Issued: As a typewritten document: May 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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We are a group (6) of former members of the Northern California Alliance who left the NCA on an individual basis sometime during the last year or so. We met and found we had substantial unity in our criticisms of the NCA, so we decided to prepare a written summary and analysis of our experience.
One of the main criticisms of the NCA we will develop later in the paper has to do with the lack of unity or even discussion and debate about the need for and the correct approach to building a Marxist-Leninist party in the U.S.A. The 6 of us hold to the basic idea that a vanguard Marxist-Leninist party is necessary in order for the U.S. working class to prepare for and carry through a socialist revolution. In a period lacking acute revolutionary activity, such as the present, the development of a Marxist-Leninist party is still necessary to patiently and coherently build the working-class movement.
The party we envision does not exist today in the U.S. It would be an organization substantially and firmly rooted in the working class. It would practice true democratic centralism with the fullest possible discussion and debate on important political questions combined with unity of action after a decision has been made. Using dialectical and historical materialism, it would creatively apply the substance and method of Marxism-Leninism (the summation of revolutionary experience in its general aspect) to analyze concrete conditions in the U.S. A correct understanding of the subjective and objective conditions in society and their interrelationship is a necessary part of this analysis. To build the kind of party we think is necessary, M-L organizations would have to gain influence and provide revolutionary leadership in the U.S. working class movement, both before this party is formed and afterwards.
In working to build such a party, a revolutionary organization at this time must unite around the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism. It should study the scientific Marxist method in a systematic and ongoing fashion. The practical work of the organization should be guided by Marxism-Leninism. Day-to-day practical work should be linked to a longer-range strategy of building a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party to lead the class struggle.
The Northern California Alliance was not united around these issues.
With this introduction we are now ready to talk directly about the NCA. A brief history of the NCA followed by a discussion of how the NCA viewed itself as an organization will preface our analysis of its major weaknesses and strengths.
The founding congress of the Northern California Alliance took place in January 1976. This followed over a year of intensive discussions based on a paper entitled “Mass Intermediate Socialist Organization”, which we refer to as the MISO. The San Francisco Liberation School and Common Sense newspaper, both previously independent projects, became part of the new organization. Most recently, after much internal struggle, approximately 1/2 of the organization has withdrawn as a group with the other 1/2 getting the right to use the NCA name in the future if they want to. (This agreement was part of a settlement negotiated between the two groups). At its peak, the Alliance had about 120 members. The MISO form of organization originated in Wisconsin, where the authors of the (California) MISO paper once lived and had some exposure to it. An exchange of ideas took place between the Bay Area and Wisconsin after they moved out here.
The Northern California Alliance defined itself as a Mass Revolutionary Socialist organization. It was viewed as the primary political organization for its membership; no member could be part of another socialist or communist organization. It saw its primary task during this period as building a mass movement for socialism in the U.S. As the MISO paper explains, “It is an organization that large numbers of working people can join because it has room in it for people with differing levels of commitment and experience, and, within limits, for people with differing political views. Within this kind of mass organization, working people can develop their potential as revolutionary fighters and leaders.”
Within the MISO-NCA, the distinction between essential and deferred questions is drawn. Essential questions are the principles of unity of an organization upon which criticism/self-criticism and strategic decision-making are based. Deferred questions are those secondary to the main task at a given period. There was recognition that at some point, questions initially deferred could become primary and therefore could not be ignored. While deferring answers to these important questions, they were to be studied seriously.
The Principles of Unity of the NCA focus around these essentials: 1) anti-capitalist and pro-socialist 2) anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist 3) upholds internationalism and 4) sees its main task as building a mass movement for socialism in the U.S.
Explicitly deferred questions when the NCA formed included: 1) development of a more than provisional analysis of class in U.S. society. 2) a deeper understanding of the relationships between racial and national oppression and class. 3) a deeper understanding of the relationship between women’s oppression and class. 4) analysis of revisionism and 5) the question of Leninist theory and the vanguard party. The MISO concept held that the NCA as an organization need not agree on the need, shape, or building process of such a party because the condition for its formation does not exist today. This condition would be a mass socialist movement within the working class. The NCA viewed itself as the type of organization to build this movement in the current period.
