Struggle Sessions Editorial Board

Open Letter to the Former National Network of FTP Organizations and Their Supporters

Struggle Sessions has issued articles detailing our criticism of the ideology and working methods of the falsified “Maoist” organization “MCP-OC” and at no point do we intend to neglect this fact of history. Our fundamental opposition is to the ideology, history and founding of this organization, and the question of its bad leadership and the counter-revolutionary role of this leadership.

Recently a lengthy statement was released on the website of FTP Boston, which contains many of our views and provides what we consider a mainly correct analysis of the shortcomings of this project. Of course there are still issues in which we disagree and must raise struggle on these; this is by no means complete in this letter, rather this open letter will serve as a response to the issues posed by the FTP Boston website. We will reserve our views on certain items in order to examine potential points of agreement with what is undeniably a positive development.

While this open letter is directed to the entire former national network and its supporters, we are focusing on the content of the document One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, issued by the FTP-Boston website. We lack clarity on the organizational situation which has not been made public so we have limited our response.

The FTP Boston website, and the comrades who wrote the article in question have hit the mark on many crucial points; they have identified the role of NGOs, ascertaining the revolutionary approach to mass organizing, correctly insisting that the struggle for the day-to-day needs of the people is part of the struggle for power–this is a radical and fundamental break with the published views and the practice of their former network. This is a happy occasion in which a modest but important blow has been struck against revisionism, liberalism, and empty charity work.

The comrades state:

“Indeed, it should be noted that the formation of the mutual aid organization did not even attend to the (now clearly stillborn) economic struggle which the pandemic generated. Our focus on an identified social need illustrates this failure; by (correctly) recognizing that food access would quickly become limited for many workers across the city, we (incorrectly) focused our work on a secondary phenomenon without engaging in practical struggle around the contradictions which drove the crisis (for example, housing or the workers’ struggle). That is, by intervening at the site of social reproduction, we, materially, carried out the function of the state apparatus or its NGO/charity auxiliary arm” [our emphasis].

The arrow here has hit the target; it is precisely this, the capitalist class seeks the means to carry out social reproduction in numerous ways, often using well-meaning churches or activist organizations as an auxiliary pacification apparatus. We must stress that these are not the words of the bitter or dejected who are responding to some personal grievance, but a clear analysis of a false start; moreover, it is a correction. Directing militant energy at the class enemy to meet the basic needs of the population instead of just polishing their wheels means educating the masses in class combat, exposing the fact that all needs cannot be met under the present mode of production, and only with power for the proletariat can all needs be met through fighting every step of the way for socialism.

While the comrades are correct in understanding the importance of building organizationally instead of empty charity dressed as mass work, their revisionist training has resulted in some ideological missteps that persist. They express that the main task is fulfilling the organizational construction; they are understandably mistaken in this, and we raise the question of ideological construction first. Ideology is the basis of organization, and only a consolidated ideological and political line can guide the organic line.

In the six aspects of Party construction in the General Political Line of the Communist Party of Peru—a document these comrades are thankfully studying well—the PCP takes the question of ideological construction as the basis for the other five aspects:

“We say Marxism-Leninism-Maoism because it is the universal ideology of the proletariat which is the last class in history, an ideology that must be applied to the concrete conditions of each revolution and generate its guiding thought.”

This matters a great deal; it matters the most. The proletariat is the most important, being the last class in history, and this is why its ideology must be applied to the concrete conditions of each revolution. This must be centered in our analysis and synthesis, in our investigation and in our summation. It is the area where these comrades have a vulnerability, and we aim to lend our criticism to help them overcome this.

The ideology of the proletariat is MLM. This must be stated over and over; it must be grasped and struggles must be raised to deepen our understanding of it. No fool should praise himself as fully knowing MLM—this would be arrogant and vulgar, so in exchange and two-line struggle the comprehension deepens. For this reason we point out a misstep not identified in the analysis of these comrades when they state that:

“We justified this decision [regarding service work] after the fact by citing the space’ proximity to a methadone clinic, and thus a large lumpen- and semi-proletarian population nearby, but our initial mode of distribution was incapable of meaningfully meeting the needs of that demographic. We began by offering pre-packed bags of groceries, initially sourced through collection of donations of produce from the end-of-the-night supply of an open air market, but later learned through investigation that pre-prepared food was more useful for the lumpen-proletarian population we aimed to serve” [our emphasis].

