The "Art and Science" of Party Building

What I aim to present here today are some ideas and propositions with regard to the problem of our Party's current size and prospects for growth. I think there is a lot of room, and a lot of need, in our leadership for thinking about this question, and I hope to stimulate that process.

What is the framework for this discussion, the reason we are having it, so to speak? I think there are three key aspects to it:

1) There are tremendous developments taking place in the political life of our country. In the first place, there are the developments in the labor movement, which take on new dimensions so often, that we have to be careful to not become routine about their meaning. For example, the developments regarding the AFL-CIO's position on immigrant workers. And there is the growing anti-globalization movement, first expressed in a dramatic way just six months ago in Seattle, and which has continued in the form of demonstrations, alliances and coalitions addressing a range of issues and events, and there are new things almost weekly ...

2) The need to address the problems of slow growth of our Party, a need which has been present for a while, but which I think has reached a critical point. I think it is incumbent on us as a leadership to acknowledge the problems with recruiting and the frustration that exists in the Party, not in order to be negative, but to bring the fullest collective experience and conclusions to bear on what we're doing and how we're doing it.

3) The need for a correction in our approach, and for a renewed attention to our theory, our strategy, for building the Party.

We've talked about the Party being in our hands. To my mind, taking a serious, responsible, political look at what we've been doing to build the Party, and where we need to go, is an important part of our role as the national leadership.

We have to look frankly at the state of our organization, which is, in many if not most areas, weak, fragile, and in need of rebuilding. And the most basic question is: why are we growing so slowly? Why are so few workers joining our Party? And, though it may seem obvious, how should we go about Party building.

Perhaps more than a lot of other issues, this is one that has to be approached, in theory, and especially in life, in the most balanced, dialectical way. It's a challenge to that old Communist trick of being optimistic realists.

My opening is organized in the form of four propositions.

So the first proposition is this: The main way we should seek to gain new members is through and as a result of involvement in struggle. And, a corollary: struggle in which we must be involved not only, not even primarily, for the purpose of recruiting. The task of Party building is interconnected with the task of movement-building.

In my Party building report to the March NC meeting I said we had to strike a better balance in our recruiting efforts, because in the recent period we have focused almost exclusively, at least at the national level, on the internet and other "spontaneous" new members.

I want to put that more strongly here: the most important proposition in terms of Party building is changing the way we work, immersing the Party, from the clubs up, from the national leadership down, in struggle, in activity, in relationship-building with leaders, activists, organizations, in particular, those of the labor movement.

Does this take away from the concept of concentration? To the contrary: I think we have to see it as the context for concentration, neighborhood or workplace. Clubs have to be part of the political mix, and individual communists, even those who are involved in a lot of things, have to think about whether what they're doing fits with the new moment and the new possibilities. Our work to be part of the struggle to defeat the ultra right in the elections is a perfect example: how should clubs work, including how should they do concentration work, in a way that they are part of building the broad, labor-led coalition that can bring a tremendous victory in November?

Party growth is hollow if it isn't for the most part connected to people in motion, to movements. Or, perhaps a better way of putting that is to ask, what does Party growth mean if it isn't for the most part connected to people in motion, to movements? That is because the purpose of our Party, whether we're small, big, or bigger, is to build the movement to change the system, and we have to be in it to win it.

One of the things that developed as we came to focus almost exclusively on the internet recruiting was that from the national center, our main efforts in terms of Party building, vis a vis the clubs and the districts, was to push them to follow up on these new members.

What I'm saying is that our main efforts, from the national leadership, should change; they should be to work with clubs and districts to become more deeply involved, in the initiatives of labor, and in existing movements and struggles, and look for ways to bring in new members in the course of that.

That old, knotty problem of "club life" is also related to this: I think we've too much gone about it from the wrong direction: rather than trying to "improve club life" so that people will want to come to club meetings, we need to do more to move clubs into activity and action, as themselves forms of club life, which will of course be more attractive and interesting, to new - and old - members.

This is the most important proposition we have to convince comrades of, and help them move towards: placing Party building in the context of movement building; Party building in the course of struggle, on issues, with others. Our approach to the November elections is an example: for the most part, the Party agrees with the basic policy of the necessity of defeating the ultra right. But we have a ways to go to get the clubs working on it in the way we can and should be working: wherever possible, as part of and helping build labor-led broad coalitions, and finding ways to "be our own organization" related to that. Likewise, finding ways to bring people closer to us, and into our ranks, related to that.