The authors of the MISO paper spoke to what they saw as the strengths and weaknesses of their perspective:
It seems to us that the strengths are along the following lines. 1) It sees correctly that the main task during this period is to build a mass working class movement for socialism in the US. 2) It is oriented toward spreading socialist ideas in the working class and drawing workers into the revolutionary movement. 3) It struggles not only at the workplace but on many fronts. 4} It provides a high enough level of political unity so that strategy can be developed and carried out, yet it makes no claim to have answered all the questions of revolutionary theory which must at some time be answered. It knows these questions are important and, while deferring answers to these questions, it studies them seriously. 5) It is an organization in which people with somewhat different ideas can work together. 6) It emphasizes the notion of development: of individuals, of the organization, of theoretical understanding, and of the whole revolutionary movement. 7) It provides a place where people can grow, get support from their comrades, learn and practice criticism and self-criticism, and do effective political work.
The main weakness of this perspective is linked up with its strengths. That is, because of its flexible-and developing nature, the organization-has many internal contradictions. It contains people with a variety of ideas; it contains people at different levels of understanding, experience, and commitment. For these reasons, the people in it must be constantly aware of the internal contradictions if these contradictions are going to be handled correctly. We realize that the principles of unity of such an organization, its structure, and its main areas of political work must be developed with the goal of maximizing its ability to deal with its internal contradictions as well as the contradictions in all of society.
Our analysis of the Alliance concludes that the weaknesses of the organization by far dominated and colored its strengths. We will show that the problems of the Alliance were not just due to lack of sufficient effort or commitment, but most importantly it was impossible for the NCA to meet its own goals due to limitations inherent in the form of organization itself and the political ideas which generated this form. Additionally, we consider the organization’s premises and goals insufficient for building a successful revolutionary movement in the U.S.
Our basic criticism of the NCA was that the level of political unity was too low to guide revolutionary practice. Unity was achieved through vagueness; people involved in the debates around the Principles of Unity see the final document as a series of fudges, of vague formulations that the differing sides could agree to. Political clarity was sacrificed in order to prevent splits and, the reasoning went, attract more people to the organization. The result was an organization that included several different conceptions of what a mass revolutionary socialist organization should be and do.
The organization lacked the strategic unity necessary to guide work and set priorities. The politics of the members of the NCA were too diverse–the range was from social-democrat to Maoist. Disagreements around the many deferred questions existed and affected the political struggles in the NCA, but they were never clearly and explicitly recognized or debated. Thus the disputes about how to guide work continued without the possibility of achieving a higher level of unity through open and clear political struggle. There was too little unity for effective criticism/self-criticism which requires a common commitment to agreed-upon principles. The low level of unity meant that the NCA could never develop a clear revolutionary strategy and agree to a set of priorities that would make possible an effective political program. The organization never really lost its character as a federation of project groups, each basically planning its own work with little regard for the rest of the organization.
The lack of political clarity went hand-in-hand with a worship of practice and a belittling of the role of theory. The dialectical relationship between theory and practice was not understood, neither by the leading group (which included some Marxist-Leninists) nor by a small social-democratic oriented group. The former group thought the NCA should keep concentrating on mass work and not spend time studying M-L theory. Systematic study of the body of Marxist-Leninist theory and its methodology of problem-solving was not part of ongoing organizational work. The social-democratic group opposed having any discussions about theory guiding practice.
Within the NCA there was always a frantic effort to deep practice going. The quantity of practical work was seen as key–and there was never enough people to keep up with it all. On the whole, study and political struggle were thought of as things that took time away from practical work. Practical needs dictated organizational work because longer-range goals were never agreed on. For example, work in the campaign for the District Election of Supervisors in San Francisco was a major project of the organization, but there was never organization-wide study or real political debate around the question of socialist participation in electoral campaigns. Some NCA members involved in the campaign were municipal-socialists or social-democrats while others in the NCA were Marxist-Leninists with a very different conception of the role of electoral reform struggles and how revolutionary work should be done there.
Common Sense was another example. There was never discussion, debate, and resolution by the whole organization of the role and political line of our newspaper. It’s our understanding that this was discussed to some extent within the newspaper collective. However, because of a low degree of unity overall in the NCA, solutions presented in the paper were either too nebulous or went beyond the NCA’s unity (for example, in drawing conclusions about Euro-communism).
