August 26, 1974

To the membership of the International Caucus of Labor Committees[1]

Comrades:

Historical reality confronts us, as communists, with the immediate necessity of leading the class to seize power from a capitalist class turned fascist by senility.  Grounding ourselves in that reality, locating our humanity in our identity as socialist organizers in the class struggle at this most critical moment in human history we withdraw from the International Caucus of Labor Committees and announce the formation of the International Workers Party.

The international working class faces systematic annihilation in the form of a zero growth cannibalization process.  This fascist mode of production (in actuality a mode of cannibalization) brings about the movement towards new social institutions, more specifically, brings about the movement towards the mass strike.  What will determine in the coming months whether that movement will be aborted or will grow into an actual mass strike, i.e., determine whether or not the working class of this country will lead an international revolution, will be our revolutionary practice; a revolutionary practice which must provide us with a sensuous understanding of historical reality and thereby a capacity to intervene upon it as a party located within it.

The present historical reality reveals the rapidly accelerating consolidation of a fascist machine under Rockefeller's leadership, and, lawfully related, the rapidly accelerating deterioration of the ICLC. It includes the lawful movement of the class and the cannibalization, of that movement by the ICLC.  The vanguard party cannot live vicariously through a motion it has done much to interpretatively identify (and inaccurately report) and criminally little to direct.

It is lawful that the IWP now become the vanguard party"--the working class.  We have developed out of a self conscious Marxist investigation of methodology and have scientifically developed an understanding of reality grounded in this historical moment.  We have taken on the serious task of leading the class, not as Promethean interventionists, but as internal organizers of the class from which we come, i.e., as class for itself organizers doing class for itself organizing.

The organization of the vanguard party is, as Marx makes clear, the organization of the class.  The formation of the IWP has grown from our attempt to organize the ICLC from within that it might move from a position of left hegemony to a position of leadership of the class.  For the motive force which led to the hegemonic position of the ICLC is now leading the ICLC to its death in the attempt to take on class leadership.  It is now necessary for us to organize our comrades from a position outside the ICLC.  For the very closed environment, the very idealistic paranoid trap which the ICLC has lawfully become for reasons delineated in F. Newman's "Idealism, Paranoia and the Mass Media, a corrective to the Labor Committee tendency," has made necessary to move outside in order to continue the "internal" polemic we have been waging.

By our principled withdrawal from the ICLC, by our demand that the closed environment of the ICLC be open to the light of historical reality we offer support to our comrades of the ICLC who must organize their fellow communists to take on the task of leading the working class.

The IWP has already begun organizing with the intent of establishing eight regional centers throughout the United States in approximately ten to fourteen days and of immediately beginning to organize the class around the slogan "CLASS WIDE ORGANIZATION OR CLASS WIDE ANNIHILAT1ON."

The IWP will be available to complete the U.S. Labor Party petitioning in view of our commitment to the importance of this task.  This and any other necessary administrative work will be coordinated through our national operations staff.

We move now with compassion for our comrades of the ICLC who face daily their own impotence in organizing the class they know, sensuously, must perish without their leadership.  From the lies and distortions born of idealism, from the mistrust of workers and our fellow organizers born of paranoia our comrades must move to take on their world historical task as communist revolutionaries.  To this end we of the IWP pledge our full support.  We must move now among real men and women who live under the historical conditions of mass annihilation, among those real men and women who desperately need our leadership.  Every Marxist, every communist must demand of herself or himself the courage to face the reality of this frightening historical moment.

In solidarity with all comrades who take on their task and in support for their struggle to destroy the idealism that will otherwise destroy them and the ICLC, we submit this document to the membership of the ICLC.

Hazel Daren
Fred Newman
Gail Peck
Gail E1berg
Harry Kresky
Carolyn Kresky
Joyce Dattner
Alan Goldstein
Fran Costa
Ed Costa
Cheryl Lazar
Molly Honigsfeld
Lew Steinhardt
Warren Liebsman
Eunice Stronger
Ann Feder
Ann Green
Freda Ravin
Judy Jorrish
Lisa Langer
Elaine Mannheimer
Emily Weiner
Ellen Byrne
Neil Golden
Ellen Varady
George Rossovitch
Tino Hamid
Karen Kotzuk
Helen Abel
June Goldstein
Peter Budabin
Sema Foxx
Alice LeBlanc
Vashti Gittler
Nancy Ross
Julie Weiner
Cathy Salit
Cathy Sadell
Bob Friedman