The orientation here is the basis of what the comrades call “red-charity”, not necessarily the method of receiving cash donations (as they correctly point our this assisted the degenerative course). We depart from the point that the proletariat is the last class in history and in imperialist countries they are both the leading force and the base force, the overwhelming majority of our population. Secondly, regarding the need to improve the organic construction, those being served should also be recruited (mobilizing the people themselves and not doing everything for them) and there is a very objective limitation on recruiting lumpen-proletarians and/or drug addicts.

An organization which is yet to be well-organized is ill-suited for the task of transforming all recruits and contacts into a class fighters when their orientation is toward those with dependency issues, or who subsist off non-productive or socially destructive activity. This can also alienate the masses of proletarians, and the orientation itself is based on an ideological alignment with Christian charity and not Maoism.

Of course, it is detrimental for any to forget Chairman Mao’s comments on the lumpen-proletariat:

“Apart from all these other classes, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. In every part of the country they have their secret societies, which were originally their mutual-aid organizations for political and economic struggle… One of China’s difficult problems is how to handle these people, Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.”

There is much to consider here. In the case of China, the fairly large lumpen-proletariat were made up mainly of peasants who lost their land, and it is fairly straight forward to mobilize them in the fight for land; this situation is not the same in the US. Secondly, we ask the comrades to examine what kind of organization they seek to, or sought to, build? Following their self-criticism and the political lines forwarded by their national organization, one could conclude that they sought to build mutual-aid networks with a decisive focus on the lumpen-proletarian, which would logically provide them with more “secret societies” which Mao treats here as an impediment. “They can become a revolutionary force if given the proper guidance”, but who is prepared organizationally for this task? We must recall that Mao stated the difficulties here even with the Communist Party and the Red Army to transform them.

It seems unreasonable to us, orienting toward the lumpen-proletariat when having not built organizations among the proletariat itself, the proletariat who alone can lead the de-classed elements back into the class struggle and transform them from anti-social to a social force for positive change. This brings us back to the question of ideology and, importantly, to the question of leadership.

In their self-criticism the comrades expose how much lack of unity was a problem in FTP, especially as it developed. We wish to raise the issue put forward by the PCP that organizations of the masses need to have two criteria they follow: 1) they are guided by MLM and 2) they follow democratic centralism.

The comrades treat democratic centralism explicitly as a principle; this is a mistake that results in a vague understanding of it. They say:

“Democratic centralism is a political principle (‘freedom of discussion, unity of action,’) and not a structural prescription. We fought obsessively in defense of so-called democratic centralism and in so doing, sparked needless conflict rather than pursuing principled ideological struggle with elements who were chiefly our allies. This speaks to a need for further ideological development of our activists, and for further study of the principle ‘unity-struggle-unity’ as a point of orientation for our relationships to other organizers.”

The above is mainly true, and if they were to consider that the political principle of democratic centralism does mean structural application, through organized ideological struggle then it would be entirely true. Democratic Centralism as applied to structure is evidenced in the Party of a New Type, codified by the great Lenin. One corresponds to the other, and the struggle to establish this is ideological principally and administrative secondarily. The comrades stride toward a correct understanding. We are correct also to point out that the volume of “anti-authoritarian” (read anti-Marxist) types is not a coincidence, but rather a consequence of the political line that was being forwarded by the revisionist leadership of the “MCP-OC.”

It does not surprise us at all to hear from these comrades that the “MCP-OC” recoiled and dissolved its leading body right as the economic and health crisis converged and the masses themselves launched the largest uprisings in decades; this is the role of the revisionist leadership, to try and create a pole against genuine revolutionaries to divert people into dead-end programs. The “MCP-OC” leadership are not genuine leaders, and the origin of the organization as a vanity project bears mention here. The masses clamor for organized rebellion, and for this reason the revisionists can only swindle them for so long, the “MCP-OC” has been faced with splits and splits, while their best elements have continued to expose the problem. It is not at all uncommon for opportunism to recoil in the face of mass conflict, to seek sanctuary behind charity and empty talk. Those who have begun to expose the problems must drive themselves harder and further toward grasping Maoism, more and better.

It is also common that opportunists get a burst of energy from the masses, they get thirsty to traffic in righteous mass struggles; then, in the wake of the spontaneous rebellions which have a clear shelf-life, the opportunist gets demoralized, sinks into pessimism and economism and blames the masses for going back to work or back to political inactivity. They worship spontaneity. Revolutionaries on the other hand understand the need to act in these struggles and to consolidate the gains in the lulls, to regroup and theorize, to analyze and synthesize, to consolidate and remain connected to those who in their millions took to the streets in May and June, even though they are not in the streets now. This is a lesson everyone must learn and learn better—how to stay linked to the masses, how to emerge from class struggle, how to attack and retreat.