While there existed enormous concern for the systematic oppression of women and gay people in U.S. society, insufficient analysis was developed by the NCA upon which to base a practical program to take up these struggles. A forum which communicates the valuable research of a task force to the membership cannot substitute for an agreed-upon analysis of the question. The NCA as a whole didn’t guide practice with theory here either.
An analysis of the public sector developed by one or two people was adopted by the membership after a couple of forums. A base committee and some practical work was established according to this rudimentary view, an outlook supported by a packet of readings on current conditions distributed before the forums. However, when the work failed and the committee eventually disbanded little attempt was made to connect the failure to the original analysis as the potential root. A critical evaluation of this major focus of the Alliance was not very thorough. An attempt at applying theoretical study to practical work was insufficient because the analysis was not later related to the failure of the practice upon evaluation.
That some NCA committees attempted to apply Marxist-Leninist theory to their practical work and took up some of the points mentioned above was a function of the initiative and unity of those particular individuals. Their unity was more developed that that of the organization as a whole.
The Alliance deferred and continued to ignore key questions such as class analysis, nature and role of the state, need for a party, dictatorship of the proletariat, the nature and relationship of women’s, national and racial oppression to class, and how to engage in reform work in a revolutionary way. The rationale for deferring questions was that there was neither the theoretical understanding or enough practice to take positions. Although the stated goal was to study these questions and combine the study with lessons from our practical work, it never happened and these questions as well as others continued to be ignored or fudged.
The belittling of theory and its relationship to practice meant that the NCA’s day-to-day work in reform struggles was objectively reformist. Because the day-to-day work was not tied to any longer range goals, the NCA didn’t go much beyond pushing reform struggles forward (and a bit to the left) and at times including propaganda on the need for socialism. The NCA never developed the ability to struggle around or inject a revolutionary understanding or content in the context of these struggles.
The lack of political unity in the NCA had other detrimental effects. Some of these were demonstrated in the discussions of the Workplace Task Force. This task force (composed of the different workplace committees) recognized that workplace work in the NCA had suffered from our inability to set priorities and concentrate our forces–we realized that little could be done with individuals scattered in many different workplaces. It was proposed that the workplace committees collectively decide what workplaces or unions to concentrate on, and that the decisions be binding on the groups and individuals involved–i.e., that groups would have to be willing to give up their areas of work and individuals would have to be willing to change their jobs or area of mass work if their workplaces or unions were not chosen as priorities. The response to this proposal showed the effects of the lack of political unity; we in the NCA had not had the necessary political discussion and debate and we had not collectively developed a coherent strategy for guiding our work. Differences regarding commitment, discipline and accountability were also not taken up in a serious way. In sum, we had not built up the necessary level of political unity and trust that would provide a basis for making decisions that would affect something as important as people’s jobs. For this reason, many people expressed reluctance to be bound ahead of time to a group decision asking them to change their job or area of primary political work (even though they agreed that setting priorities and concentrating forces was necessary). We will not be able to build a revolutionary movement unless the members of revolutionary organizations can collectively develop strategy, set priorities, and concentrate their cadre in key areas.
Thus far we have stressed the lack of political clarity in the NCA, the vagueness and diversity of its politics. It is important now to explain that within this vagueness there was a dominant leadership, some of whom have changed over time. There were always other forces within the elected leadership of the organization, and this leading group by no means dominated every aspect or decision of the NCA. Their views did, however, dominate in regards to many important questions– in our opinion they determined the general direction of the Alliance. Members of this group played key roles in formulating and gaining support for the MISO concept in the Bay Area. They played a major role in determining which questions were essential and which were deferred.
The members of this dominant group considered themselves Marxist-Leninists and agreed that eventually a Leninist party would be necessary, but they felt the MISO form was the correct organizational form for this period. It was their view that the organization should not try to unite around Marxism-Leninism and the need for a vanguard party; this question should be deferred.
