MLGA | On the Struggle for Unity within the American Maoist Movement

To preface, the author speaks of the relatively smaller Maoist movement in relation to the broader American Communist movement not as a separate trend, but as a distinctly defined tendency within it which carries its own characteristics, namely, the adherence to the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its use as the guiding ideology of socialist revolution. This is in contention to those who either lessen or deny both Mao Zedong’s theoretical development of Marxism and the universal significance of the Chinese revolution and the subsequent Cultural Revolution in the world Communist movement. Regardless of such a distinction, we hope all readers give the content of this article careful attention.

It is not controversial to say that the US Maoist movement is divided and has been for the majority of its existence. Attempts to unify a large enough section on definite principles of Marxism, correct revolutionary theory and strategy, have all famously collapsed, each rendition worse than the last. Though, despite these failures, unity is not impossible. Even the formation of a vanguard Maoist Communist party is not—and should not be—merely a distant dream. But it is clear things must change. And as we approach yet another upsurge in Communist activity, as many more flock to the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, we must face yet again the question of what is to be done. It is in this letter where I want to outline certain discrepancies at present as well as make the case for what can be accomplished in the immediate and near future. That being said, this letter does not at all intend to speak for any “section” of the movement nor does it provide an all-encompassing and completely thorough party-building plan—that would require a collective effort. These remarks are merely the opinions of the author and should be interpreted by the reader as an earnest attempt towards achieving a higher level of unity within our movement.

In order to properly articulate my thoughts, I feel it pertinent to share a recent experience. In my polemic Concerning the Rationalist Trend within American Maoism, I argued that Maoists should “help develop the class struggle today while simultaneously researching and theorizing much broader economic or political class contradictions (while summing up direct practical experience), rather than remaining locked behind closed doors waiting for our contemporary great teachers to synthesize the correct path forward,” i.e. over-prioritizing and over-exaggerating the role of the book-learning of Maoism to the point of organizing party-building around it through the form of secluded study circles (thereby subordinating practical mass work to a minor role) as one Mt. Tai claimed. Despite this formulation, I nevertheless affirmed that Marxism itself still “requires prolonged in-depth study…[and that,] in opposition to comrades who reject theory entirely, who attempt to change the world without any guiding principles or methods, a genuine study of [Marxism-Leninism-Maoism] is, and should be, unending, as one must always read and re-read various texts at various stages in the revolution.” Of course, after disseminating this article, its thesis and more notably its polemical form was then sharply criticized by a handful of groups. We welcomed this criticism by demonstrating an earnest attempt to engage in productive debate over the pressing questions my article touched on. And admittedly, after some back and forth and considerable reflection on my end, I had been won over to the idea that the article exhibited shades of a sectarianism. It became clear to me how I had drawn a subtle “line of demarcation” between our group, the Maoist Labor Group of Austin, and Mt. Tai, thereby creating another ideological boundary across the frontiers of our already heavily partitioned revolutionary movement. Now, to be clear, I still believe Mt. Tai to be largely incorrect on many questions of historical, theoretical, and organizational significance. However, any sort of struggle over such disagreements will only ever coalesce into a higher level of unity if there are definitive and principled grounds to stand on. If I were to instead “damn to hell” these exponents of rationalism, I would only continue the typical trend of consolidating around a handful of ideas as a “political line”and organizationally close myself off toward real struggle and real debate over important matters. I would be choosing to forego progress in favor of talking to my own group of “really real Marxists” in isolated perpetuity, only ever opening the door to discourse through private channels or on public platforms whenever it suited my own interests. My mistake, in a word, brought into clarity a much more endemic problem among us Maoists. Let me elaborate.

First of all, to backtrack, the aforementioned criticisms and discourse around my article were contained purely within isolated correspondence. If debate occurred, it took place across private messages between myself and other individuals. What ended up happening with one non-public group in particular was that, after our differences became clear, communications and relations were ceased from their end. On the one hand, a distinct interpretation of Marxism was made apparent within our group and theirs, while on the other hand, it unnecessarily spelled out a dividing line of demarcation between the both of us. For a while, I understood this separation as our groups representing two irreconcilable tendencies. Otherwise, why would they break off correspondence based on one single bout of exchange? But this just couldn’t be the case. Neither myself nor this group, who primarily organizes around study, were guilty of an irredeemable mistake, of opportunism or revisionism of the worst kind—yet here we were, acting as if this was the case. My head was dizzy.

