Introduction

Since the Conference we have made numerous advances politically and consolidated our ranks in new and important ways. The last five months have been largely successful and full of advances, with some secondary mistakes and issues arising. At this juncture we need to take stock of our successes, assess our shortcomings, and make the necessary adjustments to continue to adva-nce towards the formation of a Party. We need to pay particularly close attention to some emerging issues, which while not primary, need to be proactively addressed before they develop into more serious deviations. That said, before diving into these issues, it is important to reflect on the gains we have made.

Prior to the Conference, MCU had numerous very basic organizational issues. Outside of the NYC branch and the erstwhile National Committee (NC) our practice of criticism/self-criticism was extremely underdeveloped, and in some cases—such as the Boston branch—basically non-existent.¹ Blatant consolidated opportunists in our ranks—such as ____ and ____—were able to operate without being exposed and driven out. Our work in the Teamsters had stagnated. The Labor Militant Study had been a disorganized mess that set for itself unattainable goals. We had no social media presence. We had no systematic approach for assessing promising supporters and developing them into cadre. We had no system of reporting. And the list goes on. We have come a long way from this disorganized state, which is the result of the col-

lective efforts of comrades at every level of MCU leading up to, during, and after the Conference.

Over the past few months we have seen significant ideological consolidation of our ranks as comrades have developed a better understanding of MLM and our line and the CC has synthesized the lessons from the Conference into a series of important documents. We also physically consolidated with many comrades moving to NYC and Miami and solidifying the branches there. The final step of this post-Conference process was recently achieved with numerous comrades moving to NYC and Miami.

This physical consolidation of branches was an important concentration of forces which has, in turn, allowed us to refine our division of labor in the branches—a process which was already ongoing after the Conference—eliminate redundant work, and better concentrate correct ideas. The lessons from these experiences will be invaluable in developing new branches as we grow. The comrades in Miami have also led a rectificatio-n of AFTP, which addressed the damage caused by ____’s misleadership and puts the mass organization on solid footing going forward. This rectification was crucial not only for the health of the mass organization, but also for the future development of promising AFTP members into cadre and for the production of agitation going forward, as AFTP will serve as an important training ground for this crucial part of our work. 

We have also started local studies in branches across the country, as well as in cities with at-large members. These local studies are a key ways for us to grow and develop as an organization. It is important to recall that just a year ago we were struggling to find more than one or two people to join local studies (via RMS) in each branch. This change, in conjunction with successes of the Open Study (which happened despite some significant shortcomings), speaks to how we have successfully increased our reach and influence among the semi-Marxists. The completion of the first round of the Cadre Development Course (CDC) likewise speaks to the successes we have had in carrying out much of the plan that we united around at the Conference. We now have a fairly systematic approach for assessing strong supporters and developing them into provisional members.² This is a tremendous advance from our previous ad-hoc methods. It is an essential building block in the creation of a truly Bolshevized organization capable of maintaining an extremely high level of proletarian discipline.

We also carried out triage of our work in the Teamsters, have begun to address the theoretical shortcomings we have had on this front, and started to develop a clearer and more systematic line for our strategy in the working-class movement. While we still have more work to do on this front, these are significant advances towards the eventual fusion of Marxism and the working-class movement.³

All of these are major advances and significant gains. They were built off of the collective clarity and unity that we achieved at the Conference, and represent real steps forward for our fledgling movement. We should be proud of these successes and the hard work that we have put into achieving them. These gains, in turn, lay the foundation for future gains. However, we must be square that future gains will be made through the struggle to overcome new issues that arise, and new problems that we face in the process of making revolution. The revolution proceeds in a zig-zag pattern of advances and setbacks. Or, as Mao put it during the Chinese Revolution—and again at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution—the future is bright, but the road it tortuous. 

Understanding this point is essential to maintaining revolutionary optimism. Without the larger perspective of the winding path in front of us, it will be all too easy for comrades to see every setback as indicative of an inevitable defeat. Likewise, during periods of advance, comrades will tend to develop a naive optimism and assume that the road to revolution is paved with victory after victory.⁴

The road to socialist revolution is long and winding. We have united around a shared ideology and we have revived communist organization in the United States after a half-century interregnum. This is a tremendous accomplishment. Given the catastrophic collapse that the communist movement faced at the end of the 1970s—not to mention the defeats in the 1930s and 40s—we have had to effectively start from scratch and learn basic lessons of Marxism. This was an unavoidable struggle which we had to go through in forming a pre-party organization. MCU came into being in a political situation defined by a profound discontinuity in revolutionary organization and a collective amnesia on the lessons of Marxism.⁵ This is still the prevailing situation in the U.S. today, and we are only beginning to have the organizational solidity and broader influence among the left which can allow us to clarify these lessons. 

Therefore, it is unsurprising that we continue to make some mistakes and have some issues. Of the main issues that we face organizationally, a number of them are attributable, in part, to an overcorrection from previous errors.⁶ Therefore, we must not only rectify these errors, but also learn better how to address our issues, errors, and shortcomings without over-correcting and swinging too far in the other direction.

After a period of strong advances leading up to the Conference, during the Conference, and in its wake, we are now at an important crossroads. New issues are emerging in our ranks and they must be addressed head on. The emergence of new contradictions, the intensification of certain preexisting contradictions, and the shift in relations between different contradictions, all of these things are inevitable in the process of development of a complex thing. These developments, therefore, should not be a source of pessimism. The rise of new contradictions and issues is inevitable and part of the advancement of revolution.⁷

The Main Shortcomings

We face a few main shortcomings at present, all of which are the result of a petty-bourgeoise one-sided mode of thinking. The first is the lack of a deep understanding of dialectical materialism, which manifests in things like comrades’ unscientific use of terms like “internal contradiction.” This is tied to difficulties comrades have had in grasping the relationship between internal and external contradictions, and the tendency to see internal contradictions metaphysically.

The second—which stems from the first, but is by no means reducible to it—is an idealist notion of transformation. Many comrades have a tendency to reduce transformation to the first half of the dialectical materialist circuit of knowledge and ignore the second half of this circuit. This has contributed to widespread confusions over the nature of criticism/self-criticism, fantasies of achieving a sort of “moral purity” by purging oneself of all non-proletarian ideas, and the rise of a lifestyle-esque tendency in our ranks that focuses on imitating communist conduct. The later is an inevitable result of trying to hold comrades to a high level of proletarian discipline while the above idealist and metaphysical confusions exist. 

