Recently a very important meeting of the Central Committee of our Party was held, which was marked by very intense struggle between two lines. At that meeting, an attempt to split the Party was defeated and repudiated.
Summing up the situation in China, the Central Committee debated at length over and adopted the position presented by the Chairman in a paper “Revisionists are Revisionists and Must Not Be Supported; Revolutionaries are Revolutionaries and Must Be Supported.” This paper, now the line of our Party, which has been enriched and developed from its original text on the basis of the points brought out in the debate, is enclosed as the major part of this report. It was approved by a vote of more than 2 to 1–more than three to one counting alternate members.
Following this, the Central Committee discussed and repudiated what it summed up to be a revisionist line and headquarters in our Party, which had been increasingly intriguing, conspiring and working for a split. This headquarters was headed up by Comrade Mickey Jarvis. The Central Committee, however, does not regard Comrade Jarvis himself as a revisionist, an enemy, but as someone who is, despite serious errors, still a comrade. It has made arrangements for him to undertake work to make contributions to the Party, has assigned him some leading responsibility in the Party, and, while struggling with him, has expressed every hope that he’ll change in the course of work and study. At the same time it is necessary to arm the whole Party with the knowledge of this line, this factional set-up, this attempt to split the Party and who was behind it. This has badly influenced our whole Party in regard to political and ideological line, theory of knowledge and organizational line–including methods of leadership and the practice of the mass line within the Party and among the masses. It has to be rooted out.
Through criticism and self-criticism and summing up this situation, the Central Committee took some political and organizational steps to begin dealing with this revisionist line and headquarters and decided the entire Party must take up a rectification campaign to deal with the influence of this headquarters, whose ideological, political and organizational line is eclecticism, pragmatism and factionalism. (More on this rectification campaign later.) These steps and this campaign were adopted by a unanimous vote of all members (and alternate members) of the Central Committee, including Comrade Jarvis. This sets an excellent basis for the Party to push ahead, develop its work, and deepen its study and grasp of Marxism in the course of criticizing revisionism.
This revisionist line and headquarters has had its process of development, leading up to a qualitative leap around this meeting. Due in large part to the history of the development of the Party, in the main out of the old Revolutionary Union in various parts of the country, a second center has in fact existed for a number of years, including back before the Party was founded. It has developed, especially in the past year or more, into a separate headquarters organized around a different line from the Party’s line–a revisionist line.
There has been a process of development of this headquarters and its factional behavior in relation to our Party’s line on events in China since the “Gang of Four” were put down by Hua Kuo-feng in October, 1976. Here, what is being condemned is not Comrade Jarvis’ line on China, or even his vacillation over the question, but the way in which a factional headquarters in fact developed and went from quantity to quality in the last period. In this light it is useful to go into a little history around this.
Originally, Comrade Jarvis united with the position of a number of other comrades at the Party center that while further investigation of developments was important, this looked like a very bad thing. As a result, the center put out the October 15, 1976, article in Revolution, which, while upholding socialist China, had a clear “tilt” in the direction of the line of the Four. But within a very few weeks, Comrade Jarvis did a turnabout and began denouncing the Four as counter-revolutionaries, influencing some other leading comrades, even privately branding certain lines in our own Party as “Gang of Four idealism,” sharpening the divisions at the center. As a result, the “tilt” had to be abandoned and a compromise, “even-handed” position was put forward as we continued to study and struggle over events in China. Then, in recent months, with certain lines coming out of China, the rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-ping and the 11th Party Congress, Comrade Jarvis, while not changing his support for Hua and opposition to the Four, voiced opposition to at least some of the lines coming out of China. In this period the last bulletin (Vol. 2, No. 4) was put out.
