Frequently Asked Questions

So, what or who is Progressive Labor Party?
PLP was started in the early 1960s by several ex-Communist Party (CP) members who were expelled from the CP for refusing to go along with the program of its revisionist leadership. It began as the Progressive Labor Movement and, after reaching a larger size, became the Progressive Labor Party. In its early days, PLP became the first organization to defy the US ban on travel to then-revolutionary Cuba (and did so repeatedly), played a large role in the Harlem Rebellion, was the official US fraternal party of the Chinese CP until we broke with them in the late 1960s upon the reversal of workers' power in China, staged the first anti-Vietnam war protests in the US, revolutionized SDS, violently opposed Nazis and Klansmen everywhere, organized NYC garment workers, played a large role in the famous miner's strike in Hazard, Kentucky, and a whole slew of other things. For more information, see the Wikipedia page on PL. We are an international party not only in word and spirit, but in reality as well--we have chapters all over the world including, but not limited to, El Salvador, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, and Pakistan.

Revisionism?..
Revisionism put simply means fake-leftism or pseudo-Marxism. More specifically, it could be described adequately as revolutionary phrase-mongering by a group to mask its essentially tame, reformist, un-revolutionary political ideology. Even though some of their ideologies were the most radical thing out there a century ago, a lot of stuff has changed. Many groups have responded by either toning down the radical speech, theory, and practice, or by being dogmatic and mechanical. Essentially, their leadership believe that, like alchemy, if they keep repeating what every past revolutionary movement has done then eventually they'll magically get it right where they left off. Some day, the lead will turn into gold. There were definitely a lot of external problems that caused past Marxist revolutionaries to fail, some more miserably than others. But an even more important lesson to learn is what internal errors they made, and to correct them. This is the science of dialectical and historical materialism (more on this later).

"Fake"? That sounds a little harsh...
Sure, so let's be clear: we don't spend our time bashing other so-called Marxist-Leninist organizations on the left because it's generally an unproductive waste of time and energy. There is a lot to be done that is far more important. While we do disagree with most of these other groups on a huge variety of what we consider to be critical points, we've got nothing against their rank-and-file. It's not as if we see someone selling a copy of Revolution (paper of the RCP) or Liberation (paper of the PSL) and say to ourselves, "Oh, man, what a bunch of frauds." These rank-and-file members are sincerely committed to big social change, and that's something we'd never denigrate. On an ideological level, we're just saying their particular brand of "Marxism" simply isn't the real deal--for a variety of reasons--but it's not as some kind of smug personal thing. With few notable exceptions, think of it as comradely criticism. It doesn't mean we look down their members or go around thinking "we're so right and everyone else is so wrong."

Okay. But there are a ton of groups on my campus and at all these anti-war rallies. Don't you all believe pretty much the same thing? What makes PL different?
Good question. Yes, there is alphabet soup of parties and organizations on the "radical" left. And yes, in fact many of them do say basically the same thing. Some of them have more major differences than others, but for the most part they all cling to the old formula of first socialism, then communism. Beyond that, their major differences tend to revolve around matters of policy, not ideology: should we run our own candidates or just campaign for the Democrats? Do we support Castro a lot or a little? Is Venezuela under Chavez awesome, stupendous or spectacular? Do we support one doomed "national liberation" struggle or another? Do we give our leader a "cult of the personality" or a "culture of appreciation"? etc.

Other times the differences revolve around pretty much pointless stances on largely irrelevant history. One party might have supported "socialist" Albania, while another might have historically supported "socialist" Yugoslavia. One might be more forgiving or openly-endorsing of Slobodan Milosevic while the other might lean a bit more towards Saddam Hussein. Was Mao correct or incorrect when he said that Stalin was 70% correct in his analysis, but prone to being too subjective?

Ultimately, these somewhat silly divides are really only masking the fact that each group has its own leader, and each of those leaders wants to be king after the revolution.

Then there are the Trotskyists, but here we're talking about groups that are at least slightly left-leaning.

