MB3PII-03

Marxist Bulletin No. 3 – Part II

Wohlforth Against the RT


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Amendment by the Revolutionary Tendency to P.C. Draft Resolution “Preparing for the Next Wave of Radicalism

Amendment by Shane Mage, James Robertson and Geoffrey White for the Minority to P.C. Draft Resolution: “Preparing for the Next Wave of Radicalism in the United States”

substitute the following for the entirety of paragraph 41:

41.

A) Our mass work, linked with a general propaganda offensive, is an indispensable part of our preparation for the next wave of radicalism in the United States. Our aim is to prepare for the successful transition from propagandistic modes of work today to the building of a mass revolutionary party and to vying for leadership in the class struggle in the following period. Of pivotal importance is the ability of the party to solidify its general gains from current work by laying down and strengthening its roots in the mass movement.

B) In the Negro movement, North and South, there are today real opportunities. In the North our spearhead should be based on a combined approach. We aim to work with organizations selected on the basis of their militancy in particular localities and regions; we are also involved in supporting the Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendents (CAMD). This kind of activity should be coupled with such direct involvement as sustained mass sales of appropriate issues of the press in the Negro ghettos and making vigorous and sharply directed campaigns during elections. We will then ourselves be in a position to become involved in and grow from new stages and turns in the struggle. An example of such a turn is that promised by the Philadelphia mass picket line for Negro jobs at construction sites. As regards the South today, we are witnessing from afar a great mass struggle for equality. Our separation from this arena is intolerable. The party should be prepared to expend significant material resources in overcoming our isolation from Southern struggles. In helping to build a revolutionary movement in the South, our forces should work directly with and through the developing left-wing formations in the movement there. A successful outcome to our action would lead to an historic breakthrough for the Trotskyist movement. Expressed organizationally, it would mean the creation of several party branches in the South for the first time–for example, in Atlanta, Birmingham or New Orleans.

C) In maintaining its orientation to the working class as a whole, the party must steadily seek to make or find opportunities to recreate Trade Union fractions at selected spots across the country in industries important to the class struggle. Moreover every party branch should develop contact with the most important unions and factories in its area; for example, through regular, long-term press sales, and accompanied, where possible, by direct electoral campaign approaches.

D) Unless the party is able to create and develop nuclei in the broader layers of the working class movement in this preparatory period, it will be condemned to sterile isolation or an accelerating political degeneration in the face of the certain upsurges ahead in the class struggle. Thus the party’s taking hold today in the mass movement is a necessary pre-condition for going forward on the morrow in the historical mission of leading the working class to power. These primary considerations must be kept in mind in deciding the division of labor between mass work and general party activity.

12 June 1963

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