by the Editorial Board
1. Organizational Discipline and its Relation to Investigation
The general norms for the emancipation of the working class are: the need for a Communist Party leading the revolution, the need for revolutionary violence to overthrow the old established order and the need to install the dictatorship of the proletariat to build socialism and march towards the classless society of the future. It is unthinkable that anyone proclaiming these principles could deny the absolute necessity of organizational discipline. Nonetheless, in the conditions of general dispersal of revolutionary forces, in the complex and twisting path of reconstitution we find a common return to liberal concepts of discipline, and, worse, the tendency to conflate discipline of a voluntary association of communists in formation with oppression itself.
Revolution demands authority, violence, and discipline, therefore revolutionaries are for authority, violence, and discipline. It is these three things that come into contradiction in various ways with liberalism and its most decomposed form, postmodernism. It is not that that decomposed liberalism lacks authority, violence, and discipline. On the contrary, it has all of these present, but not in the interests of revolution. The kind of authority accepted by decomposing liberalism has everything to do with demagoguery, the kind of violence is—openly or through a back door—the violence of the state, and discipline is only what is propitious to short term opportunist goals.
It is put like this in the Communist Party of the USA’s A Manual on Organization:
“A professional revolutionist is a highly developed comrade, trained in revolutionary theory and practice, tested in struggles, who gives his whole life to the fight for the interests of his own class. A professional revolutionist is ready to go whenever and wherever the Party sends him. Today he may be working in a mine, organizing the Party, the trade unions, leading struggles; tomorrow, if the Party so decides, he may be in a steel mill; the day after tomorrow, he may be a leader and organizer of the unemployed. Naturally, these professional revolutionists are supported by the Party organization if their assignment doesn’t send them to work in shops or mines. From these comrades the Party demands everything. They accept Party assignments—the matter of family associations and other personal problems are considered, but are not decisive. If the class struggle demands it, he will leave his family for months, even years. The professional revolutionist cannot be demoralized; he is steeled, stable. Nothing can shake him. Our task is to make every Party member a professional revolutionist in this sense.”
While building this level of discipline and structure takes time and patient work, it is nonetheless the standard that must guide our approach. To the would-be-revolutionary who is still in reality a liberal in decomposition, the above is a thing of horrors; it causes him recoil at the “abuse” of the sacred individual. Organizational control over individuals’ lives is a communist position that fundamentally violates the old-liberal concept of the free-individual and their superstitious and always false “god-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It comes down essentially to Marxism or to liberalism in one’s viewpoint that determines the choices one makes and what is necessary for one’s goals. The liberal viewpoint overemphasizes fear of the “tyranny of the majority” expressed in the realization of the Party and its consequential concentration of class leadership.
Chairman Mao Zedong explained the Marxist viewpoint perfectly, and expresses that there are certain ideological requirements to calling oneself a communist:
“We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist.”
Organizational discipline, i.e., what is expected of communists in formation, cannot float above or as an aside to correct approaches to understanding a situation, bringing up the question of investigation. Liberals can easily accuse communism of being “cult-like” due to its devotion to principles, especially the principles of authority, violence, and discipline. In turn, counter-revolutionaries who betray the communists are equally prone to run with this, to play victim and cry foul. Liberal ideology only means that we are more prone to accepting their anti-communist shouts as something to validate or cower from. This must be confronted and mistaken ideas must be corrected. The principles of discipline are closely connected to the principles of investigation.
Chairman Mao devoted a great deal of work to the general problems faced by revolutionaries all over the world and his glorious directives shine through the ages—in many instances if we are going wrong we can sit down and study Mao, holding up what he said against what we are doing, and re-approach our work.
“Unless you have investigated a problem,” Chairman Mao wrote in Oppose Book Worship, “you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?”
