By James F. Harrington
As one of the original three members of the current Houston Communist Party, I am very appalled by the recent coup d’etat against our wonderful and thriving club.
Our club, which had humble beginnings, grew into a club with many members.
Over the recent years, the Houston CP has been very active. It has sponsored an exhibition of works of art by Antonio Guerrero, a member of The Cuban Five.
We have marched in support of the Houston janitors. Against the death penalty in Austin. In support of immigrant rights.
Several of our members, myself included, have tirelessly worked on behalf of the rights of the Palestinians.
I am deeply disturbed by the cunning and subversive actions of the leader of this coup.
He is nothing but an opportunist and party destroyer!
For the last seven months, I watched him very closely as he courted our clubs newer and younger members until he he was ready to implement his coup d’etat!
Until the very last minute, he pretended to be a loyal member of our club.
Now that he and his fellow renegade members have their very own officially recognized club, they will all have to tow the line of their masters.
They shall join together in an intertwined Dance of Death with their anti-Communist leadership.
The very same leadership (or lack of) that has gotten rid of the party’s weekly newspaper. That wants to drop the name Communist and Party from the name of the national organization! That wants all its members to support the Imperialist Warmonger Obama with no questions asked.
I shall remain a loyal and devoted member of the Houston Communist Party till my last breath.
I am expecting with great joy, my being suspended by the Webb organization. I shall wear this tribute as a Red Badge of Courage!
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_Democratic Centralism has been misused by Factions controlling Party apparatus acting as “leadership”.
Pro-Soviet ,Marxist-Leninist elements within the international communist movement have historically waged an unrelenting struggle against those factions in leadership who attempted to replace inner-party democracy with dictate, one-faction decisions and super-centralism . These “misleaders” who brazenly violate the collective will of the majority of party members and historic party principles by secret back room mechanisms.
Marx and Engels warned us about the dangers of a Party leadership that relied exclusively on centralism and rejected buttom-up democratic leadership.Such organization can suit only secret societies and sectarian movements. There must be no semblance of dictatorship (“What is Democratic Centralism?” Pyotr Rodionov,Progress Publishers,Moscow, 1988).
Democratic Centralism implies the involvement of all communists at the club level in the life and work of the Party, the collective discussion and settlement of the issues connected with the party policy. Those of us who have been active members for 45 yrs or more, know that the present Webb, Bechtell, Reuben,Moroze “leadership” has deliberately by-passed most discussion and all major decisions at the club level .That is the essence of creating new clubs with new members “in the image of the present faction leadership”.
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Democratic Centralism is essential to the discipline of a Leninist party
But it can be misused, as when an opportunist revisionist
“ leadership†sets about destroying a Communist Party
(ie Japan and Czechoslovakia in the late ’60s; Poland and
Great Britain in the 1980s; Spain .Italy and France in the
’70s; U.S. in the Webb period) from within and used its
top-down structure to expel anyone who opposed their
liquidationist agenda.
Hence “so-called†democratic centralism, which uses
centralism to destroy inner-party democracy
That appears to be what is going on in our party. This happens when there is no challenge to leaders that are not connected with the struggles of the American people.