Category: About the CPUSA
Scandalize my Name…
| February 4, 2018 | 2:54 pm | About the CPUSA, African American Culture, African American history, Analysis, Ben Davis, Claudia Jones, Ferdinand Smith, Gerald Horne, John Howard Lawson, Lorraine Hansberry, Paul Robeson, Shirley Graham DuBois, struggle against anti-communism, struggle against racism, Struggle for African American equality, struggle for socialism, WEB DuBois, William Patterson | Comments closed

Scandalize my Name

– from Greg Godels is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

For the owners, publishers, and editors of the The New York Review of Books anti-Communism is still alive. The periodical occupies a unique, indispensable role in fostering and sustaining Cold War myths and legends.

The New York Review of Books has embraced rabid anti-Communism since its opportunistic birth in the midst of a newspaper strike. Founded by a cabal of virulent anti-Communists with identifiable links to the CIA through The Paris Review and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, NYRB maintains the posture of the popular intellectual journal for academics, high-brow book clubbers, and coffee shop leftists for over half a century. Seldom would an issue go by without an earnest petition signed by intellectual celebrities pointing to human rights concerns in some far-off land that was coincidentally (perhaps?) also in the crosshairs of the US State Department. To be sure, the NYRB would muster a measure of indignation over the most egregious US adventures, particularly when they threatened to blemish the US image as the New Jerusalem.

Even with the Cold War behind us, the NYRB maintains an active stable of virulent anti-Soviet writers, partly to hustle its back list of Cold War classics and obscure dissident scribblers, partly to pre-empt any serious anti-capitalist thought that might emerge shorn of Red-dread.

Paul Robeson on Trial

In a recent essay/book review (The Emperor Robeson, 2-08-18), the NYRB brought its Red-chopping hatchet to the legacy of Paul Robeson in a piece transparently ill-motivated and poisonous.

Paul Robeson was nothing if not an exceptional, courageous political figure who galvanized US racial and political affairs in mid-century. Yet NYRB assigned Simon Callow, a UK theater personality, to the writing task despite the fact that he reveals in an interview cited in Wikipedia that I’m not really an activist, although I am aware that there are some political acts one can do that actually make a difference. And his essay bears out this confession along with his embarrassing ignorance of US history and the dynamics of US politics.

Callow begins his essay seemingly determined to prove his inadequacy to the task: When I was growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, Paul Robeson was much in evidence. His name was haloed with the sort of respect accorded to few performers. He then goes on at some length, heaping praise on Robeson. Then suddenly at some point in the 1960s, he faded from our view.

Whether Callow’s impressions are reflective of the UK experience is irrelevant. Surely, the important truth, the relevant fact, is that in Robeson’s country– the US– he was, throughout that time, a veritable non-person, the victim of a merciless witch hunt. To fail to acknowledge the fact that Robeson and his work were virtually unknown, were erased by the thought police, underscores Callow’s unfitness to discuss Robeson’s career. Indeed, members of the crowd that sought, at that time, to put lipstick on the ugly pig of racism and anti-Communism were soon to found the NYRB.

To say, as Callow does, that before the Cold War Robeson was …lionized on both sides of the Atlantic… is to display an unbelievable ignorance of the racial divide in the US. Robeson’s unequalled command of and success at multiple disciplines failed to spare him the indignities and inequalities that befell all African Americans in that era of US apartheid.

As for the post-World War II Red-scare, Callow simply ignores it as if it never occurred. Never mind the harassment, the surveillance, the denied careers, the confiscated passports, and the HUAC subpoenas that Robeson, like thousands of others, suffered from a hysterical, vicious anti-Communist witch hunt. For Callow, Robeson’s problems spring from a meeting granted by then President Truman in which Robeson had the audacity to make demands on his government. From that moment on Callow tells us, …the government moved to discredit Robeson at every turn.

What a deft, nimble way to skirt the suffocating, life-denying effects of an entire era of unbridled racism and anti-Communism.

And, from Callow’s myopic perspective, Robeson’s campaign for peace and Cold War sanity resulted in …universal approbation turned overnight into nearly universal condemnation. For Callow, standing for peace against the tide of mindless conformity and mass panic is not the mark of courage and integrity, but a tragic career move.

