Dear comrades,
I would like to propose this as a subject of discussion on this list, and
hope that we can have some exchange of experiences. I direct questions
particularly to other comrades from the major capitalist countries, and in
particular also to the comrades in Britain, since the situation there is
somewhat closer to that of the United States. (This is not by any means to
downplay the experience of comrades in the dependent countries - the
contradictions there are in general on a much higher level, and even among
the imperialist countries the U.S. is still relatively more backwards,
despite some movement.)
In particular, the Marxist-Leninist movement in the major imperialist
countries has been rather weak for the last several decades, mainly because
it has very weak ties with the working class. (There are many historical
reasons for this, in the US in particular the role of US imperialism as the
dominant imperialist country since World War II, its driving out the great
majority of revolutionaries from the trade unions in the McCarthy period of
the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the fact that the CPUSA succumbed to
revisionism and has acted mainly as a tail of the Democratic Party and the
union bureaucrats within the working class.)
What I would like to learn from other comrades is any examples (positive or
negative) of the experience of MLs working in the workers movements in their
countries. I am partly inspired on this question by a short discussion I had
with Harpal Brar from Britain a few years ago, during which I asked him why
they were spending so much of their effort in the Socialist Labor Party. His
reply was: "In Britain, everything outside of the SLP is just a sect." I
readily understood his point, as I was then working in a miniscule ML group
(which I am still in and which does irregularly put out fairly good
agitation and propaganda), and I replied: "If we (my group) worked very hard
over the next few years, we might be able to become big enough to be called
a sect."
I have been spending a considerable amount of time since then trying to do
some work in the workers movement as such, which I will try to describe in
future posts when I get a chance. But I am interested in hearing from other
comrades about this. I would remind comrades of what both Lenin and the
History of the CPSU(B) said, talking of the period before Iskra, that at
that time the workers movement and the Marxist movement were separated from
each other, and that this served to the weakening of both of them. (IF
anyone wants the exact quote, I will look it up - I think the point is very
relevant to those of us in the major imperialist countries.)
Fraternally,
George
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