itself the organizations which would come together to form the Communist Party of the United States of America. At this time the American workers far and wide felt the success of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia.
To be admitted into the Communist International—the organization, founded by Lenin, which guided all the Communist Parties around the world—the American organizations were directed to come together to form a singular organization which could guide the entire class and its allies, and this single organization had to be called the Communist Party of the USA. From the point of admission into the Communist International, the Party led the most advanced struggles in labor and against racism and jingoism, the effects of which are still felt to this day. The first and often forgotten civil rights movement in the 1920s and 30s was led by the Communist Party, and the most militant and uncompromising fights in industry and against the First World War were led by the Party.
The right wing of the Communist Party of the USA began its degeneration into a party in service to the ruling class by revising the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism (today Maoism) beginning in 1930 and escalating in this revisionism by 1935 when the prototypical Modern Revisionist Earl Browder consolidated his grip on the organization. In the 9 years between ‘35 and ‘44 revolutionary elements who opposed Browder’s revision of Marxism were systematically expelled. In 1944 the cloak was removed and Browder declared that the workers no longer needed their own Party distinct from and opposed to the political parties of other classes. He then dissolved the Communist Party into the so-called “Communist Political Association” which he characterized as a mere appendage of the propertied class, which would lobby within the government for meager working class demands. In reality the policies of Browder would transform the Party from a party of the workers into an appendage of the bourgeois-reactionary Democratic Party.
This naked rejection of Marxist-Leninist principles was the forerunner for modern revisionism around the world. At this time, the open rejection of principles caused a rift between Browder and his top collaborators, the latter (led by William Z. Foster) preferred a revisionism which could better disguise class collaboration and better sell capitulation to the masses of workers under Party leadership. By 1946 they expelled Browder and falsely reconstituted the Communist Party—as a Browderite Party without Browder. Over the years, this revisionist party lost all of its working class character and its ability to lead the masses and the workers of the US, leaving the US proletariat and its allied classes without Communist leadership, the type that can only be provided by a genuine Communist Party which is both communist in name and in practice.
In all countries that lack a Communist Party, or countries where the Communist Party has long fallen to revisionism, which is the main danger of Communists everywhere, the Communist Party must be constituted or reconstituted. In the USA, where the Party was once a genuine force for revolution and held membership in the Communist International under the great Lenin and Comrade Stalin, the principal task is specified as reconstitution. It is not correct to idealize the creation of a new party, or affix to this any manner of things which distract from the main task of US revolutionaries. The class has generated its Party and this Party fell to revisionism, so the task is clear: reconstitute the Communist Party.
Reconstitution has a very concrete meaning—all things remain in motion, and so the Communist Party cannot be revived as it once was, before revisionism took over. It must be reconstituted in the class struggles of today between the propertied class—the imperialists, or the bourgeoisie—and the working class—the proletariat—on the basis of the ideology of the international proletariat, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism with the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo, all powerful because it is true. The reconstitution effort must take place in the center of the concrete class struggles and not on their margins, specifically the places where proletarians are exploited, in the factories and warehouses, to consolidate around itself a core of class conscious workers who can be forged in struggle in order to carry out mass work. Mass work is the implementation of the revolutionary program among the deepest and most profound masses, and, importantly, the mobilization of the masses to implement the revolutionary program. This draws workers into the reconstitution effort.
Labor struggles are the principal site of struggle for communists fighting for reconstitution and socialist revolution. Economic struggles cannot exist without falling into short-sighted, reformist interests, unless they are combined with proletarian politics. The daily demands of working people for better wages, better conditions, shorter days and job security are legitimate and necessary demands. They must be combined with what is fundamental in Maoism— political power. Without political power everything gained by the workers will be taken back, everything will evaporate under the heat of continued exploitation. What is more, political power is what unchains the creative potential of workers in production and society and allows human beings to progress to new heights, accomplishing new laws, new culture and a whole new humanity.
