INTRODUCTION:

     In the 20 months since the formation of the Party, many gains have been made. The struggle to form the Party involved a period of summation of experience, of what happened when various lines were applied to work in many industries and areas. This struggle was particularly intense in fighting against Right errors, particularly Economism, and narrow trade-unionism. A better understanding of the nature and depth of the capitalist crisis was developed; the role and tasks of revolutionary proletarian leadership was focused on. The question of the single spark method of turning isolated sparks of resistance into campaigns of the whole class, was sharpened.

     Since the formation of the Party, key gains have been made, in building the struggle, organization, and consciousness of workers all over the country. These gains have been made precisely by grasping the line of the Party, analyzing the conditions, and applying the mass line, uniting the workers to fight, and combatting subjectivism through the course of each fight and in its wake.

     But it hasn't been a straight-line upward; there have been twists and turns reflecting the relationship of classes—the desperation and degree of unity of the capitalists in fighting us, and the working class' level of consciousness and orgaization [sic] in fighting them. And questions have come from many workers themselves, and from us: "Shouldn't we take care of our own backyard first," and "We can't do too many things at once," and "We're going to isolate ourselves if we make a controversy over outside issues."

     Some of these same questions have been sharpened alot through the planning carrying out (or not carrying out) and summing up the work around certain key campaigns like July 4, the Elections, May Day, ALD, the International Hotel, and the National Workers Organization, as well as the study, discussions, and struggles over the CC report and the pamphlet on the mass line. "What is the relationship between the Day to Day Struggle and the Revolutionary Goal? Is it the same as the relationship of the mass line and "doing strictly Marxist work?" These are theoretical questions that deserve much study, but they are also questions that come up every day in the work.

     Yet while Party members are seriously and honestly exploring these questions as life-and-death questions for the Party and the revolutionary movement, there also is, in one branch, a reactionary Bourgeois pessimist trend that is attempting to seize on the question of our revolutionary tasks; to distort Mao, and some of his teachings on the mass line, to oppose the whole of Marxism-Leninism, Mao TseTung Thought, and specifically the question of doing strictly Marxist work; to pit the Day to Day struggle against the Revolutionary goal—particularly the policy of the Party to take up class wide battles and mobilize the class to lead the fight against all oppression. It is important for cadre to thoroughly understand this line and the dangers that it represents, especially in this period when we are at the beginning of a spiral, results do not come quick or easy, and the temptation is there to "chase the wisp of painless progress."

WHY ARE WE COMMUNISTS?

     We live in the USA. We see great wealth. We see great suffering. We see vast corruption. We see terrible injustice. We see widespread decadence and crime. We see police brutality and the systematic oppression of whole peoples because of their nationality. We see the imperialist plunder of other lands. We see the exploitation of the working class—everyday! We've known even before we took up Marxism-Leninism-Mao TseTung Thought, that there had to be a change; there had to be a better way. Through the course of struggles against one or another of the crimes committeed by this system and the class that profits by it, and by coming into contact with and beginning to learn about MLM, we found there was a way to change the world, to eliminate this rotten system and replace it with a new one in the interests of the great majority of mankind.

     To change the world! To build a world without war and crime and unemployment. To end the rule of the rich and the exploitation of man by man. This is what we are fighting for! It's a mighty big task. How can we do it? We learn from history and we learn from our own experience only the working class leading the masses in their millions can do it. We learn from history and our own experience that the workers must be mobilized in struggle and armed with an understanding of themselves and their historic role as a class, of the source of all the problems we face—the capitalists and their system, and of the need to overthrow that system and build socialism and communism. In short, we learn that the working class through the class struggle must become class conscious.

     We know that our goals are correct, we know that our demands are just. But we have learned through our own experience in going among the masses, out to our fellow workers, that they do not at the present time see the need for revolution. They have many questions and doubts about their own class, its ability to unite, struggle and change the world. They are frequently skeptical, even hostile towards communism. "Even if you guys are right about this system," many say, "what makes you think there's anything better, isn't there always going to be someone on top and the rest getting ripped off at the bottom?"

     So sometimes we back off and we say, "Wait a minute! How can we unite and lead the workers when they don't even agree with us?" We know that we must unite with the workers. We must not isolate ourselves. We seek leadership from our organization and we get a very serious and penetrating summation of our org's work since its founding. And the necessity of doing "strictly Marxist work" and "sticking to the high road" is raised. At the same time a campaign for the study of the Mass Line is launched.