Party building in the course of struggle, however, without placing participation in struggle as something we do simply in order to build the Party. And this is an important part of it - without placing participation in struggle as something we do in order to build the Party. So another question is the relative importance of recruitment, of looking at Party building as it fits into an overall picture of our work as Communists, of what we are supposed to be doing.

Or to put it another way, even more strongly: recently, I heard a comrade say that "the main aim of Communists isn't building the Party, it's building the revolutionary movement." Now, I found that rather provocative; frankly, I think some comrades might have a negative reaction. And I'm pretty sure I would have strongly disagreed with it - in fact, I'm positive, because I went back over reports I gave on Party building a couple of years ago. But now, it really got me thinking, because it's an idea gets to the heart of the notion of Party building as a product of, in the course of, struggle, struggle, which is the main thing. It got me thinking about our strategy for growth, and how we see Party growth in relation to our overall "meaning for living."

Now, this is not to say that we don't have to build the Party. That isn't to say that we should accept where we are today. In fact, the main reason we are looking at the problem of small growth is because we need to grow. We all agree that we are way too small, and that we can and must bring new members, new blood, into the Party. In some places, that is really an understatement. But I think the "how" is fundamental; I think the "why" is also, fundamental. How do we seek to recruit to the Party? Why should we emphasize recruiting in particular ways, rather than in general?

None of what I'm going to say is an argument against a mass, public style. I am not saying we should abandon the internet work, or turn anyone away. None is this is to say that we should abandon any of the new ways we have of reaching people with our organization and our ideas; on the contrary, we have taken steps to improve that work, to improve our web page, to speed up our response time, to add comrades to help do that work. We should not only not abandon, but rather, step up, improve, update, all of the ways we've developed and the arguments we make about public presence, public visibility, mass, popular style.

This shift in emphasis is the challenge to our leadership, I believe. There are a lot of difficult questions: what do you get when you join the Party? Why should people join if they're already involved in activity? What's different about "activists" joining the Party? How do we help clubs develop new forms for activity, how do we help clubs become public organizations, how do we help with the tactics of participation in coalitions?

Another question: some have said that this isn't anything new, but it is a new day - and that is important. Party building in the course of movement building is new because the "movement" is new - in terms of level, breadth and quality. It is not the same. It is qualitatively different labor movement. It is the beginning of a period of upsurge. There is new openness to us, there are new forces in motion (witness the Million Moms), the left is changing, growing before our eyes, there are changes in the relationship and attitudes of many sectors of society towards the working class and labor. These are all relevant to how we participate in struggle and whether we can grow as a result.

Another issue: the problem of people who argued against the internet recruiting and the related emphasis we've tried to give to developing a mass style, counterposing it with working in movements. We shouldn't allow this to become an issue, because as I see it, in this new and exciting political situation, we should in no way dilute or diminish efforts to bring the Party "out," into the light, to change our style, to develop a public presence, to have Party representatives in coalitions, contingents in demonstrations, ideas in the media - our own, the broader left, and the mass media. We should do all that. The more the Party is known, the more ways there are for people to hear what the Communist Party thinks and does, the more comfortable people will become about joining - no matter which way they come in contact with us.

Another question that has to be addressed, and that is: will we "get lost" if we have this approach, if we overemphasize participation in struggle, with others? At various times in our Party's history, this problem has been brought up sharply. And it is important: as Rick put it in a PA article about Party building a couple of years ago, how to not end up "checking our Party cards at the door."

Again: the context is the new situation. And I think more to the point is this: what do we bring to the movements today that is unique, special? There are new levels of understanding and action; there is a new radicalism - what else would characterize a demonstration against capitalism? - there are new opportunities. How do we view ourselves in relation to others? We should discuss this, think about this more. We can't be satisfied with general answers about what we bring. There's a difference between a slogan on a button (capitalism sucks), and programmatic proposals and ideas. For instance, we've been talking about the need to come up with proposals on where the anti-globalization movement should go, what are we for?

