First Published: Red Front, August-September 1970.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba and Sam Richards
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AN ESSENTIAL PRE-REQUISITE FOR THE ADVANCE OF THE WORLD WORKING CLASS ALONG THE HISTORIC ROAD OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IS THE REBUILDING OF MARXIST-LENINIST VANGUARD PARTIES OF THE WORKING CLASS IN EACH COUNTRY AND THEIR UNION INTO A MARXIST-LENINIST INTERNATIONAL.
Never before in the long and bloody history of capitalism has the overall social terrain, within which progress towards the world proletarian-socialist revolution must be secured, been characterised by such varied and contradictory features - some advantageous to the working class, others highly disadvantageous. Generally speaking, on both the national and international plane the advantageous factors lie almost wholly within the objective situation, while the disadvantageous factors lie almost solely within the sphere of the subjective preparedness of the proletarian class forces. It is, above all, the virtually complete liquidation of the international communist movement, once the revolutionary vanguard leadership of the world working class, as a result of the thoroughgoing and tactically diversified betrayal of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism perpetrated by the representatives of the various brands of modern revisionism, which is preventing these favourable objective conditions from yielding their fruit.
Nevertheless, the tremendous experience gained in the struggle against modern revisionism in all its forms over the past fifteen years and more is now beginning to bear fruit in a rapid development of Marxist-Leninist analysis and its application. As the Programmatic ̶-;Manifesto of the MLOB” expresses it:
The growth of modern revisionism represents the penetration of the international bourgeoisie and imperialism into the socialist nations and communist parties and brings with it class struggle on a heightened plane. It is for this reason that, in spite of the severe blow to the world forces of socialism and national liberation represented by the betrayal of the modern revisionists, the Great Debate with modern revisionism denotes not so much a retrogression in the objective situation and perspectives of the world proletarian-socialist revolution, but the preparation for new revolutionary advances. For this heightened struggle .... is acting as a great university to train and mobilise the proletarian forces, and denotes the beginning of the end of the long period ... of bourgeois ideological and political penetration into the ranks of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard.(p.l8)
Certainly, the difficulties standing in the path of construction of genuine revolutionary Marxist-Leninist parties of the working class are very great and at this early inceptive stage the numerical strength of the Marxist-Leninist nuclei is necessarily small.
BUT IT IS AN IRREFUTABLE FACT THAT THIS PROCESS HAS BEGUN, AND NO POWER ON EARTH, NOT ALL THE SOPHISTICATED INSTRUMENTS OF FORCE AND DECEPTION AT THE COMMAND OF WORLD IMPERIALISM AND ITS HIRELINGS, CAN NOW HALT IT.
One of the most significant of the advantageous objective factors at present operating in the world situation is the tendency for the relative shrinking of the imperialist world market and spheres of influence arising from the victorious onward march of national liberation struggles in the under-developed colonial-type sector of the world. This process is undermining the objective, economic basis for reformism and social-democracy – and ultimately for the various forms of revisionism also – within the working class movements of the developed imperialist countries and is developing relentlessly the tendency for the class struggle in these countries to intensify. These developments are leading, on the one hand, to the preparation of the ground for the final smashing of the influence of social-democracy and revisionism, the latter being merely social-democracy under a false “Marxist” label, and its replacement by the influence of revolutionary vanguard parties armed with scientific Marxist-Leninist theory. On the other hand, these events are leading to counter-measures on the part of the ruling monopoly capitalist classes aimed at hindering this process; these counter-measures include attempts to impose corporate state forms of intensified repression and open class dictatorship, and the fostering of revisionism in all its tactically diversified forms of right, “left” and “centre”.
Another fundamental law of the capitalist system which is finding its fullest and most intense expression in the contemporary epoch is the law of uneven development of capitalism. It is the new mode of operation of this law which is now beginning to bring about the division of the capitalist world system into two great rival power groups, one headed by United States imperialism, the other based on the developing alliance of European imperialist powers, including the neo-imperialist Soviet Union. It is this division – the highest and most intense expression of inter-imperialist rivalries and contradictions yet to develop within the world capitalist system – which is daily and hourly preparing the ground for yet another imperialist world war for the re-division of the markets and investment spheres still open for imperialist exploitation.
These developments are bringing about a situation where the focal point of contradiction in the imperialist world system is moving from the colonial periphery to embrace the developed heartlands of imperialism, with their developed working class movements.
It was thus in Western Europe and North America that the ’struggle against revisionism in all its forms has developed to the level where the nuclei of genuine Marxist-Leninist Parties have first been established.
It was in the United States of America, the principal bastion of world imperialism, where class contradictions have already reached a high level of intensity, that the first measures outside Britain were taken to establish a genuine Marxist-Leninist vanguard organisation. Here, at the beginning of 1969, a section of the former “Communist Party of the United States of America (Marxist-Leninist)” repudiated the maoist “left” revisionism with which that organisation was infected, and broke away to set up, under the name of THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT, the nucleus of a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party.
During the last few months the American Marxist-Leninists organised in THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT have taken further steps to consolidate and strengthen their ranks on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. After an intense political struggle the A.C.M. has cleansed itself of certain elements who were striving to divert it in a “left” revisionist direction and has reorganised itself as THE MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANISATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It will be publishing a newspaper entitled WORKERS’ POWER and a theoretical journal entitled PROLETARIAT.
In Canada, the brand of “centrist” revisionism propagated by the “Communist Party of Belgium” had gained a measure of support among the rising forces of the advanced working class and working youth, partly as a result of linguistic affinity, partly as a result of the correct stand taken by the “CPB” against both Soviet right revisionism and maoist “left” revisionism in the months prior to the summer of 1969. Individual Marxist-Leninists in Canada waged a persistent and principled struggle to expose this “centrist” revisionist trend, and in August 1970 this struggle resulted in the formation of a genuine Marxist-Leninist vanguard organisation, THE STALINIST NUCLEUS.
THE MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANISATION OF BRITAIN AND ITS JOURNAL “RED FRONT” SEND WARMEST FRATERNAL GREETINGS TO OUR AMERICAN AND CANADIAN COMRADES AND WELCOME THEM INTO THE SMALL BUT GROWING RANKS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST MOVEMENT. WE HOPE TO PUBLISH PROGRAMMATIC DOCUMENTS OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANISATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE CANADIAN STALINIST NUCLEUS IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF “RED FRONT”.
HOWEVER ARDUOUS AND COMPLEX THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF MARXIST-LENINIST VANGUARD PARTIES OF THE WORKING CLASS IN THE VARIOUS COUNTRIES MAY BE, HOWEVER PROTRACTED AND TACTICALLY DIVERSIFIED THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT FROM NUCLEUS TO PARTY MAY BE, THE OBJECTIVE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD PROLETARIAN-SOCIALIST REVOLUTION WILL ENSURE ITS SUCCESSFUL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
THE NEW MARXIST-LENINIST INTERNATIONAL IS BEING AND WILL BE BUILT.