Isolating the principal site of struggle from the broad and diverse struggles of the masses outside of immediate production strangles the working classes and especially the proletariat from being able to comprehensively lead, and what is more, it robs them of the great reserves of the glorious and explosive masses. All oppression faced by the people of the US who suffer under the dictatorship of the imperialists (who comprise the extremely rich) will be combated through socialist revolution, therefore these struggles have an important place in the struggles of the proletariat for political power. The most outstanding among these, which must form the auxiliary trenches of the socialist revolution, are the struggles against police terror, which is often racial terror that tears working families apart; the struggles for equal rights and legal rights of women, which even by bourgeois standards are rolled back and restricted before our very eyes; the struggles against unsuitable housing such as slum housing, crawling with roaches and rats, infected with mold, housing that is slowly killing its residents who are at the same time threatened with higher rent and evictions, housing that the imperialists would not even consider suitable for their pets, with rising rents and other costs which cause misery among the people; the fight against the abuse of foreign born workers who face a higher rate of exploitation; and other instances of how exploitation is refracted in a million ways throughout society, reproducing social inequality and enhancing the misery of the people. In these diverse and profound struggles, fighters will be forged and take up their posts as Communist at the forefront of the struggles in the US, struggles which are an important part of, and in service to, the World Proletarian Revolution.
The forging of Communists who grasp the principal task can hardly be considered unless internationalism and anti-imperialism forms their basic point of unity. US imperialism acts as the world police, terrorizing and brutalizing oppressed nations anywhere and everywhere it can. It acts in collusion and contention with other imperialist superpowers and powers, propping up brutal regimes based on torture, exploitation, and land theft. It keeps the majority of the world in subhuman poverty and denies the rights of billions. US imperialism is the main enemy of the world’s people; there are other imperialist superpowers and other imperialist powers, but the USA is the only one with hegemonic control of the world, forcing the other imperialists to collude and contend over control of the third world oppressed nations, tending toward world war. The contradiction between imperialism and countries oppressed by imperialism is the main contradiction in the world today, and this contradiction determines that the nations oppressed by imperialism form the storm-centers of the World Proletarian Revolution. Communists must be forged as internationalists. Revolutionaries and class conscious workers in the US understandably lag behind the more advanced revolutionary forces in the world today and must accept the guidance and defend the leadership of these organizations, specifically the International Communist League.
What is a Communist? If a communist was simply a person who intellectually agrees with the aims of communism, then this would reduce a material force down to a mere idea. A Communist is he or she who accepts the revolutionary program of the Communist Party and belongs to the Party as a militant, or in the case of the USA, one who accepts and carries out the reconstitution of the Party as a supporter of a definite revolutionary organization. Hence, a Communist is a practical, material revolutionary who thinks and acts in the interests of the revolution. Communists are nothing but ordinary Communists in formation; it is the practice of class struggle that generates fighters and it is the Party that forges them in to Communists.
2. The Proletariat is both the Base Force and Leading Force in the Socialist Revolution
All of the contradictions plaguing US society are ultimately determined by economic exploitation. The principal contradiction in the US is the one between the imperialist ruling class (the bourgeoisie) and the proletariat. The US was founded on the myth that workers, through hard work, can become owners of private property. Private property means the ownership over the means of production, of businesses and factories which produce—the property that is used to make money off of the hard work of others. This is exploitation. The myth of joining the owning classes was enshrined in the US constitution alongside racial inequality. This contradiction determined extreme inequality and division among workers, stratification along racial lines, and a belief in resolving the misery by joining hands with the owners, bosses, and managers against the most downtrodden of the working classes. In contrast, it is only by going deeper among the most exploited and oppressed workers that workers generally can be developed and united through struggle. Going deeper means the embedding of revolutionary forces among the most decisive and strategic sections of the class, working with them, living with them and struggling with them.
Tendencies among reformists, revisionists, and those intellectuals in service to the ruling class and propertied classes all seek to debase the role of the proletariat in asserting social change through socialist revolution by distorting the definition of the proletariat. This makes it necessary to specify once more what the proletariat is and what it is not.
Proletarians are those who have nothing to sell but their ability to work for others and face the threat of starvation and deprivation if they do not. This sale is carried out through finding jobs. Once employed, the proletariat gives their labor power in advance to the owners of private property and is paid at a later date. It is not the other way around. Workers are not getting anything in advance from the owners; the owners only pay a fraction of the profits created by labor and only weeks after the fact in most cases. Capitalism is based on private property in which the worker labors under the hope of being paid a fraction of what he or she has generated for the capitalist. This process of creating value is called valorization—the materials which go into production are increased in value based solely on the labor of the proletariat, and then a surplus value is created that goes into the hands of the owners. It is the proletariat who build all the machines and factories which the capitalist control in the form of private property which is itself a product of exploitation.