What the comrades have exposed mainly are things we find agreement with, and we reiterate our claim that the falsified “Maoists” have always sought to promote a passive-defensive approach to organizing, one that avoids mobilizing the masses to strike the enemy and providing them with the necessary organic forms to make revolution. We stress the following items 1) ideological construction as the basis for the other five types of construction, and 2) the decisive role of leadership, class leadership and revolutionary leadership in the forms of collective and individual leadership.

The FTP-Boston comrades conclude:

“The key lesson remains that mass work must take place within the struggle itself and not on its margins. By carrying out our organizational work outside of the struggle between the masses and the class enemy, we have neutralized our ability to effectively intervene in the real movement, generate new struggles, or win the masses over to a communist program. The revolutionary masses need new forms of organization that correspond to their desire for struggle and to the possibilities of the situation. Responding to this need is what is decisive in advancing, and not palliative ‘mutual aid’ remedies” [their emphasis].

Well put. The sooner the rank-and-file and the others from their network (and everyone else for that matter) grasp this, the sooner they can mobilize against the falsified “Maoism” which has been the root of their defects. We reiterate our call to all genuine comrades:

“Ideological struggle is the only weapon to wrest good comrades from the organizational clutches of outright and cognizant revisionists, from individualists who seek to make a name for themselves at the expense of reconstituting the Communist Party in the US. This struggle is critical and will be critical at all moments. Revisionism, especially when it calls itself Maoist, must be ideologically struggled against. All of our readers, organized or not, have the duty to struggle, all must honestly and soberly assess the political line presented by the falsified ‘Maoists’ and genuinely interrogate its content, and, importantly, educate comrades and the masses on the difference between the real movement and the falsified one”.

In our view, the FTP-Boston comrades have taken an important first step at doing the above.

Finally, we raise the call to the comrades who run the FTP Boston website to develop two-line struggle over the following issues, and we invite them to engage in private or public debate with us on the following items:

1. Maoism as the ideology of the proletariat all powerful because it is true, based on doctrine and not pragmatism

2. The task of Party reconstitution or “party building” taking into account the matter of active-defense

3. The role of leadership

4. The national and colonial question as it exists today in the US

5. The international line

6. Democratic centralism, concentric construction and Party militarization

7. Fascism—what it is and is not, as well as its current position in the US

The FTP Boston website statement is cause for cautious optimism and we greet it kindly. Our many agreements with it provide us with a basis for comradely debate and exchange, and we hope the comrades consider this in the interest of desired unity—the struggle for unity—and accomplishing greater unity (unity-struggle-unity).

Addendum:

17 Points on the Revisionist “Second Conference of the MCP-OC”

We begin with some basic questions and answers and will move on to addressing aspects of the published statement of the so-called “Maoist Communist Party-Organizing Committee” (“MCP-OC”)

1. What is an Organizing Committee? An OC is a body within a Party that organizes its branches and districts for a specific task, carrying out Party construction. It is not a vague attempt to “build” a Party from scratch.

2. How does the Party emerge? from class struggle and two-line struggle and never without it. When there is no Party in existence, then the Party must be constituted or reconstituted (as is the case in the US) inside of the class struggle. Once reconstituted, it is built through war.

3. What is a vanguard? In the proletarian sense vanguard is the most advanced detachment of the class, that which is at the forefront of the struggle—the Communist Party or organization, guided by Maoism and following democratic centralism. This is a relative position, “most advanced” is in relation to the other organizations belonging to the proletariat. There is always something at the front and something in the middle and something in the back, at any stage; this is objective, while subjectively it is possible that even that which is at the front is still small and still weak, this does not matter so long as the political line is correct then it has the potential to gain everything it lacks (as taught by Chairman Mao) and therefore vanguard is mainly a political question which extends to an organic question. To be a recognized vanguard is necessary and a milestone only accomplished by the reconstituted Communist Party and no other. Unrecognized vanguards exist objectively wherever there is a force more advanced than the others politically.

4. “Party building and Party organizing” are a distraction used by “MCP-OC”; both are possible only when there is a Party to build and to organize. What is correct is to state that political work is what is needed to reconstitute the Party.

The “MCP-OC” states:

“By party building, we mean intervention in the mass movement, going among the people and fighting alongside them with the goal of forming mass organizations independent of, and antagonistic to, the enemy class rule.”