     In some quarters the question is raised: "Isn't the mass line for uniting with the workers and won't doing strictly Marxist work isolate us from them?" The answer is no—only by doing strictly Marxist work can we correctly apply the mass line, and only by correctly applying the mass line can we do strictly Marxist work.

     We unite with the masses in struggle. But always with the goals of revolution, socialism, and communism in mind. We unite with the masses in struggle because we know that people do not learn primarily through the exchange of ideas but through engaging in struggle and summing up the lessons. But we also know that nobody learns solely through their own experience. In fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience. And so, while applying the mass line means uniting with the workers on the job in struggle and summing up the lessons gained there, it cannot possibly mean just that. It means summing up the experience of the masses in their millions through the country and the world, bringing out the lessons learned in the class struggle everywhere. Further, the masses don't simply learn from the struggle being waged today, but from the historical experience of all class socienty [sic] and struggles waged to move society forward. The masses have learned a good deal about this system from the experience of Watergate, Vietnam and various struggles in recent years. But they have also learned from the experience of the Great Depression and Roosevelt; from the oppression of the Indians and the system of slavery as well as from the Civil War, the fight for the 8 hour day, the struggles to build unions, the fight for Civil Rights. Immigrants particularly have knowledge of imperialism's role in other countries and the fights for Independence, historically and today.

     The mass line is not the "gathering" of ideas and experiences in some sort of opinion poll, either. Do we just pull together everything people are saying and put out what is popularly acceptable at the time? How do we determine what is correct and incorrect? It is on the basis of a concrete analysis of concrete conditions that we apply the mass line, that we know what is correct by "what corresponds to the development of society and will move the class struggle ahead," as Mao says. After all, where do correct ideas come from? Do they come from other ideas? No. Correct ideas, as Mao says, "come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle, and scientific experiement. It is man's social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes the world." And what are the ideas characteristic of the advanced class? Marx wrote, (in the Holy Family), "The question is not what this or that proletarian, or even the whole of the proletariat considers as its aim. The question is what the proletariat is, and what, consequent on that being, it will be compelled to do."

     Does this mean that we don't care what the masses think? No, that is not what Marx means either. Marx is pointing out that the laws that govern the development of society are independent of man's will; that the material development of society—the ability of society to produce—comes inevitably into sharper and sharper contradiction with the class relations of society; that inevitably, independent of anyone's will, society will resolve those contradictions through revolution. These are objective laws of society—they are no mystery. To the extent that the proletariat understands these laws, to that extent opportunities will be seized, step by step, to move the struggle of today toward revolution and freedom.

     The mass line is not a gimmick for "getting over" with the massexs [sic] or simply "the method of mobilizing the masses." It is not simply for giving the workers more understanding of the conditions they face in their day-to-day struggle on their particular job, although that is part of it. But it is mainly for broadening and deepening the workers understanding of the world and how it is to be changed. The mass line is for making (blind) fighters for one into (conscious) fighters for all.

     Contrast these two summations of the basis of the mass line:

1. "The mass line is based upon faith in the masses, on reliance and trust in the masses and their ideas. The essential core of the mass line is the summation and concentration of the ideas of the masses into a line which is most fully capable of mobilizing the masses against their enemy."

2. "The mass line is based on the understanding that the struggle to produce and distribute the material requirements of life is the driving force underlying the development of all society, that in class society this can only take place through certain class relations, and that therefore, as the Program of the RCP puts it, 'The history of society (since classes first developed in ancient times) is the history of class struggle. The continuing development of society from a lower to a qualitatively higher one has been accomplished throughout history by the overthrow of one class by another which represents a more advanced form of organization of production and society as a whole.'"

     The first statement is a thoroughly idealist view of the mass line. It negates the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge by ignoring the source of all ideas, social practice, and it negates the criteria for judging the correctness of ideas. Which is as Mao said, "Generally speaking, those (ideas) that succeed are correct, and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man's struggle with nature. In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later."