In order to maintain this unequal relationship between the exploited and the exploiters, all manner of oppressive and coercive mechanisms are created and reproduced daily. This includes not only the coercive state but the distribution of what is produced, the reproductive labor of workers in commerce and hospitality services, as well as professionals in educational services who train a new generation of workers and owners, equipping each with the education needed to assume their posts. The working people who do not produce—who are not involved in the creation of value—are not proletarians in the proper sense. Their purpose is to realize the value which was already created by the labor of the proletarians. Nonetheless, they form an important base of allies whose interests align with those of the proletariat. This includes teachers, nurses, intellectual workers, small trades people, and in some cases very small business owners who, although involved in exploitation, face the existential threat of being eradicated as business-owners and forced into the ranks of the working people by the corporations and large monopolies.
Proletarians comprise the majority of working people in the USA. The proletariat is a highly stratified class, with the lower strata encompassing the majority of proletarians. Here the wages are lower and the conditions are worse. Capitalist society and the economic foundations from which they are built necessitate the daily struggles of the working class, and from these experiences the class learns from revolutionaries that it needs its own party to meet and exceed these demands. The lower strata workers are forced to fight for concessions from the propertied classes, but on their own they will not necessarily draw revolutionary conclusions from these fights—they may desire a society based on mutual cooperation but will not spontaneously come to the scientific realization of how socialist revolution must be carried out. For this reason empirical class struggle will not automate proletarian revolution.
The role of the revolutionary forces within these struggles—and never separated from these struggles—is to expose the machinations of the enemies of the working classes, advancing class consciousness of workers around the need for the Party to be reconstituted. Reformists and activists of the ruling class can still derail and misdirect the consciousness won by workers in battle. Such reformists seek to halt the development of class consciousness by misdirecting working people into electoralism and pacifism. With vigilance, the Communist revolutionaries must go against the tide and see that the daily demands are combined with the conquest of political power. In the current conditions this means the unification through ideological struggle of revolutionary forces and the mobilization of workers against exploitation and oppression, fighting against defined enemies—against imperialism, reaction, and revisionism.
The current stage of revolution in the US is the stage of reconstitution. Today this is characterized and specified as rectification, patient ideological struggle, and allowing revolutionary practice to speak. In this way, the leadership of the proletariat can emerge, consolidate, and become recognized.
Communists have one unalterable goal: the emancipation of humanity through achieving the communist society, a society without rich and poor, without exploited or exploiter, where the contradictions between man and man have been resolved into non-antagonism and the contradiction between man and nature is resolved in the interests of mankind, a society that the whole world must enter or no one will, a society without states, nations or classes, specifically the luminous communist society.
Who our friends are:
In its fight for the emancipation of humanity the proletariat destroys itself as a class with the destruction of all classes. In this protracted battle it makes many friends and a few concentrated enemies. In the USA the friends of the proletariat can first be understood as all those who have to work, as working people whose jobs are based on the realization of profits created by proletarian labor—all those instrumental to a functioning society. The propertied class operates vast networks to realize profits and exploits non-productive workers in this process. It is important to recognize that most sections of non-productive workers involved in the realization of value are simultaneously engaged in the creation of value themselves. This form of valorization exists only in regard to the investment capital used in the process of distribution, which itself has been derived from proletarian labor, making these workers proletarians themselves even if they do not comprise the hard core of the proletariat. Workers who do not create any value, those who work for Non Government Organizations, intellectual workers and so on, are not proletarians but as workers can find common ground and be united behind proletarian leadership.
Teachers, intellectuals, and other professionals are important allies to the proletariat. They are equipped by the ruling class with certain skills that proletarians lack, but on their own they cannot put these skills into the strict service of socialism. For this, the leadership of the proletariat is decisive; otherwise, these skills will be used to facilitate the maintenance of exploitation. These elements, especially teachers, medical workers, and progressive lawyers carry out their own manner of struggles which often align with the broad and deep sections of working people. For instance, teacher and nurse strikes for better conditions and better pay often spread to workers at the point of production who are inspired by their just fight.