Finally, in the weeks before the Central Committee meeting, particularly after further study and long conversations with the Chair, he stated to other comrades at the center that he felt his position had been wrong, that he would present a paper making self-criticism, and that the Four were basically correct, although he had some questions on some points. The Chairman offered to assist him in preparing his paper, arranged to set up a meeting to go over questions, etc., in the interest of uniting the Party and going ahead to have good and useful struggle at the Central Committee meeting. Approximately a week passed, with Comrade Jarvis failing to carry through with this meeting, evading phone calls, failing to return calls when messages were left. On the very eve of the meeting, in a conversation on China with a comrade at the center he gave no indication that he had changed his position. Then, without warning, without even an attempt to notify the Chair or the center of his position, he showed up at the Central Committee with a short and empty paper proclaiming his opposition to the Four as counter-revolutionaries and his support for Hua Kuo-feng. This paper contained little in the way of substance, but was a simple rallying cry, a tattered flag to appeal to those he regarded as his social base to rally and stand firm around him and a whole program.
He presented the Central Committee with an ultimatum, a threat to split the Party, which was taken up by others in his camp and around which an open faction solidified at the meeting. This had been foreshadowed several months earlier when Comrade Jarvis had stated he wouldn’t change his position, so no Central Committee meeting should be held to discuss this. Again, what is being condemned here is not the position on China he presented, but his way of maneuvering and doubledealing. This in fact obstructed sharp and principled struggle around China at the meeting, and for a time and to a serious degree undermined struggle and solidified a faction that was stubborn, cliquish and arrogant.
This second center, as said before, had a process of development; it already expressed itself in the period leading up to and at the Party’s Founding Congress. In part this came up in that period in the form of economist tendencies–the center of gravity and industrial concentration are everything–to which Comrade Jarvis had given some leadership, particularly in opposition to the Chairman. While he later changed and struggled against this economism, in the meantime a lot of forces had gotten into it and also apparently the ideological roots which gave rise to this tendency were not thoroughly eradicated, so the outlook and method of pragmatism which underlay this economism came out later with Comrade Jarvis in other forms, even in relation to political struggle. But still more stark at the Founding Congress was the tendency to federationism.
The criticism of federationism which was made in the Central Committee report immediately after The Founding Congress spoke to real material difficulties in forging the Party out of the pre-Party period. It spoke to the regional development of the RU, and to political tendencies that existed everywhere. But it was especially directed at the behavior at the Congress, and the line and outlook behind it, of a number of leading and middle-level comrades who had been “trained” under the leadership of Comrade Jarvis. This behavior, which amounted to using the work of an area as capital, showed itself in an extremely sectarian and arrogant approach to the rest of the Party. It was empiricist, in that it took particular and limited experience as everything and set it against broader experience of the entire Party and against overall summation embodied in Marxist-Leninist line. It promoted pragmatism in the form of the very harmful approach that “if you have more workers you have the right to speak; if you have fewer, then you really don’t.” At this time Comrade Jarvis directly and indirectly engaged in bargaining for and even offering up leading positions to others in “his camp.” (Some of this has come out only recently as comrades have made self-criticism.)
All of this was sharply felt by many comrades at the Congress and it was sharply criticized, mainly among leading comrades, by the Chairman at that time. This method creates the tendency to turn modest but potentially important advances in the work into their opposite, to turn everything into capital within the Party.
All of this was very harmful, but it did not mean that at that time there was a bourgeois headquarters in the Party. Things had not taken that kind of qualitative leap. On the basis of some self-criticism and building off what was clearly the main aspect–the advances of the Founding Congress–Comrade Jarvis generally participated in the collective leadership of the Party and made some significant contributions to the Party’s work.
But even in this period the other, second center, aspect continued. And in the last year or more this developed further into an objective factional set-up based on a line opposed to that of the Party center. This factional set-up had many contradictions within it; sometimes it was more, sometimes less, conscious in its opposition to the Party’s line, but in many ways the Party as a whole has been effectively split for a year or more. This has come out around various issues, including the questions involved in forming a young communist league. This went so far that some comrades took a factional attitude toward the Party as a whole, and a hostile attitude toward the Chair. This was objectively encouraged by Comrade Jarvis who at one point told the Chair he had no right to speak on this question because he hadn’t investigated (in fact, the Chair had done some investigation), and who, while upholding the line in some ways, also “floated” ideas to these comrades that encouraged them in their wrong thinking and their tendency to oppose the Party politically and organizationally.