The Chairman insisted, “YOU MUST INVESTIGATE, YOU MUST NOT TALK NONSENSE!” This means “probe into a problem, into the present facts and past histories” and we stress here that when this is done by opportunists, liberals, or the unqualified comrade, it is done in a one-sided manner. In other words, it is enough to hear from one side of a conflict to come to a political position on the matter. This is utterly false. You cannot know anything if your investigation only takes allegations as facts!
“Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before. Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to ‘find solution’ or ‘evolve an idea’ without making any investigation. It must be stressed that this cannot possibly lead to any effective solution or any good idea. In other words, he is bound to arrive at a wrong solution and a wrong idea.”
How many comrades take the time to sit down with those they hear bad things about? When gossip and personal issues or interpersonal contradictions are the common fodder of anti-communists and rumors run like wild dogs, who can claim to have all the facts? Do some investigation. The Chairman’s technique is universally applicable:
“Hold fact-finding meetings and undertake investigation through discussions. This is the only way to get near the truth, the only way to draw conclusions. It is easy to commit mistakes if you do not hold fact-finding meetings for investigation through discussions but simply rely on one individual relating his own experience. You cannot possibly draw more or less correct conclusions at such meetings if you put questions casually instead of raising key-questions for discussion.”
Such meetings allow the truth to come out, the mistakes to reveal themselves; hence “to investigate a problem is to solve it.” These techniques from Chairman Mao give themselves over to communist discipline and are part of the worldview. Decomposing liberalism, on the other hand, is corrosive, divisive, and provokes splits; its techniques cannot accomplish anything else but making problems worse rather than solving them.
2. Against factionalism and for denouncing snitches
Communists are against factionalism and are for denouncing snitches and liquidators engaged in police work. The contradiction between reconstitution of the Communist Party and liquidation has been ongoing since the Party was liquidated by revisionism in 1945, and we have seen periods of advance and retreat within this sequence. The Party will be reconstituted because the class struggle demands it—no one can stand in the way of this.
Before and after constitution this contradiction with liquidation was still present, and it is important to understand that the Communist International had to intervene to correct the course multiple times.
In early 1920, the Central Executive Committee of the Communist International wrote to the two parties in the US who independently called themselves communist parties that:
“The split has rendered a heavy blow to the communist movement in America. It leads to the dispersion of revolutionary force, to a harmful parallelism, and absurd partition of practical work, and senseless discussions and an unjustifiable loss of energy in inter-fractional quarrels. A concentration of American bourgeois forces has increased to an unprecedented extent, while the class struggle is becoming more acute every day and demands unprecedented sacrifices from the American proletariat.”
The ECCI called for a Joint Congress to be called, and immediate unification on the basis of the principles of the Communist International, and made this a precondition for admission into the Communist International. By 1921 the two organizations finally became one, the CPUSA. The problem of factionalism was not completely overcome, leading to Comrade Stalin’s “Speech on the CPUSA” in 1929 where he provided a critical analysis of the harm caused by factionalism, from which we quote below at length:
“. . . factionalism weakens the Party spirit, it dulls the revolutionary sense and blinds the Party workers to such an extent that, in the factional passion, they are obliged to place the interests of faction above the interests of the Party, above the interests of the Comintern, above the interests of the working class. Factionalism not infrequently brings matters to such a pass that the Party workers, blinded by the factional struggle, are inclined to gauge all facts, all events in the life of the Party, not from the point of view of the interests of the Party and the working class, but from the point of view of the narrow interests of their own faction, from the point of view of their own factional kitchen.
“. . . factionalism interferes with the training of the Party in the spirit of a policy of principles; it prevents the training of the cadres in an honest, proletarian, incorruptible revolutionary spirit, free from rotten diplomacy and unprincipled intrigue. Leninism declares that a policy based on principles is the only correct policy. Factionalism, on the contrary, believes that the only correct policy is one of factional diplomacy and unprincipled factional intrigue. That is why an atmosphere of factional struggle cultivates not politicians of principle, but adroit factionalist manipulators, experienced rascals and Mensheviks, smart in fooling the ‘enemy’ and covering up traces. It is true that such ‘educational’ work of the factionalists is contrary to the fundamental interests of the Party and the working class. But the factionalists do not give a rap for that—all they care about is their own factional diplomatic kitchen, their own group interests.