The third shortcoming is an insular culture in our ranks. This issue predates the prior two shortcomings, and over the past few years we have made some significant progress in addressing it. This can be seen in how we have been able to develop a much wider orbit of semi-Marxists around MCU and how we have built our links to the organized working class over the past few years. However, the excessive focus first side of the dialectical materialist circuit of knowledge in conducting CSC and rectifying wrong tendencies in our ranks shows the deep issues we still have in this regard. The pervasiveness of sloganeering in our ranks also speaks to the insularity of our organizational culture at present.

These shortcomings are corrosive, they eat away at our discipline, undermine our unity, and weaken our ability to advance the proletarian cause. Their class nature must be firmly understood by all comrades so that we can address these issues head on and struggle against them unflinchingly. At the same time, we must understand that the ultimate source of these issues is the class society in which we exist, and that our particular circumstances—as small communist organization lacking deep links with the working class and existing in the most powerful imperialist country in the world—means that we are unable to completely eliminate all vestiges of these issues from our ranks. Rather, we must understand how to overcome the biggest shortcomings, improve our discipline and morale, and remain vigilant for future issues of a similar nature, so that they can be nipped in the bud before they grow and metastasize into full-blown deviations.

Lack of Understanding of Dialectical Materialism

The low-level of understanding of dialectical materialism in our ranks is a major problem. This is one of the three component parts of Marxism, and understanding it is fundamental to being a Marxist. At present, most comrades have a very low level of understanding of Marxist philosophy.⁸ In On Contradiction, Mao notes that materialist dialectics is “the Marxist world outlook” and that this is integral to how we see the development of things and their relations with one another. If we have not deeply studied Marxist philosophy and internalized a dialectical materialist world outlook, then we will be unable to consistently analyze situations in a Marxist manner. We will constantly tend to see things as static and isolated, fail to grasp the dynamic interrelation between internal and external contradictions, and muddle the complex relation between major and minor contradictions. 

These sorts of confusions have been ubiquitous in our ranks and are the result of the low level of theoretical development of many comrades. We have recently taken steps in various branches to begin to systematically address these theoretical weaknesses through more rigorous study practices. However, various issues that have arisen show that many comrades still do not grasp the basic lessons of On Practice and On Contradiction. This has shown up most acutely in the repeated misuse of the term “internal contradiction” throughout the entirety of our organization, including—at times—on the Central Committee. This confused usage shows that many comrades are generally unclear on the basics of what a contradiction is. 

Throughout MCU it has become ubiquitous for comrades to use the term “internal contradiction” to mean personal issue or shortcoming. This usage appears to lend an air of scientificity to discussions, but in reality, it is actually being used to cover over the fact that comrades are not thinking dialectically about their own issues and those of other comrades. For example, what is petty-bourgeois laziness in contradiction with? Proletarian discipline and initiative. Is it the case that the comrade in question is simply exhibiting petty-bourgeois laziness—which is itself a contradiction and a unity of opposites—or is it the case that one of their internal contradictions, in this example, would be more accurately described as the contradiction between petty-bourgeois laziness on the one hand and proletarian discipline and initiative on the other? The later framing provides much great clarity on the struggle between the unity of opposites which is driving forward the development of the comrade in question; it therefore also provides greater clarity on how to overcome the issue in question.⁹

In On Contradiction Mao notes:

Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society)”. Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.

Speaking more specifically about internal contradictions, Mao states:

The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions. Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes.

From these quotes we can see that Mao was quite rigorous about what a contradiction is, what the law of unity of opposites is, and how the struggle between the interdependent and contradictory aspects of contradictions drives forward the development of all things. Therefore, when discussing comrades issues, shortcomings, and non-proletarian tendencies, we also need to aspire to a much higher level of scientific rigor. We have fallen short in this regard. We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that because we used the term “internal contradiction” that we are being scientific, especially if we are describing only one aspect of a larger contradiction that is driving forward a given comrades’ contradictory process of development. We need to raise the overall level at which we discuss these matters and combat petty-bourgeois sloganeering.¹⁰

Comrades’ poor grasp of dialectical materialism is also evident in the difficulties comrades have in understanding the relationship between internal contradictions and external contradictions. A tendency has arisen in our ranks to overly fixate on internal contradictions—while also not understanding the these contradictions as unities of opposites—and even go so far as to discount the influence of external contradictions on the issues and struggles that comrades have. This tendency has expressed itself unevenly (at times comrades are more dialectical) but it is widespread.

We can see it clearly when a given comrade is struggling to follow through on a task, or has made some mistakes, and other comrades fail to examine the conditions in which these issues have arisen. Whenever this occurs we need to examine not only the internal issues the comrade has but also the external conditions. Is the comrade dealing with some acute relationship or family issues? Did a comrade make a basic and easily avoidable mistake, but at a political event that we did not plan for well? Of course, even in difficult conditions a proletarian party must be capable of maintaining its discipline, upholding its line, and carrying out tremendous deeds. However, this sort of discipline and unity cannot be built all at once. Therefore, when comrades make mistakes or have struggles we need to understand not only the internal basis for these mistakes, but also the external conditions in which they occurred. External contradiction are themselves causes, though they can exert their causality only in relation to the internal contradictions of the thing which they are changing.¹¹

Mao notes:

Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. There is constant interaction between the peoples of different countries. In the era of capitalism, and especially in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the interaction and mutual impact of different countries in the political, economic and cultural spheres are extremely great. The October Socialist Revolution ushered in a new epoch in world history as well as in Russian history. It exerted influence on internal changes in the other countries in the world and, similarly and in a particularly profound way, on internal changes in China. These changes, however, were effected through the inner laws of development of these countries, China included.

To better understand this point, consider the example of the egg and temperature. The internal contradictions exist within a fertilized egg for the embryo to grow and develop. But if we want to understand why a given egg didn’t hatch, we cannot simply look internal to the egg (though there could be an infection, a catastrophic genetic mutation, etc. which caused it to fail to hatch), we also need to consider the external contradictions. It would be absurd to discount the impact of sub-zero temperatures on the development of the egg. So too is it absurd to consider the issues, struggles, and challenges that comrades are facing without examining the external conditions in which they occur.

Understanding relationship between external causes and internal causes is no simple matter. If we consider the other example that Mao gives—of how the October Revolution influenced China’s development—we can get a better sense of the complex relationship. On the one hand, there was strong internal basis in China for develop a Communist Party and for this party to lead a huge revolutionary movement. Not only were the domestic class contradictions already intense in China but also, since the Opium Wars China had been subjugated and vivisected by different imperialist powers. These conditions had also generated an intense class struggle, with the Chinese people rising up time and time again against domestic reaction and foreign domination. But despite these heroic efforts, they were unable to liberate the country.