In contrast to Paul Robeson’s life-long defiance of unjust power, Callow attributes a different approach to Robeson’s father, William: But the lesson was clear: the only way out of poverty and humiliation was hard, hard work– working harder than any white man would have to, to achieve a comparable result. One waits futilely to read that this reality is precisely what son, Paul, was trying to correct.

Like so many of today’s belated, measured admirers of Paul Robeson, Callow cannot resist delving into Robeson’s sexual proclivities, an interest which bears relevance that frankly escapes me. Similarly, Callow raises the matter of Robeson’s mental health and his withdrawal from public life.

Rather than considering the toll that decades of selfless struggle and tenacious resistance might have taken on Robeson’s body and mind, as it did countless other victims of the Red Scare, Callow contrives different explanations. Robeson, it is clear, knew that his dream was just that: that the reality was otherwise. But he had to maintain his faith, otherwise what else was there? So, for Callow, Robeson’s bad faith was responsible for mental issues and ill health. It was not a medical condition, the emotional stress of racism, or the repression of his political views that explain his decline. Instead, it was the consequences of bad politics.

Paraphrasing the author of a book on Robeson that Callow favors, he speculates that Robeson’s physical and mental decline may have directly stemmed from the desperate requests from Robeson’s Russian friends to help them get out of the nightmarish world they found themselves in. We are asked to believe that a man who resisted every temptation of success, defied the racial insults of his time, and steadfastly defended his commitment to socialism was brought to his knees by anti-Soviet media rumors? Certainly, there is no evidence for this outlandish claim.

Again, using author Jeff Sparrow (No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson) as his mouthpiece, Callow reveals his problem with Robeson: …Robeson’s endorsement of Stalin and Stalin’s successors, his refusal to acknowledge what had been done in Stalin’s name, is the tragedy of his life. In other words, like Budd Schulberg’s fictional snitch in On the Waterfront, if Robeson had only denounced his class, ratted on his friends, and bent to authority, he could have been a contender for the respect of liberals and the blessings of bourgeois success. But since he didn’t, his life was a pitiful spectacle.

Thankfully, there are still many who draw inspiration from the pitiful spectacle of Paul Robeson’s extraordinary life.

One Who Does

As if misunderstanding Robeson were not enough, Callow attacks a prominent scholar who does understand Robeson’s legacy. In contrast with his fawning review of the Sparrow book (as different as chalk and cheese), Callow demeans the contribution of one of the most gifted and thorough chroniclers of the page in history that included the life of Robeson. As a historian, Gerald Horn’s prodigious work stretches across books on such politically engaged Robeson contemporaries as WEB DuBois, Ben Davis, Ferdinand Smith, William Patterson, Shirley Graham DuBois, and John Howard Lawson. His writings explore the blacklist and The Civil Rights Congress, both keys to understanding Robeson and his time. In most cases, they represent the definitive histories of the subject.

But Callow prefers the shallow Sparrow account that substitutes the overused literary devices of in search of../searching for… to mask its limited scholarly ambition.

Callow is baffled by Horne’s Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Horne’s insistence that Robeson was a ˜revolutionary makes Callow apoplectic (…page after page). But if Robeson was not an authentic, modern US revolutionary, then who was?

Callow cannot find a “clear picture of Robeson’s personality in the Horne account, a conclusion that probably should not trouble Horne who seems more interested in history rather than psychology.

Callow’s sensibilities are especially offended by Horne’s depiction of the odious Winston Churchill, the man many believe to share responsibility for the WWI blood bath at Gallipoli and the two million deaths in the Bengal famine of 1943. It seems that Horne’s words for the short, chubby, Champagne and Cognac-loving prima donna– ‘pudgy, cigar-chomping, alcohol-guzzling Tory — struck Callow’s ears as vulgar.

But Callow spews his own venomous insults: Horne’s book lacks …articulate analysis, his account is numbing and bewildering in equal measure, like being addressed from a dysfunctional megaphone.

Horne’s concluding endorsement of the relevance of Marx and Engels famous slogan– Workers of the World, Unite! –really brings Callow’s rancor to a boil: I’m sorry to break it to Mr. Horne, but he doesn’t. And it isn’t.

We surely know which side of the barricades Simon Callow has chosen.

