First Published: Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, Vol. II, No. 1, January 1959.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
In New York on Thanksgiving weekend the National Committee of the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, gathered in its first plenum.
Basing itself on the science of Marxism-Leninism, the plenum addressed itself to the situation facing the working class, and to a review of its progress in laying the groundwork for the re-constitution of a real party of struggle.
Present were representatives of P.O.C. committees in Chicago, Cleveland, Eastern and Central Pennsylvania and six local organizations in N. Y. City. Observers from the Communist Party New Jersey and 2 former members of the now defunct CP of Puerto Rico, were also present, as invited guests.
The political report was delivered by Joe Dougher of Philadelphia who is National Chairman of the P.O.C. The report stressed that in the main the period of inner-party struggle was being concluded, and that as POC committees were consolidated in the various districts, they would have to start tackling the issues before the working class as a whole. The work of our committees would now point in the direction of mass struggle, and the strengthening of our connections and influence with the rank and file membership of the old Communist Party, and ex-Party members who are disgusted with the revisionist line of the leadership.
Comrade Dougher exposed the falsity of bourgeois propaganda that the “recession” is about over and pointed to the continued millions of unemployed, the almost complete failure of resumption of capital goods production, and to the artificial injection of budget increases (more than $15 billion) in Government spending on armaments and missiles to cover up the disastrous drop of national production. As one delegate remarked, the true test of any program to fight the depression is “whether that program attacks the profits of capital, in order to shift the burden of the crisis from the workers to the capitalists”. Another delegate reminded the gathering that under the general crisis of capitalism, there could be no “recovery” from the inevitable cyclical crisis of the system except by a long process of deterioration of capital equipment, [several words missing – EROL] many years or a wholesale destruction of that equipment by the holocaust of War.
The report exposed the failure of the trade-union bureaucracy, and the responsibility of the CP. leadership in condoning that failure to organize the more than 40 million unorganised workers in our country, including many Negro, Puerto Rican, and foreign-born workers in small shops and fringe industries.
He pointed out that these oppressed minorities also constitute a sizable number of the lower paid sections of workers in the mass production industries, and advocated that, wherever the opportunity presents itself, steps be taken to form rank and file committee of workers to organize these shops. He suggested that similar steps be not overlooked wherever the unemployed, the Negro people, or other groups react against the effects of the economic crisis, discrimination, or the war policies of U. S. imperialism.
He pointed out, where the working people understood an issue clearly, such as in the elections where the “right-to-work” laws were overwhelming defeated, that they were beginning to evolve the elements of independent working class political struggle. It is the job of a vanguard party to bring this understanding to a higher level on many other issues, such as the real causes of the depression, the responsibility of U. S. Imperialists for the danger of war and the suppression of the national liberation straggle of the Negro people of the U. S. and those of the Latin-American and other colonial peoples. In this connection, he outlined the role of a developing Marxist-Leninist vanguard helping to organize and initiate rank and file struggles to extended unemployment insurance, really adequate public assistance for the aged and dependent children, for outright repeal of the Taft-Hartley law, and for unrestricted trade relations with all countries, including the socialist countries. He demanded that this struggle include the fight for better housing, reasonable rents, reduction of taxes on incomes less than $5,000, and particularly the struggle (now forgotten by the trade union leadership) for the Six Hour Day without a reduction in weekly pay. Without a development of this struggle, as the American people face the increased sharpness of the attacks by the monopolist bourgeoisie, the danger of the outbreak of an imperialist war greatly increases. While the road to war and fascism for the U. S. imperialists is made very difficult by the Socialist countries and the peace movement of the world’s peoples, we can have no assurance against these catastrophes except through the road of struggle, led by a vanguard party, which only the P.O.C. is seriously moving to build in our country.
In the discussion of this report, delegates and observers reported from Chicago, Cleveland, Central and Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and N. Y. They told of a strike of 800 unorganized Puerto Rican women in a shop in the Bronx, of the two million votes against the right to-work law in Ohio (as compared with only 600,000 organized workers in the state), of resistance to leadership sell-outs by organized workers in auto shops in Detroit and elsewhere.
It was evident, in the discussion and unanimous vote of approval of the report, that the National Committee will move to combine the struggle for consolidation of the P.O.C. and building a Marxist-Leninist vanguard, with increasing participation in the new opportunities for mass struggle.
Rejecting “advice” that all ideological struggle be waived in programs of action only, the N.C. unanimously approved an organizational report by A. Marino. Goals were projected for a 60 percent increase in membership within three months; 500 new subs for our monthly organ, THE VANGUARD; definite financial goals to ensure the resources for organising; and the continuation of our intensive educational program, combining the classics of Marxism-Leninism with our own experiences and literature, to ensure the fullest understanding and most effective struggle on the part of all our members for the sharpening class struggle to come.
With sober enthusiasm, without illusions as to the rebirth of a long dead “New Deal” era, and determined to fight against isolation from the basic struggles of the American workers, the plenum adjourned with a new determination to fight revisionism and build a reconstituted Marxist-Leninist Communist party of the American working class.