As Mao put it in Reform Our Study: 

For a hundred years, the finest sons and daughters of the disaster-ridden Chinese nation fought and sacrificed their lives, one stepping into the breach as another fell, in quest of the truth that would save the country and the people. This moves us to song and tears. But it was only after World War I and the October Revolution in Russia that we found Marxism-Leninism, the best of truths, the best of weapons for liberating our nation.

If we contrast, for example, the impact of the Russian Revolution on other countries—even on countries like India which had a strong internal basis for the emergence of a mass communist movement and many similar conditions to China—we can see how the same external conditions impacts the development of things differently depending on their internal contradictions. 

This example also shows how important it is to look at internal contradictions in their particularity and not just at the general level. On the surface, India and China were quite similar countries at the time of the October Revolution. Both were semi-feudal countries which were under the domination of foreign imperialism (India under the British Raj, China under the first form of neocolonial rule). Both had seen large-scale rebellions against foreign domination (e.g. in India there was 1857, the Indigo Rebellion, Bhumkal, etc.). Both had a nascent working-class movement developing as well as a strong tradition of peasant struggles, and both were able to quickly form Communist Parties after the October Revolution. But the specific differences between India and China—which are beyond the scope of this piece—meant that the October Revolution impacted both fairly differently, despite the similarities of the countries. And thus no revolution succeeded in India—there was only Partition and transfer of power to the compradors—while China was liberated in 1949.

Without a more granular analysis of the specific differences in the internal contradictions of India and China, it would be impossible to understand the different histories of these countries and why the October Revolution had a different impact on them. To stop at the general level is a form of dogmatism whether we are analyzing countries or comrades. In many cases when examining comrades’ internal contradictions we fall into the trap of dogmatism. We need to rectify this wrong tendency in our ranks.

It can be helpful to refer to CPI (Maoist)’s 2009 Leadership Training Manual in which they explain how comrades’ insecurities and issues express themselves differently depending on the situation:

We say that we are communists, but are born and brought up with the values of the prevailing ruling classes. When we join the Party those ideas do not disappear by themselves. Besides, we live in society which such feudal and bourgeois values are rampant and quite naturally impact us. In such a situation, there is a need for consistent struggle to change ourselves. Some of our incorrect values are deep-rooted in our subconscious and built around a number of insecurities. […] Though we may suppress them under some conditions, they assert themselves in other conditions more aggressively.

It is incumbent upon us to understand the incorrect values that comrades have internalized, to see how the ultimate origin of these is the larger society, to understand the insecurities that comrades have which reinforce these wrong values, and to grasp the conditions in which these wrong values assert themselves. All of this is required so that we can develop rational knowledge of the issues that comrades have. This rational knowledge must then serve as a foundation on which to develop a plan for comrades to transform. This plan must, in turn, be realistic and feasible.¹² We need comrades to make progress in overcoming their issues—not simply to improve themselves, but most fundamentally to advance the revolution—but we need to be clear that we are not striving for purity¹³ and that it will take comrades years to deeply uproot non-proletarian values which have reinforced over decades.

This is not to say that comrades should not or cannot make quick progress. We need comrades to rapidly improve their orientation and better themselves as communists. However, we cannot set standards that expect comrades to completely overcome the contradictions they face or make unrealistic progress. For example, if a comrade is acutely struggling with procrastination, short-term progress needs to be made so that they accomplish tasks on time and so that they don’t leave things to the last minute. But we should not expect that, after some basic CSC, they will be free from struggles with procrastination. This will take years of work, and they will likely backslide at times, especially when faced with acutely challenging external circumstances. The same is true for comrades with other shortcomings.

To better understand the relationship between external and internal contradictions and what sort of progress and transformation is realistic it can be helpful to consider the Long March. The Long March is one of most amazing accomplishments in human history. It was so incredible that when Chiang Kai-Shek’s American military advisors heard about it, they did not believe it was possible or true. The Chinese comrades had to pass through some of the most difficult terrain in all of China with little-to-no supplies, insufficient equipment, and ragged clothing. Throughout the March they constantly dealt with comrades who struggled with motivation and wanted to give up. Given these extremely challenging circumstances, this is not surprising. 

In The Great Road, PLA troops recount the difficulties of the Long March:

Our most bitter trials came when we had to pass along narrow and dangerous mountain paths, through narrow passes, across narrow bridges, or swim icy streams. At such times our advance troops slowed down and the rear ones would take one step forward and stand for ten. We could not move forward and we could not sit down to rest. Some men fell asleep as they stood.

At other times we marched through storms with a fierce wind and rain whipping our bodies. Under such circumstances we would not use our torches and the paths were slippery and dangerous. Sometimes we covered only a few li a night, and, soaked through, had to bivouac in the open.

There was Laoshan (Old Mountain) on the Kwangsi border where we went up a mountain so steep that I could see the soles of the man ahead of me. Steps had been carved out of the stone face of the mountain, they were as high as a man’s waist. Political workers went up and down the columns encouraging our struggling men and helping the sick and wounded….News came down the line that our advance columns were facing a sheer cliff and that there was no way of getting the horses up. After a time came the order to sleep where we were and continue climbing at daybreak.

The path was no more than two feet wide at any point and even if one succeeded in lying down he could not turn over without rolling down the mountainside. There were great jutting boulders everywhere and even the path was covered with sharp stones.

Since there was nothing else to do, I folded my blanket, placed it beneath me, and tried to curl up on the path. I was so weary that I fell asleep. Sometime during the night the cold awoke me. I wrapped the blanket about me and tried to roll myself up in a little round ball, but I still could not sleep. I lay and watched the twinkling stars in the sky. They looked like jade stones on a black curtain. The black peaks towering around me were like menacing giants. We seemed to be at the bottom of a well.

Up and down the path I saw many small fires lit by men also awakened by the cold. They were sitting around and talking in low voices. Apart from their faint voices the silence was so great that I could hear it. It was sometimes near, sometimes far away, sometimes loud and sometimes faint, and at other times like spring silkworms eating mulberry leaves. I listened intently and it sounded like a complaining mountain spring, then like the distant murmur of the ocean…

Next morning my group finally reached the sheer cliff that had stopped us the night before. It was Leikungyai (Thunder God Rock), a solid cliff of stone jutting into the sky at about a ninety degree angle. Stone steps no more than a foot wide had been carved up its face, and up this we had to go without anything to hold onto. Horses with broken legs lay about the foot of the cliff.