The Legacy

The legacy of Paul Robeson has been maintained for the four decades since his death by his comrades and allies of the left, principally the Communist left. Most of those who worked and fought alongside of him have also passed away. Yet a small, but dedicated group of a few academics and more political activists have continued to tell his story and defend his values against a torrent of hostility or a wall of silence. Through the decades, he has been forced out of the mainstream– the history books and popular culture.

Of course, he was not alone in suffering anonymity for his Communist politics. Another giant who was brought down by Cold War Lilliputians, denigrated by hollow mediocrities, was African American Communist, Claudia Jones. Until recently, her powerful thinking on race, women’s rights, and socialism could only be found by those willing to search dusty corners of used book stores.

Perhaps no one promised to live and further Robeson’s legacy than the young writer Lorraine Hansberry, celebrated before her tragic death for her popular play, A Raisin in the Sun. Her work with Robeson and WEB DuBois on the paper, Freedom, brought her politics further in line with theirs: militant anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist, Communist.

Forgotten by those who wish to portray her as a mere cultural critic, she famously called out Robert Kennedy’s elitist, patronizing posture in a meeting with Black civil rights leaders as enthusiastically recalled by James Baldwin.

Ignored by those who would like to see her as simply another civil rights reformer, her speech at a Monthly Review fundraiser, shortly before her death, resounds with revolutionary fervor:

If the present Negro revolt is to turn into a revolution, become sophisticated in the most advanced ideas abroad in the world, a leadership which will have had exposure to the great ideas and movements of our time, a Negro leadership which can throw off the blindness of parochialism and bathe the aspirations of the Negro people in the realism of the twentieth century, a leadership which has no illusion about the nature of our oppression and will no longer hesitate to condemn, not only the results of that oppression, but also the true and inescapable cause of it—which of course is the present organization of American society.

Today, there is a renewed interest in Robeson, Claudia Jones, and Lorraine Hansberry. Articles, books, and documentaries are appearing or are in the works. Some are offering new perspectives on the lives of these extraordinary people, exploring aspects of their lives that show that their humanity perhaps reached further than previously thought. Yes, they were Communists, but they were not just Communists. Indeed, they belong to the world.

However, it would be a great tragedy if they were denied their conviction that capitalism– the present organization of American society, in Hansberry’s words– represented the foundation of other oppressions. It would be criminally dishonest if there were no acknowledgement that they were made enemies of the state precisely because they embraced socialism. For an African American, in racist, Cold War mid-century USA, the decision to embrace Communism was not taken lightly or frivolously. Robeson, Jones, and Hansberry knew exactly what that commitment meant to the forces of repression. And they risked it. They should be looked upon as people’s champions for their courage.

New researchers are welcome to explore other dimensions of the lives of these unbending fighters for social justice. But their authentic legacies are needed now more than ever.

Greg Godels
6/08/71 US COMMUNIST PARTY RUNS GUS HALL FOR PRESIDENT
| January 28, 2018 | 8:18 pm | About the CPUSA, Gus Hall, Party Voices | 1 Comment

Gentle Giant
| November 26, 2017 | 7:09 pm | About the CPUSA, Discrimination against communists, Local/State | Comments closed

https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/gentle-giant/Content?oid=2268857

GENTLE GIANT

By

At 79, he has outlived his most outspoken critics and several spans of public scorn. Most of those who know his name today are activists or labor liberals — and they have only praise for him, despite his long and entirely public or “open” membership in the Communist Party, USA.

“He’s a true organizer, of a dying breed,” says Graciela Sanchez, director of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center.

Those who have dealt with Stanford over the years say that rather than pose as a militant, he speaks in the voice of consensus and prudence.

 Tom Flower, a Vietnam-era protester, now an Anglican minister better known for work among the homeless, argues that, “actually, John is pretty conservative about doing things that might upset people. He doesn’t like to put leaflets on people’s windshields, for example.”

But Stanford wasn’t always viewed as the mild character that he seems to be today. There was a time when he was seen as a threat to the free world.

In 1950, he entered the peace movement by circulating the Stockholm Peace Petition, which called for banning nuclear weapons, and was roundly viewed as a conspirator in a global plot to further Stalin’s aims.

Stanford says that the joined the Party on the day after his discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1946. He became an activist within weeks, soon after re-enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin. Late that year, the Houston Informer reported that Stanford gave a speech in the basement of a Baptist church, under the sponsorship of the youth wing of the NAACP.

