Published:The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 9, No. 11, December 5, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In the last Several months, the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists has undertaken a series of activities which clearly reflect the fact that this organization today acts in the direct service of state monopoly capitalism, employs the means and methods of operation of police agents and provacateurs, and has assumed as its mission the sabotage of the class struggle in the United States, and the undermining and wrecking of the growing unity between the proletariat of the United States and the international proletariat and oppressed nations of the world.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party U.S.A./Marxist-Leninist gravely condemns the state-inspired actions of the COUSML, and wishes to bring to light the actions of the COUSML in recent months. These have included the publication of outrageous slanders and fabrications against the CPUSA/ML, against the Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPUSA/ML, and the use of such methods as sending certain so-called “truth squads to various cities to try to contact and infiltrate the basic units of the CPUSA/ML, as well as the spreading of lies and fabrications about the policy of the CPUSA/ML on various questions. Most recently this organizations has announced its intention to claim itself a “Marxist-Leninist party, perpetrating still another caricature of Marxism-Leninism.
The purpose of this statement is not to try and persuade the individuals of the COUSML as to the error of their ways. The COUSML is not merely another opportunist organization among the plethora of opportunist trends in the United States. The COUSML has passed in recent months from opportunism over into the direct activity characteristic of police agents and provacateurs. Only secondarily is the purpose of this Statement to alarm the working class and progressive forces of the U.S. as to the counter-revolutionary nature of the COUSML – for this in the main is accomplished by the COUSML itself, with its ultra-adventurist and ultra-’left’ phrasemongering and activity.
Rather, because the main function of the COUSML today is to try to sow confusion internationally, to disrupt the growing unity of the U.S. proletariat with the international proletariat, to promote “several parties in the U.S. and to cause confusion and divisions among the Marxist-Leninist Parties in order to hinder their unity with the proletariat of the U.S., the main purpose of this Statement is to inform our fraternal Marxist-Leninist Parties further of these recent activities by the COUSML, and to connect them to the general political line of this counter-revolutionary organization, parading under the “bright red banner of Marxism-Leninism.
This Statement addresses three points:
(1) The document issued by the COUSML at the Internationalist Rally in Montreal, Canada, on March 31, 1979 entitled, “Against the Social Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement; a Study of the Origin, History and Present Role of the Social Democrat Barry Weisberg and His MLOC/CPUSA(ML).
(2) Certain activities bf the COUSML in recent months; and
(3) The document entitled, “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social Chauvinists and Against the Social Chauvinists
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1.) The March 29, 1979 issue of the irregularly-published Workers’ Advocate, newspaper of the COUSML, prepared for distribution at the March 31, 1979 Montreal Rally sponsored by the Communist Party of Canada/Marxist-Leninist, contained pages of slanders and fabrications against Comrade Barry Weisberg, the Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPUSA/ML. These fabrications were repeated by COUSML in their speech at the Rally!
Later, this anti-communist diatribe was issued as a pamphlet of 55 pages. This material, announced the COUSML, was the result of a special internal conference of the COUSML called to denounce the CPUSA/ML and Comrade Weisberg.
That this material represents the means and methods of police agents can be readily seen by the nature of its anti-communist slanders, including such statements as those that Comrade Weisberg is a “hardened social democrat with a long history of anti- Marxist-Leninist writings.... trained in anti-communism and social democracy.... a professional anti-communist.... etc. The COUSML suggests directly that Comrade Weisberg is both a trained agent of the state, an “infiltrator, and on the other hand that Comrade Weisberg is an agent of Chinese revisionism who “developed credentials and ties with ’left’ circles after Nixon went to Peking.
Such fabrications are followed by a piecemeal and slanderous alleged political history of Comrade Weisberg, together with a collection of passages from a book written by Barry Weisberg, published in 1971, which are organized in such a manner as to completely misrepresent and take out of context their actual significance.
The “biography manufactured by the COUSML researchers for their “special conference not only concocts and distorts several years of Comrade Weisberg’s life, but is selected to omit any mention of more than a decade of revolutionary activity in which Comrade Weisberg, beginning in the late 1950’s, fought actively against discrimination in housing, helped to organize the first national march on Washington against the Vietnam War and many other large scale anti-war actions, worked in various struggles for democratic rights in the South and North, organized anti-imperialist student organizations on several campuses and actively mobilized opposition to Zionism. The book from which they choose to excerpt, issued in 1971, was long ago publically refuted by Comrade Weisberg as eclectic and containing many incorrect ideas. Yet the COUSML not only selects from this book to completely distort and misrepresent its contents, but presents something written eight years before the formation of the CPUSA/ML as if it represents the views of the CPUSA/ML today! Naturally the COUSML chooses to omit from its slanders any reference to public statements made by Comrade Weisberg in the last few years.