During the existence of the NCA, members of this leadership group had or developed positions on several of the questions that they said should be deferred by the organization. These views affected how they led the NCA – their views on deferred questions affected the program and practice of the NCA, but the rest of the Alliance members had no way to formally discuss and debate these questions. For this reason we assert that the NCA’s organizational form resulted in a manipulative, elitist, and non-democratic process. Other Marxist-Leninists were also not able to legitimately discuss within the organization the various questions (deferred in the NCA) facing and being debated by the communist movement. We were not able to discuss how these questions affected the form of the organization and its program and practice. Efforts to form a M-L caucus were strongly discouraged by the dominant leadership group. Deferred questions remained buried.
We will now point to two examples of how the position of the dominant leadership on questions deferred for the organization affected the NCA. The first will be a position on party-building with its effect on the very form of the organization itself. We will be referring to the main views of Max Elbaum, with whom others in the leadership core essentially unite. We recognize that others have co-authored various NCA documents with him and that he did not hold all his current ideas in earlier times. He has consistently been at the core of the NCA’s development and his most recent, views on party-building (which he has always said should be deferred for the NCA) appear in the November 2, 1977 Guardian.
It’s our understanding that Max and others will push for the NCA to now unite around Marxism-Leninism but continue to be involved primarily in mass practical work and continue to defer such questions as party-building. If so, our criticism applies to this future form as well. It is our contention that the basic form of organization, of the NCA and the proposed new form only make sense if one agrees with the particular approach to party-building outlined in Max’s article.
Max’s views expressed in his article are very close to those of the Guardian; he supports their party-building plans and is involved in the Bay Area Guardian Club. Max holds that the main task of party-building in the present period is uniting Marxist-Leninists around ideological questions. After the party is formed, he says, then the task of fusing Marxism-Leninism with the working class can be addressed. Max states: “the key link in the reestablishment of the party cannot lie in the field of the practical work... the advances in this practical work cannot be the precondition to the development of the party because of its inherent limitation without a party’s guidance.”
We agree that coming to unity on the application of M-L theory to the U.S. is key in party-building but also maintain that it is incorrect to separate the theoretical debate from practical work in working class struggles. In Max’s approach the organizational forms for carrying out the theoretical debate around applying M-L theory to the U.S. must be distinct from the organizational forms for carrying out work in the mass movements until the party is built. In the Bay Area this has meant (in Max’s conception) that the NCA has carried out (and may continue to carry out) the practical work in the mass movement while the newly formed Guardian Club has been involved in theoretical debate. (To our knowledge, no formal organizational link of the NCA to the Guardian Club exists. The connection is through Max’s party-building concept.) We feel that this is an incorrect separation of theory and practice which advances neither the mass work nor the theoretical debate of the party-building effort.
If the theoretical debate is not carried out by organizations involved in working class struggles, there is nothing to ensure that the theory that is developed will really apply to the concrete situation of the U.S. working class. The process of applying M-L theory to the U.S. must include the testing out of theory by M-L organizations in the actual struggles of the working class. If the theory and political line being developed is correct then it should be possible for the organizations to win over some of the advanced workers and establish some influence and leadership in the working class. With such influence and leadership in the class struggle established, a genuine M-L vanguard party can be formed.
We clearly disagree with Max’s position on party-building. The main purpose of the discussion here is to show how the leadership’s position on a deferred question affected the NCA, in this case the very form of the organization itself. Because neither the NCA as a whole nor the body of Marxist-Leninists in the Alliance could discuss or debate this deferred question in any serious and systematic way and because the positions of the dominant leadership group on these questions have influenced and are now influencing the direction of the NCA, we characterize the organization as manipulative and non-democratic. There was de facto continuation of the same form and the same deferred questions.
The second example of the leadership’s position on a deferred question influencing the organization was the study of racism. Essentially, a consciously held view on the nature of racial and national oppression in the U.S. was presented in the 2 study sessions that occurred. There was no mention that prior unity on this position was held and by whom, that this view did not originate with Alliance members, and that this was one of many views on the question. A political position was put forward as fact and not as one based on an assessment of facts. No word was spoken of other positions existing based on other assessments of facts. The leadership could not be expected to lead study of positions opposed to its own but an upfront acknowledgement of all these ideas should have been made so as to at least understand the limitations of the leadership’s study program.