With this, my hopes turned to more public-facing groupings. I submitted the article to several Maoist publications and sites, and one in particular had gotten back to me: the recently founded Long March Journal. This journal, in its initial declaration, correctly assessed that our current period is

marked by the absence of a real vanguard formation of the working class movement [and is] one of dispersal and disorganization, wherein the anti-revisionist forces (such as they exist) are grouped into small circles with varying levels of politico-ideological and organizational development. Many of these organizations take up a sober assessment of this dispersal and understand, correctly, the need for an attitude of Communist humility, recognizing that no currently existing formation has any legitimate claim to national leadership, and that the task before us is to produce that leadership through genuine struggle for unity. Others take up an attitude of bloviating hostility, conceiving of their group as sole bearers of the truth merely because they manage to shout it the loudest and expecting others to fall in line, proclaiming—as once did our old friends in Texas [in reference to Red Guards Austin - L. K.]—that their task must be to “convert them into comrades, or convert them into dust.” Still others take a fully monastic form, as small local (or online) groups studying together at a distance from both the real movement and the rest of the Maoist trend, amateur and squabbling though it may be.

Invoking Lenin, they also point out the need for “an open and thoroughgoing discussion on the burning questions of our movement.” Desperately true. Thus, in light of these conditions, the editors of Long March Journal proudly lay out the function of their publication as

a space for serious theoretical production and comradely struggle, open not just to the viewpoint of our own circle and its sympathizers, but also those with whom we disagree (so long as they are motivated by a genuine pursuit of unity of anti-revisionist Communists!). We therefore welcome and encourage the submission of documents—polemics, criticisms, theoretical interventions, summations, etc.—although we reserve the right to publish such documents with our own criticisms or responses where they diverge from our own orientation.

With such a declaration, I thought of my submission relatively straightforward. However, to my dismay, it was rejected. On what such grounds? The editors, not lacking in a proper response, gave me a detailed explanation as to why. Most of it consisted in a sharp disagreement with my main thesis, labeling it as the same old pragmatism which reigns among the likes of Democratic Socialist canvassers and Party of Socialism and Liberation activists. Though, as is clearly expressed in the above declaration, this could not be enough for a refusal to publish it. And so the main reasoning, they told me, centered on its “overly polemical tone” resulting in a distortion of Mt. Tai’s line, and its lack of both polish and professionalism. The former point I found mute given that I did not twist any thesis to suit my own needs albeit with an understanding that the article could have perhaps been much more thorough.¹ The latter point appeared rather strange to me given that nowhere above, nor in the rest of the declaration, are these more “professional” guidelines clarified. Of course, if my piece was virulent or horribly illegible I’d understand. But my article was neither. Sure I threw in some strong jabs at Mt. Tai, but never did I once label them as opportunistic, irredeemable, liquidationist, and revisionist swine as our friends at The Worker might have. Notwithstanding these criticisms, it was suggested that I either revise my article or respond to their comments. However, tired of the same isolated debate I had just experienced, wherein things were left within email chains and group chats, I sent back that I did not think it made sense to revise the article and that if they believe both its form and content to be completely wrong, then it would be much more productive for them to publish it with a critical response so as to foster the “comradely struggle” they themselves call for. The Long March Journal did not respond. To this we ask: how can you proclaim that the principle task of our movement is theoretical rectification when your editorial board is more worried about the polish of its journal rather than the rugged diversity of opinions?

But I digress. This problem of sectarianism is not meant to be levied solely against the editorial board of Long March but towards many other public and private groupings active within our movement (one already alluded to). Moreover, such criticism from my end is based not on a merciless drive for scoring points but on the observation of a commonality among us American Maoists (and Communists generally) in creating dividing lines between one group and another based on one or a few ideas. To argue that a particular disagreement, like, for example, whether or not Gonzalo contributed to the development of Maoism or whether or not we should organize ourselves into study circles, calls for a digging in of trenches where skirmishes are fought only once here and once there, is—and has historically been—counterproductive for the development of a nascent revolutionary movement. This was, to reiterate, a fault of my article. It did not succinctly clarify in its language that there does not lie between myself and Mt. Tai an uncrossable gulf. Yes, I believe that they are wrong that we must follow their party-building strategy of “study circle —> pre-party —> party”, and of their academic priority of the book-learning of Marxism. No, I do not think that we in the MLGA are purified Communists and those in Mt. Tai are forsaken opportunists unable to contribute anything of substance to the movement. If, for example, what Long March says is true, that “no currently existing formation has any legitimate claim to national leadership, and that the task before us is to produce that leadership through genuine struggle for unity,” which we wholeheartedly agree with, how can we remain locked behind our current groupings acting as if it is blasphemy to cross beyond their bounds? How will we ever build anything at all if we do not consistently and unapologetically struggle over pressing theoretical and ideological matters regardless of group affiliation? I want to make it clear that these are questions I first and foremost levy at myself. In regards to the Maoist Labor Group of Austin, I give it not a crumb of my allegiance insofar as it gets in the way of the formation and creation of a genuine vanguard Communist party. This is why, in my previous article, I talked of “achieving higher revolutionary practice” in the first place, so as to move away from the predominant trend of “ready-made” revolutionary organizations to which a small membership clings onto. Nevertheless, this group-first orientation applies not just towards those who seem to be alone on their own island but also to various “camps” or “coalitions” of different groups as they still split our relatively small movement into pieces within a period of general division and disarray.