Workers in the service industries are most often underpaid and overworked. These industries are very stratified with a corresponding level of class consciousness. Those closest to the bourgeoisie who are involved in the commercial aspects of luxury commodities, be it high-end retail, fine dining, etc. often form the upper crust of service workers, those who have the strongest affinity for the exploiters, and their wages or commission reflects this. On the other hand, those who work in commercial and service industries such as big box stores and fast food are paid the least and have to work multiple jobs in order to survive; these workers are the closest to the hard core of the proletariat in production and comprise a large pool of resolute allies. Their struggles to form unions and their battles with the corporations indicate an increasing level of class consciousness. This must be linked with the struggles of the hardcore of the proletariat in order to win the low-income workers to the cause of socialist revolution.
Migrants without legal documentation and many immigrants—forced by the atrocities of imperialism to leave their home countries for the promise of jobs in the US—are met with discrimination and a higher degree and rate of exploitation. Not only are the most difficult and least desirable proletarian jobs given to them, but in all respects they are at a disadvantage even when it comes to non-proletarian work and small business practice. The threat of deportation and consistent social discrimination around language and culture must be struggled against in order to unite these sections of the masses with the cause of socialist revolution. From their direct experiences these masses of workers are more aware of imperialism in practice than most workers in the US. They are decisive in countering imperialist influence among the workers that favor jingoism and war.
Black people, most of whom are proletarians who face double oppression—first as being Black and then as workers—constitute important revolutionary forces in the US; the revolution cannot proceed without joining the fight against racial oppression and police terror. All Black people experience some degree of racial oppression, and it is mainly the working class and poor among them who face open police terror. The disadvantage and oppression of Black people is the cornerstone of US society. It cannot be undone without toppling the old society and constructing a new one based on workers’ power and the absolute annihilation of racism. Black people of various classes share a common interest in the fight against race-based oppression and white chauvinism. Revolutionaries of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities must unite in the practical fight against racial oppression and white chauvinism. It is only through unreserved dedication to the liberation of Black people through championing the Black struggle as partisans that it can be fully linked to the struggle of the class as a whole. In this final decisive struggle, the ranks of the Black proletariat will provide the most resolute, ardent, and audacious revolutionaries who will assume their posts as leading Communists. In the fight against the oppression of Black people, proletarian revolutionaries must not surrender to the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie because the latter can never take things far enough, and ultimately they want more Black exploiters of Black workers.
Small-scale exploiters. The consciousness of the small scale exploiters is most often that of severe and self-serving individualism. The class of small business owners, when radicalized, therefore tend toward individualistic bourgeois ideas like anarchism. These are not natural class allies for the proletariat. While their existence is under constant threat, it is only in particular circumstances that they will be anything but a hindrance to the cause of the working people.
Nonetheless, class allies exist among them—these are usually people who share some other common basis that makes their alliance possible. In regards to this class, the hardcore of the petty bourgeoisie, their leadership (they always attempt to lead), must be firmly rejected and they must be neutralized or brought under the leadership of the workers. This is true in all struggles. The proletariat must lead. The leadership of the petty bourgeoisie has invariably misled the working people into defeat at the hands of the owning class. They use all manners of electoralism, reformism, and treacherous collaborations with the old state to defang and subvert the people’s mass movements so that they do not draw revolutionary conclusions. Alliance with these elements is only desirable when it can be in the interests of the exploited, when it can be led by the working class. On an individual basis, petty bourgeois ideology can be replaced by proletarian ideology only when it is combined with practice. The conditions exist for allies to be won over, provided the working class movement is strong and has advantage, otherwise these elements will plague and destroy political movements. Orientation toward the petty bourgeoisie is a mistake, and a costly one that activist movements have made many times.