Our medical units suffered the most because the sick and wounded had to get off the stretchers and either crawl or be pushed, dragged, or carried up. The women comrades of the Medical Corps ceaselessly comforted and helped the men in their care without once showing any sign of weariness….

Old Mountain was the most difficult mountain we had climbed so far….But after crossing the River of Golden Sands, the Ta Tu River, the Great Snow Mountains, and the Grass Lands, it seemed very small indeed.

Clearly, it would be absurd in these circumstances to consider a comrades’ wavering or struggles with motivation to be necessarily indicative of deep internal issues. Instead of conducting CSC with comrades who struggled, the CCP had political workers going up and down the lines, reminding comrades of the basic reasons for their struggle, of what they were fighting for and why they were undertaking the Long March. The CCP understood that they were not trying to make cadre into “perfect communists” free from division or backwards ideas. Rather they needed to provide the comrades with the support (including, when necessary, CSC) to help them continuously improve their abilities, stay resolute, and serve the people to advance the revolution.

This example, of the Long March, is meant to clarify that in very difficult circumstances even very strong communists will waver and struggle. If we do not understand this then we will not have realistic expectations for ourselves, our comrades, or the people. Instead, we will push comrades unrealistically and see their struggles as indicative of deep problems, instead of understanding the complex interplay between external circumstances and internal issues.

All of this said, there is a positive aspect to the one-sided focus on internal issues that has arisen in our ranks. Namely, that comrades have adopted an orientation of not making excuses for (or dismissing) mistakes that comrades make and issues that they have. We should carry forward this positive aspect of our orientation while simultaneously developing a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between internal contradictions and external contradictions. Only through significantly raising our whole organization’s level of understanding of dialectical materialism will we be able to right this wrong tendency and overcome to obstacle that it presents to our work.

Idealist Notions of Transformation

The rise, within our ranks, of idealist notions of transformation currently constitutes a major obstacle to developing an organizational culture of proletarian discipline. As noted above many comrades have a tendency to reduce transformation to the first half of the dialectical materialist circuit of knowledge and ignore the second half of this circuit. This, in turn, is tied to fantasies of “moral purity” and the rise of lifestyle politics trends in MCU, where comrades attempt to imitate communist conduct without sufficient theoretical or ideological clarity on MLM and our political line. 

To put it bluntly, if comrades are not well-rounded communists with a solid grasp of all aspects of MLM, and if comrades therefore are not able to take independent initiative to think through different questions and situations independently, they will not be able to consistently conduct themselves as communists and any attempts at practicing proletarian discipline will lapse into clowning and lifestyle politics. 

This is not a hyperbolic overstatement to get the point across; it is a basic analysis of a widespread problem that we face. 

To clarify it is helpful to refer to what Lenin wrote in “Leftwing” Communism: 

The experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.

This is often dwelt on. However, not nearly enough thought is given to what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?

As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.

As a small pre-party organization with only limited connections to the working-class movement—a movement which is weak and embryonic right now in the U.S.—we cannot hope to achieve even the level of organizational discipline that the Bolsheviks had in 1903. Understanding this is an essential prerequisite for having realistic expectations for our comrades and our organization as a whole. If comrades expect that, at this stage of development, our organization will run largely without issues and that our comrades will be consistently acting with the heroism and determination which characterized the Bolshevik Party from its inception, then we will be sorely disappointed. We need to have a realistic understanding of where we are at as an organization and what sort of struggles we need to be waging now to improve our discipline and proletarian spirit. We can no more leap over a given stage of development than one can leap over their own shadow. As Lenin notes “these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience.”

We therefore need to be clear about what sort of struggles must be waged now to build up MCU. These struggles are by no means reducible to the CSC we conduct to combat backwards ideas and non-proletarian values in our ranks. Equally important (and at times more important) are the struggles to raise our theoretical level,¹⁴ the struggles to build our ties to and influence within the working-class movement, the struggles to develop a better understanding of our society, the struggles to develop better leadership, and the struggles to craft a correct political line and popularize this line among the masses of people. 

We cannot conduct CSC—which, by the GPCR, Mao preferred to call struggle-criticism-transformation¹⁵—without clarity on these matters. Otherwise CSC will become—as it has at times in our ranks—clowning. This is not to say that things have been all bad, but the tendency to divorce CSC from our practical work, the tendency to see CSC simply as a form of self-improvement (therefore fail to grasp that its purpose is to improve ourselves to better serve the revolution),¹⁶ and the tendency to seek purity (often through fixating on excessively small mistakes) are corrosive petty-bourgeois deviations fundamentally at odds with a proletarian orientation to CSC.

First and foremost, struggle-criticism-transformation needs to be linked to our practical work. This does not just mean that comrades, after conducting CSC, must develop a plan for the comrade who made significant mistakes to transform, but also that the comrades must transform through carrying out the work of making revolution, not just through reflecting on their own issues and the root causes of their non-proletarian values. What’s more, the process of the comrades’ transformation must be understood in the context of the level of development of our organization as a whole. While we want to push comrades to improve as much as possible, this has to be grounded in a materialist understanding of the comrade in question, the depth of their issues, the amount of time it will take to transform, how their particular circumstances (including their political responsibilities) can aid or detract from their transformation, and the level of overall development of our organization. 

We cannot expect that our comrades will all be Bolshevized at this stage of MCU’s existence. As noted above, we are a small pre-party organization. We have a few dozen members in a country of 350,000,000+ people. This country has been the dominant imperialist power in the world for the past 70 years or so. There is a weak working-class movement just beginning to wake up from decades of slumber. We have only limited and provisional ties with this movement. The continuity of revolutionary organizations was broken in the 1940s and again after the defeats of the 1970s. No real communist organization has existed in this country since that point. Among the petty-bourgeois (the class from which we have drawn the vast majority of our ranks) decadence and nihilism reign supreme. Most comrades who joined our ranks had some very basic issues aligning thinking and doing when they first got involved in our work. These are some of our basic material circumstances that we cannot forget or abstract away when considering the process of struggle-criticism-transformation.

It is only by understanding the specific social context in which we emerged and in which we are presently developing that we can have realistic expectations for ourselves, our organization, and our comrades. We have made tremendous progress in the past few years, but we have only a few years of experience under our belts. We have learned some basic lessons. We should be incredibly proud of this. It constitutes the most significant advance for the proletarian cause in this country in the last fifty years. However, we also must understand the scale of this step and just how far we have to go before we are a Party and before we can achieve real proletarian discipline in our ranks. 

