by the Editorial Board
This article was updated on 07/18/2024 to add a hyperlink to the New Labor Press article this piece is in response to.
We must begin by denouncing the speculation from the New Labor Press that we are involved in some type of plot. The comrades offer absolutely nothing to substantiate this, only a strange claim that we have released articles in rapid succession. The comrades also claim that we have “quietly erased and deleted articles of [their] fraternal organizations [that we] had previously republished.” Comrades, can you hear yourselves! Just go look at our website and you will see no deletion of articles, they are still there and we still stand by them here. Our readers can verify for themselves that the articles in question have not been deleted, it is a lie that we have removed anything.
The NLP comrades appear to be suffering from an even worse case of sectarianism than we had suggested when they speak of “an organized putsch” and suggest The Worker has anything to do with such a conspiracy. For our part, we have reached out to the leaderships of the NLP and Revolutionary Student Union (RSU), they are free to respond however they see fit. Their internal business is their own and not ours. We find it only logical that a sectarian and factionalist approach to politics can leap into suspecting those who seek struggle for unity as agents in some kind of conspiracy. Our criticism was direct, to the point, measured, and principled. We stand by it and challenge the comrades to stop chasing ghosts and instead to defend their politics.
“To raise public struggle, while maneuvering and intriguing in the shadows. To decry splits, while actively fomenting one. Never have more vile, anti-Marxist, under-handed tactics been so openly used against NLP and the revolutionary organizations it works with.”
So says NLP, and in principle we fully agree. To claim anyone is “fomenting splits” one needs hard proof. We can only hope that our position, if it is correct, finds ears among every revolutionary organization, including the NLP. We write to convince and promote our positions of struggling for unity, and for no other reason. Comrades, prove that there is a plot. We encourage all comrades to struggle for unity, to state their views, and to neither leave their organizations nor expel their comrades. Two-line struggle is what allows the movement to grow and to find a basis of unity under Maoism, nothing else.
Paranoia sinks them to even lower pits when the comrades write:
“In their polemic against us, The Worker engages in clear police tactics, labeling us without substance as ‘communist rudiments’, ‘communists in formation’, and insinuating that we are a pre-party organization rather than the open theoretical publication we are and have always claimed to be.”
The Worker serves the struggle to reconstitute the Communist Party on a journalistic front, and we disdain to hide our views. The Worker has made no claims that NLP is “a pre-party organization” and we do not even use this term. We issue no such labels to NLP. It is dishonest to call this police work. We called on NLP to embody communist principles, since they too claim to stand for reconstitution. This is what we wrote:
“If NLP fancies themselves as communist rudiments, the least they could do is to start to ‘act like’ communists in formation, providing the kind of real leadership that is desperately needed.”
For us this is a big “if”, and it is regarding how NLP considers themselves; further reading skills are needed, but the comrades can read. We specify “fancies”, meaning that they do not by our standards qualify for the status of these so-called “communist rudiments” (their term). And what is the call? The call is to provide leadership and behave as serious revolutionaries. What is the point of operating a “press” if it does not provide ideological and theoretical guidance, i.e., a type of leadership? In short, we demanded in our response to their polemics that the comrades act more professional, understanding and mature, that they embody communist principles—and they cry “police work” and “conspiracy”! This, comrades, is reckless labeling. We do not wish to embarrass anyone so capable of embarrassing themselves.
To be absolutely clear, The Worker does not consider NLP to be involved in any clandestine Party-like structure and we make no insinuation. Such involvement requires more expertise than they have yet to manage. They must learn to walk and then they will run, but let them not run in the direction they are going.
NLP claims “the reason we decided not to engage in direct communication with [The Worker] is a direct result of their history of revealing private communications in public polemics…” Comrades, where and when has The Worker ever revealed private communications? Can you offer a single shred of evidence? What are you so afraid of? That your response to our letter of greeting and congratulations would slip through your clearly water-tight movement? A movement filled with ghosts and conspirators! If you are—as you claim, and as we believe—a publication, then what are you so afraid of? Public debate! Which is why you are still refusing matters of political line and instead raise other specters.