The enemy of the working class and those who align with them:
The ruling class of the United States is the imperialist bourgeoisie, those who comprise the most wealthy and elite sections of society whose income is derived from the plundering of the world with financial capital, using their immense fortunes to prop up governments and militaries around the world. The US government is the apparatus of the imperialist ruling class, no matter the name of the political party it selects to administer oppression and exploitation of the workers of the world. The imperialists can select any type of government, liberal bourgeois democratic as is the case in the US, or fascist and corporative as is the case in many places in the world, choosing which type of government suits them best in given conditions. What they cannot do is change the class character of the bourgeois state—it is always an armed administrative wing of their class.
The imperialist ruling class in the US is compelled to administer oppression and exploitation in its own country as well as around the world. It is compelled to compete with itself and to attack other classes, and it tends to concentrate greater and greater wealth in fewer and fewer hands while spreading poverty among increasing numbers of people. This class is the most decomposed and backward element of the capitalist mode of production. The imperialists as a class have entered their death throes and cannot live much longer; they create the world’s problems and force working people to take the initiative in toppling them altogether. In the short term, the imperialist bourgeois are merciless tyrants crushing, killing and imprisoning millions of people, but in the long term they are weak, they are few, while working people are many. The massive armaments, the militarization of the police, the abundance of prisons, the military domination of the world, etc. are not signs of strength but weakness; it is the sign of an over-extended power verging on collapse, something that is historically evident in all great powers. The increasing expenditures on militarization we see every year comes directly at the expense of the well-being of the people of the world; its growth entails the proportional growth of the fury of the oppressed and exploited, a fury that fuels the ongoing era of revolution that will in the coming decades bury the imperialists in a graveyard of their own creation. Support of the people is the source of true strength and it is evident that this is what they truly lack. All the demonstrations of “power” in the case of the imperialists are signs of decomposition and weakness.
The imperialist ruling class is the principal target of the socialist revolution, it is the true enemy of all other classes but nonetheless it converts some into its staunch allies, or handy tools in moments of crisis to secure its rule. This sector is often composed of intellectual laborers, academics, managers, expert professionals, religious officials, small-scale capitalists, the police apparatus, and agents of the old state, for example in the form of electioneering for one imperialist administrator or another. This group of reactionaries often also includes declassed elements, the throw-aways of all classes who circle the drain of society and become parasitic, like the imperialists themselves but on a smaller scale. This includes professional criminals like organized crime, large drug traffickers and dealers as well as professional scabs, snitches, and strike breakers, including all sections of the workforce which can be bribed to serve imperialism. Only strong and consistent action against imperialism in all its manifestations can wear down its base of defense. The revolutionary movement must make the cost of serving imperialism far greater than the material bribes offered by it as well as struggling so that the masses are educated to through and resist the bribes. This means making revolution at home—the principal act of internationalism.
The main lieutenants of the imperialist ruling class among the workers are the labor aristocrats, those who share in the super-profits of exploitation and form loyalties to the imperialist ruling class in exchange for enjoying a much more comfortable existence at the expense of their class siblings and the people of the world. These servants of imperialism raise the red, white, and blue flag against the red flag to pit worker against worker on the basis of phony nationalism. They secure votes for whichever imperialist party offers them the most advantageous bribes and they seek to mislead the people into thinking that the system can be changed with votes for this or that imperialist party. They populate the upper ranks of union bureaucracy in their unyielding efforts to convert all unions into useful appendages of the capitalist against the worker. However, the existence of those servants of imperialism within the unions is not a cause to abandon the unions to their bloody misdirection—this would mean handing over the weapons forged by workers to the soldiers of the class enemy. On the contrary, the existence of the labor aristocracy means that the working people must fight a war on two fronts: on the one hand they must form or join unions to meet their demands in the fight against the imperialists, while on the other hand they must fight against the servants of imperialism within the unions. Every working class conquest must be defended, otherwise it will be reversed.
Electionists—trying to give imperialism a face lift via the legitimization of the electoral farce—are serious impediments to the formation of the independent party of the proletariat. They swindle the workers into the pockets of the bosses, they offer life support to the decomposing system, and they are necrophiliac in their infatuation for the dead and rotting bourgeois democracy. These types must be distinguished from the working people and masses who still vote; the latter has used the only tool presented to them, even though it never could have worked in their interests, while the former has hocked poisoned goods on a desperate population.