To be clear, this does not mean that we should not strive to improve ourselves and our organization. But unrealistic expectations are driven by a petty-bourgeois idealist impetuosity; they are the other side of the coin of nihilistic despondency. Just as there is no royal road to scientific understanding, so too are there no shortcuts to achieving proletarian discipline. This discipline can only emerge through a long period of struggle to build the Party.  

Second, when assessing our comrades’ ability to transform and overcome their issues we need to take into account their overall development as a communist. It is great if a comrade, through the process of CSC, has come to some clarity about the nature of their shortcomings and the social conditioning which gave rise to them. However, if this comrade is still quite shaky in the basics of Marxism, we cannot expect them to carry through the process of struggle-criticism-transformation in all aspects of their life. 

We should not set standards for comrades which are unrealistic for their present level of development as a Marxist. How can a comrade be expected to rigorously apply Marxism to all aspects of their life if they do not have a solid and well-rounded grasp of Marxism?¹⁷ Even if we discuss a comrades’ shortcomings with them and they develop a basic understanding of the nature of their issues, without a solid grasp of dialectical materialism specifically and Marxism more broadly, they will most likely fail to consistently comprehend how, why, and when these very same issues emerge in new social contexts. 

We must therefore set realistic paths forward for our comrades when carrying out CSC. We must not only help them achieve clarity on the root of the issues the face, but also develop plans for addressing their issues which take into account their present level of political development and instill them with both the understanding that the struggle to transform is a prolonged one and the determination to take up this struggle with revolutionary optimism.

Insular Culture

Since the founding of Mass Proletariat we have struggled with an insular organizational culture. This is a challenge that all small communist groups with limited ties to the working class will face, but it is something on which we can make progress. Addressing this issue must proceed in a two-fold fashion. On the one hand we need to grow our ranks and deepen our ties to the working class. On the other hand, we need to clearly identify wrong tendencies in our ranks and shortcomings in our organizational culture which contribute to insularity. The first is something we are already working on as we grow and develop as an organization. However, we need a more conscious effort to address the second. 

The insular culture that has developed in our ranks is, in many senses, a reflection of various petty-bourgeois social trends in the larger society. Unsurprisingly, our organization is not immune to the influence of these trends. Right now, the anti-social tendencies in the U.S. are quite intense even compared with a few decades ago. The atomization of society and the destruction of social fabrics, common spaces, and communities has proceeded rapidly.¹⁸ With the proliferation of cellphones and social media, people are increasing isolated and tend to self-isolate. Work-from-home trends since the start of Covid only intensified these already existing dynamics. We emerged in these social circumstances and they have impacted our organization. We cannot eliminate them once and for all from our ranks (as their complete overcoming requires, as Marx put it, “the abolition of class distinctions generally […] the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest […] the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production [and] the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations,” which is only possible after the revolution) but we can struggle against their pernicious and corrosive influence.

Another such tendency is caused by the Neopuritanical norms that are typical in the small-group left. This is tied to the trend of creating “safe spaces” in petty-bourgeois activist scenes and the related fixation on linguistic shibboleths to differentiate between outsiders and members of the in group.¹⁹

While we have thankfully avoided the most extreme manifestations of this tendency—such as ostracizing those who do not use the correct lingo—some real shortcomings have arisen in our ranks in how we talk about politics broadly, Marxism, and our line. In particular, there is a tendency to use key terms (e.g. “centrality of the industrial proletariat,” “internal contradictions,” “CSC,” etc.) without understanding them sufficiently and—even, at times, when there is sufficient understanding—to use them with contacts and supporters in a way that does not clarify the underlying ideas. This sort of insular jargon is a danger for any organization that collectively develops complex and detailed knowledge which requires highly technical terminology.²⁰ However, the issue is not reducible to this; in fact, it is principally the result of the influence of petty-bourgeois small-group-left tendencies in our ranks. In other words, a form of sloganeering has developed in MCU.²¹

This sloganeering flows from a lack of understanding of Marxism and petty-bourgeois laziness. Instead of carrying out the hard work needed to understand the complexities of the current political situation and our line, many comrades have instead taken up repeating key terms and slogans to disguise—even from themselves—their lack of concrete understanding.²² This tendency speaks to deeper organizational issues, in particular the insularity of our culture, as such blatant sloganeering could not exist if comrades were rigorously and critically engaging with what other comrades put forward. Sloganeering as a widespread organizational tendency can only sustain itself in a climate of group-think and uncritical reflection. Otherwise, it would be extremely obvious when comrades are sloganeering and others would quickly disagree, or push them to be more precise and stop covering over their own lack of knowledge with slogans and technical terminology. 

This tendency is extremely corrosive and has hamstrung our ability to grow and develop as an organization. If our comrades are saying incorrect things and hiding behind the use of slogans and technical terminology this should be criticized and corrected. If comrades not only do not criticize these errors, but actually do not even see them as errors because they themselves have fallen into similar tendencies, then our political unity and organizational discipline will slacken and falter. Not only will we be unable to convey the basics of our line to supporters, contacts, and the broader masses, but we ourselves will not be unified. We will not be able to concentrate correct ideas. We will not be able to achieve unity of thought or unity of action. We will instead experience a myriad of setbacks and difficulties.

The widespread adoption of sloganeering leads to a form of group-think, in which people convince themselves that they are on the same page because they are using the same terms and words. This is a dangerous phenomenon. It hamstrings our organizational ability to understand reality and solve problems. It instills passivity and conservatism where proactivity and courage are needed. It is fundamentally in line with the petty-bourgeois politics of the small-group left, which seeks not to change the world but to carve out, in a larger oppressive society, a social circle whose members can smugly reassure themselves of their moral and intellectual superiority to others. The fact that this tendency has significantly arisen in our ranks is cause for extreme concern and requires immediate action. We must work together to overcome this dangerous deviation.

Comrades should reflect deeply on the ways in which these issues of insular culture, sloganeering, and phrase-mongering have hurt our ability to grow as an organization. To what extent have comrades in local branches and the Open Study been looking for contacts not to have deep political unity and develop their understanding of Marxism, but rather for these contacts to parrot our sloganeering, profess nominal unity with our line, and use the same terminology we do? To what extent have comrades been mistaking form for content, only looking at appearance and not analyzing the essence? 