It is a hallmark of every opportunist and provacateur to utilize the means and methods of Joseph McCarthy to try to slander and discredit individuals, when they are unable to defeat the correct program and political line of our Party.
The recent slanders by the COUSML against Comrade Weisberg are reminiscent of similar attacks, in this respect, launched against him publicly by the U.S. Attorney General in 1964, and later by the fascist Ku Klux Klan, various trade union bureaucrats, and in a special document circulated by the social-fascist Revolutionary Communist Party U.S.A. The recent COUSML slanders place them in the same camp as the state-inspired attacks of the past, and directly serve state monopoly capitalism in its efforts to subvert and destabilize the CPUSA/ML today.
Not satisfied with this, the COUSML then proceeded to utilize the same method to misrepresent the origin and history of the former Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee in the pages of Workers’ Advocate. In a manner reminiscent of attacks against the leaders of many Marxist-Leninist organizations and parties, the entire history and work of both the MLOC and now the CPUSA/ML are attributed to the efforts of Comrade Weisberg.
Nothing more reflects the inability of this counter-revolutionary organization to speak to questions of program, strategy and tactics, than their exclusive attention to individuals.
The recent slanders and fabrications by the COUSML are related today to a sharp escalation of attacks against the CPUSA/ML by state monopoly capitalism and fascist reaction, and serve as an inspiration to various other opportunist circles and organizations which have taken recently to launching similar such attacks against the CPUSA/ML, and Comrade Weisberg. Together, all such activities have as their common thread their hatred of Marxism-Leninism, which is variously expressed in increasing open and veiled assaults against the CPUSA/ML, the Party of Labor of Albania, the Third Communist International and Comrade J.V. Stalin.
2.) In recent months, the COUSML has undertaken various efforts aimed at attempting to infiltrate and destabilize basic units of the CPUSA/ML in some cities, in the same manner as agent-provacateurs would act. Arriving in a city where the COUSML has no political work, they have made inquiries with local contacts in the ’left-wing’ movement, trying to obtain the names and phone numbers of cadre of the CPUSA/ML. On other occasions, they have made repeated efforts to try to contact Party members and supporters to “inform them about the CPUSA/ML.
Still other methods are utilized to slander the CPUSA/ML and falsely represent its policy. One example was efforts by the COUSML in some cities to spread the lie that the CPUSA/ML did not support the Eritrean revolution, and therefore to convince members of the Eritrean students’ organization in the U.S. to condemn the CPUSA/ML. On still another occasion the COUSML has sought to utilize its attendance at the Internationalist Rally in Montreal, on March 31, 1979, organized by the Communist Party of Canada/Marxist-Leninist, as “proof that COUSML had fraternal relations with the various parties in attendance, and that the CPUSA/ML did not!
To date, the COUSML has produced two pamphlets directed toward attacking and slandering the MLOC, and now the CPUSA/ML, totalling nearly 150 pages. No such attention has been directed by them to the struggle against Khrushchevite, Titoite or Chinese revisionism, Trotskyism or any other revisionist or opportunist trend.
3.) The latest round of such activities by the COUSML has been their pathetic “Call of the National Committee to “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social Chauvinists and Against the Social Chauvinists.
The timing of this maneuver is definitely tied to the supposed prestige the COUSML achieved by attending the Internationalist Rally which concluded the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada/Marxist-Leninist.
Trying to cover their counter-revolutionary line under supposed support for the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania and alleged opposition to the theory of the “three worlds and “Mao Tsetung Thought, the COUSML once again paints the absurd fiction that “ten years of all-sided and wide-ranging struggle has gone into the building of the Marxist-Leninist nucleus of the vanguard of the proletariat. It is now time to reconstitute that Party through the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. (page 17, “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party....)
The Central Committee of the Communist Party U.S.A./Marxist-Leninist condemns this further effort on the part of the COUSML to build yet another revisionist party in the United States, to try and further split and divide the proletariat, and to sow confusion and divisions internationally.
The out-and-out degenerate nature of the COUSML is clearly evident in their view both of the objective and subjective conditions, in the U.S. and internationally. The COUSML claims that today in the United States, “the basic.contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is at the bursting point. Anyone truly familiar with the conditions of the class struggle recognizes that a revolutionary situation does not yet exist in the United States, nor is it around the corner. This contradiction is hardly at the “bursting point today.
