Melvin P.
Detroit, Michigan

This comment on one of the main issues being debated on the left today is from Melvin P., a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (among other organizations), whose review of Revolution in the Air is posted in the review section.

A post from the marxist-leninist e-mail list:

The issue isn't of few people "breaking" with the Democratic party of fighting "daily issues" but of proletarian forces, the few that are organized, breaking with opportunism and ruthlessly, painstakingly and systematically struggling against all manifestations of opportunism to expose it as such to the working class in appropriate forms (and not as if they were already conscious and organized, i.e., not to fellow travelers) so that the class can make a break with opportunism. For this, the vast number of different ways in which opportunism and imperialism operate in life day in and day out has to be exposed and struggled against.

Reply by Melvin P.:

The US Presidential elections . . . the heading of this thread . . . above all deals with electoral politics. One either votes or not votes. Within the category of voting or not voting is a field of operation that depends on ones purpose or goals, ones human forces and organizational strength.

One cannot fight opportunism by "fighting opportunism."

In 1976 we made a political assessment that a "Vote Communist Campaign" in Detroit had a chance at success in the electoral arena . . . meaning a chance of winning. When this campaign was launched it consisted of various fronts and kinds of activity that spanned from seeking trade union support, endorsements, voter registration, distribution and sells of the party press, recruiting members, galvanizing our propaganda apparatus across the board, the establishment of book clubs, expanding the outreach of our bookstore, etc.

That is how we fought opportunism.

In 1978 we resolved to once against conduct a "Vote Communist Campaign" . . . fully understanding that the great majority of the lowest and most poverty stricken section of the workers do not vote. Our campaigns are never run to "expose the system" but rather to put before our class local and national issues on the basis of the self interest of the workers.

Political newspapers and leaflets are used to "expose the system" . . . or as a tribune of the people . . . against police violence and abuse and social injustice. Electoral politics is a specific creature with its own operational laws. It is an election . . . parliamentary form of engagement and not social or political revolution.

During this period of time . . . the mid and late 1970s . . . the question of "breaking with the Democratic Party" was not an issue for us because our campaign was the material realization of such a breach in the first place. Nor was it simply a question of the size of our forces . . . which was considerable . . . but rather the actual level of organization and the social consciousness of the people who really vote . . . as they experience the impact of a section of society in motion or confronting the state.

Detroit was still reeling from the last great strike wave in the industrial sector . . . and a sizable minority of the workforce had the capacity to influence the broad masses. There were scores of activists and groups at interplay.

For a host of reasons the rest of the country lagged behind this process, which would express itself in the electoral arena. Detroit had been on political fire since the 1967 Rebellion. The 1967 Rebellion was the first significant expression of the coming political separation between the black workers and the black bourgeoisie.

Although the Watts Rebellion in 1965 represented the new political juncture . . . and expressed the encirclement of American imperialism by the fighting colonial masses of earth . . . Detroit 67 . . . expressed an internal development in the African American Peoples Movement where the industrial proletariat and most poverty stricken proletarians came to the fore. Detroit 67 reaffirmed the rejection of nonviolence as a strategy or tactic.

A breach was created in the political sphere.

In 1968 something new happened with the formation of DRUM . . . Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and later the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Numerous forms of organization would later spring up including MCLL (Motor City Labor League) and all kinds of factory clubs and cells.

Political fissures already existed in Detroit going back to the formation of Michigan's Freedom Now Party (its 1963 run in Michigan). Prior to this the old National Negro Labor Council . . . locally based in Local 600 of the Ford Rouge complex dissolved under the blows of McCarthyism and the House un-American Activity Committee, but not before Coleman Young Jr. would destroy the membership list and in a stirring denunciation of the Committee refuse to be a "stool pigeon." In a real way the LRBW represented the culmination of deep splits and tension in the union movement as well as opposition to the local and state Democratic Party politics and housed within itself various and all interest of the mass of African Americans and activists striving to represent the most poverty stricken from the standpoint of a historic political motion of black workers and militant unionists.

The split in the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers lead to the formation of "From The Ground Up" group and later "DARE" (Detroiters for A Rational Economy), which lead the electoral charge and the anti-terror campaign through its "State of Emergency Committee.