These questions also open up a whole other area, which is, how we define Party membership, what it means to be a member of the Party. I think we have to continue figuring that out, we have to have flexibility, there has to be room for different levels of activity, we have to ask people to make certain changes and we have to be willing to change ourselves to accommodate new kinds of members.

This is all to say that I don't think we should be afraid that we'll get lost - but we should be thinking about how to be the Communist Party in the 21st century, in the midst of a radical, complicated, multi-faceted upsurge, in a country with a labor movement that is on the move, in a "globalized" economy and world.

And I don't think any of this changes the point about the need for a serious shift in emphasis in our organized Party-building efforts, to place them in the context of involvement in struggle, and to re-stating our overall strategy and how a strategy for Party building relates to that.

Proposition 2: So, on strategy. We should have - we have - a strategy for growth, which is inherent in the definition of our organization as a working-class, revolutionary party, namely, that the emphasis, the priority, the focus, of Party building should be to build in the working class, i.e., to recruit workers, and to recruit in the predominantly working-class Black, Latino and other racially oppressed communities. And again, in the course of struggle, in the course of participating in building the working-class movement.

We should continue to struggle to open all doors, to change our style, to enhance all forms of public presence, to build an organizational identity that fits the times and attracts people, to do what we can to change the atmosphere and people's perception of the Party. But I am convinced that we will not, and should not try, to build the Party by relying mainly on spontaneous joining, even as we appreciate, and look for ways to benefit from, the significance of people's willingness to identify with us and to join based simply on our ideas.

We aren't just looking for large numbers of members, in general, in the abstract. And in fact, the apparently large numbers who've reached us over the internet have not, for the most part, materialized into members who participate or are real, even in a very limited sense. And I believe it is correct to say that that has been the Party's experience over the past few years.

But more than that. I think it is a wrong concept that we could build a mass (i.e., big, influential) Party in a general sense, just drawing on the increased interest in our ideas, in the population in general. And, even more, I think it's a wrong concept that we would want to build a big Party in that way even if it were possible - because it would be an unrepresentative Party, and it would be a Party separate from the ongoing, actual political struggles that are taking place and from which we cannot afford to be separate.

Another mistake we've ended up making, I believe, is the notion that "if we build it, they will come."

Proposition 3: We need more workers - lots more - Black, Brown and white, young and old, but especially young! And I don't have answers on how to recruit large numbers of workers. Except in the late '30s and '40s, and to a lesser extent, but not insignificantly, in the upsurge of the '60s-'70s, this problem has been with us. We should study more the periods in our country's history when large numbers of workers did become Communists. What were the conditions, economic and political; what needs to take place now, what will have to change, to make such joining take place.

In fact, what I think is this: that perhaps we're just not yet at the point where large numbers of workers are going to join. Not yet. Saying that, though, is not to say that we should give up on looking for ways to bring more workers into the Party - on the contrary, I am convinced that an important aim of our organizational work, national and district level, should be to constantly seek new ways to do this. And we haven't been doing that, not lately, at least. Industrial concentration, shop clubs, have been given inadequate attention. We need to change that.

Of course the best way to gauge where the class is at, is to be with it, involved in what's going on, to be in position to grow as the working-class movement grows.

A big part of the answer to bringing workers into the Party is to be found in the new opportunities for work in and with the labor movement, which we have not fully appreciated, recognized, particularly on the club level. Breakthroughs here in regard to how the clubs work on the elections is the first step, and should be an aim of our organizational work this year.

In this connection, I want to say something about the PWW. We've lacked a serious approach to building the circulation of our press, and it seems obvious to me that building a much bigger circulation is a necessary part, a connection, a tool, that we have not utilized enough, and that as we do, will help us to recruit.

There is no automatic, or magic, solution to the problem of workers joining the Party, but certainly the main first step deepening our involvement. Leadership means helping find the ways to encourage clubs to move, to seek this involvement in struggle, with workers, both for its own sake, and to root our Party in the working class.

Proposition 4: This last point is related to the other three: our strategy for building the Party has to be organically connected with our strategy for socialism - or, to put this in the reverse, since we say that socialism will be won by a coalition of forces, with labor at the head and heart of it, this has important and clear implications for our strategy of building the Party in the here and now. It has important and clear implications for how we see building the Party not just in terms of gaining new members, but building the Party in terms of our political and ideological depth and strength, our ability to offer answers on immediate problems, our longer-range solutions, our program, and, last but not least, our relationships with other movements.