Here, then, are some items that make PL not slightly, but enormously, different from other organizations you've encountered.

1. PL does not believe in "revolutionary" versus "reactionary" nationalism. Since 1969, PL's line has been that all nationalism is inherently counter-revolutionary.

2. PL--most significantly of all, perhaps--does not believe in the old two-stage theory of first socialism, then communism. It made sense at the time, but unlike the Russians, Chinese, and many others, we in this time period have the benefit of hindsight. As stated earlier, there's no doubt that all of these countries suffered under an enormous amount of pressure from other imperialist powers. But the real problem, the real reason none of them ever even came close to communism, was ultimately because socialism itself maintains far too many aspects of capitalism, from wages to privileges and a whole host of other things. PL's slogan is "fight directly for communism" (or simply "fight for communism"). This can be somewhat misleading in a theoretical sense, because we recognize that no such transition is always smooth and even. But setting up some kind of mechanical "stage" system is worthless. Our main point is that while revolutionaries must smash the state and build a dictatorship of the working class, we still need to move rapidly to communist economic relations. In other words, from each according to their ability (or as we say more now, their commitment), to each according to their need.

3. PL does not have a lot of various "fraternal" parties in other countries which may or may not be linked as some sort of broader "International." We did use to do this, but haven't for quite some time. Instead, PLP is now an truly international party, existing in many countries.

4. PL does not believe in the possibility of a "peaceful" transition of state power.

5. PL no longer holds the old idea of being a "vanguard" party, at least in the classic sense of the word--we are a mass party.

6. PL does not build its own coalitions. You may be aware that a lot of big coalitions were founded by other "socialist" parties. That's true. We've done the same thing in the past with InCAR (International Committee Against Racism). Ultimately, we found it more productive and useful to work within existing mass organizations, as maintaining something like InCAR tended to sap our time and energy desperately needed to work toward our revolutionary aims.

7. PL does not take sides in bosses' battles. We support the human rights of Palestinians, for instance, but our line is that workers have no stake in some internecine ruling-class dogfight between Hamas, Fatah, and the Israeli government. Instead, working class Palestinians and Israelis need to unite in solidarity and smash all of these gangs of bosses. Same deal with Iraq. Many, many groups talk a great deal about supporting "the Iraqi resistance." What you never hear is about supporting the Iraqi working class who is undergoing wholesale slaughter not only by US and allied imperialists, but by various "resistance" factions and religious extremists.

8. Unlike pretty much all of the rest of the anti-war movement and other groups, PL's membership is incredibly multiracial and overwhelmingly non-white. This isn't to say the "color" or "racial makeup" of a group means that its politics are necessarily right or wrong, just that we've proven in practice that fighting racism and capitalism are best done through multiracial working-class unity--not separate "caucuses," nationalist groups, or identity politics. This was popular in the 60s and 70s, and is very popular again today.

9. PL does not participate in capitalist elections, run candidates, endorse other candidates, or generally buy into the illusion that playing politics with the capitalists will ever change anything for the good of working people. We don't care if you vote or not, but that you realize that real change is only going to come by organizing to smash the system.

10. No personality cults, no signatures. If you've gotten a copy of our paper, Challenge, then you've likely noticed we don't sign any articles. While this certainly helps as a security measure, it's mainly to emphasize a focus on ideas, not personalities. One of the big errors of the international communist movement, historically, has been personality cults around "the leader." This is an idealist (anti-materialist) phenomenon because it disempowers the Party and the working class as a whole. It retards the development of rank-and-file leaders (and ultimately, we would love for all workers to become communist organizers and leaders). Personality cults exalt the individual over the collective. They are also anti-dialectical, in that they make leaders "all good" or "all bad," ignoring the contradictory aspects within each one of us. Personality cults reflect a lack of faith in the working class. They set up a situation where, should the party become corrupt and begin to maintain or re-introduce capitalist ideas, the working class is too imbued with the god-like qualities of "the leader" to overthrow the Party.