The reaction increased a hundred fold since 1967 . . . but by 1972 the Detroit electorate elected an openly Marxists Judge to a ten year term . . . Justin Ravitz.

The Mayoral election of 1973 was vicious and resulted in the election of Coleman Young Jr. . . . who we supported . . . against the fascists police chief who publicly announced he would "get us" and increase the terror against "the agitators" and "criminals."

Mayor elect Coleman Jr. Young carried out his agreements with us and immediately abolished the Red Squad section of the Police Department and released all of our files and surveillance reports. Also abolished was the STRESS squad . . . the extra legal terror organization of the police department that had killed a dozen or so people.

Part of the fight against "opportunism" involved mobilizing 5000 people in protest and turning in 40,000 signatures demanding the abolishment of STRESS. What we where faced with was the evolution of the Police Department as "call back and contact" (the dialectic) of reaction in response to the 67 Rebellion. The dialectic of reaction contains its own process, which we responded to in the electoral arena . . . following the political assault launched by "From the Ground Up" and "Dare" . . . to as well as armed self-defense.

Armed self-defense means when you are shot at . . . shoot back. This was the logic of the rejection of non-violence as a strategy.

Thus, by the mid 1970s the political environment and social consciousness allowed not just us but numerous parties and groups to launch successful "3rd Party Campaigns" . . . with the SWP conducting a significant state wide campaign.

"Proletarian forces" does not mean the "force of the proletariat" as an abstraction. Proletarian forces can only means having the organizational ability to command troops and maneuver in the electoral arena . . . in the context of this thread.

The working class does not "break with opportunism" as a theory postulate or ideological category. The working class does not wake up one day and say . . . "gee I need to break with opportunism because it is not good for me and my class interest."

What happens is a politically active segment of the population . . . drawn from all classes and stratum . . . achieve a political and organizational reality that articulates specific demands that can rally that section of the workers already in motion . . . and on this basis the entire working class undergoes galvanization . . . and the more backward section are drawn in its wake and radicalized.

There are an infinite number of sides to the social process and they are expressed within society and numerous organizations. Within America during this time were the growth and proliferation of a dozen or so communist and Marxists groups and hundreds if not thousand of study circles. Although these groups existed more than less outside formal organizational unity . . . as a totality they represented the ability to maneuver and manipulate a fighting section of the class.

Under such conditions the strategy was to "organize all who could be organized" as a strategy. From the standpoint of electoral politics - the heading of this thread . . . work in the electoral arena produces an impact on the organization that undertakes such work.

What happens internally to an organization intimately involved in this electoral process is that a sizable section always rebels against electoral work. Comrades rebel not because they have mistaken thoughts or feelings but because . . . if you actually achieve a certain unity as a political catalyst engaging the electoral arena . . . then your organization is going to express that section of the proletarian masses that do not and refuse to vote.

The question is not an abstract breaking with the Democratic Party . . . which has already fundamentally taken place as the result of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and his run for President. This is the base reason why I do not write about breaking with the Democratic Party . . . because the "break" has already occurred.

What has not occurred is the national formation of a working class party and by this I do not mean a Leninists party . . . but an organized national forum that can articulate national demands and not slogans like . . . "No Kerry/No Bush."

The broader question is never posed as "the working class breaking with opportunism" as such . . . because we are really taking about 90% of American society. The issue is fighting along a trajectory that wins that section of the workers in motion . . . at any given moment . . . and on this basis raise national issues from the standpoint of the class interests of the proletarians as a whole . . . as view through the lens of the most poverty stricken sector.

In respect to electoral work and the Presidential elections of today . . . the issue is not strategy in general or tactics in general or deploying the proper tactics . . . in general. The issue is the preservation of our forces and their consolidation and training . . . their education in a communist tradition. This means determining what is possible . . . today.

Thus this thread is not really about the US Presidential elections as strategy and tactics but rather something akin to what various individuals think they think about the upcoming election.

That is why we end up taking about "fighting opportunism" and "struggling against imperialism."

I would suggest two books to understand the breath and depth of the 1970s and early 1980s. Detroit I Do Mind Dying by Dan Georgakas/Marvin Surkin and Revolution in the Air by Max Elbaum.