“The reality of building and maintaining a revolutionary organization across an entire country is messy. Regrettably, this is something that some non-party formations abroad do not appreciate for various reasons. Many Maoists who are involved in “pre-party” projects, for example, have no understanding of the difficulties of party life because of the regionalism of where they are located. Some of these Maoists like to make damning proclamations about our practice without a holistic understanding of our practice because they are only reacting to interactions on social media, and have no conception of the challenging nature of day-to-day reality of party work. Imagine, for a moment, that you are part of a political formation which exists beyond your immediate region. Imagine that there is a Central Committee elected from elements across your entire country. Local problems are investigated by bodies that are not part of that locality; local leadership is no longer the highest leadership of the mass movements. Problems are no longer so simple; solutions are no longer so easy to declare. This is precisely what we are facing now, as a party that has transcended regionalism, and localized “pre-party” cadre in the USA should pay attention to this shift. If they succeed in building a party, these challenges will affect them as well.” (“On the Misrepresentation of Line Struggle”)
While the Canadian opportunists fail to be upfront or direct about whom they are talking about, we find it appropriate to respond to this paragraph as we are certain they speak of the Red Guards collectives in various cities across the US, as these are the only organized pre-Party formation in this country. For starters they are correct that we do not have a Communist Party in the US (yet), and Canada does indeed have a Communist Party—fortunately they are not in it. So we speak on equal footing as non-Party organizations. Their opportunist clique is not recognized by us as a Party and it should not be recognized by the rest of the International Communist Movement (ICM) either. They assume that we do not investigate problems outside of our respective cities; they assume that we do not cross-pollinate or investigate and guide new formations. They base these assumptions on no evidence at all, however, and their deployment of these claims is nothing more than a diversion. No organization or organizations serious about the initiation of armed struggle would be public about this sort of political work and construction anyway. We hold that, between open and clandestine work, clandestine work is principal. We hold that direct lived experience (if we do in fact lack it) is still not the sole criterion for the accumulation of knowledge—we agree with Mao that social practice in three types is how we develop and enrich knowledge. Social practice is not limited to the lived experience of a singular Party, or in this case a self-interested clique of revisionists. Applying the general to the particular means we arm ourselves with the experience and analysis of the whole history of class struggle in the ICM. In short we can comprehend the difficulties faced by any countrywide Party from any point in history. Despite lacking the firsthand experience of those in the Bolshevik Party, for instance, we still grasp, uphold, and apply its lessons.
The argument of the opportunists that we could not possibly understand their fake-Party because we are not yet a Party is telling of their overall identitarian brand of politics. Here their self-identification as a “Party” provides them with a unique lived experience that anyone outside of this clique cannot possibly grasp, regardless of whether or not they materially qualify as a genuine Party. We assert that they do not. We have all heard the arguments of identity politics that insist that without having experienced a specific list of this or that oppression and discrimination one can never possibly understand some specific condition. This is outright opposed to Marxism and we insist that nothing is beyond comprehension. We can fully understand what a revolutionary Party looks like and what a revisionist Party looks like without having to take on the identity of revisionism, or self-identify as something that contradicts reality. In essence their argument boils down to the revisionist argument that if you have not self-identified as a Party, you must support anything that does and always refrain from criticizing it, because without self-identification you cannot possibly analyze it. This is a thinly veiled way of saying “do not oppose revisionism.”