Despite the concerning degree to which these errors and wrong tendencies have manifested in our ranks, we have a strong examples in our recent organizational history of overcoming aspects of our insular culture. For example, within the last three years we began to make ties with the working-class movement, abandoned our secrecy policy, and overcame a long-standing organizational allergy to serious engagement with semi-Marxist circles. We still have a long way to go to in this regard, but this recent history is a cause for optimism and speaks to the fact that once we come to unity of understanding on these sorts of issues, we can easily achieve unity of action to overcome them. So let us carry forward this struggle with the same energy and spirit of proletarian determination.

Conclusion

Over the past few years we have made tremendous progress as an organization. We now stand on the cusp of a major advance, as we have a political line that is basically correct, we have consolidated our branches, we have functioning transmission belts, we have a growing influence in semi-Marxist circles, we have promising ties to the working class movement, we have hundreds of people interested in our work, and we have a solid core of cadre. However, since the Conference some concerning tendencies and dangerous deviations have arisen in our ranks. We must face these head on and struggle against them. We have already begun this process through the first stage of the rectification campaign, but now we must deepen this campaign, and work to dig up the roots of the weeds of liberalism.

In order to overcome these wrong tendencies and rectify these deviations we need to not only understand the general trends here but also grasp the specific instances in which they have manifested over the past few months. This requires the initiative of comrades at all levels of the organization. Junior comrades cannot expect senior comrades to solve these problems from above, we need both strong leadership from above and dynamic initiative from below. Comrades must think creatively about how these issues have played out in their own particular areas of work, take steps to criticize shortcomings, and work with others to resolve these problems. Comrades should also see this rectification effort as a training grounds to prepare them to more proactively identify and struggle against wrong tendencies as they emerge in the future.

This being said, our fundamental starting point for this rectification effort must be the attitude of unity-struggle-unity. We must understand that this campaign aims not to drive comrades from our ranks or knock comrades down in one blow, but rather to carry out the process of struggle-criticism-transformation across the board. During the course of this campaign, we will realize that some comrades should step down from one position of leadership or another. This is normal and should not be surprising or a cause for demoralization.²³ However, not all comrades who have made mistakes should step down from their leadership positions. Comrades need to work together to be discerning and assess when comrades are not fit for the positions of leadership that they presently hold, and when they can continue to carry out their responsibilities as a leader and—through some struggle, self-criticism, and work to transform—become a better leader. 

Comrades should also recall that it is a disservice to our comrades and to the revolution to fail to critically assess our comrades and their actions. It is an extremely corrosive form of liberalism to “let things slide” for the sake of friendship or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. We must constantly push each other to address our weaknesses and shortcomings so that we can better serve the people and build up the revolutionary movement. Therefore, we must not shy away from critically examining the mistakes our comrades have made, but must instead develop a proletarian culture of open discussion and airing of criticisms. 

Only if we take up this attitude will this rectification campaign be successful. And only if we succeed in rectifying the petty-bourgeois deviations will be able to solidify our current ranks so that we can grow and develop into a Party. Our present core of cadre must develop rapidly into a granite cornerstone of the future proletarian vanguard party. What’s more, overcoming these petty-bourgeois deviations—which is different from eliminating all petty-bourgeois ideas from our ranks—is an essential prerequisite to laying the foundation for fusing Marxism with the working class movement. 

The Central Committee therefore calls on comrades at all levels of MCU to carry forward this rectification campaign with a spirit of enthusiasm and proletarian determination. All working bodies should discuss this document and reflect on how these deviations have manifested in their work. Adopting the attitude of unity-struggle-unity, comrades should take up the struggle in their bodies and the organization as a whole to right these wrong tendencies and improve our overall style of work. Working bodies should summarize their conclusions and share them with the leading bodies overseeing their work, which should, in turn, synthesize key conclusions and help guide the rectification at lower bodies. At the same time, lower bodies should not shy away from criticizing higher bodies and ways that they have promoted and reinforced these tendencies. 

If we take up this campaign with energy and enthusiasm we can quickly correct course, overcome these issues, and strengthen our ability to grow and develop as an organization. We have already begun to address some of these issues in a provisional fashion over the past month, and have seen promising results. In a short period we can address these deviations and thereby prepare ourselves for a period of rapid expansion. 

Let us cast aside liberalism and combat the culture of petty-bourgeois laziness.

Let us build within our ranks a granite theoretical foundation of Marxism so that we can consistently apply Marxism to all aspects of our work and lives. 

Let us rectify our style of work and combat petty-bourgeois ideology so that we can carry out our primary task of organizational expansion. 

Onwards, with our Party building efforts!

