Our party has always taken for granted the absolute necessity of basing the organization on the factory nuclei. The Whole history of the international communist movement has shown that a party which is not based in the industrial proletariat cannot successfully lead the working class through the revolution. However, the more we move out into the spontaneous movement, the more we find that our comrades in practice do not understand this principle.
Rather than repeat what has already been written in our Party press and by the masters themselves on the critical role of the shop nuclei, let’s deal with some of the ways we can implement this understanding as well as some of the more common political misconceptions.
We have to start naturally with a review of the basic political works dealing with this question. A surprising number of comrades have only casually studied works as Letter to a Comrade; What is to be Done?; Peter’s Manual, the Comintern documents on Factory nuclei, and some of our own papers such as the Agit-Prop reports in the Party Organizer Vol. 2, No. 3, especially the reports on Industrial work and factory and street nuclei. After reviewing some of these works in our region we were able to see where many of our basic weaknesses lay, both political and organizational.
The first question we put to put to the comrades is, “why do we base ourselves in the large factories?” The most common answer is that by doing this we will be in a position to shut down capitalist production, and thus bring the capitalist class to its knees. This outlook reflects two things: 1.) the conception that the revolution is basically a general strike. Yet Lenin wrote that one of the basic lessons of the 1905 revolution was that the idea of the general strike being the highest form of class struggle. It also proved that stopping capitalist production temporarily did not bring the capitalists to their knees. In fact, the main struggle in this sphere in the Russian Revolution was to keep the factories open. 2.) the fact that many comrades in the plants unwittingly have fallen into basing, all their work on the trade unions as a mass organization.
They forget one of the fundamental points of any mass organization which Lenin outlined in his essay “On the Road”, “Though mass organizations of one type or another may be dissolved, though the legal trade unions may be hounded out of existence, though every open act of workers’ initiative under a regime of counter-revolution may be ruined by the police on one pretext or another – no power on earth can prevent the concentration of masses of workers in a capitalist country ...” It stands to reason then that a party which bases itself on such mass organizations is setting itself up to be destroyed by the police, whereas a party which bases itself in the concentrations of workers in the large plants, mines and mills is invincible.
The next obstacle to overcome is the notion that the building of factory nuclei is just the business of the comrades working in the factories. No wonder we have so few factory nuclei! Without being based in the factories our party can’t begin to influence effectively the rest of society, but we can’t build this base unless the entire party is mobilized to accomplish this task. If we are to succeed we must begin to treat this question on the level of an inner-party campaign. Of course such a campaign is not at all in contradiction with the membership, finance, and Tribune campaign. We should view the building of factory nuclei as a concrete way to Implement this campaign.
In the interest of getting this off the ground I offer the following 10 points which we have learned from our experience. If all these are carried out we will at least be 10 steps closer than we are now to a real party based on factory nuclei.
1.) Discussion in leading bodies and both street and factory nuclei of the importance of factory nuclei. Many of our leading bodies over the past year became absorbed in tactical decisions and never stopped to discuss this point. This leads to a similar style in the units. The main thing to keep in mind here is that there is no existing model of factory nuclei in USNA society. Thus factory nuclei can only build through a conscious process, through a scientific application of the experience of the international communist movement. In the absence of this the comrades will do what comes naturally, this is, they will model the party after the existing trade unions and other mass organizations and attempt to model the latter after the party.
2.) Analyze our past work and learn from our mistakes. As we got more and more involved in the spontaneous movement we inevitably made mistakes. We should adopt a Bolshevik attitude of self-criticism toward these mistakes. Apparently many comrades don’t adopt such an attitude because they are either afraid of being vilified or they don’t want to admit that their work hasn’t been perfect. We should remember, though, that the main aspect of self-criticism is education – of the individual comrades, the party and the class.
3.) Develop a plan of work. Many areas don’t even know which are the major factories in their area. A plan of work doesn’t involve months of research as some comrades seem to think. Any area could develop a simple plan of work within a week if they based on these points: a) a plan of work doesn’t involve determining political line, as this has already been done; b.) the plan should be oriented toward our main task at this time – winning the vanguard of the proletariat to the cause of communism; c.) what are the major factories in the area and where are they located? d.) what are the major communities of the unskilled and semi-skilled workers, e.) what are the most important mass organizations? f.) where are our cadre presently located and how can they best be utilized? Finally, every comrade should know the details of points c, d, e this involves no security risk since this information is obtained from public sources anyway.