     In other words, while incorrect ideas will lead to defeats, the forces representing the proletariat and applying correct ideas (ideas that correctly reflect reality, that is arising and developing and driving society forward) will sometimes suffer defeat because they are not strong enough yet. Single battles must not be viewed as isolated events but as part of a chain of repeated experience in class struggle. Revolution, the OC/NWO Organizer, the WORKER, all describe countless small battles, most of which fail to win all they set out to achieve. Such events are ripe material for bourgeois pessimists—if they are viewed one by one, in isolation. But that is wrong.

     The Party sets forth three main objectives to fulfill in the struggles of the working class: "to win as much as can be won in the immediate battle and weaken the enemy; to raise the general level of consciousness and sense of organization of the struggling masses and instill in them the revolutionary outlook of the proletariat; and to develop the most active and advanced in these struggles into communists, recruit them into the Party and train them as revolutionary leaders." It its [sic] in this context that the battles of the class—especially our role and the role of the more active and advanced—must be viewed, as contributing to, or obstructing, the fulfillment of these objectives through the repeated experience of the class in struggles to change the objective conditions.

     But the idealist position further states, "the formulation of this line (if it is truly to be correct) must be based on the ideas of the masses themselves." As if to say these ideas exist independent of condition, time and place and that in fact it is ideas that determine man's social being and not man's social being that determines his ideas. If this is true then what do the masses need us for?! As conditions get worse, the system will expose itself, the workers will naturally see the need to unite and to make revolution. So let's just unite with the masses and wait till they "see the light".

WHAT IS THE MASS LINE?

     "Mass Line" is the name given by Mao to an essential part of the Marxist theory of knowledge. The concept of the mass line has always been part of communist ideology—scientific socialism.

     The mass line is based on an understanding that man exists in the world, in societies that are organized for the production of man's needs. The world is objective, it is material, and man is part of that material objective world, not separate from it.

     The mass line is based on an understanding that, as Marx said, all materialism before him treated the material world as an object, something to be studied, but Marx contributed the understanding that the material world is also a subject of human activity—practice—, and that in fact the only way to cut through the superficial appearance of things and understand why they do what they do, is by struggling to change them. Furthermore, the material world is governed by laws that are independent of man's will, that determine what society, and the classes in society, must do because of what they are.

     The mass line is based on an understanding that where man fits in the scheme of things, his social being, his position in the material world of social production and private accumulation (in capitalist society), his relationship, therefore, to classes, is what determines his consciousness, his ideas. Furthermore this "social being," this reality, is not static; it is constantly changing. There's a dialectic at work and that means that something is arising and developing, in opposition to something else that is decaying and dying.

     The mass line is based on an understanding that ideas that spontaneously arise are at best a partial and incomplete reflection of reality. Moreover, they reflect all aspects of dialectical reality, the revolutionary and the reactionary, often mixed up together in the same thought. And it is also true that scientific ideas—ideas that, through concrete analysis of concrete conditions, grasp the laws governing the behavior of the various forces at work—in society as a whole or in an individual workplace—are deeper and more complete than unprocessed perceptual knowledge, the perceptions of reality.

     The mass line serves the working class. As Mao says, once the ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses of people, they become a material force to change the world. In short, this is the process which we refer to as using the mass line. The mass line addresses the contradiction, that objectively the masses need revolution, but subjectively they have not grasped that necessity, they do not yet see the need for revolution. The mass line is a method of utilizing the experiences of the masses, the knowledge that grows out of the struggle to change reality, utilizing that knowledge to foster a deeper and more complete understanding of the world, the relations of the various classes, and how to change class relationships to make revolution and move society forward.

     The mass line, therefore, is not a method that can be considered separately from the objectives of the struggle at any particular time. The mass line is not simply a way for individuals to relate to one another. No, it is much more than that. It is a relationship between the vanguard Party of the Proletariat and the masses of people. Inside the Party, where contradictions arise as a reflection of the views and contradictory experiences of classes in society, the mass line is the method by which the Party formulates and implements the line and policy of the proletariat. Inside the Party, the mass line is usually called democratic centralism.

     In the Party's work, a grasp of the line and policies of the proletariat, drawn from Marxist analysis of concrete conditions, is necessary for the correct formulation of tactics. Through correct tactics, the line of the Party is implemented, the initiative of the masses is unleashed and the face of the enemy is exposed. Through each struggle, in repeated experience, the masses learn the nature of all classes, the necessity of revolution, of this system's inability to meet the needs of the people, and the necessity of the working class to lead the fight against all oppression and exploitation and for revolution. This is true because revolution is inevitable and in the interests of the working class and all society. Without understanding this, which is where the mass line begins, there can be no scientific faith in the masses, no receptivity to the revolutionary sentiments of the masses, to the disgust and hatred of the masses for the oppression and exploitation that are inherent to this system, no understanding of the source of backward ideas among the masses and how those ideas will change.

