From the Marxism-Leninism Today Editors

Friday, August 22, 2014

Western Pennsylvania has a rich history of class struggle. The region has witnessed, for example, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the growth of the CIO in the 1930s and 1940s, and the fierce attacks on organized labor and the Left by McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Meeting in Pittsburgh on Saturday August 16, 2014, readers and supporters of the Marxism-Leninism Today (MLT) website — www.mltoday.com  — many of them former Communist Party leaders and activists, met to form a new Communist organization.

Those attending came from Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Greetings were received from those in Texas and Indiana who could not attend. Ten former members of the National Committee of the CPUSA either attended the conference or helped to plan it. More than half of those attending were union activists or union officers.

The conference heard and discussed presentations by convenors from the MLT Collective who presented three resolutions which, after discussion, were amended and formally adopted unanimously.

The key conference decision was adoption of a resolution to create a pre-party formation, tentatively called the Network of Communist Clubs (NCC). It will be led by Temporary Coordinating Committee (TCC), composed of the MLT Collective and two additional members who were added at the meeting to ensure a more balanced leading committee.

TCC’s main task will be to undertake necessary actions to create conditions for the birth of a full-fledged Communist Party operating on Leninist principles. The TCC will guide and nurture a network of Communist clubs. To some extent, a network of such clubs already exists.

Two of the opening presentations focused on the ten-year period since the founding of the MLT website, what led to its founding, and how it has tried to uphold the traditions of struggle of the CPUSA. Also included was a more detailed report on the growth and development of the MLT website, which since 2004, has enjoyed a five-fold growth in readership, two-thirds of it in the US. It has a lengthening list of regular writers, and growing international contacts. Since 2010 it has made several attempts to take the next step, from a political web site to organization.

A labor historian offered the long-term view, describing the untidy process by which the first CP came into being in 1918-21. He compared the favorable and unfavorable factors influencing the birth of a new organization, then and now. He reviewed the party’s recurrent battles against opportunism, a political illness always resurgent when the fortunes of US imperialism were on the upswing. He enumerated Lenin’s key ideas on what kind of vanguard political party the working class movement needs. With all our limitations and shortcomings, he concluded, it is our responsibility to try to rebuild.

A four-member panel of the Pittsburgh Club reported how the club came together in 2010. They outlined the essence of what an ideal Communist club ought to be and gave a report on the Pittsburgh club’s attempts to turn the ideal into reality, with substantial success.

The timing of the Pittsburgh meeting was influenced by the 30th CPUSA Convention in June 2014, which formally wrote into the Party Constitution new language taking the Party even further away from Lenin’s ideas about revolutionary organization. About one year ago, MLT editors announced their aim of refounding a Communist party. In the last year they have visited activists in almost all parts of the country to test sentiment.

Speakers from the floor spoke of the worsening objective conditions in the country, against a backdrop of upheaval against racial injustice in Ferguson, Missouri and the US-led aggressions, old and new, under way in dozens of countries. Not a single people’s movement has remained unaffected by the absence of a CP in the United States. The US labor movement despite some signs of struggle, remains in decline and retreat, and mired in class collaborationism.

Participants at the meeting agreed that the stress will be on a bottom-up approach to the creation of functioning clubs involved in mass struggle. The TCC was charged in the coming period with involving people in mass work in such areas of political work as labor, peace & solidarity, equality, and independent political action. Many in attendance are already involved in such work.

The TCC will create and supervise a working committee to write an expanded statement of principles, looking toward a full Party program. It will look at ways to alter the nature of the ML Today web site to begin to serve NCC organizational needs. It will recruit volunteers and strive to put the organization on a more stable and sustainable basis. It will work toward obtaining a physical location and address as soon as possible.

The Pittsburgh meeting agreed to hold a follow-up meeting in three months at a site still to be determined.

Those interested in contacting the TCC for more information can reach it at <<tcc.ncc2014@gmail.com This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >>.

Check out this video:

The witch Hunt in the Verkhovnaya Rada of Ukraine has become the main purpose of the National Fascists who seized the power. Intoxicated with the blood of their fellow countrymen and political opponents the deputies obedient to the junta are pressing buttons in extremist ecstasy, voting for the most obscurantist laws. Today, they banned the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In the McCarthyism tradition the campaign is being unwound aimed at banning of the Communist Party, which has consistently advocated for peace in the country, against the increase in prices and tariffs, for the right of everyone to freedom of conscience, speech, speak their native language, the right to control their destiny in their own country.

We reiterate that a tragedy of the peoples in Europe started with banning of the German Communist Party, the Reichstag fire. The then Nazis have found followers in today’s Ukraine.

In the hour of trial for the Communists of Ukraine, we declare support and solidarity with the Communist Party of Ukraine.

We appeal to all national-patriotic forces of our country, to foreign communist and leftist parties to raise their voices in defense of the Ukrainian comrades. Come out to the meetings; make protests in the country representative missions, your parliaments and governments. Call for human rights respect.

Fascism will not pass!

Chairman of the Communist Party Central Committee

G.A. Zyuganov

By Darrell Rankin
A comment for Hiroshima Day

“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength, at this time in human history when more than seven billion inhabitants are struggling for their survival.”
– Fidel Castro, August 5, 2014 in Granma

The encroachment of the NATO military alliance towards Russia since the setbacks to socialism 23 years ago has reached a new milestone with the West’s take-over of Ukraine. The West – which often calls itself the ‘international community’ – is imposing harsh sanctions on Russia.