Lately, as a means of hitting back at this tendency opposed to the Party’s line a number of things have been written at the center, including the Party Branches articles (especially the second one), the Worker bulletin, and the reply to the youth appeal which were issued as blows against this line and in varying ways against this headquarters.
How did this faction form and operate? Why in fact were some people so stubborn, cliquish and arrogant instead of listening, studying and struggling in a comradely way in the period leading up to and at the Central Committee meeting? These questions were gone into at some length at the meeting, based to a great degree on the self-criticism and struggle against this revisionist line and headquarters by the comrades who themselves had been part of this factional set-up.
In this report these questions, and the crucial points of line involved, can only be characterized. Discussion in the Party and further guidance in the course of carrying out the rectification campaign will be required and developed to flesh these points out.
People in Comrade Jarvis’ own camp, who had “owed allegiance” to him went into how this factional set-up operated on various questions, including the young communist league. This needs to be gone into more by the whole Party as a part of rectifying our work in the spirit of curing the sickness to save the patient.
Did the fact there has been a factional set-up and a bourgeois headquarters mean there have been formal meetings or that Comrade Jarvis has openly expressed disagreement with the Party’s line on all these major questions? Not at all. The faction was based on a line and ideological outlook opposed to that of the Party. It operated while Comrade Jarvis generally upheld the Party’s line in meetings of bodies, etc., and even vigorously upheld it on various bodies. But people who, in one way or another, were part of his factional set-up often did oppose it. He unleashed these forces, this social base, often by agreeing in words with Party documents, but then floating a scheme, raising a question or pushing a concept whose whole thrust ran counter to the line of the document in question. In effect, this comes down to saying one thing and doing another.
Philosophically it amounts to eclecticism, attempting to combine and reconcile two opposing points, or raising a secondary aspect of a contradiction to defeat the principal aspect. Such a method objectively increasingly “gave the green light” to people and tendencies more openly and vigorously opposed to the Party’s line on the basis of their own outlook and mistakes.
Such people then thought they had Comrade Jarvis’ support, at least relative to the Party center as a whole, for their lines. This whipped them up, flamed tendencies toward innuendo and departmentalism, and made struggle through regular Party bodies very difficult. In this way a line opposed to the Party’s line was pushed, a social base was formed, a factional set-up and a bourgeois headquarters developed–all under the banner of carrying out the Party’s line.
It often happened that when things then “got out of hand” and the Party center stepped in to struggle with these lines and forces that Comrade Jarvis would then take part, even vigorously take part, in the struggle along with the center. But the effect of this was usually to produce in those forces he had unleashed a feeling that he had “punked out” to the center and had, in fact, “set them up.” This both perpetuated the faction and produced confusion and demoralization, not principled struggle and clarity.
The period since the last Central Committee meeting has been a period of increasing factional spirit and struggle between Marxism and revisionism. A revisionist line and a headquarters increasingly developed in opposition to the basic point of the last CC Report, in the form of “raising the CC Report to defeat the CC Report.” At that last CC meeting, there was sharp struggle against a rightist current which opposed the original report written by the Chairman and, after some discussion and struggle, submitted to the Central Committee by the standing bodies (“Some Points...”). This counter-current argued that “Some Points” distracted the Party from the main questions of how to build the struggle, and that it was ”left” idealist and defeatist. Although other points were added (see other sections of the last CC Report) the body decided after sharp struggle that the original paper was correct “as is.” This upheld the line and major principles of the report and beat back opposition to it from the right.
At that CC meeting Comrade Jarvis struggled for the line of the CC Report. But immediately after the report came out, as the whole Party was supposed to be studying that report, he and others close to him launched their own campaign in many places, outside of regular Party channels, around “the general resides in the particular.” The effect of this was to seriously obstruct in many places grasping the essence of the CC Report, to unleash again around a wrong line those forces who had opposed the original report, and in effect to reverse the struggle over “as is” that had been decisive at the Central Committee.