1. Even in NYC and on the NC, where things were comparatively better, we still had fairly basic issues which went unaddressed, reflecting some weaknesses in our CSC. ↩︎
2. That said, some of the deviations spelled out below have inhibited our ability to do this as well as is needed at the present juncture. ↩︎
3. This fusion is still years out, but we have come to understand in much more concrete terms how to bridge the gap between where we are now and this eventual fusion. The CC will be writing on these conclusions in the near future. ↩︎
4. In On Protracted War, Mao spoke of the twin deviations that emerged in the War of Resistance Against Japan: The theory of quick victory and the theory of national subjugation. Both of these deviations were ultimately rooted in petty-bourgeois one-sided thinking, impetuosity on the one hand and pessimism on the other. Comrades should reflect deeply on the appearance of these deviations in our ranks. On the other hand, they should also keep in mind Mao’s point that “As for those who are neither subjugationists nor confirmed pessimists, but who are in a pessimistic frame of mind for the moment simply because they are confused by the disparity between our strength and that of the enemy at a given time and in certain respects or by the corruption in the country, we should point out to them that their approach also tends to be one-sided and subjective. But in their case correction is relatively easy; once they are alerted, they will understand, for they are patriots and their errors only momentary.”
   This describes many comrades in our ranks who, in light of the recent difficulties we have faced in fully implementing our line, have seen their revolutionary enthusiasm wane. But through the process of rectification we can reinvigorate their spirits and instill them with optimism once again. ↩︎
5. This amnesia actually began earlier, with the setbacks that the International Communist Movement faced with the rise of modern revisionism. It is important to remember that modern revisionism emerged, in the form of Browderism, full-formed in the U.S. before any other country in the world. The communist organizations that formed in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s failed to sum up the successes and failures of the CPUSA, and ignored many of the most important lessons from the Comintern period as well as the experiences of the Bolshevik Party. ↩︎
6. For example, the obsessive and insular focus on CSC which has arisen in recent months is clearly an overcorrection form a situation where most of our organization was not even practicing a rudimentary form of CSC. ↩︎
7. That said, it is important to understand the difference between new issues that inevitably emerge and those which could have been avoided had we been more vigilant, provided better leadership, had a more clear understanding of some key lessons of Marxism, etc. This requires further reflection. However, it is the provisional view of the CC that some of these mistakes could have been avoided had the CC provided better guidance and had comrades been more clear on the relationship between criticism and self-criticism and the advancement of the revolution. In fact, even when the CC identified some of these issues and came to unity on them, we were not only very slow to issue an organizational notice about them, but some CC members themselves continued to make some mistakes that perpetuated these issues (e.g. using the term “internal contradictions” in an unscientific manner). Overall, these mistakes were relatively minor, but they still delayed the process of rectifying these issues in our ranks and speak to how far we have to go as an organization in order to overcome our own conservatism, indiscipline, petty-bourgeois egoism, and all the habits we have inherited from bourgeois society. Only once we have made much more progress in this arduous struggle can we say that we, as an organization, have achieved a truly proletarian work style and proletarian discipline. ↩︎
8. Reading On Practice and On Contradiction as well as some of Anti-Dühring is a good start for comrades, but if this is all that comrades have read, it is far from sufficient. In contrast, consider the volume of material that would be covered in a Philosophy 101 course in college; this shows how far many comrades are from having even a survey-course-level understanding of Marxist philosophy. ↩︎
9. From this basic understanding of the actual contradiction—the prerequisite for which is properly identifying the two aspects of the contradiction—comrades could then go on to analyze circumstances when each aspect is dominant and, in turn, better understand the particular external conditions which lead to the more acute expression of petty-bourgeois laziness in the comrade in question. This is also a basic step and one which is neglected far too often in our ranks at present. Instead issues comrades face tend to be treated as metaphysical qualities, even if there is some basic analysis of the social origins for these issues. The need to better understand the relationship between internal and external contradictions is discussed in greater detail below. ↩︎
10. The widespread relatively spontaneous adoption of a non-Marxist use of the term “internal contradiction” within our ranks is also tied to the issue of insular organizational culture and broader tendencies for comrades to sloganeer. The fact that this non-scientific usage has become so widespread in our ranks also shows that many comrades (including many leading comrades) are not sufficiently critically engaging with what others are saying and putting forward. In a relatively small organization like ours, the possibility of an insular culture is a particularly acute danger. This issue is often reinforced by use of common terms which, if not critically examined, cover over significant differences, as comrades use the same terms to mean different things. This is a form of sloganeering. All of this is discussed in more detail below. ↩︎
11. As Mao noted in the above quote: “Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes.” ↩︎
12. Comrades have often misunderstood what a plan is. A wrong tendency has arisen in our ranks which sees plans for transformation not as a guide for internal struggle—which requires lots of initiative and thought at every step—but rather as a “Ten Step Program to Fix Yourself!”A plan is not a quick fix, it is a guide to action and to struggle, it is a way to align thinking and doing, which comrades must follow and take up in their daily lives based on the rational knowledge which has been developed through the collective process of CSC. Without a “dare to think, dare to act, dare to struggle, dare to win” orientation on the part of the comrade working to transform, no plan—however complete—will succeed. In general, plans for transformation should be simple and concrete. They should link theory to practice and push comrades to transform not principally through self-reflection (which is a necessary prerequisite to developing a plan and is also important along the way, but not in and of itself sufficient) but through making revolution. ↩︎
13. The latent Puritanical culture in the U.S. has led many comrades to have extremely unrealistic expectations for how their transformations will proceed. Instead of understanding internal contradictions as the basis for the movement and development of all things, they believe that becoming a communist or going through some basic CSC will purge them of any and all backwards ideas and non-proletarian values. When this inevitably does not occur and when these comrades still have some basic struggles and contradictory ideas, they grow quite nihilistic and despondent. This is a manifestation of petty-bourgeois impetuosity which seeks to cut corners and wants “quick fixes” instead of years long struggles to continuously improve as a communist. These ideas are also influenced by “self-help” discourse, “get rich quick” scams, and productivity influencers, our modern carpet-baggers who peddle magical thinking and naive optimism. ↩︎
14. Consider what Lenin wrote in the next paragraph of “Leftwing” Communism:
     “Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia, oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and thoroughness each and every “last word” in this sphere in Europe and America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment. verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.” ↩︎
15. “You people have engaged in the Great Cultural Revolution or struggle-criticism-transformation for two years. Now, in the first place, you are not struggling; in the second place, you are not criticizing, in the third place, you are not transforming. Yes, you are struggling, but it is armed struggle. The people are not happy. The workers are not happy. The peasants are not happy. Peking residents are not happy. The students in most of the schools are not happy. Most students in your school are also not happy. Even within the faction that supports you there are people who are unhappy. Can you unite the whole country this way? You belong to the new Peking University. You “Old Buddha” are in the majority. You are a philosopher. Don’t tell me that there is nobody against you in the new Peking! University commune and among the cultural revolutionaries in the schools. I don’t believe that! They may not say anything in front of you, but they will say devilish words behind your back. Wang Ta-ping, is your work easier?”
    From, Dialogues With Responsible Persons Of Capital Red Guards Congress, a 1968 dialogue between the Cultural Revolution Small Group (CRSG) and various student Red Guard leaders, including Kuai Dafu, after the CRSG sent in the workers to dispersed the armed student groups that had developed on campuses in Beijing. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_81.htm