In this case, the leadership’s position on the deferred question of racial and national oppression resulted in a biased and manipulative agenda for study. This narrow approach could not possibly have allowed the membership to struggle to any meaningful higher unity on the question. The agenda effectively limited discussion on the substance of racial and national oppression.
There was never clarity or unity on what the tern “mass” in mass revolutionary socialist organization meant. To some it meant bringing together the greatest number of people possible; to others it meant the organization should strive to have a mass character (i.e. reflect in composition the make-up of the U.S. multi-national working class); to still others it meant mass as opposed to cadre. Since this was never struggled out there was no unity in practice on what kind of organization was being built.
The term “revolutionary” was never well defined either. The Principles of Unity only point to recognizing the need for fundamental change and accepting the responsibility to both work for this and to change ourselves in the process.
In our opinion, the organization tried to be mass and cadre at the same time and did neither very well. More importantly, we believe an organization cannot be mass and cadre at the same time (in regard to level of political unity, program, accountability, discipline and commitment).
There was, as we’ve said, not enough political study, discussion, and debate to achieve the political unity necessary to set a clear strategy to guide work. At the same time the level of time and energy commitment required to be a member of the organization was too high for most people just becoming interested in socialism. Some people new to socialism worked hard in the NCA but dropped out because they couldn’t see where it was leading to.
In our view, what is necessary is a M-L cadre organization with sufficient political study, debate, and unity to develop strategy and set priorities. The organization can then guide the work of its cadre in, mass organizations or in other intermediate forms. Communists should try to bring a class perspective and communist leadership to the mass struggles they are involved in, but this should not be confused (as it was in the Alliance) with trying to bring the mass movement into the cadre organization.
A cadre group must develop the theoretical and practical understanding and skills of its members. The NCA did not take seriously the development of its membership. The proposal for mandatory programs of Marxist study for new members was always voted down with the argument that such a program would make the organization lose its mass character. In addition there was not enough unity in the NCA to agree on what new members should read and many held that practice was more important.
It was said that new members could take courses at the Liberation School if they wanted. The problem with this approach–in addition to its unsystematic character–was that new members in the NCA, like all the members, quickly got bogged down in all the work of the organization: the practical work in the mass movements, the internal organizational work, committee programs of study geared to particular areas of work, etc. There wasn’t much time to learn the fundamentals of Marxism.
A serious and systematic cadre development program of study and practice for all members can guarantee each person access to the scientific tools of Marxism-Leninism and enable each member to develop and participate on a more equal footing in the political debates of the organization. Without such a program unequal levels of development are perpetuated and major decisions continue to be dominated by the few who started at a higher theoretical level. Many who consistently tried to minimize the organizational study in the NCA were the very ones who had studied the most in the past.
Speaking more generally, a cadre organization should have a systematic approach to the development of all its members and a realistic recognition of the unequal levels of development of its membership. The NCA tried but didn’t resolve these two goals. In the Alliance, only a small group were given the opportunity to develop their skills and understanding: some people met regularly with the KDP, some people took Capital classes, etc. This was not based on an agreed-upon division of labor in the Alliance. Rather it was a matter of who you happened to know, or if you happened to have the time. There existed an inherent class bias in this method against people with full-time jobs, children, or other family responsibilities. They had less free time to devote than most Alliance members. They tended to be foreclosed from opportunities to develop regardless of their political ideas, their role in a particular struggle, or their being in a particular workplace.
The membership of the NCA, like that of many organizations in the U.S. left, was almost all white and most members had some amount of higher education. The organization was not representative of the multi-racial, multi-national U.S. working class. This composition of the NCA was not in itself bad as a starting point; it is in fact where we had to begin and revolutionary organizations in other countries have started out in similar circumstances. The question, rather, is what direction the NCA was and is moving in. We feel that the main weaknesses of the Alliance (those of key questions deferred, poor understanding and application of the theory-practice dialectic, the manipulative character, an incorrect approach to party-building, and the mass-cadre combination) increased the difficulty for the NCA to make any headway in changing its racial, national, and class composition.
Concretely, the NCA had no developed analysis upon which to base a political program to take up demands to struggle against the special oppression of racial and national minorities. Deferring, the development of a program meant the organization could not carry out and evaluate effective systematic practice in these struggles. The relationship of this work to involvement in the overall class struggle was also undiscussed and thereby providing, very little political basis for Third World people to join.