“White students are learning that it is time for them to fight for the rights of the Negro people,” he declared, characteristically throwing in a bit of wishful thinking. “If we increase our unity, we can make of the South a place where everyone can have a decent living, health, and education facilities.”

Stanford, who is white, delivered his Houston speech to support a lawsuit by Heman Sweatt, a black postal worker, to gain admission to the University of Texas law school. It was not the kind of speech that ordinary white men gave in that era of poll taxes and statutory segregation.

“In the South in the 1930s and 1940s, there were very, very few whites who spoke out for racial equality,” explains Maurice Isserman, the nation’s leading scholar on American communist affairs. “To do so was to put your life at risk.

And in many instances, the white Southerners who were willing to take that risk were in, or close to, the Communist Party.”

Sweatt’s legal challenge, won in 1950, is today seen as a precedent to the more-famous 1954 ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, which ordered the integration of all public schools.

Because of his victory, Sweatt posthumously became a Texas hero, his portrait displayed at the Institute of Texan Cultures, a scholarship and college campus named in his honor.

feat-stanford-0944_330jpg
John Stanford was one of the few whites who spoke out for racial equality in the 1930s and 1940s. Photos by Mark Greenberg

The Meerschaum pipe Members of the Communist Party customarily don’t reveal the names of members or former members who are still alive. But Sweatt’s death has freed Stanford to declare that at the time of the suit, Sweatt, too, was a Communist Party member. Unlike Sweatt, Stanford was never closeted, even if it was because he had little choice, thanks to the Texas Legislature and the Houston police. He moved to the Bayou City following his graduation from UT, and on September 16, 1948 — El Diez y Seis de Septiembre, Mexican Independence Day — the bilingual agitator was arrested for distributing Party leaflets decrying “the ruthless economic, political, and social oppression of the Mexican-American people.”

In 1951, Texas passed a Communist Control Act that required Party members to register with authorities, and prescribed a two- to 10-year prison term for failure to comply with the law. The Party decided to challenge the law’s dubious constitutionality, and Stanford, who was by then living in San Antonio, volunteered to be the test case, mailing an open letter to officials in 1952, declaring his membership. According to the plan, he was to refuse to register when the authorities responded.

But the 1950s were tough times for even the Party’s bravest members. Eleven national leaders of the group had been indicted under federal anti-communist laws, and some of them were already behind bars. After Stanford mailed his statement, the Party’s leadership found that it didn’t have the resources to pursue the Texas challenge, and ordered him to go underground.

“The Party had made a big mistake,” Stanford observes today. “It thought that fascism was coming.” He doesn’t remember everything that happened afterwards, partly because aging takes a toll, and partly, he says, because he tried to forget.

“I used to keep photo albums,” he recalls, “but when I went underground, I cut the faces out of the pictures, so that the FBI wouldn’t harass my friends. But the thing is, then I forgot, too, and can’t match names with faces now.”

To avoid arrest, he fled to Alabama, and knowing no one, found a job as a waiter at a diner and tried to lay low. But he couldn’t; it wasn’t in him to sit on the sidelines. After a few weeks in Birmingham, Stanford began attending meetings of a committee that was opposing fare hikes on city buses. Alabama bus fare activists, however, were wary of the Texan who showed up as if from nowhere; they thought that he was an FBI agent.

Stanford’s arrangement with the Party — like a scene from a movie about the French Resistance — was that he was to stay out of view for six months, then place a classified ad in the leading daily newspaper, saying that he had lost a meerschaum pipe. The person who called to report the discovery of the meerschaum, the plan went, would become his contact with the Party.

Stanford placed the ad and a young woman called. He asked her to meet him at the diner on a Sunday morning, when business was slow. Joanna Tylee walked in, she recalls, and upon seeing the Texan whom she remembered from the bus fare meetings, thought that she had walked into a trap.

The pipe plot had a happy ending: Joanna Tylee is today Jo Stanford. Following their marriage, John returned to San Antonio, and with her, reorganized the city’s frightened Communists and raised two children in the Jefferson neighborhood.

A Rosewood raid Back in Texas, prosecutors hadn’t forgotten Stanford. Through informers, they and the FBI kept eyes on the quiet-spoken protester, and as late as September 1963, San Antonio Express and News headlines assured its readers that “D.A. Still Studying Stanford.”