Revisionism is the main danger for revolutionaries. What is revisionism and how does it arise? A revisionist is not one who is simply swayed by revisionist theory, nor is it a communist who has made mistakes. A revisionist is an active agent of the project of revising the revolutionary content of Marxism on the basis of claiming new conditions. This includes the theoreticians and leadership of organizations that are dominated by revisionism, who serve to stave off or destroy socialist revolution while claiming to be the champions of socialism itself. Revisionism is to go against the red flag of the international proletariat with a false red flag. An organization’s ideological, organic, and political line determines whether or not an organization is revisionist—this term is not an empty pejorative to be hurled at disagreements in the place of two-line struggle on the ideological, organic, and political fronts.
Revisionism can arise from within any revolutionary organization. The world views and class stands of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie contend inside of all organizations and inside all individuals. It is this contention—and the class forces the contenders represent—that manifest into a right and a left, any organization will necessarily develop two opposite wings. The danger posed by revisionism must be understood in order to treat internal two-line-struggle correctly to prevent revisionism from dominating the organization, liquidating it or turning it into its opposite.
Because its ideology derives from the bourgeoisie, the revisionists are necessarily eclectic. They are in contention with one another and are composed of individualist and factional interests, hence there is no simple type to describe all the tendencies of revisionism. The critical things to look for in exposing revisionism are the positions taken on the role of revolutionary violence, the conquest of power by the proletariat, the formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the communist party as the vanguard of the proletariat and the axis of everything, and the role of contradiction and struggle as the motor force. Many modern revisionists today have simply attempted to negate the proletariat as the revolutionary subject entirely.
Revisionism is not external only, it is a threat to everyone embarking upon the revolutionary road to the conquest and defense of power and communism. Revisionist organizations may not always appear as enemies of the proletariat, and they always attempt to recruit genuine workers and revolutionaries. The genuine must be won over to the side of the revolution led by the communists. Combating revisionism is inseparable from implacably combating reaction and imperialism, the proletarian revolutionary must be relentless and ever vigilant in this struggle.
3. The Decomposition of the Bourgeois Democratic System and the Fight for Workers’Democracy
All states—with the exception of socialist states—have been dictatorships of exploiters against the exploited. The increasingly reactionary and decomposing state in the USA is such a dictatorship. Dictatorships of the exploiters are dictatorships of the minority over the majority, while dictatorships of the working class are dictatorships of the majority over the minority. These two types of dictatorships have very different conceptions of democracy. “Democracy” for the exploiters was first developed as a revolutionary form of government against the old European monarchies. The United States issued the first democratic constitution in which the class privileges of the old world were denounced, the right to vote and assembly guaranteed, while at the same time defending slavery and the exclusion of Black people from bourgeois democracy. The entirety of the document was slated against the native inhabitants of the country in the interests of the large land owners (mainly southern cotton planters) and the nascent industrial capitalists of the north-eastern states. Bourgeois democracy in the US was born with these hideous birth defects and had immediately debased itself. In comparison to the revolution in France which followed on its heels, the US revolution was far less radical. Nonetheless, the American revolution was a significant revolution which pioneered new forms in politics, asymmetrical warfare and bourgeois democratic rights. As Engels pointed out, the US Constitution denounced the rights of class privilege (with meritocracy), while proclaiming racist privilege (with slavery). It should go without saying that bourgeois democracy could never accomplish the emancipation of the worker or women, while at the time of its emergence it professed to represent the interests of the oppressed.1, 2
The reactionary demo-liberal form of government would arise on the foundations of meritocracy undermined by slavery and would grow and decompose, passing from industrial capitalism through monopoly capitalism and into imperialism. Imperialism is capitalism in decay, and corresponding to this is the utter decrepitude of liberal democracy.