This definition simply means political work because it is not building the party, but attempting to create conditions and links with the people to make reconstitution possible.

What is more, mass organizations are not formed; this is not respecting the dialectical process. No organization is formed as a mass organization; a generated organization does not start out with the participation of the masses. This is what is built, as it wins more and more mass support and participation to become an organization of the masses¹.

5. There can only be one Communist Party in every country and it must be called the CP and include the country name. Adding things like “Maoist” or “Revolutionary” assumes that there is such thing as a communist that is neither Maoist nor revolutionary and demarcation is needed. This is a concession to revisionism and rehabilitates revisionism by ceding the title of Communist.

6. “MCP-OC” moves in a backward motion; they have regressed backward to the old tested and failed line of “autonomous collectives” struggling to unite, forfeiting democratic centralism on the national level. A revisiting of how the Revolutionary Union was originally organized².

This is clearly deconstruction presumably for construction, a retreat that promises to advance, but there is no guarantee that the existing unity expressed in centralism will return to the same center, hence it is a polite-split, in fact a fragmentation or shattering, with many groups coming apart while only maintaining the same name. It must be understood this way and not misconstrued as any kind of “party building” since the groupings are no longer able to determine things together democratically or act in unison (democratic centralism).

7. They state that,“We refer to the most basic unit of organization at this stage as a struggle committee: an informal organization…”

Their leaving matters to “informal organizations” is exactly the opposite of what the revolutionary masses require; the masses already have many informal organizations constructed by liberals or anarchists during a struggle (occupy, BLM, etc.) which blow away with the wind. The people need stable organic forms, stable bodies of struggle, formal bodies. “MCP-OC” hopes that through this kind of concession to spontaneity that revolutionary militants will fall from the sky or just emerge on their own without being forged inside stable and united organizations, centralized, acting as one on a national level. They bow to chance and do not correspond to Leninist principles. This can be for no other reason than an inability to lead due to low capacity but mainly due to political line. Basic units are not wrong, but keeping them informal and lacking any centralization is wrong; it is not Marxist but anarchist. In this case, we see anarchist organizing which promises to one day become Marxist, writing a check that cannot be cashed.

In the conditions of today, where revisionists, social-democrats, and anarchists preach “anti-authoritarianism” among the left, in which postmodernism is highly influential, this concession is abandonment. It lacks a concrete analysis of concrete conditions in the objective sense, and falls to pessimism from a subjectivist viewpoint. The masses need to be organized into formal bodies guided by MLM and following democratic centralism, not as an afterthought. There is a clear struggle between the need to organize the misery of the people, and those who seek to decentralize everything including contradictions, placing everything as issues between individuals³.

8. “MCP-OC” claims: “Party organizing, on the other hand, refers to the work of uniting and consolidating existing revolutionary organizations – the nuclei of the pre-party formation”.

What we have here is an embryo of an embryo! And what is more, they are still only talking about political work and not “party organizing”. Instead of beginning from their claimed centralized national formation—they have retreated. This is because their former centralization was in form only, and not functional as such⁴.

9. Two-line struggle is not considered enough. It is assumed by the “MCP-OC” that all of these dispersed groups can conduct struggles for unity without any center of unity and that they will just be sewn together in a “central committee” at some undefined point in the future; this is a bad wager, and far behind where they were and where others are.

There is also no emphasis on ideology in the entire document from the “second conference”. This is very bad. Ideology must be the basis of unity; the task is to consolidate the advanced around Maoism, this means having a central body that can do this in a systematized and planned way using the mass line, not a free-for-all based on the loosest possible definition of Maoism. Central planning is essential to every communist process, “MCP-OC” dispenses with it and proceeds with no plan because they are not communists.

10. “MCP-OC” shamelessly revises Maoism when they claim that:

“The line of party construction (the dialectic of party building and party organizing) is called the line of concentric construction”.

This claim is totally false—concentric construction means the three instruments of revolution with the Party at the center, around it the army and integrated militia and around that the united front of revolutionary forces. The “MCP-OC” conception is revisionism of concentric construction. Secondly, without democratic centralism there is no way to concentrically construct anything, because the centralized aspect is what allows the precursor to the reconstituted Party to become the axis of everything.

11. They also revise Mao directly:

“’Unity – struggle – unity.’ This means starting from a point of unity, resolving contradictions through criticism and struggle, to arrive at a new unity on a higher basis.”