The point about the particularity of contradiction is in fact raised in the CC Report (points 1 and 2), not in the narrow way it came to be taken up, but as a blow against idealism, particularly right idealism. It is clear from reading it in context that it is against the idea of just “plugging along straight ahead to revolution,” it is a call to make an analysis in a sweeping way of the objective situation, including the state of the crisis and the mood of the masses, and on that basis develop the understanding and application of our general line. Distorting this, the “general resides in the particular” became a call to narrowness and tactics as everything–trying to make the entire general (laws of capitalism and the need for revolution) reside in one or a few particulars.
This is a violation of Marxist philosophy and distorts the correct understanding of the relation between the universality and particularity of contradiction. The purpose should be to fully make use of people’s experience in any particular struggle and to help them raise their heads and see a picture far bigger than what can be seen in any particular struggle–the big picture of the laws of class society and the need for revolution and communism. This is quite the opposite of trying to reduce down the universal–to make the entire general reside in any one or a few particular struggles or exposures. This latter approach promotes narrowness and departmentalism, a downplaying of ideological work, losing sight of the united front strategy and historic mission of the working class. Where this “campaign” was conducted in the Party, it sabotaged the Central Committee discussion in the eclectic way of raising a secondary point to defeat the main point.
It tended to reinforce the opposition to the main point of the CC Report. Though both points are important, the essential and basic point is not that small forces can lead big battles in this period, but that we can and must take the high, hard road, make use of every opportunity in this period to fulfill all three objectives in our work and prepare for the big qualitative leap in the revolutionary situation ahead. Overemphasizing the first point, as the “general resides in the particular” campaign did, amounts to a reversion to the theory of stages–to stagism–which was key to the struggle at the last Central Committee. While periods or stages objectively exist, the point to emphasize, which runs through all this, is well put in Lenin’s words: “The task is to keep the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat tense and train its best elements, not only in a general way, but concretely, so that when the popular ferment reaches the highest pitch, they will put themselves at the head of the revolutionary army. . .” (Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 246). Guided by this principle we can work to carry through the real fusion of Marxism-Leninism with the working class movement.
The concept of high road, which lays out not a moral injunction, but a political and ideological task, has been distorted, and become practically a dirty word in some quarters in the past period. Innuendo and rumors circulated that there were “two lines in the CC Report”–a correct line and a “left” idealist line. In fact what has been increasingly true is that there has been a Marxist line and a revisionist, essentially right opportunist, line existing in our Party.
On the question of the relation of theory to practice, this line and headquarters promoted both–theory over here and practice over there. The separation of theory and practice, the breaking of the chain of the Marxist theory of knowledge, is one of its hallmarks. This line downplays the “lifeline of the Party branch,” education in the Party’s general line. Instead of training people in the Marxist line and method, the most you get is “cook book theory,” a book or a quote on how somebody else did something similar to what you’re doing back in this or that year. With this method, ideological line and the Marxist method are thrown out. Even when the second Party branches article came out, even though it was in large part directed at his line and headquarters, Comrade Jarvis became a vigorous defender of it–in relation to cadre on lower levels–without really grasping its essence and changing his basic approach to the relation of theory and practice and line to tactics.
In politics and organization, pragmatism is promoted. Comrade Jarvis advocated, especially at the time of and after the Founding Congress, the idea that “it is easier to steer a truck once it’s moving.” It is correct to say that it is necessary to let practice develop and experience accumulate in order to sort out and convince people of correct and incorrect lines–as opposed to having a “two line struggle” every week. But to spread around this notion about “motion” can only feed the theory of spontaneity and undermine the guiding role of ideological and political line. This, in fact, is what happened. With pragmatism in the driver’s seat, there tends to be an exaggeration of the importance of tactics, the promotion of the “tactics as process, not tactics as plan” (as Lenin says in What Is To Be Done?), a tendency to reduce political line to questions of tactics, exaggeration of stages and the adoption of stagism, and the throwing out of ideological tasks and the guiding role of ideology. All these tendencies have in fact existed in our Party’s work, due not only to spontaneous tendencies but also the interference of this revisionist line.