    This entire incident and dialogue is a helpful of exposure intense manifestations of petty-bourgeois misunderstandings of the process of transformation. See also, William Hinton’s Hundred Days’ War, and Alessandro Russo’s article The Conclusive Scene. ↩︎
16. “By combining ‘correct theory and practice,’ [one] can transform himself, as one can see in the common Chinese word fanshen, which may be freely rendered as ‘transformation of identity.’ The Chinese communists thus believe that the arena of class struggle cannot take place abstractly within the class a whole, but must be fought for within each individual human being,” from Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, (Berkeley, UC Press, 1966), p. 32.
    Comrades should must internalize and promote this understanding of CSC as transformation of ones’ ideas and actions. ↩︎
17. For example, consider all of the complex question one faces in their life: family, romantic relationships, friend dynamics, exercise, diet, etc. If comrades grasp Marxism and can proactively think through these questions with others, then it is possible to make major transformation in one’s life so as to better serve the revolution. However, without a strong understanding of Marxism, comrades will tend towards lifestyle politics and imitating what they see as the socially correct things to do without grasping the political reasons for these changes. Applying Marxism to ones’ life means adopting an attitude—which is grounded in a solid theoretical foundation of Marxism—of unflinching criticisms of all that exists and applying it to one’s basic practices in life. ↩︎
18. C.f. Oscar Newman’s theory of Defensible Spaces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory) and HUD’s decades’ long efforts at the “Deconcentration of Poverty.” ↩︎
19. While shibboleths have long history—and are not always negative—their particular existence in contemporary petty-bourgeois activist circles is tied to the basic nihilistic philosophical tenets of post-modern identity politics. The creation of safe spaces, the fixation on “people-centric language,” and approach of mainly trying to change how people talk about things instead of changing the world are all based on inaugural axiom of radical linguistic nominalism. Namely that there is a fundamental ontological disjunction between objective reality and language (with its most strict adherent outright rejecting any suture of language to being). From this pessimistic premise, it follows that political progress can only be made—or harm only reduced—by means of a rehabilitation of language (and shame on those who do not speak the rehabilitated language!). Radical nominalism—being, as it is, inconsistent in its fundamental philosophical premises—tends towards eclecticism generally (i.e. oscillating between materialism and idealism); most adherents of post-modern identity politics similarly eclectically and inconsistently adhere to radical nominalist philosophy. That being said, it is necessary to understand this philosophy in its pure state in order to grasp the political conclusions that flow from it, even if these politics are generally practiced by those whose world view is an adulterated admixture of different philosophical tendencies which result in an incoherent and kaleidoscopic view of the world. ↩︎
20. A secondary issue here is the proliferation acronyms in MCU over the past few months. Acronyms can be helpful and make speech and writing more concise. However, we need to be discerning when we adopt acronyms, and not just abbreviate countless phrases. For example, in some semi-Marxist circles, people say “PB” instead of petty-bourgeois. Within these groups the acronym is used incessantly, including with many contacts who do not understand what it means. In this way it acts as a shibboleth for those who are “in the know.” What’s more, most of the members of these groups have only the most rudimentary grasp of a Marxist understanding of class. This use of “PB” helps to obscure this and reinforce a false impression that they are all unified theoretically and ideologically. Similar sloganeering tendencies have arisen in our ranks around acronyms like “ICs.” Likewise, a smaller number of comrades have tended to adopted and promote the use of lots of acronyms for less common phrases. We need to struggle against these wrong tendencies, while also keeping in mind that acronyms, in and of themselves, are not the problem and can be helpful. ↩︎
21. It should be noted that, given this preexisting tendency to sloganeering, there is a distinct dangers that these issues persist in the rectification campaign itself. In other words, we face the risk that comrades will sloganeer about rectifying our style of work. We must guard against this danger. ↩︎
22. After the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, sloganeering and phrase-mongering proliferated in Russia. Lenin struggled relentlessly against this tendency, and constantly emphasized the difference between correct, scientific and accurate slogans and sloganeering. In Some Features of the Present Collapse he explains this difference very clearly:
    It is extremely important to grasp the truth, confirmed by the experience of all countries which have undergone the defeat of a revolution, that one and the same psychology, one and the same class peculiarity (that of the petty bourgeoisie, for example) is displayed both in the dejection of the opportunist and in the desperation of the terrorist.
    “All are agreed that there is no hope of an armed uprising in the more or less immediate future.” Meditate over this flashy and hackneyed phrase. These people have evidently never stopped to consider the objective conditions which at first give rise to a full-scale political crisis, and then, when the crisis becomes acute, to civil war. These people have learned by heart the “slogan” of armed uprising, without having understood the meaning of this slogan or its applicability. That is why, after the first defeats of the revolution they so lightly throw aside their ill-digested slogans, taken on trust. Whereas if these people valued Marxism as the only revolutionary theory of the twentieth century, if they had studied the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, they would have seen the difference between phrase-mongering and the development of really revolutionary slogans. The Social-Democrats did not put forward the “slogan” of insurrection either in 1901, when demonstrations caused Krichevsky and Martynov to begin shouting about “the assault”, or in 1902 and 1903, when the late Nadezhdin called the plan of. the old Iskra “literary exercises”. They put forward the slogan of insurrection only after January 9, 1905, when not a single person could doubt any longer that a general political crisis had broken out, that it was growing more acute daily and hourly, by the direct movement of the masses. And within a few months this crisis led to insurrection.
    What lesson follows from this? The lesson that we must now carefully follow the new political crisis that is now brewing, teach the masses the lessons of 1905 and the inevitability of every acute crisis developing into an insurrection, and strengthen the organisation that will release this slogan at the moment the crisis arrives. But it is a barren occupation to ask, “is there hope in the immediate future”? The state of affairs in Russia is such that no thoughtful socialist will venture to prophesy. All that we know and can say amounts to this, that without reconstructing agrarian relations, without completely breaking up the old land system, Russia cannot live—but live she will. The struggle is about whether Stolypin will succeed in breaking it up the landlords’ way, or whether the peasants, under the leadership of the workers, will do it themselves to suit their own purpose. The business   of the Social-Democrats is to imbue the masses with a clear understanding of this economic foundation of the growing crisis, and to train up a serious party organisation which could help the people to assimilate the abundant lessons of the revolution, and would be capable of leading them in struggle, when the maturing forces become fully ripe for a new revolutionary “campaign.”
    But this reply, of course, will seem “vague” to people who regard “slogans,” not as a practical conclusion from a class analysis and assessment of a particular moment in history, but as a charm with which a party or a tendency has been provided once and for all. Such people don’t understand that incapacity to adapt their tactics to the differences between fully defined and not yet defined moments is the result of political inexperience and narrowness of outlook. ↩︎
23. As Mao put it “Both inside and outside the Party there must be a full democratic life, which means conscientiously putting democratic centralism into effect. We must conscientiously bring questions out into the open, and let the masses speak out. Even at the risk of being cursed we should still let them speak out. The result of their curses at the worst will be that we are thrown out and cannot go on doing this kind of work—demoted or transferred. What is so impossible about that? Why should a person only go up and never go down? Why should one only work in one place and never be transferred to another? I think that demotion and transfer, whether it is justified or not, does good to people. They thereby strengthen their revolutionary will, are able to investigate and study a variety of new conditions and increase their useful knowledge. I myself have had experience in this respect and gained a great deal of benefit. If you do not believe me, why not try it yourselves.” ↩︎