That said, it must be understood by the reader that we are not calling for a sort of unity which seeks to erode the various differences at play in favor of “unity for unity’s sake”, as this only ever results in tailing the progressive-wing of bourgeois politics (see the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America and the current Communist Party of the USA). However, in order so that we may effectively struggle over our differences, we must first work off of firmly elaborated and defined unity. In the present moment, as we are without a party, this would mean uniting around a transitory yet organized party-building network that would lay down a foundation where we (we as in those agreed to a set of party-building principles to which I will expound upon at the end of this article) may all walk upon and, more importantly, struggle over. This approach is what is meant by unity-struggle-unity. The premise of organizational sects or “camps” which prevail today operate principally on struggle-unity-struggle—which, in practice, only ever means winning over the entire movement to your specific group’s line. Certainly, some groups have more correct ideas than others, I wouldn’t deny such a thing. But history has shown us that within our own movement, either intentional or not, correct ideas only ever end up subordinate to the interests of a sect and its leadership. That isn’t to say that within a party-building network, there will be no groupings. On the contrary, such groupings will manifest and become ever more defined and concrete, reflecting the real dividing lines of our day, narrowing down those for the revolutionary position and those opportunistically against it.²

Thus, on this note, I feel it pertinent to clarify some history. Factionalism has long reigned throughout the entirety of the US Communist movement. The Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party were forced by the Comintern to quit their own petty-squabbling and unite within one organization. And even then, de facto factionalism continued between competing groups, notably Lovestone and Foster, hampering the ability to apply Marxism correctly to American conditions as well impeding in its role as the vanguard (of which it arguably never fully achieved). Later, after Browderism sank any remaining hope for the party to move past its blunders, within what are properly coined “anti-revisionist” movements, new hasty formations like the Progressive Labor Party and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) rose and fell one after the other, giving way to a myriad of rebellious and sensational groupings which could not see far beyond their own interests. Upon the rise of the New Communist movement in the 60s and 70s, the same largely continued. Instead of learning from past mistakes and forming a party on a conscious basis, which struggled for definitive unity on all important questions, circles consolidated around a few set of ideas representing their own understanding of Marxism (the correct one of course) and drawing deep trenches between themselves and other groups. The Revolutionary Union, October League, Communist League, Venceremos, etc., etc., all came into being huddled around their own set of leaders and their own particular brand of Communism. Dozens upon dozens of new cells, circles, collectives, leagues, groups, committees, and unions proliferated across the US with unmatched pace, each attempt at unity only ever a vague call for “kumbaya unification” in the form of broad forums, congresses, and conferences, etc. By the time a few comrades had come to grasp the prevailing sectarian attitude and fractured situation (one Pacific Collective (M-L) in 1979), lines were now walled off borders within a movement that had already lost its steam.³ Groups degenerated, dissolved, or completely disappeared without a trace. What followed, most already know. Maoism receded to the corners of the country, ebbing and flowing further into total obscurity while major advances were made in other parts of the world (see the revolutions of India, the Philippines, Peru, Turkey, and Nepal). In the 21st century, our traditions have only continued, especially throughout the 2010s wherein new national groups like Red Guards Austin (later the failed Committee to Reconstitute the CPUSA and now The Worker) sought not to unify but to, like Long March pointed out, convert comrades into dust.⁴ Other groupings like the New Communist Party - Organizing Committee (which certain members immediately left to make the New Communist Party - Liaison Committee) Maoist Communist Group, and others, were largely confused and dogmatic, again forming organizations upon murky lines, shoddy theoretical understandings, and misguided practical work (plus more of the same opportunistically-inclined leadership). By the time one could call it a “New Maoist Movement”, it was over and all the various sects scattered into oblivion.⁵