“It is, therefore, not surprising that politicians of principle and honest proletarian revolutionaries get no sympathy from the factionalists. On the other hand, factional tricksters and manipulators, unprincipled intriguers and backstage wire pullers and masters in the formation of unprincipled blocs are held by them in high honor.
“. . . factionalism, by weakening the will for unity in the Party and by undermining its iron discipline, creates within the Party a peculiar factional regime, as a result of which the whole internal life of our Party is robbed of its conspirative protection in the face of the class enemy, and the Party itself runs the danger of being transformed into a plaything of the agents of the bourgeoisie. This, as a rule, comes about in the following way: Let us say that some question is being decided in the PolitBureau of the Central Committee. Within the PolitBureau there is a minority and a majority which regard each decision from their factional standpoint. If a factional regime prevails in the Party, the wire pullers of both factions immediately inform the peripheral machine of this or that decision of the PolitBureau, endeavoring to prepare it for their own advantage and swing it in the direction they desire. As a rule, this process of information becomes a regular system. It becomes a regular system because each faction regards it as its duty to inform its peripheral machine in the way it thinks fit and to hold its periphery in a condition of mobilization in readiness for a scrap with the factional enemy. As a result, important secret decisions of the Party become general knowledge. In this way the agents of the bourgeoisie attain access to the secret decisions of the Party and make it easy to use the knowledge of the internal life of the Party against the interests of the Party. True, such a regime threatens the complete demoralization of the ranks of the Party. But the factionalists do not care about that, since, for them, the interests of their group are supreme.
“. . . factionalism consists in the fact that it completely nullifies all positive work done in the Party; it robs the Party workers of all desire to concern themselves with the day-to-day needs of the working class (wages, hours, the improvement of the material welfare of the workers, etc.); it weakens the work of the Party in preparing the working class for the class conflicts with the bourgeoisie and thereby creates a state of affairs in which the authority of the Party must inevitably suffer in the eyes of the workers, and the workers, instead of flocking to the Party, are compelled to quit the Party ranks . . . . What have the factional leaders of the majority and the minority been chiefly occupied with lately? With factional scandal-mongering, with every kind of petty factional trifle, the drawing up of useless platforms and sub-platforms, the introduction of tens and hundreds of amendments and sub-amendments to these platforms.
“Weeks and months are wasted lying in ambush for the factional enemy, trying to entrap him, trying to dig up something in the personal life of the factional enemy, or, if nothing can be found, inventing some fiction about him. It is obvious that positive work must suffer in such an atmosphere, the life of the Party becomes petty, the authority of the Party declines and the workers, the best, the revolutionary-minded workers, who want action and not scandal-mongering, are forced to leave the Party.
“That, fundamentally, is the evil of factionalism in the ranks of a Communist Party.”
Nothing in the above does not prove itself true today in the even worse conditions of general dispersal of revolutionary forces.
Because factionalism is a manifestation of subjectivism it expresses itself outside of a single organization of the class in the form of sectarian approaches to the question of reconstitution. We highlight the above from Comrade Stalin to indicate real problems of the movement, leading up to the split in 2022 and following through the complex period of the struggle to unite under Maoism, problems that are ongoing today—that is to say, these problems have existed for some time and they have gotten worse, not better.
