by the Editor

John Stanford

Many thanks are due to Dave Mack who posted a comment to a video of an African-American music group posted on this website. His comment is as follows: Ya’ll have been pretty ‘uneven’ and I can understand ‘factions’ but what is it with “All points of View”? We do not accept the views of Nazis or Trots and that sounds so damn liberal!

Thanks for giving us a chance to respond and explain the recent changes we have made to the website.

To understand the name All Points of View, please review the article that appears just before this one on the website entitled Gentle Giant. It is the story of a Texas born communist, John Stanford, who fought for justice his entire life. All Points of View was the name of his bookstore which was raided by the US government. He filed a lawsuit against the government and won.

John’s bookstore sold many books concerning social justice issues and some of them were published in the Soviet Union. He was a contemporary of Gus Hall and was an advocate for Bill Of Rights Socialism to include freedom of speech.

In 2012, after this writer met with John Stanford, he received an email from John Bachtell which was a notice of expulsion of Houston communists from the CPUSA. At that time, the leadership of CPUSA sought to deny club members the right to free speech based on a distorted concept of Democratic Centralism. Mr. Stanford died on September 13, 2013.

Mr. Mack is certainly correct that we are uneven. We seek to fight for freedom of speech among communists who want to fight for a better world and want to make socialism a reality in the USA.

I would issue a challenge to Mr. Mack to find any articles on this website which are in any way laudatory of Nazis. However, I would point out that at some point it might be useful to publicize the views of Nazis on this website to provide a forum in which socialists and communists could critically analyze Nazi ideology. You cannot fight your opponent effectively if you have no knowledge of their ideology.

Although there are some articles on this website about Trotskyism, the vast majority are critical of this ideology. However, it is important to recognize the contributions of Leon Trotsky to the 1917 Russian revolution. It is extremely unfortunate that he became a counterrevolutionary, as many Russian revolutionaries did, following the revolution. Similarly, it may be useful to post the views of Trotskyites on this website so that this flawed ideology can be critically analyzed.

The post that Mr. Mack made a comment to was a video of an African-American band. It is the plan of this website to publicize and remind people of the great talent of African-American musicians and their contributions to the culture of the US. We have done this and will continue to do this unashamedly and proudly.

Again, many thanks to Mr. Mack for his comment. All Points of View will strive to be a forum for progressive, working-class people. We will seek to be a voice for the voiceless. We will fight against sectarianism and opportunism in all its ugly forms.