NATO is sending troops, ships and warplanes to Eastern Europe. Canadian and other NATO planes will soon be patrolling the edge of Russian airspace, directly confronting Russia and its nuclear arsenal.

As a result, the threat of a nuclear war is looming more dangerously. Such a war could be triggered accidentally or because of the lowered thresholds allowing the use of these weapons in the military doctrines of both NATO and Russia. NATO military doctrine, for example, allows for a nuclear “first strike.”

On August 1, Russia’s Foreign Ministry charged that “Washington is systematically carrying out a plan to dismantle the global strategic stability system,” referring to the U.S.’s continued development of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems, including space-based weapons.

“Americans started this process in 2001 by unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty. Now it is aggravated by… elaboration of a provocative strategy of Prompt Global Strike and an excessive build-up of conventional weapons…”

Another reality of modern imperialism is the influence of ‘neo-con’ war theorists in imperialism’s capitols. Divorced from reality and truth, these neo-cons are responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are behind the push for war with Syria and Russia.

The most reactionary and bellicose class forces of imperialism – finance capital, the military-industrial complex and the biggest oil monopolies – are the real power behind the neo-cons. These are powerful forces in modern capitalism.

The shift towards militarism and reaction in imperialism’s politics is not a question of personalities or subgroups within classes. Understanding it requires knowing the class forces involved in shaping history today.

We see non-imperialist countries like Russia and China defending their sovereignty. The world’s largest-ever protest and strike took place last year (Eqypt – 28 million; India – 100 million). In 2011, protests shook the entire Arab world. People in South America are leaning more towards socialism.

The common thread in all these struggles is the grassroots resistance of working people. The international working class is waking up to international imperialism’s dangerous effort to maintain world domination.

The response of imperialism to all this is war and reaction, combined with arrogance and deception. Neocon politics are the corrupted and dangerous logic of a system in crisis, of imperialism justifying by violent means the status quo of privilege and exploitation.

It is a common saying that war is the continuation of foreign policy by violent means, and that is the role of neocons today.

Traditional Western (nonMarxist) game theory required both ‘sides’ to be rational. Nuclear weapons would be used only if one side was going to lose a ‘conventional’ conflict.

The old ‘balance of terror’ created by game theory to cover up imperialism’s role in the Cold War simply no longer exists because neocons base their policies on unrealistic and arrogant views.

The ‘terror balance,’ if it ever existed, has been replaced by a high degree of uncertainty about what will trigger a nuclear war.

The rare voices of reason and disarmament in imperialism’s parliaments are rarer still. Modern militarist culture justifies crimes and re-writes history, even the Vietnam War. It promotes a thoroughly false aura of invulnerability and superiority, a fairy tale world of superb military leadership and soldiers who can duck bullets and defeat fat generals with ineffective armies.

People who live in imperialist countries today are not being told the truth about the horrors and hardships of a truly global war. The whole purpose of imperialism’s war culture and propaganda is to ‘educate’ people with the arrogance and strategic fantasies of imperialism’s leaders.

At what cost? Modern civilization – both capitalist and socialist – could easily and instantaneously perish in a full-scale nuclear war, along with most life on earth.

For socialists, the source of the war danger is the capitalist system. Our view is that humanity is moving from capitalism to socialism because our present social system is in a large, general crisis of its own making. Such is nature of our historical epoch.

Capitalism has no hope or ability to resolve its many problems such as poverty, environmental destruction, unemployment and a host of ‘democratic deficits.’ Growing militarism and reaction are imperialism’s main responses.

Russia is a country not completely under the sway of Western imperialism. Moreover, Russia has enormous energy resources. One of the aims of U.S. and Canada is to ‘cut off’ Europe from Russia’s resources.

Historically, we experienced something like this before during the world wars of the last century. War in Europe has always benefited capitalism in North America.

If war breaks out, North America would gain a great deal because Europe will lose access to Russia’s resources. Russia, also weakened, would become more of a target for U.S. and Canadian corporate take-over.

What we see in Ukraine is imperialism trying to spark a war or a very serious confrontation with Russia. This is far more dangerous than the war imperialism wanted with Syria last fall, a war the West tried to start by falsely blaming the Syrian government for using chemical weapons.

Denied a war in Syria because of Russian diplomacy, imperialism is lashing out at the main reason no war took place. Western imperialism carefully prepared for war and the coup in Ukraine.

We see Western imperialism using fascist forces to carry out a coup d’etat in Ukraine and to launch a genocidal war against Russian-speakers in the country’s Eastern provinces. There is strong information that the downing of the Malaysian airliner was another false flag operation.

The West’s furious attempts to deepen the conflict against Russia testify to the overall aim: to tilt world politics towards war and reaction, if not fascism itself. The danger of nuclear war is on the rise.

On this Hiroshima Day, we need a peace movement who mobilizes people against imperialist militarism, who educates people about the danger of imperialist militarism, who understands the threat posed by NATO and its relationship with the fascists in Kiev. War will create a worse situation for all who want to create a better society, and if history is a guide, in the first place socialists.