First Published: The Communist, Vol. III, No. 9, May 7, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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May Day, the international holiday of the world proletariat, is a day for the American Marxist-Leninists to reaffirm our commitment to our central task of party building. While the forces of the world proletarian revolution are advancing vigorously in opposition to the forces of world imperialism headed by US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, we must understand that the US proletariat can make a greater contribution to world revolution only under the leadership of a genuine proletarian party. May Day as a commemorative day of the working class is also a time for us to remind ourselves that the real motive force for revolution in this country is the working class and no other class. This realization compels us to concentrate our work in the working class and implement the slogan put forth by the Workers Congress, “Deeper into the Industrial Masses”. Lenin as far back as 1897 explained this general orientation in “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats”: “Our work is primarily and mainly directed to the factory, urban workers. Russian Social-Democracy must not dissipate its forces; it must concentrate its activities on the industrial proletariat, who are most susceptible to Social-Democratic ideas, most developed intellectually and politically, and most important by virtue of their numbers and concentration in the country’s large political centers.”
For us these words of Lenin mean that we must concentrate our efforts not on single-issue anti-imperialist coalitions or the more popular community struggles, etc. but rather we must concentrate on the factory workers right at the place of work. But in our orientation toward the working class we cannot concentrate on all workers – we must concentrate on the advanced, i.e. those workers who see the practical (and not merely academic) necessity for Marxist-Leninist theory and who are ready to put that theory to revolutionary practice. By winning these advanced workers to communism and organizationally consolidating them into centrally-directed factory nuclei, we are in a position to energize and revolutionize the middle elements and activate the broad masses of the workers. In this way we build the Marxist-Leninist Party, the vanguard detachment of the working class, right in the midst of the working class itself. In this way we fuse communism with the workers movement in such a way that communism plays the leading role and gives the workers’ struggles a revolutionary direction.
This process of winning the advanced workers to communism and building the Party in the midst of the working class will move forward as we develop the one central organ of the US communist movement, the Iskra-type newspaper. This newspaper will be one that the workers increasingly see as their own – a paper that educates them, that provides them with Marxist-Leninist analysis and with guidance in their struggles and which also serves as a tribune from which their voices can be heard. We can see that an Iskra-type newspaper is not only an instrument for facilitating ideological struggle among Marxist-Leninists, but is also an instrument for winning advanced workers to communism.
The arduous task of building the Communist Party still remains before us. The self-proclamations of the “Revolutionary Communist Party”, the October League’s “Communist Party (M-L)” and others that they are the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in no way relieves us of our duty to build the Party of the proletariat. On the contrary, just as China and Albania learned from the negative example of Kruschev’s capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union in order to further consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in their countries, likewise we should learn from the negative examples of these opportunist groupings and their incorrect approach to the question of party-building. We must step up our efforts to grasp well the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao and in a deliberate, not frenzied, manner, learn to better distinguish between genuine and sham Marxism, oppose all forms and manifestations of opportunism right in the working class and move the party building process forward. This is how the Marxist-Leninists and all class conscious workers must celebrate May Day, 1977.
MARXIST-LENINISTS UNITE!
WIN THE ADVANCED TO COMMUNISM!
BUILD THE PARTY BY BUILDING THE ISKRA-TYPE NEWSPAPER!
(This article was submitted by the Seattle Communist Workers Group.)
SCWG can be contacted at:
SCWG
PO Box 3193
Seattle, Washington 98104