Officials had plenty of authority under which to act against him: Augmented by new measures, Texas laws by then prescribed 30-year prison terms for unregistered Reds. But the feds asked that Texas officials wait to nab Stanford until he could be designated as a Communist by the federal Subversive Activities Control Board, which delivered its finding on December 26, 1963.

Hours later, search warrant in hand, seven men from the district and state attorneys offices knocked on the door of the Stanford home, which was then on Rosewood Street, in the Beacon Hill area. John Stanford wasn’t home; Jo admitted the raiders and promptly telephoned the press. Meanwhile, her visitors began boxing some 2,000 books and various papers, including the couple’s marriage license, insurance policies, and mortgage schedule. The raid lasted for five hours. When reporters arrived, according to the Express and News, Jo welcomed them with, “Come on in and join the party!” But then she caught herself. “Or should I use another word?” she joked. The searchers claimed that the raid was necessary to prove that Stanford was imperiling public safety by selling Communist books and tracts through a mail-order bookstore in his home called All Points of View, which he had been operating since 1961.

In the months that followed, Stanford and his attorney, the late Maury Maverick Jr., were frequent subjects of the local press, whose handling of the affair betrayed an acquired admiration for the suspect. Reporters described Stanford as “affable,” and “pipe-smoking,” a designation that, in days before bongs, connoted “reflective” and “calm.”

Litigation over the book seizure wound up before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Maverick pointed out that among the confiscated items were copies of legal opinions on anti-communist laws penned by Justice Hugo Black.

“The reference to Justice Black’s opinion brought chuckles from the bench and several humorous exchanges that brightened the hushed dignity of the marble courtroom,” Express writer Ned Curran reported from Washington when the Court heard the case.

To almost no one’s surprise, the Court ruled the raid on Rosewood invalid, and the DA’s men, driving a borrowed red-and-white pickup, returned Stanford’s books to Rosewood.

They probably didn’t intend to aid or encourage the unarmed Stanford to overthrow the government, but the lawmen also gave him a gun, a .38-caliber pistol that had been taken for evidence in an unrelated case. Stanford, who has always claimed that he is for “socialism by peaceful and democratic means,” promptly returned the weapon.

Lingering suspicions Stanford’s victory before the Supreme Court kept him under public glare even after the ruling was old news. In 1965, an Express reporter grilled Stanford, who attended a demonstration to protest the killing of Reverend James Reeb during the Selma-to-Montgomery march led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps hoping to tarnish the voting rights movement, the reporter asked Stanford to justify his presence at the event. “I participated for the reason tens of thousands participated across the country — as a protest against the brutality being practiced against the Alabama Negroes,” Stanford shot back.

Six months later, his activities were again assailed in the local press when he sent anti-war leaflets to a mailing list that he had compiled, drawing a complaint from a soldier’s mother — not in San Antonio, but in distant El Paso.

“I believe the wars in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic endanger the lives of all American servicemen — including this woman’s son,” he told an inquisitor from the Express.

In the years since Vietnam, Stanford has taken part in dozens of other causes: the unionization of Valley farm workers, the campaign to Free Angela Davis, protests over U.S. involvement in Central America, and since 2001, Thursday peace vigils at the San Fernando Cathedral.

At protests against the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he is saying much the same thing today that he has said since 1946. “Capitalism doesn’t have a future,” he maintains. He insists that Soviet interests were only a marginal concern of his. “We weren’t concerned about Stalin’s policies during the 1950s, we were fighting against the poll tax,” he says.

Young demonstrators may dismiss Stanford as too old, and his trademark causes too dated to be relevant now, but they don’t suspect him, as their forerunners did, of joining their protests with a hidden agenda in mind. The ironies of history are endless, and one of them is that it’s not because he has spent more than 50 years on the barricades, but because there is no longer a Soviet state, that nobody questions Stanford’s sincerity today.