11. May Day. PL revived the May Day march in the 1970s. We mention this because while some other organizations occasionally have dinners or meetings on May Day, PL carries out openly communist, militant, mass marches in working class neighborhoods where we have built a base. They occur on the weekend closest to May 1, and usually happen simultaneously in New York City and Los Angeles in the US. PL in other countries tend to coordinate as contingents in larger May Day marches, as they never lapsed as an event in other countries.

In the end, none of these points are necessarily going to convince you of anything. Like all other things in life, the proof is in the pudding whenever you're ready to look at it. And, theory and ideology means little without practice to verify, test, and change it.

Wow, that was a really long answer. And I'm not sure what half of it meant.
It seems like a lot, but then, this is a FAQ! Contact us and come to one of our events, or go up and talk to a Challenge-seller when you see one. There can be a lot of history and lingo internal to the communist movement that, to folks not as familiar with it, can seem very daunting. But don't let this throw you off. We don't expect you to know anything about that stuff already; you may have never had a reason to.

Speaking of papers, is that all you guys do? I get a little sick of people trying to sell me papers all the time, especially at anti-war marches.
Anyone that sells a paper can be perceived as pushy sometimes. However, a lot of this is simply anti-communism. Every day people get on the subway there are usually at least two people, one handing out the Metro, the other handing out AM New York. They talk, they hold them out in front of you--its very clear they want you to take one. Yet it doesn't seem to bother anyone. However, when it's a communist paper, suddenly some people at anti-war protests seem to get very upset. The bottom line is, if someone just offering you a paper--that at least, unlike AM New York or the Metro, contain important information and ideas--is enough to get your goat, that's a good sign it's probably because you don't like what the paper says. Plus, Challenge is by-donation. That means you can have it for free if you really don't want to pay the 50 cent suggested donation for it.

PLP members and friends are engaged in a wide variety of groups and activities, but the paper is the primary way we spread and discuss our ideas. It is a critical tool for base building. Imagine how far any idea would get without some cohesive way to spread it! Ultimately, the purpose of a paper for a communist organization is to serve as an ideological weapon in the hands of the working class, a tool to wage class war.

Are you guys Stalinists?
No. We are Marxist-Leninists. While we uphold the gains of the Bolsheviks under Stalin, we are also highly critical of their errors. If Stalin had made any revelatory contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory, then sure, we'd probably jump all over the categorization of "Stalinists." But he didn't; he just upheld Leninism.

Are you guys Maoists?
Nope. This stems back to the '60s, when PL was the fraternal party of the Chinese CP. But even then, we were just plain-old Marxist-Leninists. Again, we defend the Chinese masses' gains under Mao, but are also very critical. That's how dialectics works. And, again, we don't think Mao--who granted, made more important theoretical contributions to Marxism than Stalin--added so much to Leninism to warrant a qualitatively new form of it called "Maoism."

Still, that whole Stalin thing...
If you really are that hung up on it, let's get together and talk. But if that's what's stopping you from getting involved in the movement, then you're missing the bigger picture. And while you think about that, note that, for better or worse, most people don't say "I would become Christian, but that whole Crusades thing..." Many of us, of course, aren't religious people. But all of us can recognize, again, that such a statement misses the point. We're not out to convince you of anything and most of us couldn't care less about hashing out age-old debates--we're interested in getting things done now. The past matters in so much as we can learn from it and apply it--or not--to the future. But we have limited time and resources, and they need to be spent building for a revolution!

I head you guys told people to vote for Obama's senatorial campaign, hate gays, and said [insert incredibly obscure and equally absurd claim here] once.
No, no, and [no]. And stop talking to Spartacists/the FBI.

To find out more about PL's line and practice, check out "the twelve articles"--the closest thing we have to what might be called a party programme. Feel free to contact us with questions at cd188@juno.com, plp@plp.org, or (for the Columbia-specific) plpcolumbia@gmail.com.