There has also been in our Party a strong tendency to exaggerate and narrow down what should be meant by “results.” Because our only purpose in knowing the world is to change it, results are in fact the goal and the test. But by results we do not mean only, or even mainly, immediate results, but results in carrying out the class struggle on all fronts, according to the three objectives. To fail to see results in this way will even turn immediate successes into their opposite by promoting a line of stagism in the class struggle, by promoting an attitude of careerism and sectarianism within the Party on the basis of getting dizzy with successes in the work.
This revisionist line and headquarters is also characterized by a strong tendency toward departmentalism, “hot-shotism” and making absolutes out of the division of labor within the Party. As a result, much damage has been done to the political role and initiative of leading bodies, along with much damage to the method and style of leadership within the Party, which has been spelled out in a number of places, including in the section on leadership in “Discussion/Decisions” of the last CC Report.
One example of the method and style of leadership of this headquarters, which was criticized sharply by people who had been in this camp, was seeing the overall role of leadership as one of putting out fires and thereby taking initiative out of people’s hands, particularly out of the hands of the Party bodies with overall responsibility. With this line, the role of a leader, instead of applying the mass line and promoting genuine struggle over line, begins with an often preconceived idea of what you want out of a situation. Then you promote this one to take a line this way, and that one to take a line that way; you become the “synthesis” in the middle, while still basically promoting one side and “your people” who are putting it forward. This amounts to apriorism and eclectics. It means always setting it up so you come out of a situation with what you wanted in the first place, leaving you smelling like a rose and others confused and unarmed to lead themselves–only to “implement.” (Of course implementing requires applying and developing line.) Such a method often ends up with the wrong result.
This is opposed to the correct method of leadership which is to lead in summing up a situation on the basis of Marxism and the Party’s general line, promoting investigation and struggle over line, leading in synthesizing this “raw material” and in this way arming people not only with policies but with a heightened understanding of the general line and method.
Right along with this wrong method go the tendencies to put everything in the hands of a few people and to run the Party out of an office. This, of course, doesn’t mean we don’t need offices, but they cannot become another center that replaces or stands above the regular channels of the Party.
This line makes an absolute out of the necessary division of labor in the Party. It usually proceeds from taking the general line as “given” or “settled” and then proceeds to “get down to the business” of implementation. For this purpose, people’s overall political understanding is not developed; instead their skills in this or that aspect–“organization man,” “mass leader,” “speech maker,” “writer,” and even “theoretician”–are regarded as the key thing to develop. Theory remains locked in the realm of abstraction and practice mired in pragmatism.
In this way the collectivity of leading bodies is undermined, self- and mutual-criticism comes to be based only on implementation, departmentalism runs rampant, and leading people develop a big-shot, or hot-shot “heavy” mentality in “their own field.” Cadre on the lower levels either get appealed to on the basis of careerism or bludgeoned, and are left unarmed and demoralized.
The hot-shot mentality–which often takes the form of just plain old “macho”–also leads to a downgrading of the role of women inside and outside the Party and to downplaying the important task of politically and theoretically developing women to be communists and communist leaders. This does not mean we should apply “New Left” standards to the question of leadership or political training and promote feminism, but can we say there is nothing to the woman question inside our Party?
The hot-shot mentality stems from the line that those directly putting the line into practice are the real heroes, not the masses and the Party as a whole. It stems from the exaggeration of tactics as the basis of success (and of political line) and, in sum, leads to putting mass leaders in opposition to the Party as a whole. And there is the tendency to turn everything into capital. This is a clear example of the point made in the second Party Branches article, that pragmatism leads to a breakdown in discipline and factionalism whether anyone desires it or not. To get dizzy with success considering the relatively minor character of the successes we have so far achieved would be funny if it weren’t so serious. It is obviously high time to sum this up and clear it out.
Pointing to and moving to correct all this does not mean weakening, but strengthening, democratic centralism. It means strengthening the lines of the Party as both chains of knowledge and chains of command. All this should strengthen the ability of comrades to take initiative on the basis of and under the leadership of a unified line.