Today, it is unsurprising publications like The Worker represent the absolute worst continuation of this tendency, describing other groups like The Masses, the organ for a group called the People’s Defense Committee, as “born in the filth of snitching,”⁶ and “the most advanced form of revisionism in the US today.”⁷ They routinely speak of a “right opportunist headquarters”, labeling certain comrades as “liquidationist” and “fed-jacketing”, which are absurd terms that simply don’t apply in the present period due to the fact that the state has hardly been given a reason to care about the threat of Maoism.⁸ On the other hand, The Masses alongside its fraternal grouping of The Partisan, New Labor Press, and La Obrera (meaning “The Woman Worker”), among others, while never playing down to the same utter inanity as The Worker, still largely adhere to their own specific “coalition” of organizations and to their shared line and influence (specifically around Gonzaloism, the line of complete clandestinity of party-building, and others), demarcating themselves from other sections of the movement.⁹ Long March Journal, as we have already mentioned, has yet to follow through on their call for diverse theoretical struggle and rectification, only republishing one article from non-editorial members since their founding (which they agree with ideologically).¹⁰ Regarding Mt. Tai Study Circle, the main subject of my polemic, they have not delivered any retort to its content,¹¹ largely remaining quiet on matters of theoretical debate besides an article entitled “Field Butchery: A Review of a Recent Article…”, a polemic against The Partisan’s claim that our movement is heavily influenced by the organizational line of Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party. This polemic was then criticized in T. Kobayashi’s article, “Avakianism or Marxism?: In Response to Mt Tai Study Circle’s Myopic History of the CPSU”, and similar to my recent inquiry, no response was issued. If we turn to the likes of one Maoist Communist Union, birthed alongside the RGA ten years ago in a former grouping called Mass Proletariat, they not only avoid struggle, evident by their complete lack of polemics within the Maoist movement,¹² but act as if they are the only spokesman of American Maoism, going as far as labeling a handful of their own former members “Mensheviks” for going against their line.¹³ Lastly, as we have already mentioned, many unknown or non-public groupings are cropping up—usually centered around study and study only—and are in the process of consolidating organizationally around their own understandings which will result assuredly in yet another rise of collectives with their own set of leadership, principles, and ideas. In the final analysis, a vast majority of these seemingly sharp differences (past and present), which set the stage for a myriad of groupings and sects, are in fact contradictions among the people confused for antagonistic contradictions among opposed classes. If what many groups say is true, that we have hardly a class analysis to speak of, that we are in the mud theoretically and ideologically, and that there is no party, how can there be any talk of Menshevism? Of an opportunist headquarters? Of rectification? Comrades, escape your self-imposed confines for just one moment and look around!

Such a history lesson is all well and good, some may retort, but what about Lenin’s famous edict in his Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra that “[b]efore we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation”? My reply: if one would like to invoke the role of Iskra then let us get some basic facts straight. The economists were still, despite revisionist, within (and principally arose from) the Russian Social-Democratic movement itself. Lenin had sought to keep unity with them in order to maintain the integrity of the party as well as, and more importantly, win over large sections of the movement from economism—especially the strata of advanced workers—as its influence had become incredibly popular. It often gets lost nowadays that they were represented at the 2nd party congress of the RSDLP, wherein their position was firmly and finally defeated. Had Lenin, before winning over a majority of the movement to the Iskra-ist position, instead expelled from the movement with vile and vitriol the right-opportunist section headquartered within Rabochaya Dyelo, he would have severely alienated Iskra and his own position in spite of it being correct.

To make ourselves utterly clear, we would like to quote at length a portion of a polemic written at the tail end of the New Communist Movement entitled From the Circles to the Party: The Tasks of Communists Outside the Existing Parties, by Pacific Collective (Marxist-Leninist) where the authors (who understood well the state of American Communism) correctly affirmed that despite the economist and bernsteinian trends deviating away from the principles of revolutionary Marxism, Lenin sought nevertheless

to conduct a line struggle…among the Russian Marxists, in order to either win them over or defeat their considerable influence among Communists and class-conscious workers. Conducting this struggle was what Lenin called drawing lines of demarcation. He did not say, “To hell with the Economists and those under their sway, let’s demarcate them out of our efforts to build the party and set up forms where we consistent Marxists can talk to ourselves.” Naturally, with this approach, not everyone involved in the party-building struggles that culminated in the Second Congress left that Congress as a member of the Party, though Iskra’s defeat of Economism obviously increased the ranks of those who were won to the correct line. But there is an extremely important lesson in this. If party-building is a process, U.S. Communists, too, can engage in it without guarantees that all who now join to struggle for unity will succeed, and it is fortunate that we can do so. There are no such guarantees, and the futile pursuit of them, through refusal to see in party-building itself a process of drawing lines of demarcation, would lead to one more unnecessarily narrow grouping of forces going its own way, guided not only by its members’ common strengths, but by their unchallenged common weaknesses.¹⁴