To summarize:
1) Factionalism and sectarianism blind people. 2) Factional and sectarian approaches harm the training of comrades in a policy of principles and harm the development of an honest, proletarian and incorruptible revolutionary spirit and therefore represents the threat of turning to revisionism and liquidation. 3) Factionalism/sectarianism cultivates Menshevism and decomposing liberalism. 4) It undermines unity, the struggle for unity and iron discipline. 5) It compromises the clandestinity, secrecy, and security of revolutionary work. 6) It allows agents of the bourgeoisie to access secrets making it easy to use knowledge of the internal life of the movement against it. 7) It threatens the complete demoralization of the ranks of those engaged in the reconstitution effort. 8) It nullifies positive work; it robs comrades of the desire to serve the people and remain connected to the masses in class struggle. 8) It weakens the connection between the proletarian organizations in formation and the masses. 9) It leads to scandal-mongering and the alienation of those who refuse to behave like bourgeois politicians. 10) It creates a cycle, where any attempts to overcome it are assailed by it.
While there is no Communist International today, there is the International Communist League, the great conquest of the international proletariat and a bold step the class has taken in its reconstitution of the Communist International, serving as a weapon against the dispersal of forces on the world scale. Understanding this, let us approach international guidance with optimism and a commitment to learn, rather than false affability and the put-on of effete confusion regarding what they plainly put in front of us all.
In December of 2022, the website Communist International (ci-ic.org) posted “A Statement on the Situation of the Maoists in the USA”. We printed it in our first issue and made it available on our website. It is a correct, sober, and revolutionary statement, saying clearly what needs to be said for all to easily comprehend. It is neither vague nor ambiguous; it must be read and studied in a manner opposed to subjectivism and factionalism. It is a red flag and a rallying point for our entire movement without exception. Its precision and short length serve only the interests of uniting under Maoism and seeking a deeper understanding through discussion.
The international comrades write in the document that:
“…the comrades in the United States who struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in their country are facing a complicated internal situation resulting from an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA) – the ongoing initiative to unify all the communist in the task of reconstituting the communist Party of the United States under Maoism.”
Precisely the comrades speak of an attempt; this is the first thing we must emphasize, an attempt is nothing more, it is not a statement declaring the final success of liquidation, collapse, or any other pessimistic inclination. Attempt, this word is followed by another word, “ongoing.” This is clear enough. If anyone abstracts complexity, difficulty, and the task from the concrete conditions of attempts to liquidate and the ongoing character of the fight, we fall prey to subjectivism, to confusion and enter into denial of reality.
Still in the first paragraph, having already established that the struggle for reconstitution is ongoing in spite of attempts to liquidate it, the comrades waste no time in qualifying and denouncing the police work of the liquidation:
“The liquidationists are launching a vicious internet campaign in which they go so far as snitching, diffusing internal information about the revolutionary organizations, and, in the most repulsive cases, publicizing names and photos of alleged leading members. This helps the reaction in striking blows against the revolutionary and communist movement. It is collaboration with and legitimization of the enemy apparatuses, and does not, in any way, help to build a communist party, nor does it constitute a method of revolutionaries and communists for developing the struggle.”
With the speech from Comrade Stalin fresh in our minds we can better apprehend this powerful statement. Responses to the situation that fail to denounce police work specified as diffusing internal information and publicizing names and photos of alleged leading members are mired in the factional spirit, the same spirit that gives rise to the police work of the liquidationists. We must see that it is the responsibility of the international comrades to denounce this, and that they have done so, and we must ask why some who proclaim “long live the International Communist League” here in the USA have either made excuses for the liquidationists or have conveniently ignored them to avoid taking a principled position.
Demarcate between errors that take place in practical work and errors of principle—this is what the international comrades express. Commandism, subjectivism in practical work, and even factionalism and sectarianism in this work are indeed major deviations (rooted in the old-reactionary society) that existed and that exist in the effort to creatively apply Maoism. Deviations need to be criticized; they are not the same thing as errors in principle, which have led to the rejection of Marxism and the conducting of police work.
Several problems emerge when one is so confused and mixes up the errors. Some will call everyone they disagree with “revisionists”, with others fearing this term settling for “opportunist” and others still will go over to the enemy camp with the use of the enemies’ terms and means. In response to failing to solve the problem of demarcation, many of these who make a quick grab of terms against this or that group will simultaneously reject protracted two-line struggle and instead attempt to remain silent, to disengage and not step up even when they are called to task.
