Where we stand

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Where we stand

Statement of the Detroit Marxist-Leninist Study Group
(Communist Voice vol. 1, #1, April 15, 1995)

The forces who are collaborating to produce Communist Voice are Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries. We stand for a working class alternative to capitalist society.

Capitalism thrives on exploitation and oppression

The present social order in the U.S. rests on the exploitation of tens of millions of workers. Year after year, the living standards of the workers and poor deteriorate. Meanwhile, this misery goes hand-in-hand with huge profits for the corporate giants, multi-million dollar bonuses for the CEOs, and the good life for the rich in general.

It is a social system that has created technological wonders and great productive powers. But in the hands of the capitalists, these great powers are turned against the workers. They mean speedup and layoffs. They mean swelling the army of unemployed workers and the huge “underclass” which lives on the edge of destitution. And while the need for social welfare grows, social programs are being cut to ribbons. This profit-driven system is the breeding ground for rampant racism, the hounding of immigrant workers and the oppression of women. Capitalist greed constantly leaves environmental devastation in its wake.

The political system serves the needs of capitalist exploitation. American democracy means the class rule of the corporate giants. The president, the Cabinet and Congress are tied to the capitalists by a thousand threads, as are the Republican and Democratic parties. The legal system and the various police agencies keep the downtrodden from threatening the profits of the wealthy. The social ills bred by capitalism are “solved” by more police measures and a “boom” in jails. Capitalist democracy is democracy for the rich and repression for the poor.

Meanwhile, American capitalism is the world’s imperialist superpower. It is the global cop and the largest international exploiter. It heads up a world order of oppression along with the other imperialist powers. It is a system where multinational corporations exploit labor, plunder resources and exercise political influence around the globe. It is a system where the U.S. and other imperialists seek to impose their will around the world through economic pressure, international agencies, and war. Militarism, power politics, spheres of influence and the division between haves and have nots are not an accident or a mere policy choice but are an inherent feature of capitalism in its monopoly stage.

The workers and poor need a new social system

The workers and poor need a new society. They need a society that is free of the profit motive and therefore can use the great productive powers and technological marvels of today to benefit the masses. Such a new society can only be achieved through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by the class rule of the workers. The workers must stepwise learn how to run the new society, convert the economy to social ownership and abolish anarchy of production, end exploitation, and build up the common productive powers. The construction of such a socialist society creates the basis for eliminating the social ills born of capitalism. And it will create the conditions for passing over to a classless, communist society.

The new society is not some scheme dreamed up by utopian planners. The groundwork is being laid by modem capitalism itself. It has created productive powers that have the potential to eliminate want. Large-scale production has laid the basis for social ownership. It is the billions of exploited workers and poor peasants worldwide whose class interests make them the potential vehicle of revolutionary change.

The DMLSG believes that the working class alternative is not just a future goal. Its achievement is the outgrowth of the development of the class struggle. The struggles of today not only are a necessity for survival, but provide the training ground for the greater battles of tomorrow. We support the day-to-day battles of the workers to defend themselves against the capitalist offensive of unemployment, wage and benefit-cutting, speed up, etc. We stand with the masses straggling against imperialism and the war machine, against racism, sexism and anti-gay bigotry.

The DMLSG holds that for the workers and poor to achieve their immediate and long-term goals, they must be able to express their own class stand. They must get organized independently of the capitalist parties, the Republicans and Democrats. As well, they must fight such vehicles of capitalist influence as the trade union bureaucrats and the reformist misleaders in the anti-racist movement, the women’s movement, etc. They must rely on mass action and class organization, not the establishment.

Without an anti-revisionist theory, there will be no communist movement

We think that the success of the working class straggle depends on it being guided by revolutionary theory. That theory is Marxism-Leninism. The DMLSG does not think that theory provides some standard recipe for revolution. Rather it provides a basic framework and principles that must be applied to present conditions.