It is clear that this correct orientation against petty factionalism and sectarianism which does not prematurely draw lines of demarcation upon contradictions among the people—upheld and applied by Lenin¹⁵—if implemented by the various groupings which have been created in the last few years, will undoubtedly allow for us to figure out the really real opportunistic and antagonistic lines within our so-called movement. Notably, we find ourselves at favorable juncture in which many of the separate groupings that exist acknowledge the absence of a vanguard party and are not consolidated around a pre-mature party formation (see the formation of the Progressive Labor Party, Communist Party M-L, the Revolutionary Communist Party, among many others). In addition, there are hundreds if not thousands of new comrades who have in recent years been forced by the horrid conditions of our oppressive society to rebel against it (not counting those who have yet to be won over to Communism in the coming years, like, for example, a large enough strata of advanced workers). Many of them are without allegiance to any particular Maoist camp and will more than likely constitute, moving forward, the bulk of soldiers who will come to wield the red banner of socialist revolution with complete resolve over the interests of any one faction.

However, if we choose to instead close ourselves off organizationally, to only ever engage in theoretical struggle either when it is convenient or in our favor, and to only ever put the interests of our own petty sects’ leadership in front of the proletariat and its party, the Maoist Communist movement in this country will never escape from the dark recesses of obscurity and irrelevancy to which it has been trapped in for over half a century.¹⁶

To conclude, as we find ourselves at a critical juncture in our movement, we are forced to choose between two avenues: the path down our same old isolated sectarianism and organizational factionalism beyond the point of no return or the trek upwards through the raging fire of comradely struggle towards the summit of principled unification. As this question is juggled by the reader, it is important to point out that the proletariat, the most powerful and most revolutionary class birthed in the historical and material development of our world, will show no fear in the face of the class struggle nor a hint of hesitation in the pursuit of its most ultimate of aims. The last two hundred years of class conflict confirms this universal truth. In our own times, the American working masses have demonstrated with all their vigor and all their might their ability to charge head first against injustice, oppression, and exploitation. Will we, through our own slavish ineptitude, sectarianism, and individual comfort, fail to organize and lead them? Or shall we shed such errors and fight selflessly towards the creation of their most formidable weapon against the ruling imperialist dogs, the Communist Party?

"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history. The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant…” — Mao Zedong