A Tribute to Claudia Jones
| October 13, 2017 | 9:19 pm | About the CPUSA, African American history, Struggle for African American equality, struggle for the equality of women | Comments closed

A TRIBUTE TO CLAUDIA JONES

Thursday 26 October 7pm

Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0DU

Book tickets here http://tinyurl.com/yamdq2jj

  • Claudia Webbe, Islington Councillor and member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee in the Chair
  • Winston Pinder, friend of Claudia, on Claudia’s life as socialist, organiser and writer
  • Meirian Jump, Archivist & Library Manager, on Claudia’s archives at the MML

Claudia Jones (1915-1964) was a political activist and tireless anti-racist campaigner. Her activity as a member of the Communist Party USA – during a period of McCarthyite attacks on the left in America – led to her imprisonment and deportation in 1955. She moved to the UK where she was instrumental in founding the Notting Hill Carnival in 1959 and established the first major black British newspaper The West Indian Gazette. She was an inspirational speaker, addressing numerous peace and trade union meetings. At her funeral in 1965 Paul Robeson gave the following tribute ‘It was a great privilege to have known Claudia Jones. She was a vigorous and courageous leader of the Communist Party of the United States, and was very active in the work for the unity of white and coloured peoples and for dignity and equality, especially for the Negro people and for women’.

Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School

37a Clerkenwell Green
Marx Memorial Library
London
EC1R 0DU
United Kingdom
WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHY BERNIE SANDERS IS NOT A SOCIALIST
| January 31, 2016 | 11:18 am | About the CPUSA, Analysis, Angela Davis, Bernie Sanders, class struggle, political struggle, socialism, USSR, WFTU | Comments closed

(A response to Sue Webb opinion in People’s World on January 4, 2016)

Dear Editor:

In Sue Webb’s opinion piece which appeared in the January 4, 2016 edition she implies that all that is needed in the USA is for us to change the word “capitalism” to “socialism” and everything will fall into place. Of course, this is pure fantasy, the words of a person who is satisfied with the capitalist system of greed and corporate control, what we used to refer to as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Ms. Webb is, indeed, bourgeois and her oversimplifications show that.

Her slanders of the USSR and socialism are particularly disturbing. She writes “[socialism] – has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there’s nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not “socialist.”

Ms. Webb never objected the to the USSR when, in an act of great proletarian internationalism, the Soviet Union and the socialist community of nations led an international movement to save the life of Angela Y. Davis. Now that there is no more USSR thanks to the counter-revolutionary activities of Mikhail Gorbachev and those around him that promoted the concept of socialist “markets” and private enterprise, Ms. Webb all of a sudden finds fault with the socialism of the 20th Century, calling it dictatorial, politically repressive, bureaucratic, and over-centralized, with a command style structure. And what dare I ask, was the USSR when they supported the CPUSA and its fight against racism and its political anti-monopoly program? So soon she forgets! Ms. Webb never objected when the Soviet Union supported the Cuban economy and the development of Cuba. She never objected when the USSR supported the national liberation movements in Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Congo. All during the existence of the Soviet Union, the world witnessed the greatest fighter for world peace and socialism. Real socialism. To deny that is the worst kind of right opportunism.

As her alternative to scientifically planned economic socialism, Ms. Webb describes how we in the USA have many publicly owned electric utilities. That’s nice. We also have private utilities Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas, and Electric (PG&E), and Edison International for example, that endanger our environment and public health, cause great disasters like the natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California, the natural gas leak in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the financial manipulation of energy prices by companies like Enron. What is the plan of the social-democrats to deal with these privately owned conglomerates in a socialist economy?

Ms. Webb says that Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist because he rejects the idea of a planned economy. Great! So we should continue living with the chaos we live in now, where material goods are produced not for the benefit of the people, but to continue the system of private profits and exploitation at any cost? She speaks like a typical believer in American exceptionalism. As long as we have markets for goods everything will be OK. She even says it would be OK to operate private businesses that continue to exploit workers, a kind of touchy, feeley, nice capitalism!

Gus Hall, the great American Communist leader, said many times that there is no “socialist model but that there are general concepts and economic laws of socialism that cannot be ignored. When they are cast aside as Sue Webb suggests we should, the result is counter-revolution and an increase in anti-worker activity. As long as there is a bourgeois class and that class holds the levers of power, it makes no difference who is President of the United States. We have two Americas. A capitalist America, and a working class America. The class war intensifies more every day. We will never have socialism unless and until the workers themselves take power and own the means of production and write their own ticket. They don’t need a Democratic Party messiah to do that. They need a real trade union federation like the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), another contribution to humanity from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

So what is socialism? In any country, in any language, socialism is the intermediary step toward a communist society. Socialism is defined as follows: “The social order which, through revolutionary action by the working class and its allies, replaces capitalism. It is “the first phase of Communist society, as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society” (Marx). It is the social order in which the exploitation of man by man has ended because the toiling masses own the means of production. In contrast with the higher phase of Communist society, where “each gives according to his need,” in Socialist society “each gives according to his ability, and receives according to the amount of work performed”.