Many have falsely labeled themselves Marxist or Leninist. There are the “Leninists” who back repressive state-capitalist regimes such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe of yesterday, or the China and Cuba of today. There are “Marxists” who are banking on the reformists or trade union bureaucrats to move the struggle forward and “socialists" who preach about the wonderful new societies that can allegedly come about without overturning the old oppressive social orders. Such “Marxists" have revised Marxism beyond recognition. The DMLSG holds that Marxism-Leninism is nothing if not anti-revisionist. We aim to carry through the anti-revisionist critique of such theories and of the tyrannies that posed as “communist." We stand opposed to Soviet revisionism from Stalin to Gorbachev. We also stand opposed to Trotskyism, Chinese revisionism, Castroism, social-democracy and anarchism.

We believe that study of the entirety of the Soviet revolution and its subsequent decay is part of developing socialist theory. This must include examining the period under Lenin’s leadership. We do not believe this means rejecting Leninism. We support the Leninist framework and draw a distinction between that framework and the evaluation of particular policies.

The revolutionary workers' party

The DMLSG believes that the class struggle requires a revolutionary party to guide and organize it. Such a party would be made up of the most class conscious workers and other dedicated activists and be guided by Marxism-Leninism. As the class struggle develops, numerous other forms of organization will come into being and pass away. But unless there is a party representing the interests of the class as a whole, a party with the political clarity to influence the diverse struggles, the struggles cannot converge on a common path against the capitalist exploiters. A party of the most clear-sighted sections of the class is vital to guide the proletariat amidst the confusion spread by reformist and opportunist trends. A vanguard party is needed to both strengthen the present struggles and to develop within them the consciousness and organization that will prepare for the bigger battles of the future. The DMLSG is not a party, but hopes its work can make a contribution to the eventual rebuilding of a communist party worthy of the name.

For world proletarian solidarity

The struggle of the American working class is part of a global struggle of capital and labor, of exploiter and exploited. The American workers must stand with the workers and poor peasants around the world. This requires special attention to support for the creation and building of revolutionary class organizations of the proletariat all over the world. It also requires overcoming the national and ethnic divisions among workers. This is inseparable from the American workers opposing their “own" imperialist bourgeoisie, its oppression of toilers around the world, and its national rivalries with the competing bourgeoisies of other countries.

Our political roots

The founders of the DMLSG were former members or supporters of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA. which produced The Workers' Advocate newspaper. The MLP dissolved at its 5th Congress in November 1993.

The MLP was a staunch defender of the workers' interests and consistently fought to spread revolutionary class consciousness and defend the Marxist-Leninist theory. Under the pressure of over a decade of lull in the mass movements and of the neo-conservative ideological climate of the times, however, a section of the party gave up their previous belief in the need for building an anti-revisionist trend although another section held that the present times cried out for continued communist organization. Despair over revolutionary work also gradually took hold among a majority of the MLP’s leaders who sought to eliminate the party’s revolutionary stands and publications.

Thus the ideological unity of the party fragmented and the growing liquidationist mood was reflected in varying ways. The liquidators turned Lenin’s views into cardboard caricatures and then dismissed them. Modern capitalism was prettified and imperialism reduced to incidental “flaws” rather than the world order of capitalism in its monopoly stage. In the difficult conditions and backwardness of the times, they no longer saw much point in imbuing the masses with revolutionary class consciousness and the perspective of socialism. Indeed, some eventually went so for as to put up for grabs even the basic Marxist theses that capitalism would give rise to socialism and that the working class was the vehicle of this revolutionary change. For some, the only thing that was realistic at present was “free market" development and petty-bourgeois dreams of ever-growing democracy which would supposedly take place under the rule of the capitalist and imperialist exploiters.

As the MLP dissolved, a section of former members and supporters fought to continue the discussion of the controversies that tore apart the MLP These comrades came together as a grouping at and following the 5th Congress of the MLP, which dissolved the party. This grouping (the “minority") fought against the anti-Marxist liquidationist (“majority”) views. But within this grouping itself, some shared the skepticism of the liquidators towards anti-revisionism. As well, they substituted anarchist anti-organizational phrasemongering for a serious critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the MLP. The grouping that had come up to carry on the debate on the controversial issues in the MLP proved incapable of declaring any common platform. The Detroit Marxist-Leninist Study Group and other comrades are continuing, however, to uphold anti-revisionist Marxism, and to that end, we are publishing Communist Voice. <>