One way of changing the racial and national composition that has been tried by some formerly all white groups on the left involved working and negotiating with Third World Marxist-Leninists groups and individuals, developing relationships and then discussing the conditions and necessary changes under which the groups or individuals might be willing to merge or join. A move in this direction was made by the NCA but nothing seemed to come of these efforts.
Another possible way of affecting the racial, national and class composition would be through recruitment of white and Third World members of the working class from the mass struggles the NCA was involved in. This did not happen–in fact the NCA did not ever recruit many people from its work in mass struggles. The lack of political unity and strategic direction meant that the practical work of the NCA in mass work was not of a high enough quality–it did not provide good enough leadership–to attract other people to the organization.
There were other characteristics of the NCA which made it difficult for the organization to recruit white and Third World working class members. The organization was chaotic, unprioritized, and undisciplined. There was always a “too much work to do” frantic syndrome. And there was no systematic program for the development of new members’ theoretical and practical skills. These aspects of the NCA made joining’ the Alliance a difficult and somewhat unattractive step, especially for working class people with less formal education who were new to the socialist movement. Inviting people to join the NCA was somewhat like inviting them to come in and flounder in the confusion.
The MISO form of organization was based in part on the idea that socialists could work together in an organization without having to agree on every political question or issue. In a movement as splintered as the U.S. left today, we think the basic idea of essential and deferred questions is useful in our general view of the party-building process.
A second strength of the NCA was its effort to be systematic about planning work. It was understood that we needed to set plans with concrete and realizable goals and later sum up how we had done in relation to these goals. This planning effort was, unfortunately, a relatively uninformed process in the NCA due to the lack of political study, discussion and debate, and there was too little political unity to seriously plan and set priorities.
Another positive aspect was the use of current political-economic analyses to understand some of the current developments in this country in order to guide work in these areas. Use of this type of literature on conditions in the U.S. is an important safeguard against a dogmatist approach which expects to find exact answers to present problems, in quotations from the classics of Marxism-Leninism. On the other hand, the NCA went to the other extreme of virtually ignoring the classical literature of the revolutionary movement, thereby losing touch with the many lessons of the revolutionary movements thus far in history.
The NCA did see the importance of working in broad coalitions in this period. It saw the importance of united front work but did not have a clear political line of what to struggle for within a united front. People in the NCA were conscious that it was necessary to act in a non-sectarian way toward other organizations. In practice, sectarianism was not always avoided, especially toward Marxist-Leninist pre-party groups. In the absence of a developed and understood analysis of these organizations, there seemed to be a general dismissal of their role and relationship to the movement.
A point that was stressed in the original formulation of the MISO concept was that the organization should have a multi-front approach: its members should be involved in communities as well as workplaces, in grass-roots organizing as well as electoral campaigns. The NCA did have more of a well-rounded character than many organizations: it had some work in community, workplace, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles and it had its own school and newspaper. In general, however, the multi-front strategy of the NCA was not successful due to the serious weaknesses that affected the whole organization.
We’ve identified several major weaknesses of the NCA and many of their direct effects. A low level of political unity, continuously deferring key questions, poorly understanding and applying the theory-practice relationship, an incorrect approach to party-building, the mass-cadre combination, and a manipulative and undemocratic character have all prevented the MCA from meeting its stated goals. More importantly, we’ve tried to show that the goals of the Alliance couldn’t be met within the framework of the MISO, an organizational concept with these very problems built into it. Furthermore, we view the goals and premises; of the NCA inadequate for building a successful socialist revolution in the U.S.
We want to recognize that at different times and places, to varying degrees, some individuals and, groups within the NCA tried to overcome these weaknesses. We also recognize certain strengths of the MISO form. However, in our view, it is the particular weaknesses rooted in the. very form of the NCA and in the ideas that gave birth to it that did and will dominate its work and that of its membership.
What we think is needed at this time are Marxist-Leninist organizations involved in local struggles of the working class and in theoretical debates of the national Marxist-Leninist movement with the goal of building the U.S. working class movement and a genuine Communist Party able to gain influence and provide revolutionary leadership in the class struggle.