Blatant social chauvinism is contained in the COUSML’s white supremacist position on the existence of oppressed nations within the state boundaries of the U.S. Following in the footsteps of the revisionist Earl Browder, and Mao Tsetung, they deny the existence of an oppressed Black Nation in the U.S. and relegate the oppression of the Black masses to a question of “violent repression and racial discrimination. The Chicano Nation and people are completely liquidated, and simply referred to by the COUSML as “people of Mexican ancestry!! This is the same revisionist position of the Khrushchevite CPUSA.
In its call to form a party, the history of the COUSML and its predecessor is painted with the most fantastic exaggerations. While the COUSML promoted the line and practice that “Mao Tsetung is our Chairman for ten years, and advocated “Mao Tsetung Thought as a new and higher stage of Marxism-Leninism, the COUSML now describes this as having “consistently fought against the pervasive ideological confusion spread by the bourgeoisie! With a newspaper which today remains irregular, which has no outlets in the South, Southwest, or in virtually any major factory in the U.S., they claim to have “(taken) up the organization of agitation and propaganda which was national in scope..., With an organization which played no national role in the struggles for democratic rights or the anti-war struggles of the 1960’s and 1970’s, no role in any major strike in the last ten years, such as those in auto, steel or coal, no role in any major struggle for democratic rights in the U.S. such as the anti-Bakke or anti-Weber struggles....with this pathetic history, the COUSML claims to “guide every step of the struggles of the masses. With open support for such organizations as UNITA of Angola, the COUSML claims to have “laid great stress on proletarian internationalism. With merely a “national committee and no Central Committee, with “branches independent of the “national committee, with “self-moving basic organizations and no factory nuclei or basic units of a Leninist character, the COUSML claims that its organization “has the initiative to respond to the day to day struggles of the masses and the political strength and unity to train the workers in the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist line of the COUSML.
This is an organization completely modelled after the social-democratic line of geographical units, not factory organization. This is an organization which has for ten years “enlivened revolutionary activists in the defense of socialism with no stated strategy and tactics, and by blatantly denying the necessity for a party program or constitution.
The five “main tasks which the COUSML advances to build their revisionist party contain no discussion or reference to a party program, constitution, founding Congress, plan to unite Marxist-Leninists, welding a core, or anything else vaguely resembling a Leninist approach to forging a vanguard party of the proletariat. This is a party which is to be based on “city branches with no regard to concentration in the strategic industrial centers, the Black or Chicano Nations, the military or any important center of revolutionary struggle in the U.S.
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The recent flurry of activities of the COUSML described in this Statement are connected to the basic stand and viewpoint of the COUSML, which the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee pointed out in August, 1978 in its “Reply to the COUSML Pamphlet, ’Reply to the Open Letter of the MLOC’. Since that time the COUSML has descended further down the road of Khrushchevite and Chinese revisionism, covered over with internationalist phrases.
This basic political line of the COUSML is a hodgepodge of Right and ’left’ revisionism and infantile disorders characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie. On one hand, it takes a classic Right social-democratic position in assuming geographic forms of organization and denying the importance of factory nuclei and industrial concentration. It follows a blatant social-chauvinist line in negating the national character of the oppression of the Black and Chicano Nations, following readily in the footsteps of Browder and Jay Lovestone in the U.S. and Mao Tsetung internationally. On the other hand, it postures with endless ’left’-sounding phrases and self-inflating accolades, preserving its “purity by ignoring the masses of workers in the reformist organizations and trade unions, never conducting any genuine revolutionary education, organization, mobilization and leadership of the mass movement.
The sterile, shrill’ and frantic maneuvering of the COUSML is the hallmark of its class stand and origin. Completely unable to apply the tenets of scientific socialism to the concrete conditions of the class struggle in the U.S., COUSML both denies the universal character of Marxism-Leninism, and is reduced to parroting their “bright red bastion” of the moment. In this sense, the COUSML finds its mission not in the defense and elaboration of Marxism-Leninism, but in identification with or against a particular trend. Such is the caricature of Marxism-Leninism made by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.
In this Statement, the Communist Party U.S.A./Marxist-Leninist has pointed out both some recent activity on the part of the COUSML and connected it to the basic orientation and line of this organization. The main point made in this Statement is to call attention to the fact that the means and methods of struggle now employed by the COUSML are those of police agents and provocateurs, and that these result directly from both its basic political orientation and its class outlook.