All these wrong methods of leadership, this departmentalism and factionalism, stem from the fundamental question of line. There is an analogy between all this and what we say on page 55 of Red Papers 7 about revisionist rule in the Soviet Union:
It is impossible for some classless group of ’bureaucrats’ to rule society in the name of the proletariat, because in order to maintain such rule these ’bureaucrats’ must organize the production and distribution of goods and services. If bureaucratic methods of doing this prevail and come to politically characterize the planning process under socialism, and if a group of bureaucrats, divorced from and not relying upon the masses, makes the decisions on how to carry out this process; then inevitably this will be done along capitalist lines.
In the final analysis, the revisionists can only fall back on the law of value as the ’lever’ which organizes production.
If leadership is not principally based on overall line, if “running a Party” does not principally mean arming its members with a constantly increasing understanding of the Party’s line and the Marxist-Leninist method so they can act to lead the struggle in an increasingly conscious way, then every sort of lousy method will be resorted to.
In all this it is clear we have much to learn from the negative experience of the old Communist Party, even in its better days, and much remains to be done to struggle against the influence of CP-type revisionism in our own Party. Much of this is spoken to in the section of the Programme that begins on page 63. We should sum up our own experience and that of the old CP and more consciously fight pragmatism, departmentalism and bureaucratism. We must struggle against the concept of division of labor that reduces basic level Party members to “Jimmy Higgins”–good for loyal and hard work and little more. A division of labor that makes hot-shot heavies out of the heads of mass organizations and negates the role of the masses and the Party. A division of labor that produces big-time Party bureaucrats who dominate it all behind the scenes by leading organizationally, not on the basis of developing the overall line of the Party, using its channels and chain of knowledge, assisting comrades in grasping and applying the line and Marxism generally, and personally going into work principally in order to serve the further development of all this.
If the whole Party struggles to sum all this up and carry out this kind of rectification, then we can build on what has been the principal aspect of our Party’s line all along–its Marxist-Leninist line–and for the other part we can turn a bad thing into a good thing. The key thing in this rectification is for comrades to deepen their understanding of line and the fact that two lines, Marxism and revisionism, have existed in our Party. We must build up Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought in struggle against, in the course of repudiating, revisionism.
In doing this we should not be liberal in regard to line, but neither should we seek retribution on comrades or emphasize organizational changes on every level. The sickness can be cured. There has been a bourgeois headquarters and a proletarian headquarters, a revisionist line and a Marxist line, but even at the top of this headquarters, which itself is full of contradictions, the contradiction is not one between us and the enemy. The key link is line, including in solving organizational problems. If this is grasped, then we can conduct a sharp and thorough rectification that helps unite the Party. If we grasp more clearly what Mao said about ideological and political line determining everything, then the whole Party, including comrades who have made serious errors, can make a big advance.
Over the next half year we will have to give extra emphasis to study, to line questions internally, including rectification. This does not mean this should become our main emphasis however. Mass work remains our main emphasis, unlike in the period of forming the Party. However, adjustments will have to be made and we are obviously calling for something more intense than, for example, the mass line campaign. In the immediate period we should continue with and work hard to build various mass campaigns that have already been launched, including support for the miners’ strike and the fight against Carter’s unemployment offensive. Because of necessary adjustments at the center, including the need for more forces, the publication of the first bi-weekly news service has had to be put off a couple of months. The goal of May Day for many papers remains, and should even be more possible if these political questions are gone into well. The first three papers will come out bi-weekly before that, with a date to be set soon.
Immediately upon receiving this report, all bodies (with the area leadership having one initial discussion) should immediately begin discussion and study of it. This should go on in a regular way, only through Party channels, unless the area leadership, in consultation with the center, decides other steps would be helpful. This report, on China as well as on the revisionist line and headquarters, of course represents the line of our Party. Leadership of all units has the task of leading their units in study and struggle to grasp and apply this line. If there are any disagreements, they should be raised for struggle only in the highest body one belongs to.
For six weeks, beginning the first of the year, the discussion should center on the line on China in the accompanying report. One or at most two initial discussions of the part of the report dealing with rectification should be held during this period.