A follow up to my initial argument is being drafted and will be shared soon.
It will also allow—or force, if you will—pre-existing groups to make a case for their line and win over the rest of the movement to it. In simpler terms, a network of this kind makes any supposed leader “put their money where their mouth is.”
The revisionist coup in China also shattered the world Communist movement and thereby exposed many groups who had largely tailed international developments without formulating their own concrete understanding. This played an important, yet secondary (external), role in the degeneration and erosion of the New Communist Movement.
Red Guards Austin. (2018, August 22). CONVERT THEM INTO COMRADES OR CONVERT THEM INTO DUST. Red Guards Austin.
We do not intend for this singular paragraph to be the final word on an assessment of the US Communist movement as there are certainly many other contributing factors for its failures. Therefore, we are currently in the process of conducting a much more in-depth investigation into this topic and plan to share our findings and analysis in the coming months. On this note, if a party-building network is created, not only will our work be much more worthwhile but so too will the investigatory and theoretical work of others (especially work which disagrees with our conclusions).
This is the full quote: “The reality is ‘The Masses’…is like the rest of the septic tank in which it resides since the split of 2022. They were born in the filth of snitching and never washed themselves of it, and they have never opposed it in principle. Instead, their bourgeois ideology is that snitching is a legitimate means by which a movement can self- regulate against so called “abuse”, in other words a postmodern rejection of principle.” The Liquidationists are Still Liquidating and the Rats are Still Ratting. (2026, July 17). The Worker Newspaper.
Editorial Board. (2026, July 25). The Right Opportunist Headquarters (Liquidationist and Revisionist) in the US: A Nest of Snitches and their Collaborators. The Worker Newspaper.
That being said, they will eventually. And due to that fact, we want to make it clear that, even in the present, we do not endorse doxxing individuals because of political or personal differences which may put them in needless danger now or later. There are of course certain individuals within our movement who have poor non-proletarian politics, I don’t want to deny these things. However, if one needs to dox someone’s personal information in order to prove a point, then one is setting a dangerous precedent. Comrades should be able to defeat erroneous political ideas through their incorrectness, not by exposing the person expressing them.
Although we share certain differences with these groups, we firmly appreciate their diligent work in recent years, especially the New Labor Press. They are squarely unafraid of real struggle and are willing to place questions of most importance directly on the table regardless of disagreement.
Former Members of Proletarian Feminist Research Group. (2026, May 16). Once again on the Emancipation of Women. Long March Journal. Nevertheless, despite our criticisms, we do acknowledge the thought-provoking theoretical articles Long March have produced and we intend on thinking very deeply about their arguments.
While it is always possible things never reach their intended audience, I made sure to email them the article directly.
They instead spend much of their time working with non-Maoist organizations like Worker’s Vanguard, a trotskyist group, and contributing to Cosmonaut Magazine. This isn’t to say that it is absolutely wrong to work with explicitly non-Maoist groups. But it’s certainly inconsistent to willfully ignore the existence of other formations in your own movement, especially groups which have repeatedly criticized your line.
This is the full quote from their recent batch of Red Pages: “Ultimately a small group of four cadre unified around an openly Menshevik line, which rejected democratic centralism, argued against basic organizational discipline, and said that anyone who nominally supports our line and work should be made cadre of MCU, even if they do not carry out basic work or abide by organizational discipline. Beyond recycling the exact arguments that the Mensheviks made at 2nd Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, they had little in the way of a political program to offer.” Maoist Communist Union. (2026, June 23). Some Reflections on our Rectification Campaign. Red Pages, 2 (1).
Any serious Maoist should study this work very carefully and apply its lessons to our current movement as many of its assessments of certain trends and tendencies of its day, 1979, are still relevant in the present period. For example, in its appendix it states similarly to our period that “[t]he main deviation in party-building in the U.S. has been ‘left,’ in rushing to form parties before any of the preconditions were met, in extreme sectarianism towards other Communists, in petty-bourgeois Communists’ attempts to present themselves as a working-class vanguard, and in refusal to take the time to do absolutely essential theoretical work.” Ibid. https://www.marxists.org/history//erol//ncm-8/pacific-collective/index.htm
This was not only upheld by Lenin but also, as is well-known, by Mao. Anna Louise Strong, in one of her later conversations with Mao, recalled his thoughts on the struggle against the errors of the “left” opportunists within the party, errors which had led to the Long March: “The first thing they [the party] did, [Mao] explained, was to publish a big book of documents concerning the two lines. This set out the statements of both sides. ‘We found that many comrades who wouldn’t be persuaded by arguments were convinced when they read and compared the two positions. Many ‘left opportunists’ had forgotten what they themselves had said a few years earlier. By showing them their own past writings, most of them were convinced of their error. There were a few individuals, like Wang Ming, who never admitted that they were wrong. That didn’t matter; we didn’t expel him. He remained in our Central Committee’…The ‘left opportunists’ had the slogan, ‘ruthless blows and relentless struggle.’ Mao’s view was: ‘treat the disease and save the patient, correct past errors to avoid their repetition, clarify thinking and unite all comrades.’” Strong, T. B., & Keyssar, H. (1985). Anna Louise Strong: Three Interviews with Chairman Mao Zedong. The China Quarterly, 103, 489–509. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741000030721 Even during party-building, these lessons are incredibly crucial to understand. We must always try fervently and relentlessly to win over the majority of comrades, even if they have made serious errors or are incorrect on many things.
As this comment by a user on Reddit regarding the complete lack of successful revolutions in recent times remarks: “[W]ell simply put, the actions of the Communists lag far behind the masses - just like in 1900. The masses are constantly active, and economic struggle is everywhere. Communists in capitalist countries are either atomised, individualized, intellectuals; reading group-ers and adventurist sloganeers, aging ‘build the party’ obsessives, lost in the sectarian battles of the past and lost in the actual past itself; or have sunk back into the general masses, or as is the general overarching issue: are unable, unwilling or not educated enough to properly and deeply understand the mass perspective and properly and deeply understand that only following [the] mass line will result in revolution.”