To continue: “…of beginning struggle under false pretenses all while conspiring behind an organization’s back, of using seemingly honest interactions as a means to infiltrate and then liquidate or split organizations. As is now plain to see, our hesitations were completely vindicated, and more!” You comrades convince yourselves of a threat of conspiracy, then convince yourselves of a conspiracy and have no proof. Worse, you expect others to just eat the slop you are serving them. There is a word for this: irrationality.
All comrades must understand this: it is not conspiracies and police plots that you have to fear the most. What you have to fear is a failure on your part to deepen the two-line struggle on the basis of Maoism, because it is only this that will accomplish a leap. The liquidationists, anti-communists par-excellence, have not passed a single negative word in public against the NLP; on the contrary, like the NLP they attempt to link us to other organizations or “trends.” They do not criticize our articles or our political line. Their criticism lacks political sense. And what of the attacks? They have not stopped any of us from carrying out our work! Revisionism is the main danger to the US movement; do not slip into revisionism by suppressing two-line struggle internally or avoiding it externally. It is in the interests of imperialism, reaction, and revisionism to avoid two-line struggle and to have no desires for unity.
The Worker does not seek to metabolize or take over, let alone infiltrate other forces—we have made ourselves very clear on this, and had you talked to us you would know that our only interest is serving reconstitution by finding agreements and disagreements that serve as a basis for two-line struggle. We are Maoists and we are not afraid of political struggle, nor do we find the need to use the methods of NLP of striking out at comrades, then crying about a conspiracy. Comrades—you, not us, are provoking splits; we simply issue well-established principles in an attempt to warn you of this.
For the NLP to practice Marxism not revisionism, to struggle for unity and not splits, to be honest and above board, they must realize who their friends and enemies are, they must stop foisting false positions on their comrades, and really, genuinely, and fearlessly conduct two-line struggle. This holds true for all of us. You must still struggle, comrades—struggle politically and do not invent straw men to attack in place of a political argument.
The NLP has a problem with reckless labeling—we pointed this out as comrades in the same struggle, and they responded by doubling down on their reckless labeling, snarling at the mouth. They raise wild speculation that our publishing schedule revolves around imaginary plots, with the comrades claiming that “the Daltonites [their label for our publication’s supposed “trend”] have published another desperate piece implying that all those who refuse their renegade leadership are factionalists and splitters, that it is those who resist their renegade tactics and back-door schemes who are the actual ‘liquidationists’.”
Again, contend with what is written—is it true? Is it based in Marxism or revisionism? Nowhere in the article in question does The Worker make a single claim that liquidation is a question of who follows which group. Instead of presenting evidence from the article cited that this is in fact our claim, NLP just jumps at shadows. The Worker article is directed at the question of principles related to the Party; it does not raise any outfit above the rest, but states established Marxist positions.
In another article we recently hosted on our website, the Great Lenin describes different methods—let’s see which ones characterize the polemical approach of NLP:
“Luch printed a lengthy article on the same subject. Not a single fact is cited in the article, the author does not attach any social significance at all to the dispute…”
Does the NLP cite a single fact? No.
“And an underhand rumor, worthy of the official press, is slipped in to suggest that certain ‘master-hands at revolution’ are to blame for it all because they are afraid of losing their influence if the broad masses of the workers enter into the dispute.”
This is certainly the method of NLP and we could not put it better ourselves. NLP learns from Luch, not from Lenin.
“What the author and the newspaper that published his article are aiming at is to pack people’s heads with gossip, squabbles and personalities, and thus avoid the necessity of explaining their point of view.”
Replace “newspaper” with “press” and there you have it—avoidance of principled political debate. We could go on, but wish instead to encourage our readers to study Lenin and to seek truth from facts.
The Worker has called on all comrades to remain at their posts, to struggle for unity under Maoism, to unite and not split; NLP, instead of championing these principles in anything but hollow praise, seeks to prevent the contention of ideas through bureaucratic and parliamentary-style opportunism, that is, to reject Marxism and do things administratively. They call on others to:
“expel those in your leadership who persist in their use of wreckerist tactics, who for years have clung to the methods of revisionism and the enemy, who stubbornly and egotistically damage our movement and limit the ability for a principled struggle for unity domestically with liquidationist-style attacks and double-talk.”