Years ago supporters of this same opportunist clique would encourage US comrades to set aside the ongoing ideological debates and just form the “Party.” Fortunately no one of consequence heeded this awful advice. We uphold the Maoist process of unity-struggle-unity; we persist in patient work and ideological struggle, moving ever closer to founding a genuine Maoist Party in the US. We affirm that all work must proceed from a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, an unimportant matter to them that is beneath their engagement. The obvious defect in their rationale, which attests to their opportunist waving of their faked “Party” status, is that conditions in the US are vastly different from the conditions in Canada. For starters while geographically similar in landmass, our two countries have very different populations. Ours is much, much larger, and theirs is mostly along their southern border. Perhaps if we focused only on organizing in a smaller pool along the northern border we could falsely call ourselves a “Party” too. We state that it is they who have not managed to grasp the difficulty in building a Party or a countrywide organization in a population the size of the US, spread out as far as our population is. They would do well to remember that we have accomplished great strides in our span of existence. The Red Guards movement, which has existed for significantly less time, is already gaining on if not surpassing their “countrywide Party” in terms of participation, mass support, campaigns, and political development. It is strange and inappropriate for them to have such a pompous attitude due only to their self-identification with no regard to what they are in essence—a revisionist assortment of loose eclectic groups—a “Party” in form but not the Communist Party in essence. This is clear in their insistence that the Canadian proletariat has no vanguard.
While the majority of their document attacks the actual Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party in Canada (PCR-RCP), and we have no intention of speaking for them, we must assert that revisionism and Communism are in constant battle. The opportunist’s stance on opposing polemics in the sham-PCR’s document is nothing more than a stance for opposing ideological struggle against revisionism. We also affirm the document “We Are the Continuators” issued by the real PCR-RCP (pcr-rcp.ca) as the red line in Canada against Canadian revisionism. We recognize the PCR-RCP and its historical leadership based in Montreal as the sole representative of the Canadian proletariat, and as the only Maoist Party in North America. We have learned a great deal from them in terms of street tactics, articulation of military strategy, and political analysis. We are glad to hear that they have demarcated themselves from the trash articles in Arsenal no. 9. Our collective leadership has had the opportunity to study the contents of the journal and were repulsed by its revisionist content. The fact that the opportunists seek to flaunt collaboration on this trash in opposition to the Maoists’ denunciation of it only proves that they do not regard learning from past mistakes as a virtue. Montreal, having broken fully with the right-opportunists who once infested their Party, is now freely opposing such nonsense publically. This is a great development for the class struggle in Canada and is in service of the world proletarian revolution. Two-line struggle is an internal motor for Party development; this principle does not extend to external revisionists. It is enough to celebrate that one has divided into two—and this has strengthened the red line of the true and legitimate PCR-RCP based out of Montreal. We wish to see the right-opportunist line roundly and thoroughly defeated, resolutely, once and for all!
It is impossible to develop two-line struggle with those who have separated themselves from the ICM the way that these red-washed revisionists in the Canadian opportunist camp have done. It would be absurd to engage with them in private or as comrades when we consider them revisionists and traitors. We affirm the teachings of the Communist Party of Peru and we reiterate that we must “combat imperialism, revisionism and worldwide reaction inseparably and implacably.” We understand them to firmly belong to the white-capitulationist line struggling to assert itself in the ICM. We understand the opportunist camp in Canada to be part of the colossal scrap heap that is to be swept from the face of the earth.
We oppose the contents of Arsenal no. 9, and we oppose the existence of the sham organization parasitically poaching the name of the PCR-RCP at the website pcrrcp.ca. We oppose the banal intellectual masturbation of the revisionist J. Moufawad-Paul and his criminal work Continuity and Rupture, whose other work is at the website moufawad-paul.blogspot.com. We uphold, defend, and apply MLM and remain at our post—that is, building the Communist Party in the US. We support and recognize the real Revolutionary Communist Party in Canada found at the website pcr-rcp.ca.
While we remain in opposition to empiricism, both our firsthand experience and our study of MLM warn us about these types of opportunists and have trained us to know the difference between revisionists and revolutionaries. We call on all US Maoist organizations and supporters to take a principled stand in defense of the red line in Canada; we call on all Parties and organizations that are part of the ICM to support the real and legitimate PCR-RCP, and to denounce revisionism, rightism, postmodernism, centrism, and all other degenerate ideas that prey on our ideology.
To paraphrase Comrade Chiang Ching, we would rather have our heads chopped off than concede to revisionism.
Long live the International Communist Movement!
Long Live the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada!
Do not give revisionism an inch!
Build up the Red Guards!
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