Published: The Workers’ Advocate, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1970.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Past issues of The Workers’ Advocate have put forward our prime task of building a Marxist-Leninist communist party of the working class to lead a united front of oppressed people to overthrow the monopoly capitalist class. In recent weeks we have seen evidence that the rulers’ fear of the people has grown as they Increasingly recognize the people’s ability to overthrow them and as they see the economy sink deeper into crisis, threatening to release new storms of people’s struggle against them. The desperate murders of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and other Panthers by the police, and of mine-worker leader Joseph A. Yablonski (by either the coal operators or the union hacks) should indicate to the working class that the imperialists are reaching for their last card: FASCISM. Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary backward sections of monopoly capital, and it is imposed by the bourgeoisie when they can no longer govern by their previous “democratic” means.
Public opinion in favor of fascism is being prepared in the schools and in the news and cultural media, where uninvestigated, unscientific ideas of racial superiority and of the supposed irrationality, greed, lust and violence of the people are being advocated. For example, the bourgeoisie is blaming the people rather than themselves for pollution, poverty, riots, and starvation, and is sponsoring numerous articles and student organizations to do this propaganda for them. These ideas are racist, anti-working class and anti-communist at their roots, and they combine to form fascist ideology. Economically, the bourgeoisie is trying to transfer the burden, of its crisis onto the working people by raising prices and taxes and by attacking their democratic right to organize against exploitation. Politically, the bourgeoisie is passing repressive laws and carrying out assassinations against the people’s political movements, and preparing aggressive wars in still more parts of the world.
Therefore, we must greatly intensify our work to build a communist party, recognizing, as in Europe and Asia before and during WW II, that a disciplined organization of the class-conscious proletariat is the most powerful weapon against fascism, a headquarters and general staff of the working class in class warfare. We must also recognize that as the bourgeoisie further denies the peoples’ rights in preparing open fascist dictatorship, the rulers will become more and more isolated and ever larger sections of the people will oppose them. We must organize the class-conscious proletariat to lead all these struggles and carry them through to the defeat of monopoly capital. In fighting fascism, carrying out a mass democratic method of work which relies completely on the people (as described in the report on the Vancouver Conference), becomes even more important. Fascism tries to disarm the people by turning them against each other, using slanders and lies (in addition to taking away their guns). Mass democracy must be fought for and put into practice, for only it can build trust among the people and unite them fully against the enemy.
In the face of rising fascism, it is all the more necessary for the working people of America to go all out in struggle and to demonstrate ever more clearly our solidarity with the working class and the oppressed peoples and nations of the world, whom the imperialists are constantly trying to turn us against, The only true defense against repression Is to destroy the enemy. U.S. imperialism and Soviet Social-Imperialism are stepping up their preparations for war against the working and oppressed people of the world, led by Socialist China. The first Imperialist world war resulted in the victory of the working class In the Soviet Union. The second imperialist world war resulted in the victory of the people of China and the liberation of many former colonies. The great leader Chairman Mao has written: “If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the Imperialists; it Is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse.” He also stated recently: “If such a war breaks out, the people of the world should use revolutionary war to eliminate the war of aggression, and preparations should be made right now.”
Since the U.S. imperialists will try to use fascist dictatorship to force the American working people to fight against the people of the world, these statements provide a clear guideline for us: the American working class and oppressed peoples must prepare for class war to oppose imperialist war, for People’s Anti-Fascist War to oppose imperialist war of aggression.