Unity struggle unity does not mean starting from a point of unity; it means starting from desired unity, otherwise where does unity come from? Unity cannot exist without struggle before it. Read Mao more carefully:

“As soon as we talk about unity, there is disunity; disunity is unconditional. At the very time we talk of unity, there still remains disunity – this is why we have work to do. To talk all the time about monolithic unity, and not to talk about struggle, is not Marxist-Leninist. Unity passes through struggle, only thus can unity be achieved. It is the same within the Party, as regards classes, and among the people.”

Hence, there is no possibility of “staring from a point of unity” but only of desiring unity when there is already disunity, which is absolute. It is no coincidence that they have already been criticized (without responding) for the fact that their project began from assumed unprincipled unity (disunity), and this is where they end up. The “MCP-OC” lack a grasp on philosophy and do not comprehend the law of contradiction. This must be stated to substantiate the argument that their “decentralization” is actually nothing but a surrender; it still assumes unity, as the organization was built on false unity, and due to disunity it cannot maintain its centralism.

12. Continuing in ignorance of dialectal materialism and in revision of concentric construction they say:

“Therefore, while the line of concentric construction calls for an overall strategic tendency towards centralization, it nevertheless sets out from a period of decentralized and autonomous local work. Only a period of protracted struggle over line and methods of work, rooted in the shared experience of practical attempts at party building on the local level, can bring about the real unity necessary for organizing a national vanguard formation”.

Due to their ignorance regarding dialectal materialism, they are unable to comprehend the relationship between centralization and decentralization, the necessity of a centralized political line and decentralized operations in carrying it out. They simply hope to turn fragments into a whole instead of managing the contradiction between the fragment and the whole. Furthermore, political work (they incorrectly call it “party building”) at the local level without any higher level is severely limited. It lends itself to localism and what Mao calls independent kingdoms or mountain strongholds, a pervasive kind of individualism which is a natural bi-product of the postmodernist lines forwarded by the “MCP-OC” throughout their existence. They simply dress right liquidationism up as a necessary step forward. In reality it is their incorrect political line that caused them to fragment and not any sort of condition beyond their control.

13. Lack of dialectics is a persistent pattern. According to them:

“Skipping this phase amounts to attempting to construct the party from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. Premature centralization will ultimately foreclose the possibility of party construction in favor of a party in name only. It will put militants at risk of severe repression, and stunt the development of a real culture of democratic centralism by forging the organization on the basis of paper unity rather than a real unity arrived at through struggle”.

Genuine unity can exist among a small centralized formation with links to the masses as long as the correct importance is placed on two-line struggle, and this small administrative body is actually stronger at defending its militants and the whole movement from repression, because they have real unity and can insure democracy. Let us compare the above from “MCP-OC” to Lenin’s teachings in Chapter 4 of What is to be Done:

“’A dozen wise men can be more easily wiped out than a hundred fools.’ This wonderful truth (for which the hundred fools will always applaud you) appears obvious only because in the very midst of the argument you have skipped from one question to another. You began by talking and continued to talk of the unearthing of a ‘committee’, of the unearthing of an ‘organisation’, and now you skip to the question of unearthing the movement’s ‘roots’ in their ‘depths’. The fact is, of course, that our movement cannot be unearthed, for the very reason that it has countless thousands of roots deep down among the masses; but that is not the point at issue. As far as ‘deep roots’ are concerned, we cannot be ‘unearthed’ even now, despite all our amateurism, and yet we all complain, and cannot but complain, that the ‘organisations’ are being unearthed and as a result it is impossible to maintain continuity in the movement. But since you raise the question of organisations being unearthed and persist in your opinion, I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools. This position I will defend, no matter how much you instigate the masses against me for my ‘anti-democratic’ views, etc. As I have stated repeatedly, by ‘wise men’, in connection with organisation, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity….”

Following the “MCP-OC” logic means Lenin organized things from the “top down” and therefore made a weak structure, when history proves just the opposite. In place of a stable organization—without which Lenin insists there can be no enduring revolutionary movement—the “MCP-OC” have written the opposite prescription, that the only way to endure is by dissolving into decentralized informal groups. Following Lenin, we know that the greater the activity of the masses, the more necessary the stable organization becomes, and the less useful are these decentralized, informal groups. Again the right liquidationists are prescribing the opposite remedy, that decentralization is the method to reach the masses.