The international comrades give very good advice:
“We call on all the honest comrades in the United States—which we believe constitute the overwhelming majority of those that had taken part in the process of reconstitution—who wish to serve the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of the USA to follow ‘Practice Marxism, not revisionism; work towards unity, not for splitting; act in honest and honored way and don’t thread intrigues nor machinations’. A principled two-line-struggle through the correct internal channels must be conducted with the aim of firmly unifying on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the struggle against imperialism, revisionism, and the reaction, and to serve the development of revolution in the US as part of and in service of the world proletarian revolution. We call all the comrades that have criticism toward other comrades to dispose all post-modernist criteria in the struggle, to reject individualism and personal disputes. All criticism must have a political sense. We call all comrades that have committed mistakes to undergo serious and honest self-criticism and to correct the mistakes in their revolutionary practice. We call on all comrades who have been left without reliable contacts to not despair, nor open any organizational debates and information online, nor cease their work with the masses, we urge them to keep developing their revolutionary activities. With the proper development of two-line-struggle, you will be able to reconnect and participate in it through the internal channels.”
Who is called upon here? All honest comrades in the United States, the overwhelming majority of those who have taken part in the process of reconstitution. That is everyone except for the inveterate liquidationists engaged in police work. What are we called upon to do? 1) practice the three-do’s and not the three don’ts, which can be found in the Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China in great detail; 2) conduct a principled and protracted two-line struggle through correct channels; 3) aim to unite under Maoism against revisionism, imperialism and reaction; 4) serve the development of the revolution here as part of and in service to the world proletarian revolution; 5) reject individualism and dispose of postmodern criteria, reject all personal disputes; 6) do not despair or open organizational debates online; 7) make sure all criticism has a political sense; 8) undergo honest self-criticism and correct mistakes; 9) do not cease work with the masses, keep developing revolutionary activities. These are the 9 most important calls that will steer the course and help prevent even those who made costly mistakes from falling into sectarianism and revisionism.
Some comrades have attempted to carry out these tasks and others have openly rejected them, and more even pretend the tasks have never been issued and persist down bad roads. The international comrades emphasize:
“We urge all comrades to develop internal two-line-struggle, to apply unity-struggle-unity, and to firmly reject all snitching and police work.”
Sadly some comrades refuse to do these things, likely in the name of preserving a sham oppositional and factional-based “unity,” their own sticky mess, and in this refusal they drag their feet in the march for reconstitution, afraid to struggle for unity and afraid to be attacked by the snitches if they denounce them. It is easier for them to spread distrust among those who uphold Maoism and extend sympathetic-validation to the anti-communists. Only the anti-communists are reactionaries, they have crossed a line and they have become snitches!
The best denunciation of snitching and police work comes about by preparing our comrades to stand against these methods of reaction. A Manual on Organization expresses the problem well:
“The working class is constantly at war with its enemy, the capitalist class. In this war (class struggle), as in any other war, the capitalist class has one main objective—to defeat its enemy, the working class. In order to achieve this aim, the capitalists use all possible methods to disorganize, demoralize and divide the ranks of the proletariat. One of the most effective weapons in the hands of the enemy is the agent-provocateur, the stool-pigeon, the spy in the ranks of the working class, and especially in the ranks of the vanguard of the proletariat—the Communist Party.
“The activities of these human rats can be listed as follows:…Creating sentiment against the leadership of the Party; Systematic destructive criticism against the line of the Party;… The spreading of rumors about individual leaders of the Party, concerning their political integrity or personal life”
We have emphasized and shortened the quote to express what are today the most common techniques of enemy agents, splitters, and liquidationists. The Manual expresses that:
“The most effective weapon in the hands of the Communist Party against these agents-provocateurs is the carrying out of the general line of the Party, the uncompromising fight against any one who attempts to deviate from this line, Bolshevik self-criticism and correction of mistakes and shortcomings in the work of the Party organization or individuals in the process of applying or carrying out the general line of the Party. In a Party organization where these principles are strictly adhered to, agents-provocateur will be exposed very quickly.”
