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Revolution Today: USA
by the Progressive Labor Party
NY: Exposition Press, 1970, 355pp. pb
[MC5 provides dates of context: In August, 1966, China's highest official political organ, Peking Review published a major speech by Robert Williams. Two months later, the Black Panther Party formed. A large portion of the SDS identified more closely with the BPP than the PLP. In June 1969, SDS and PLP split. In November 1971, PLP condemned Mao and the reversal of workers power in China which it said happened in the 1960s with definitive defeat in 1969. These quotes are from the PLP book Revolution Today published in 1970, that PLP rarely mentions anymore. I have retyped the quotes that show PLP's divergence from Mao and were hence "unorthodox" despite appearances contrary maintained till 1971. After 1970 the PLP had become much more sectarian in setting out on a mission to be the only correct party in the world while all armed struggles existing were deemed incorrect. We have found few PLP members with any idea about this material, but the PLP does include the essay "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," on its website. Since even PLP does not go over the history anymore, MIM lists these quotes from 1969, including some from February before the split in SDS. The February quotes can in fact be deemed part of the cause of the SDS split. Reading them caused some people in SDS to turn toward the Weatherman and RYM II. It can be fairly said, that as with Khruschev, PLP's abandonment of principle caused splits, in this case on the question of revolutionary nationalism and two-stage revolution; albeit, Ho Chi Minh had been causing special problems to the communists leading the anti-war movement in the united $tates before PLP became problematic.] "In the past we in the Progressive Labor Party have been guilty of creating illusions about Black nationalism and nationalists. In our early period we were one-sided; because we supported the resistance of nationalists like the Muslims and Robert Williams, we viewed them as generally good. We failed to understand that nationalism is reactionary, and that this is the main aspect. We made similar errors internationally. We were wrong in evaluating Ben Bella, and then Boumedienne. We were wrong in our evaluation of Sukarno." (p. 263) --Progressive Labor Party, February 1969 "Though we no longer believe that the Vietnamese leadership is fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, we support the efforts of the people against imperialism and demand that the U.S. get out now, regardless of what type government the Vietnamese wish to set up. We also call upon the Vietnamese workers and peasants to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only way they can determine their own destiny." "We regard this as a principled concession to nationalism because it is within the framework of a serious fight against imperialism. If not for the anti-imperialist struggle there would be no reason for the concession." (p. 265) --Progressive Labor Party, February 1969 "Revisionist politics of Soviet 'aid' and negotiations with the U.S. are opposed to revolutionary politics of rejecting Soviet 'aid' and standing firm on U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now. "The Vietnamese people could have driven out the U.S. and established socialism. But because many of their leaders have stopped halfway, the U.S. will be able to thwart both possibilities." (p. 280) --Progressive Labor Party, "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," August, 1969. "For many years we in the Progressive Labor Party held to the idea of two types of nationalism: revolutionary and reactionary. But a look at world reality shows there is no such thing. Nationalism is either the path to oppression by an outside imperialist or the road back to capitalism from socialism. Any form of nationalism is bad!" (p. 284)--Progressive Labor Party, "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," August, 1969. "The SWP still hails Robert Williams, one of the most divisive forces. Williams' hate-whitey line would perpetuate the split in the working class. The main aspect of Williams' line is to build a Black bourgeoisie. . . It's a hollow joke when some forces refer to the PLP as Trotskyist for rejecting SWP-C.P. idols and ideas." (pp. 290-1)--Progressive Labor Party, "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," August, 1969. "We have read Lenin and Stalin on the national question. And we would like everyone to consider all ideas that they expressed on this question, because we feel that the essence of their position was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. We readily admit that it has been difficult for us to grasp this idea because we ourselves have been weakened by revisionist ideas. We thought of the national question as a gimmick. And we found it hard to grasp the complexities of Lenin and Stalin on this question. We don't pretend that what we do or say is necessarily what they meant or did themselves. And we don't feel that the quotations we read are the final authoritative answer on the national question." (pp. 294-5)--Progressive Labor Party, "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," August, 1969. "During the Chinese Revolution there were those who said that you couldn't skip stages and go from feudalism to socialism. They said China had to have capitalism first. . . One of the great contributions of the Chinese communists was to smash this idea. By leaping from feudalism to socialism they speeded up the revolutionary process and greatly intensified imperialist contradictions. . . The Chinese Revolution proved you could skip stages, that socialism could triumph in a country without a significant industrial base." (pp. 295-7)--Progressive Labor Party, "Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism," August, 1969. [MC5 comments: The above quotes reveal that the Progressive Labor Party was already attacking Mao in February 1969, before the final closing down of the Red Guards and before PLP's split with SDS. From this, and other documented tensions with the Black Panthers, we at MIM conclude that the main driving force behind PLP's switch of line was the Black Panther Party and that PLP was unhappy with Mao's attention to Robert Williams. The mention of the SWP with regard to Robert Williams was a pathetic ruse by the PLP to avoid mentioning Mao. The PLP went out on a limb to drop the major theses of Lenin, Stalin and Mao on the stages of revolution in a semi-feudal context. The last quote is another ruse, because the Chinese communists did not see it that way. They believed they went through stages. The PLP had to do all that to attack both the BPP and the united front with the Vietnamese. In other words, first the PLP attacked on the national question. Then it realized it had to drop the two-stage theory of revolution in Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Next they realized they also had to drop the united front idea, and they did that too in their Road to Revolution III magazine. Then to avoid being called national chauvinist, the PLP made anti-racism one of its cardinal questions. Of course, the PLP quote above about the Vietnamese not being able to kick out the united $tates despite going revisionist proved historically wrong. The United $tates left completely in 1975 despite the revisionist leadership in Vietnam. We at MIM are not surprised: Vietnam was semi-feudal and thus the national revolution did bring progress to Vietnam.]
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