By Thomas Kenny
How does a good Communist tell that the Party line is wrong?
When the line fails to hold any explanatory power.
When its assumptions no longer conform to obvious facts.
When it misidentifies the main enemy (as a party, the GOP) , not as a class ( finance capital, in other words, Wall Street) .
When, objectively, it steers Party activity toward infliction of damage on real anti-monopoly allies (Occupy) .
When it abandons a tough-minded analysis of class rule veiled by the US two-major-party duopoly and, instead, resorts to demagogic rants against Republicans as if they were the unique, Satanic carriers of the ultra right virus.
According to Fred Dicker, a conservative but well-informed veteran Albany, New York journalist, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gop_jitters_threaten_cuomo_tax_cut_oLfX8F1FPEPV3lfqyJ11NK upstate New York Republicans don’t want to let the “millionaires’ tax” expire.
Dicker states the Republicans may fight Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who wants the tax to expire, and who is demonstrably in the pocket of Wall Street lobbyists (example “the Committee to Save New York”) on most issues, especially tax and spending policy.
The truth is concrete, and this is a concrete illustration of the incorrectness of the Party line: “unity-against-the-ultra-right-support-the-Democrats,”
Here in New York, the Democratic governor, Cuomo, is the prime representative of Wall Street power and intransigence. Almost all trade union leaders in the state believe this and say so privately. Some now say it publicly.
For this reason such formulations as “Objectively, the 2012 election is critical to achieve any and all of the goals of Occupy…” is a completely wrong assessment if it means “Elect Democrats to save us from the ultra right” or “work for Obama.”
Objectively, corporate Democrats such as Cuomo and Obama are on the opposite side of the anti-monopoly Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoots, whatever verbal games Democratic politicians play to appease the party’s mass base. That base, by a huge majority, supports the goals of Occupy.
According to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and reliable journalists, Obama’s Homeland Security agency is coordinating mayoral evictions of Occupy movements by big city police.
The tragedy is the present Party line aligns the CPUSA with monopoly capital, grouped around Obama, against a promising new anti-monopoly movement, Occupy.
Defenders of the Party line have shifted their ground. The line can’t be defended openly. No one in his right mind thinks the likes of Cuomo or Obama are leaders of the people’s movements.
Instead, the new defense is a hysterical litany of the horrors of the ultra right, as if that settled the matter.
Far from it. The ultra right is indeed horrible. But such a litany omits the reality that corporate Democrats such as Cuomo and Obama — at their own pace and in their own way — are imposing the agenda of Wall Street and the ultra right.
Example: The present US Administration is demanding cuts in the social safety net which the US working class movement, including the Communist movement, won by fierce struggle over the last eight decades.
What kind of Party aligns itself with the destroyers of some of its noblest achievements?
That question should give pause to anyone.