     Instead, our idealist author puts forward that the method of the mass line is nothing less or more than a statistical poll conducted by bourgeois sociologists renamed "communists." Despite his protests to the contrary, he does hold the bastardized view of the mass line that "Whatever the masses already understand, that is the mass line..." He puts forward the mass line as a method to win popularity—not surprisingly, as his methods of work, we understand, have made him extremely unpopular ("You're nothing but a backward worker!" he said to John, thereby raising John's understanding and will to fight not at all, but driving quite a wedge between us and him.) And no doubt he blames his own unpopularity on the "backwardness" of the workers and the "voluntarism" of Party leadership, "at least in this area."

THE QUESTION OF NUMBERS

     Why are our numbers small? This question, and the idealist's answer that "the leadership is not applying the mass line," are central to his rambling. To answer this question, we must back up a bit and take a serious look at the beginning spiral of the imperialst crisis, its effect of [sic] the new working class movement, and our idealist's line on the crisis.

     Nearly three years ago, before the Party was formed, the leadership of the RU published an analysis of the economic and political crisis of U.S. Imperialism—the "Quicksand" article in November 1974, which said: "What's different about this crisis, (from previous recessions) the reason it takes the form of recession and inflation exploding simultaneously, is that all the old contradictions of capitalism are coming to a head at once and the U.S. Imperialists can't export them in the same way they did in the past. In fact, the severity of the present crisis is guaranteed by the very measures the U.S. imperialists took to put off the crisis in the past."

     Since that time, the severity of this crisis and the difference between this crisis and the several recessions that preceded it since WWII, have become more apparant. The Party, based on this analysis of the crisis, has since then summed up that despite the ups and downs, the overall direction is down, that the system is in the beginning of a spiral of deepening crisis that will not change until there is a severe realignment of forces in the world through war and/or revolution. Furthermore what this means for our work is that while the stakes are higher in that it's harder to win as every battle brings us right up against the system, nevertheless the opportunities are greater for waging class struggle and exposing the face of the bankrupt enemy to all. But to do this means doing strictly Marxist work, upholding the hard, high road of revolution which "objectively maens [sic] that we will be relatively small" for some time, while learning how small numbers can lead large battles and mobilizing the mases in their millions. (see C.C. report)

     Or, as the May '77 Revolution puts it, "While the intensification of the contradictions of capitalism has led to more hard fought battles of the working class on many fronts, it is also necessary to take stock of the other aspect of things—that precisely because the 'ante' has been upped and the stakes are so much higher, the masses of people generally are often hesitent to leap into struggle, though when they do so they fight with even more determination and in more open defiance of the capitalists and their agents, for the very reason that the stakes are higher..."

     "Today it is all the more true that there are no easy victories. The bourgeoisie is in no position to grant concessions to the workers easily; on the contrary, gains won through struggle in the past are being nibbled—and more and more often, chopped—away at. The political climate spread by the bourgeoisie itself is less and less based on the deceptions they spread about a steady improvement of life of the masses (an illusion that found some basis in the experience of the masses in the post WWII decades), but increasingly demands sacrifice from the people.

     "Because of this situation, large numbers of the workers are not yet convinced that the road of sustained mass struggle is not only necessary but is the only road forward, and, of course, only a very small percentage of the workers have been won to the necessity for the complete overthrow of the capitalist class. Much of the struggle of the workers is of a sporadic nature, with battles, large and small, breaking out more and more frequently but also being hit back hard by the bourgeoisie and its agents."

     Compare this with: "The only 'adversely changing objective conditions' of any great significance that we are presently facing are ones of our own making, due to our gross mistakes." (Draft Notes on the Mass Line...p.13)

     Our idealist author has a history of denying the nature of the present crisis. From the time of the Quicksand article 3 years ago, when he denied the source of inflation and the fact that this crisis is qualitatively different than previous recessions, up to the present, when he still denies the nature of the crisis (though more quietly and carefully), and denies the necessity of bourgeois attacks on the workers. Instead, he upholds a notion of the system's unrestrained freedom and power in this period when, he says, the Party's analysis of the capitalists' cutthroat competition and productivity drives, caused by the crisis and the shortage of capital, is wrong.