Though the ruling class and its state are deeply and increasingly reactionary, the US is not a fascist country. It is based on private ownership of the means of production in which the state does not force corporate merger into monopolies, and this contradicts fascism which corporatizes private ownership while increasing state ownership combined with the eradication of bourgeois democratic forms. Confusion on this point leads to folly—revisionism and some progressives make dangerous mistakes here. Fascism must be understood as the most reactionary form of government based on open terrorist dictatorship; however, bourgeois democratic liberal governments are still the agents of white terror and reaction. Attempts to misdirect on the question of fascism are most often maneuvers to improve the public image of decaying bourgeois liberalism, maneuvers which only prolong its reactionary character and provide more impulse for fascist aggression in moments of severe crisis. Recently, the specter of fascism, that is to say a misunderstanding of what it is, is utilized as a scare tactic to rally people in support of the decrepit Democratic Party, which itself can offer no measures of defense against real fascism.3
Bourgeois democracy has no life left in it. It rots and is a sham. Democracy for the propertied class is democracy for those who own the factories, the media, and the schools etc., and is misery for the working people. With each worsening economic crisis faced by imperialism the sham becomes more and more apparent—power is consolidated around the executive branch of government and elections become more farcical. The entire society, from elections to entertainment and education, becomes increasingly backward. This is called the process of reactionization and it exists in tandem with a decreasing number of increasingly rich imperialists and an increasing number of increasingly poor masses. The process of reactionization can take on openly backward and formally progressive images. The fact is that imperialism is not progressive, the social changes that occur in the imperialist countries which are not the product of temporary conquests in class struggle belong to the degeneration of imperialist society.
There is currently no Left organized to confront the right-wing conspiracy theories, nor the “left”-wing postmodernist metaphysics. The organization of these battles among the workers themselves is of vital importance. In the struggle to reconstitute the CP, the Left must emerge to demarcate itself from from the conspiracy theorists and postmodernists by not providing the same answers and not accepting the ideologies that come with them.
In terms of political thought, philosophy, and the bourgeois intellectuals, the process of decomposition and corresponding reactionization has a dual aspect—on the right we see intensified jingoism, right-wing populism and a resurgence of religious fundamentalism, while on the “left” we see severe individualism in the form of postmodernism, which considers individual and interpersonal problems to be principal and thereby declares that one’s perception is incontestable reality. Both forms of ideological decomposition and reactionization assail science and revive the most decrepit forms of anti-enlightenment thought. For revolutionaries, the “left” decomposition is more dangerous because it rejects the progressive aspects of traditional liberalism in favor of the most reactionary philosophical systems—idealism, the view that thinking determines reality, most evident in “gender” and “identity” politics which have become hegemonic among so-called progressives. Revolutionaries must offer fearless challenges to the intellectual degradation in both its “left” and right costumes.
The right wing movements are not impervious to postmodernist thinking either. The threat posed by the right-wing forms of postmodernism—including some conspiracy theories—impacts the masses of workers as well, especially those who have been in contact with the decomposition of liberalism and thus seek answers elsewhere. It is critical that the battle against divisive and reactionary identity politics and “gender” theory among the “left” is at the same time concerned with uniting the workers against the same type’s of ideology coming from the right. The increasing popularity of pseudo-science and “power of thought” theories which rely upon falsified astrophysics must be confronted as it is only on the rise as a new-age religion among the poor.
None of the corrupting influences of bourgeois ideology are fundamentally new, no matter the novelty of costume. Only the ideology of the international proletariat can serve as a weapon on this front. It must be applied through practice in class struggle to win more and more workers over to the materialist philosophy grasped only by Marxism. Marxism is the truth and it must be brought to the workers in the fight for a better future.
Bourgeois democracy is false democracy; true democracy can only exist when the majority, that is the working masses, hold political state power. This is the type of democratic form which communists fight for—democracy for the working people who are to take ownership over everything and dictatorship over the exploiters and oppressors. In this condition the most democratic society can emerge, because the reason for production is social well-being instead of private profit. Communism is the most rational and scientific form of human organization, a kingdom of harmony where things like democracy and government are no longer needed. Humanity will enter communism, and a scientific approach must be taken to get there.
4. The Communist Approach to the United Front
While the proletariat is both the base force and the leading force of the socialist revolution in the United States, it cannot act alone. Work among other classes proceeds only on the basis of the ability of Communists to embed themselves among their class, focusing on the deepest sections of the proletariat. Without this firm link, the efforts to reconstitute the Communist Party will change color and become an appendage of one section of the propertied classes or another; mainly it will fall under the influence of petty bourgeois elements.