The discussion on China should focus on the basic point of line–that the revisionist line on major questions coming out of China now is the same revisionist line that was fought since around the 10th Party Congress by Mao, and the Four before they were put down; it is the line pushed by Teng, Hua and Chou En-lai and others. This is clear, among other things, by studying the “3 poisonous weeds,” which Hua together with Teng claims credit for and upholds, as well as by studying the basic line of Hua’s speech on Tachai, given in the fall of 1975. To assist in this study, we are sending out, in addition to the “General Program” which came with the last bulletin, another of the “poisonous weeds”–“Some Problems in Speeding up Industrial Development” (“20 Points”)–together with three articles with the Four’s line criticizing it (“Criticism of Selected Passages of. . . ”; “Teng Hsiao-ping and the ’20 Articles’ ”; “What Is the Essence of the ’20 Articles’?”).
Another major focus for discussion should be on the line on science and technology. (The “Outline Report,” which is not available in full, was the third poisonous weed.) The reason for this focus is that unleashing bourgeois forces and tendencies in scientific and technical circles is an important part of the social base of the top capitalist roaders in China for wrecking the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even more, it is important to study this because the current leadership has put forward “improving” science and technology as the key link in their goal of “modernization.” Obviously the line on this is not a minor question. In addition to studying the report, comrades should read the two major articles of the current leadership (Peking Review 30 and 40, 1977) and compare them to the line of the Four on this question (PR 18, 1976, and 47, 1975). The article defending the science report entitled “Criticizing Eclecticism or Attacking the Theory of Two Points?” (PR 48, 1977) is good teaching material by negative example on eclectic philosophy.
Finally there should be focus on the destruction of the Communist Party as the Party of the proletariat which is underway. Comrades should refer to the new Constitution adopted at the 11th Party Congress and Yeh Chien-ying’s Report on the Constitution (PR 35, 36, 1977) and compare it closely to the Constitution adopted at the 10th Party Congress and Wang Hung-wen’s report on the Constitution at the 10th Congress.
The last bulletin on China should be referred to for further points and explanation. For additional reference, comrades should study the Chinese Central Committee statement after Mao’s death (PR 38, 1976) and our article in the October 15, 1976 issue of Revolution. People are encouraged to read over the “Breakthrough. . . ” article on the Cultural Revolution in the October 1,1976 issue of Revolution. These all should remind us exactly how far things have gone away from Mao’s line since his death. Yao Wen-yuan and Chang Chun-chiao’s two pamphlets should be restudied, and studied together, as they were written to go together. Hua Kuo-feng’s 1975 speech at Tachai, and the third speech in the “green pamphlet” on the 1975 Tachai Conference should also be studied and contrasted. Finally, in Red Papers 7, people should study our definition of socialism (in italics on page 9) and our summary of leadership and the law of value (second column on page 55, first column on page 56). For those who have the opportunity, restudy of all of Red Papers 7 (particularly the first three chapters) and the article on Nicolaus and Soviet social-imperialism in The Communist, Vol. 1, No. 1, would be very helpful.
In the second phase, after these first six weeks, focus should shift to rectification in our own Party. In light of the line of this report, all bodies should organize restudy of the last CC Report. Especially since they have come under some attack, the Revolution article on the “High Road” of the Bolshevik Revolution (November 1977) and the major article in the December 1977 issue on the miners’ struggle, should be referred to as representing a correct line. In addition, study and discussion should be organized again around the mass line pamphlet and around the Party Branches pamphlet. These documents should be discussed principally in relation to the ideological, political and organizational line questions of rectification. On that basis, in separate discussions of the work of the unit, comrades can and should bring in points from the rectification campaign to assist in solving political questions in the work. In this period more emphasis must be given to the general line questions of rectification, using examples from the work to shed light on this, than to using rectification to give “new direction” to the branches’ work (though this, of course, is very important). Further material and guidance will be developed nationally both internally and in Revolution to help develop this phase as it progresses.
As another part of this rectification, study of Marxist-Leninist works centering on Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought versus Eclecticism, Pragmatism and Factionalism will be organized in the branches. Guidelines for this will be prepared. Comrades are encouraged to continue their study of political economy on their own, but organized study of this will not continue.