     It's not surprising that this line cannot comprehend the ups and downs of the workers' movement. For this line not only denies the reality of the crisis, it also denies the necessity of studying and analysing the objective conditions. "I am frankly suspicious," says the idealist, "of 'explanations' for the failure of political work based on factors-beyond-our-control, 'material conditions,' and the like." Frankly, we are suspicious that our idealist is just dodging struggle over his analysis that the present crisis of capitalism is just one of many 'cyclical downturns' and not the beginning of a spiral into a major world-wide crisis. After all if we got into that, we might look into products of that line, like critical-support for McGovern, his opposition to the Party's campaign around ALD from job fights or from struggle around the International Convention [sic], as examples. Well, we're going to look at some of these anyway, but first—the question of numbers.

THE QUESTION OF NUMBERS [Repeat of previous subhead in original. —S.H.]

     In building the struggle, organization, and consciousness of the working class—in every industry, in every section of the country—active workers raise questions: "How can we, a small handful, change anything? Why aren't more workers active? How can the workers unite, or will they ever unite? Why me? Why should I beat my' [sic] head against the wall?" These questions are raised most sharply when things are just starting up, or after some setbacks that haven't yet been summarized.

     These questions reflect the reality that at this point we are still at the beginning of a spiral; and they reflect the bourgeois ideology of pragmatism, that whatever works is right, that what succeeds is right, that the fact that vast numbers don't beat down our doors may be proof that individualism—another basic pillar of bourgeois ideology, "look out for No. 1"—is right. Workers and Party members alike struggle with bourgeois ideas like these all the time.

     The Idealist, however, while uniting with Bourgeois Pragmatism, does not take it to the gutter of individualist abandonment of struggle, but rather into the cesspool of Economism. He argues that numbers are related to methods of work, specifically to the mass line which he constantly defines as "basing yourself on the ideas of the masses," which is, he says, the main problem—that we don't do that. While no one doubts that a belligerant self-centered asshold will have few, if any, friends, this is hardly the "main contradiction" in the work, despite the intricate drivel of this "Marxist's" "how to win friends and influence people."

     The question of numbers, while an important question that has been analyzed historically and dialectically, by the Party, is a straw man, however, in the hands of this Bourgeois Idealist and Economist. No one has denied the role of the masses, or that the question of mobilizing masses in their millions is essential. But what is being denied—by the Idealist/Economist—is that the line which mobilizes the masses must be revolutinary and not reformist, or else it will go nowhere—or more accurately, backward, disarming the masses and blinding them to the revolutionary situation approaching. In fact, in arguing for "basing our work on the ideas of the masses themselves; [This semicolon should probably be end-quotes instead. —S.H.] in every example he points not to revolutionary ideas held by the masses, but to the objections or indifference of some workers to waging political struggle, to taking on the job fights as part of a social movement of the working class.

     Years ago, he argued the "critical support for McGovern" line, based on an unjustified analysis of a strong Bourgeoisie with "progressives" like McGovern who would, unlike Nixon, choose to pull out of Vietnam—an idea which certainly was widely held by millions, but was wrong.

     Soon after, he opposed the beginning analysis of the crisis, believing—as the Bourgeoisie preached and, yes, millions believed along with him—that this crisis was another mere recession, a temporary phenomenon. But this idea is wrong, although millions believed it.

     In his current writings, the Idealist/Economist began with a "small" incident, the struggle over "the Chinese connection." When active workers raised a fear of being redbaited, rather than discussing the real threat of redbaiting and arming the workers to combat such Bourgeois poison, he instead combatted their fear,, [sic] pooh poohing the threat which the workers correctly felt was a real question they would have to deal with. The fruit of the confusion thus sown was temporary paralysis of the caucus.

     When the Party launched a campaign around the 1976 elections, based on the (controversial, to be sure) slogan "Victory Through Our Struggle, Not Through the Elections," our idealist professed agreement with the line of the campaign—dishonestly, we believe—but objected to any activity on the part of the caucus connected with the compaign—except leaflets. The one event held—a press converence—he denounced before, during, and after. Why? Because, he relates, the workers didn't agree with it, they were indifferent, they were antagonistic, they didn't bring it up.