The failure to understand and apply communist tactics in united front work has led to innumerable problems historically. Revolutionary forces in the midst of reconstitution of the Party will find themselves in many battles, this means that they will encounter numerous members of other parties. It does not matter if one is a social-democrat, Democrat, Republican, or unaffiliated to any organization provided they unite around agreed-upon demands in a given struggle and that the Communists fighting for reconstitution do not give up their independence and leadership over the struggles. It is necessary to simultaneously expose the problems of these organizations and parties in active class struggle while winning concrete demands. United front work is in the strategic interests of the working class, specifically its conquest of power led by the reconstituted Communist Party.
The approach to the united front was correctly formulated by the VII Congress of the Communist International, and it was this formulation that was developed further by Chairman Mao Zedong in the furnace of the People’s War in China. Some falsely argue that the VII Congress was a rightist deviation; it is true that there were Parties affiliated with the Comintern that ended up betraying their class, but they did so by distorting the Congress, not applying its directives and principles creatively. This is a problem of the leadership of those parties. Unless one has forged themselves in understanding this, their conceptions of the united front and united front work will be insufficient.
5. Communist Principles
We hold the following principles to be indispensable to Communist organizing in the United States:
1. Contradiction as the sole fundamental law of the incessant transformation of all eternal matter;
2. The masses make history and it is right to rebel;
3. Class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat and proletarian internationalism;
4. The creative application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism and the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo to the particular concrete conditions of making revolution in the USA;
5. The necessity of reconstituting the Communist Party on the basis of Maoism, which maintains and preserves its independent initiative and self-reliance;
6. Inseparably and implacably combat imperialism, revisionism, and reaction;
7. Two-line struggle as the motor force of Party development (and of all organizations fighting for reconstitution);
8. Practice Marxism and not revisionism, unite and do not split, be honest and above board and do not conspire or intrigue;
9. Constant ideological transformation, always putting politics in command;
10. Serve the people and the world proletarian revolution wholeheartedly;
11. Absolute selflessness, a just and correct style of work;
12. Going against the tide.
6. In Conclusion
The precise type of party necessary to the conquest and defense of proletarian power is the militarized Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism with the contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo. The principal task of all revolutionaries in the US is the reconstitution of the Party on this basis. Such a party must be equipped with the correct understanding that revolutionary violence is a universal law of resolving the main contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the socialist revolution and its continuation after power has been seized in the form of cultural revolutions. Such a party must concentrically construct its army and united front around itself. The army is the principal forces by which the masses are mobilized to carry out the Party program. The strategy with which power is conquered and defended is peoples war, the universally applicable military strategy of the proletariat, which must be applied according to the conditions of each country and the specific stage of world proletarian revolution that must be undertaken. The Worker intends to publish many more articles on each of the points addressed in this series.
Footnotes
- The revolution in the US was led by the colonial subjects of England who sought colonial dominance over the indigenous inhabitants and Black people imported as chattel. It was directly financed by the French monarchy that would face its own bloody trials at home. For instance, Ben Franklin is so highly regarded not on the basis of his revolutionary merits but on his ability to get large sums of money from his extended stay in France at the time. Thus cities in the US are named after the Orleans Dynasty or after Jean LaFayette etc. The internal contradiction within both the royal families in France as well as between the French royalty and the English empire were those that set conditions in which the American Revolution took place. It is no surprise that the revolutionary French bourgeoisie, accompanied by the nascent proletariat would in all respects outrun the American colonialists in terms of raising revolutionary—for that time—democratic principles.
- All bourgeois republics with the exception of the short lived one in Corsica excluded women from voting and in most cases also excluded non-property owning men, advancing only so far from fuedalism. This exclusion had a lot to do with the contention between the new proletarians and new bourgeoisie which propelled the developments of the bourgeois revolutions and enabled their success leading to proletarian revolutionary efforts beginning in 1848, and entering the age of proletarian revolution with the success of Great October in 1917.
- It is only when the imperialist ruling class finds uniting into one corporate state preferable in their own desperate defense that fascism becomes a last resort; fascism tends to be unstable and the ruling class gives up individual autonomy as bourgeoisie for an open terrorist dictatorship which disallows essential democratic rights while, sometimes, keeping them in form.