To be clear, calling on organizations to expel people instead of engaging in two-line struggle is coup behavior, meddling in others’ internal affairs etc., the exact type of thing the NLP accuses others of doing. It is desperate, pathetic, and infantile. Conduct two-line struggle and unite under Maoism. Expulsion from minuscule groups is meaningless, and it is not “wreckers” but good comrades who will suffer almost anywhere this policy is applied. What will it result in? More fractured and bitter groups with greater difficulty coming together. No, comrades, there is no method by which you can escape the path of two-line struggle. Maoism unites, while revisionism seeks splits and administrative expulsions in the place of political struggle and of convincing comrades to reject their deviations and correct their mistakes.
We must reiterate and reaffirm our call: enough with phantoms, scandal, and rumor-mongering. Enough with reckless labels, subjectivism, sectarianism, and factionalism. Should our work provoke debate, good, it must not be stifled. We stand by our analysis that even these severe and pigheaded mistakes on display from NLP can be overcome; the comrades lack experience in spite of their boasting of being “steeled through years of struggle”; they are quite infantile and show it to all with their posturing and hot air, this too can be corrected. No one in the US, no matter what they say, has been sufficiently steeled, because the movement here is still in its infancy—the Party, the masses and the highest expressions of class struggle steel us, not a few short years of publishing. There is nothing to brag about, there is no need for striking a pose. We are often childish and ignorant and have a lot to learn.
The working class cannot have two centers; it cannot have two or three or four parties. It can only have one: the Communist Party, which stands as the axis of everything. That makes unity a question of life and death, not a trifle. We reissue and reaffirm our commitment to this, we include here the basic political issues and criticisms we raised to NLP and we will keep raising them because they are true:
“1. You have relegated the principal task to secondary focus in your published works. You have failed to fully and correctly indicate the three points we have raised [in our email] to you clearly and upfront.
“2. By placing labor tactics as the main point on which to conduct two-line struggle you have slipped into a form of economism, and this form is succinctly defined by what your ‘Who We Are’ section says—and what it does not say.
“3. By polemicizing the newer and younger organizations in the US and labeling them revisionists you have failed to offer them the correct guidance. You hinder the struggle to unite under Maoism with your sectarian approach. The good positions which you take are undermined by your methods of conduct. You must realize that splitting over tactical disagreements when there is a basis for strategic agreements is subjective and short-sided.
“4. The struggle for unity under Maoism means standing against liquidation and is the principle struggle of the communists; no other struggles must take place before this one, it must proceed on the following points of demarcation: 1. acknowledging or not acknowledging Maoism as the third, new and higher stage of Marxism and the necessity to combat revisionism and all opportunism; 2. acknowledging or not acknowledging the omnipotence of revolutionary violence in order to make revolution; 3. acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity to demolish the old state apparatus and replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat; 4. acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity of the revolutionary party of the proletariat; 5. acknowledging or not acknowledging the necessity of proletarian internationalism, and finally; 6. acknowledging or not acknowledging the specific type of revolution applicable to imperialist countries such as the US as the socialist revolution.
“We hold that it is the responsibility of revolutionaries to struggle over these points, over our understandings of them etc. and that it is detrimental to label people revisionists for their understandable mistakes—in concrete conditions of liquidationism which have robbed them of leadership—instead of patient and dedicated exchange. Commitment to revisionism on these questions makes one a revisionist, but mistakes in formulation do not, especially when a group is politically inexperienced and lacks experience in life which time allows.”
Reckless labeling, sectarianism, factionalism, responding to principled critique with an escalation and slander, lashing out, striking a pose etc. can all appear quite “Left” but in essence they are rightist deviations. It appears that our request that they conduct themselves with communist principles is too much for NLP at their current stage of maturation, for this they call us the police and Lin Biao; nonetheless, we believe that it is the only honest approach to making revolution. Become serious revolutionaries and do not lash out in all directions.
Finally, to our readers who agree with our principles, wherever they reside, we advise: patiently struggle for unity, do not violate your agreements or organizational discipline, do not act impulsively, stay connected to the masses, be vigilant in the fight against revisionism and struggle to develop a higher level of political principles and professionalism, especially in regard to our movement’s dispersal and childishness. In our analysis it is improper to isolate comrades making left or right deviations, we must conduct two-line struggle and criticism and self-criticism to forge unity among Maoists and we must conduct ourselves with this in mind. Do not become dispirited, the road is difficult but it leads to victory.
UNITE UNDER MAOISM