     The same objections, the same denunciations, the same reasons were given when the photo display was brought to a barn in building for the Founding Convention of the National United Workers Organization. Yet all these objections fly in the face of the campaign that was built on the job around the NUWO, that did stimulate great interest from many workers, not all of whom had been to UWO meetings, rallies, demonstrations, and cultural events. Yet our Idealist does not recognize these advances, for he did not participate in building for the NUWO, nor has he attended hardly any UWO activities in the last 10 months, unlike several workers. Still, his line is that workers aren't interested, they are indifferent. Furthermore, those that are interested "don't count"—as seen by his disruption of dissension of the NUWO's program for the industry with a couple of active workers.

     Most recently, in a discussion of the crisis of the cities, the Idealist/Economist held forth that the crisis was receding, not deepening; that the Bourgeoisie had more freedom now and less necessity to attack city workers and cut city services; and that this means that the possibility of city workers winning battles is greater, because the bourgeoisie has more freedom to grant concessions. While his view is shared by thousands of city workers and many others, including some active workers, it is wrong in its belief that the prospects for working class victories are linked with the Bourgeoisie's greedom [sic] to grant concessions. In fact, the latter argument is just a re-hash of the old revisionist "identity of interests" line promoted by Kautsky, Browder, and their kind. That line holds, in the final analysis, that the working class can win only when the Bourgeoisie is strong enough to be benevolent; it denies that crisis is an essential feature of capitalism and imperialism, and specifically denies that Bourgeois attacks on the working class in a period of crisis are launched with a desperation born of weakness, not strength. This revisionist line, repackaged by our Idealist/Economist friend, is wrong and betrays the interests of the working class, even though many workers hold these views.

     But it would be equally wrong to assert that many workers do not see through the transparent "progress" of capitalist "recovery." Indeed, workers in growing numbers are seeing no progress from capitalism, and are fighting back in thousands of ways. That is the sentiment that must be united with, that must be organized and focussed and linked up with. And that—which is the high, hard road the CC report is all about—is what the Idealist denies, and objects to with pious Gregorian repetition: "Mass Line, Mass Line, you must follow the Mass Line, you must base yourself on the ideas of the masses, we can't do this, we can't do that, the masses are indifferent, the masses are demoralized, the masses are not demanding political struggle, the masses aren't asking to link up with the working class, the masses want bread and butter, they want only economic struggle, and even that, we should follow them, do nothing but education until the masses tell us what to do. And as for politics, well, the bourgeoisie is strong, it has a progressive side, we will ask them for what we need on the basis of liberalism, of charity, of logic."

WHY THIS PAPER

     Leadership has taken on this reactionary Bourgeois pessimist line because it must be thoroughly rooted out, smashed, and repudiated by all comrades if the line of the Party on doing revolutionary work in a non-revolutionary period is to take root in our work in the real world. Through our work and changes in the objective situation, real advances can and must be made. This can only be done by summing up the mood of the masses and the objective conditions, basing ourselves on the dialectical materialist method, understanding the relation and interpenetration of objective and subjective, of quality and quantity, and through that analysis with that method, finding the key contradiction around which all others will unfold.

     The Party leadership has focussed this question in the Mass Line pamphlet: "How do we resolve this contradiction—that today the actual struggle of the masses of workers is concentrated in the fight around wages, working conditions, etc., but that in order to develop its revolutionary consciousness and play its revolutionary role, the working class must build and lead a broad united front against the monopoly capitalists, must act as the vanguard fighter against all oppression? The answer lies in approaching every struggle of the working class—and for that matter every struggle involving different strata and social forces—as part of the political objective of building a revolutionary movement, led by the working class, aimed at overthrowing and eliminating capitalism."

     It is necessary to repudiate the reactionary Idealist line because not doing so means not keeping to the high road of revolution, it means chasing the wisp of painless progress and accomodating imperialism. We are a young Party, the working class is just beginning to fight, the crisis and the revolutionary workers movement are at the beginning of a spiral. The danger of Revisionism, of abandonment of revolutionary work, is as serious threat, and the life or death struggle against it must be decisive. Only by correctly grasping the line of the Party, the mass line, and the objective situation, will we be able to carry on the work necessary to lead the class in the coming—inevitable—revolutionary situation.