We should draw attention here to the fact that it is the stable organization of revolutionaries which brings continuity. “MCP-OC” believes they can “build” a “Party” by going in reverse, that they can achieve stability and strength through weakening their already weak forces with more instability. This is the logic of revisionism, to cite new conditions (that are nothing new in this case) to excuse themselves of MLM. It is dressed in revolutionary sounding rhetoric so that it is digestible to supporters, but essentially misleads them into yet a deeper bog than before.

All genuine revolutionaries, the comrades associated with these disorganized projects who wish to strike at the heart of US imperialism should without wasting any time evacuate this condemned project and refuse to entertain any idea that its corpse can be reanimated. The consequence of their revisionist line has come into being; this was its inevitable course, and it is time to leave. There are certainly those who have learned from the error of following the bad leadership of the “MCP-OC” and will continue learning more; the recent statement from FTP-Boston confirms this.

14. “MCP-OC” revises history from a total lack of understanding; failing to even investigate, they claim:

“We have already seen the damaging effects of premature attempts at party organizing with the collapse of the NCP-LC/OC, the dogmato-revisionism in command of other sectors of the Maoist movement, and in the errors endemic to the ‘NCM’ era of struggle.”

Let’s examine this. The New Communist Party Liaison Committee also failed to comprehend Lenin, they failed to implement democratic centralism, and used basically the same methods outlined in the “MCP-OC” second conference (albeit articulated better.) It met its end for the same reasons: it attempted to “build” an open “Party” on the basis of “mass organizations” that lacked unity and had little to no mass participation. Where does this decentralized method of “Party building” derive from? The so-called “New Communist Movement”. As we have pointed out, the “MCP-OC” is following pretty far behind what the Revolutionary Union prescribed in Red Papers number 1 decades ago. It is absurd that they would raise these specters, already exposed by their opposition, as a charge against their opposition when it is they who follow this political line.

15. In essence, the so-called second conference of the “MCP-OC” was a dissolution and a call to keep doing empty charity on an individual basis as they always have done. This is just to rationalize their miserable state of disorganization by formally embracing it. They have admitted that they can no longer pretend to be what others have exposed them for precisely not being, i.e. a step forward for the realization of the Communist Party.

16. With all the bogus content of this “conference” there is a bit of good: many sources associated with the former project, who were expelled or left for other reasons have stated that the “centralism” of the “MCP-OC” was nothing short of the mandates of one individual who is nothing but a social media persona. This kind of leadership inevitably results in degeneration; the rank and file can smell the excrement. It is inevitable that they would desire something better. Now that they have degenerated nationally and surrendered to disorganization at a time of great economic and health crisis when the masses are most in need of organization, the rank and file are free to learn by doing, to examine the work of revolutionaries that the old bad leadership has poisoned them against through years of lying; these revolutionaries are their own true comrades, and they can now find out for themselves and begin linking up with the real Maoist movement, the movement that has provided leadership and stable bodies of organizations.

17. We encourage turning a bad thing, the emergence of and existence of the “MCP-OC”, into a good thing, a lesson in the negative, a lesson on what not to do, and from this to determine the correct course and commit to it.

The course provided by the “MCP-OC” conference is not the correct course. The “MCP-OC” was arbitrarily announced for the purpose of opposing Maoist unity, to become a pole against it. In its existence it carried out what can only be considered counter-recruitment from an empty social media base; it drew in genuine revolutionary youth, diminished their potential and promoted the division of the proletariat and revisionism; it taught counter-revolution as revolution. The struggle at hand is one for ideological unity around Maoism, and not the struggle to reconstitute the reconstitution effort. Struggle Sessions exists to help facilitate ideological struggle, to proceed from a desired unity, to struggle for unity, and accomplish better unity, unity around Maoism. We openly stand for ideological struggle, and challenge others to participate.

Find out where the red flag is flying and assemble under it! A better world is indeed in birth.

Footnotes:

¹ “On the way to the reconstitution of the Communist Party in this country, it is necessary to create seeds for the party’s mass organizations. These germ forms are not the mass organizations of the party; these can only be created by the party itself. The creation of the germinal forms of these mass organizations is nevertheless an urgent task that serves the reconstitution of the party in this country. Comrades must learn to do this type of work. At the same time, these first mass organisms must be organizations that are able to intervene in the class struggles of the masses, to play a role in them, and to assume more and more a leading role in them.” From Klassenstandpunkt issue 17

² See Red Papers number 1

³ See Struggle Sessions, “Psychology of the Unsettled”

⁴ See later in the same document where “MCP-OC” admit “practical centralization is entirely absent”. Not nearly honest enough.