Our strategy for socialism and Party building: what is the connection. We have to be thinking about how to root our Party in the midst of that movement, that coalition, that working class that will, at some point, see socialism as the solution. [[Workers will be attracted to the Party and to socialism as they themselves are coming to see it as the solution.]]

We need to develop this more both because of the consequences in terms of our approach to Party building, but also in terms of how comrades understand the path to socialism. I think we're weak on this - and it's important, obviously, not just that comrades understand socialism in the abstract, in general, what we think it will be like, etc. What's key is figuring out, seeing, on some level, a relationship between what we're doing in the here and now, and socialism. I think understanding this relationship, discussing it, will change what we do and how we do it. Because that relationship has everything to do with rooting the Party in the working class, and in the working class movement that exists today.

Lastly: Just some thoughts on the notion of a mass Party: I think there are a number of things meant by the term mass, and we have been fuzzy with its usage. One of the ways we used it was in the idea that the internet recruiting represented the appearance of a mass Party in our country.

And I think that was problematic, with the end result being a certain demoralization and cynicism in the party, where there was a feeling, and I believe it is widespread, that the Emperor really had no clothes, so to speak, that the reports of tremendous growth via internet recruiting did not reflect reality, or at least, not the reality in many if not most districts.

It was a problem because, inadvertently, it fed the notion that Party activity in and of itself, by ourselves was more important than being involved in struggle with others. I would go so far as to say it is incorrect, in this sense: it assumes that there could be a mass Communist Party without a big mass movement; that all that is required is effort on our part, follow up, better meetings, finding things for the new people to do.

This is not to say that we shouldn't follow up when someone asks to join, or that we shouldn't have much better meetings. But I think the emphasis was off, and we went off on a tangent with it, and drew wrong conclusions.

The question is: what it will take to build a mass Party. I think it will take a lot more than just our desire to do it, and our efforts. And that's important to say. Why? Because we have to acknowledge the frustration in the Party, and the difficulties of Party growth. We have to lead in a different way than we have in the past, I believe. It's not enough to urge comrades to build the Party. It's not enough to give exciting examples. And our leadership on Party building has to be sound, theoretically.

A mass Party means a Party that is actually big, public and reflects in size and activity a big people's movement, a big working-class movement, a period of upsurge. I think we have to have more accurate, realistic, scientific, assessments of the movement, of the upsurge, and I don't think a mass Party is "out there" just waiting to be brought in. I think the increase in numbers we've seen has been an arithmetic growth, and it will take a mass upsurge that we are part of, for that growth to become geometric, and for it to be truly mass growth.

We cannot bring about the big objective changes, and we alone cannot bring about the big subjective changes, that create and constitute a mass upsurge. However, there are important changes we can effect, in how the Party is viewed by the American people, in our organizational self-image too. We needed a makeover, and we should continue to use the many new tools at our disposal to accomplish that.

We should continue to advocate a Party style of work that is public and, in that sense, "mass; " we should fight for it, lead by example, make the right decisions about resources and cadre so that we truly transform ourselves in that regard. We should not restrict the definition of Party membership; we should be open to many levels and avenues for participation.

Before I end, let me say this: I think we have to strive to discuss all of this in the most balanced, responsible way, and draw conclusions with care. The low level of recruiting, and the even slower gains in terms of new members becoming active, also reflect the relatively low level of involvement of many clubs in movements and struggles. But even given that, are the numbers who are joining as a result of our work a real measure of what's possible today? I think not, since we have paid very little attention to this approach. And, some of the problems with bringing new members into activity are organizational and even technical. We have had a sharp drop in the number of full time Party organizers, and certainly some aspects of recruiting and membership boil down to educational work, to organizational follow-up, to day to day attention. We should do everything we can to overcome those problems.

These are hard questions, hard even to bring up; they're questions that don't have easy answers. The most difficult part is how to raise them without appearing to be pessimistic, or worse, without appearing to be throwing up my hands. In fact, thinking about Party building in this way has made me feel anything but pessimistic; in fact, it's almost a relief - and I think the Party will see it that way - to begin to look at and identify the reasons for our small size and slow growth, to try to place the task of Party building in the most scientific, balanced way, proportionate way to our other tasks.