The adherence to communist principles is an attack on police work and liquidationism, and as such it is also a defense against them. Agitation must be carried out against the handful of liquidationists, who still maintain agents in the movement. It is not only a matter of principle, but a matter of the long-term interests of the working class.
3. Transformation only happens through politics and Unity-Struggle-Unity
Transformation and development take place in the political life of class struggle and the struggle for unity, never in isolation from it. This is a Marxist principle based on the law of contradiction; attempts to reverse it are acts of revisionism. Unity is possible only on two conditions: 1) the desire for unity, and 2) a struggle for unity. Nothing else. Stop adding conditions, there are not any others.
There are those who would set false, liberal, and anti-Marxist preconditions for unity such as the complete withdrawal from politics for those who have made mistakes or even been accused of making mistakes. This is a sleight of hand that shuts down the necessary two-line struggle. Nothing in society develops or improves in the conditions of complete withdrawal from political life, nothing. No matter the error made, this theory is unacceptable. It is a liquidationist theory meant to sweep class struggle and two-line struggle under the rug. First, it denies a desire for unity, second it avoids the struggle on this basis. The fact is that there have always been right opportunists and there always will be; they hide and seek to remain hidden by separating the left.
It must further be established that a sober and genuine commitment to self-criticism cannot take place outside of political life and active social practice; if it is to become abstract then it stops being a weapon for unity and becomes empty talk, meaningless performance art for closed circles of sectarians. It is a fact that self-criticism is the prerequisite to rectification and essential to the entire process of development, and this too is never for a moment separated from the two-line struggle. No amount of hand-wringing conflict-avoidance or whining about our poor subjective conditions will absolve us of the immediate task of struggling to unite under Maoism by deepening the two-line struggle.
Empty and unqualified talk about “uniting and not splitting” while encouraging comrades to leave their organizations is vile and repugnant. It is the desperation of sectarians to engage in the craft of poaching in a crude substitution for two-line struggle. Politics proven in the social practice of class struggle never need to resort to such bourgeois conduct. The two-line struggle must be understood in the context of unifying under Maoism, and this is what must come to divide the revolutionaries and the revisionists. The struggles must be conducted internally and externally, and in all cases they must be based in what the Chairman has taught:
“… the essential thing is to start from the desire for unity. For without this desire for unity, the struggle, once begun, is certain to throw things into confusion and get out of hand.”
“Marxist philosophy holds that the law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates universally, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in man’s thinking. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change. Contradictions exist everywhere, but their nature differs in accordance with the different nature of different things. In any given thing, the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas the struggle of opposites is absolute.”
And:
“We should unite with everyone provided he truly makes a clear distinction between the people and the enemy and serves the people.”
The lack of desire for unity has two main sources: 1) confusing friends for enemies, which is to say those who have strong political disagreements should not struggle to find agreements, but instead they should go to war and battle to wipe one another out; as a policy between revolutionaries this is a liquidationist position, and 2) a liberal avoidance of difference, doubtfulness of the correctness of one’s positions and fear of exposure in the struggle for unity; as a policy between revolutionaries this too amounts to liquidation. To desire unity makes one fearless in struggle. Only armed with this desire can the complex and difficult heights be scaled. We must struggle against mistakes and help the comrades who make them to improve their work as class fighters, for the class, the masses and the reconstitution of the Party.
Revolutionaries desire a unified revolutionary movement steeled in Maoism, and therefore they must first struggle against their amateurism, factionalism, and lack of confidence in struggle and begin talking seriously to those with whom they disagree. It is only those who can unify the proletarian movement who are fit to be leaders in it.
This article was edited for accuracy on 07/11/24.