4.) Develop the factory nuclei on the basis of a distribution network. This is a sore point in our work. When it comes to distributions most factory units rely on outside distribution teams. This is wrong and eventually the police will prove it to us. Not that we discourage outside distributions, but the main efforts of the factory unit should be aimed at developing an internal distribution network. The most important part of such a network is the People’s Tribune and the party press. But we also should develop shop newspapers and regular leaflets to build this network. Without relying on the advanced workers and utilizing their energy a distribution network will be impossible. As a matter of fact, if we did more of this our factory units could probably organize distributions outside their factory as well, so that the Party’s distribution teams could be freed to work on factories where we have no nuclei.”
5.) Ensure that the Party is established as an independent force within the factories. In some factories the plant management knows the CLP is doing work there, but the workers have no idea what the Party is. This only shows that the nuclei is either doing no communist work or they are an adjunct of the trade union. Part of belonging to the Party is accepting the Program. But how can we recruit if the workers have no idea what our program is? The main part of the comrades and the advanced contacts’ work should be the implementation of and the fight for the Party Program. Anything less is liquidationism.
6.) Develop both the economic and political struggle in the plants. Some comrades believe only the economic struggle is applicable in the plants. Contacts in the plant and even comrades who are involved in something other than the strictly economic struggle are being transferred to street units. This only perpetuates a synicalist outlook. Who of us has not seen that the most stable force of the national movements, of the struggle of the youth and the women is the industrial proletariat. The factory represents the objective unity of these various political struggles. Rather than “transfer” these comrades and contacts out of the factory we should organize them on the basis of that unity. At the same time we must combat the sectarian attitude that the economic struggle is unimportant. In fact, as Lenin made clear, it is through this economic struggle that the workers get their first gleanings of political consciousness.
7.) Establish a Bolshevik division of labor in the nuclei and the study action circles. Comrades and contacts alike can only develop through responsibility and authority. If everyone in a unit works in the trade union and does the same thing there, we will develop one or two leaders and four or five followers. This contradicts the whole idea of the Party as a general staff. Often the same mistake is made with contacts. They are all put in an unemployed committee or some other task. As a result we tend to recruit more “leaders and followers”.
8.) Develop an interrelationship between street and factory units. If we think we will organize all the major plants in an area only by sending comrades there it could take 2000 years to have a successful revolution. The street units must play an active role in developing factory nuclei. This does not primarily mean doing distributions at the plant gates or otherwise functioning as adjuncts of the factory units. What it does mean is that our street units must see the importance of helping the advanced workers from the major plants to do communist work in their factory. Many street units don’t even know where there contacts work. This only perpetuates the idea that basing the party on the factory nuclei is the job of only a part of the party and not the responsibility of all comrades.
9.) Make the plant the dominant part of the factory units’ work. Our comrades should analyze how much time they actually spend with workers at the plant. Generally speaking, you are not allowed to socialize with the other workers during working hours. Therefore the lunch hours* break times and periods before and after work are critical in getting to know who the most advanced workers are. Handing a contact a Tribune is only a small part of the task. Contacts must be cultivated, worked with on a day to day basis. If the trade union meetings are the main times we meet other workers, it only shows that the plant is not the main focus of the work.
10.) Lastly, we must publicize the efforts of the comrades to build factory nuclei. Developing factory nuclei is one of the hardest tasks of all, requiring incredible time, discipline, energy, initiative, and conscious application of the science of Marxism-Leninism. There is a tendency to underplay the importance of this work because it doesn’t make the most “noise”, because our comrades don’t get “famous” for doing it. It is our job to convince these comrades that they are real heroes of the Party, that they are doing a difficult job which will truly make the Party invincible. One important way to convince these comrades of this is to publicize their work (without, of course, endangering their security), to permit the entire Party to learn from their experience.
Comrades, we are daily linking our roots deeper into the working class movement. But without the ”soil” of the factory workers, without developing factory nuclei in all the major plants, the bourgeois state will easily sweep us away. The building of factory nuclei is only one step in the revolution, but it is a step that will help make our party an impregnable fortress. Let’s mobilize the whole party to take this step!!