We should carry out the line indicated in the part of this report on China. In short this means upholding China as a socialist country, while making clear there is very acute class struggle and the danger of restoration of capitalism in the socialist transition period. This is the correct and responsible position for a number of reasons. While a qualitative leap in the situation in China has occurred with the revisionist coup and unless this is reversed by revolutionary struggle of the masses socialism will be destroyed, it has not yet been destroyed. This is not a meaningless abstraction because, as the rather open statements in the Peking Review and elsewhere make clear, resistance is far from crushed in China. While the struggle to reverse this situation cannot be led from the top, while the conflicts between those in top power now are simply opposite poles of the same stupidity, revolutionary struggle from below cannot be ruled out. We should learn from the Chinese attitude to the Soviets in the late ’50s, be prudent, and let things play themselves out.
There are many other complicated questions which cannot be settled in a minute. For example, if China in the near future were to be attacked by the Soviets, it would still be the case of a socialist country being attacked by imperialists and this would have to influence our actions (as well as having a significant effect on the class struggle inside China) and perhaps might even develop in a way favorable to revolutionaries in China.
It is also important to grasp that, having taken this line internally, our purpose and task is not to undertake an anti-China crusade but to arm ourselves and others as broadly as we can with a correct Marxist-Leninist line.
This means we will write articles in our press on such questions as studying the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and on the gains of the working class under socialism–focusing on gains of the Cultural Revolution, which now (though we won’t go into this) are under attack. These articles will stress political line, without being open attacks on the Chinese leadership.
In talking to people outside the Party, we must draw distinctions. We can speak about our whole line on this only to people who are very close to the Party and who can be trusted to grasp not only the line, but the reasons we are not expounding it publicly (this should be explained to them). (For the line on Teng Hsiao-ping, see the end of the resolution on China.) To others we work with, we should explain we uphold China as socialist, answer their questions by saying that many of the gains of the working class there are under attack now, use this to arm people with an understanding that the class struggle is sharp under socialism and restoration can occur and why that is, and then go on to explain even if restoration were to occur, this would not mean you cannot win, but only that the historic mission of the working class–a radical rupture with the past to wipe out all vestiges of exploitation and oppression–can only be accomplished through twists and turns, temporary reversals, and hard struggle, but that it will inevitably be achieved. (Comrades may want to refer to an article by the Four, “Proletarians Are Revolutionary Optimists” in Peking Review 36, 1976.)
The RCYB, because of its nature, should not have a line on this question (though, obviously, Party members within it have a line). Only those closest to the Party within the RCYB should be told our full position, as outlined above. Within the RCYB generally, our line on China should be the same as our broad public position. Articles from our Party’s press which touch on relevant line questions can be used for RCYB educationals on the victories of and the class struggle under socialism, but in these discussions all-around conclusions about China should not be drawn.
A related footnote: The Central Committee briefly discussed the 1977 appointment calendar which was recently produced in Philadelphia. This calendar is a factional calendar, particularly because of how it handled the Chou En-lai question when it was well-known to some that this was a very controversial question which would soon be summed up. It has two pictures of Chou–one of the type reserved only for the “Big 5”–Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. It printed the Central Committee statement on his death, praising him for “upholding the red flag against all enemies within and without,” which in today’s context of Chou being praised in China for fighting the Four is a back-door way of taking a position on this struggle. While we have not officially repudiated that CC statement, neither have we been repeating it, any more than we have been repeating the Revolution article of October 15, 1976. Still, the Central Committee felt the calendar should be sold. Many comrades who were not aware of the Chou question and how it was being used put a lot of hard work (and money) into this calendar and produced a number of worthy results. This should not be negated, even while being clearly aware of the factionalist character of the calendar around Chou En-lai. The calendar has some other errors, too (for instance, portraying the Civil Rights struggle by a picture of Rosa Parks) but, under the circumstances, there is not enough wrong with it to hold it up. It should be actively distributed.
In summation, by going deeply into line on China, by uniting around it and by carrying through deeply on the rectification campaign, the influence in our Party of the revisionist ideological, political and organizational line can be overcome and the Party of the U.S. working class which we declared had been founded for the second and the last time, can further consolidate and advance.