Contrast this with Democratic Socialism, *which is the general term for reformist and opportunist parties in their “theory” and practice in the Labor Movement [in sharp contrast with class conscious, anti-imperialist trade unionism of the WFTU]. Social-Democracy’s history is marked by timidity, legalism, “respectability,” capitulation to the influence of the capitalists, and consistent betrayal, of the working class.

Time to ask yourselves, which side are you on?

*Marxist Glossary, L. Harry Gould, Sydney. Australia 1948

Joe Hancock

PCUSA, Los Angeles

Everyone’s talking about socialism, but what is it?
| January 30, 2016 | 10:30 pm | About the CPUSA, Bernie Sanders, political struggle, socialism | Comments closed

assets/Uploads/_resampled/CroppedImage6060-suewebb3.jpg

by: Susan Webb

January 4 2016http://peoplesworld.org/everyone-s-talking-about-socialism-but-what-is-it/

sandersflags520x300

Bernie Sanders may or may not win the Democratic presidential nomination, but he has already done something stunning: put socialism into the mainstream political debate in the United States. Sixty years after McCarthyism made socialism “un-American,” Sanders has placed it back on the American agenda. I say “back” because, as others have noted, socialism has a long history in our country, with such prominent advocates as Helen Keller and Albert Einstein.

But this resurgence should not make long-time supporters of socialism feel self-satisfied. On the contrary. Even for the most dedicated believers, socialism has been a pretty abstract concept, or one defined, stereotyped and hobbled by the experiences of Russia and the Soviet Union, many of which were harsh, even cruel (and criminal), ultimately self-destructive, and inapplicable to American society and culture. For Americans new to the idea of socialism, it’s often burdened with notions of faceless bureaucracy, one-party rule, government control of every aspect of life, stifled creativity, cheesy “socialist realism” paintings, and the like.

Now, in the Sanders era, advocates of socialism are challenged to think and talk about what socialism really is, its essential promise, how it fits the American experience, what it might look like for the U.S., and how it’s a goal every American can embrace and help make a reality.

Below I offer a few ideas.

But first, here’s what Bernie Sanders had to say about socialism.

Bernie Sanders showed how socialism makes sense for America

Sanders made a powerful case for his vision of socialism in a speech at Georgetown University on Nov. 19. In the New Deal of the 1930s, Sanders said, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted “against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists”:

“Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combatted cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country.

“And that is what we have to do today,” said Sanders.

Both FDR and Lyndon Johnson, who enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, were assailed by the right wing as socialists in their day, Sanders noted.

He did not mention the enormous mass movements of the 1930s and 1960s that pushed both Roosevelt and Johnson to act. But he acknowledged it implicitly when he declared that today, “we need to develop a political movement which, once again, is prepared to take on and defeat a ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation. The billionaire class cannot have it all. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.”

“A ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation” – Sanders didn’t say it specifically, but that is the essence and logic of capitalism. Defeating this ruling class, according to Sanders, means bringing about “a culture which, as Pope Francis reminds us, cannot just be based on the worship of money.”

Sanders cited calls by Roosevelt in 1944 and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s for an economy that serves the people. In their view, he said, you cannot have freedom without economic security – as Sanders put it, “the right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, and time off from work, the right for every business, large and small, to function in an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right of all Americans to have a decent home and decent health care.”

Getting to that freedom means reshaping political power in our country, Sanders said, because “today in America we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality.”

“Democratic socialism, to me,” he said, “does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice. It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote.”

Is this pie in the sky? Is it impractical? Is it socialism?

How socialism can transform our society to serve the people

Clearly, the connection between our economic and political structures is stronger than Sanders indicated. They are not two parallel systems. We have a political power structure that maintains, protects and preserves an economic system that fuels inequality and injustice. Our economic system based on greed drives (in many ways or in important ways) our political system. The right-wing-dominated Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United ruling is just one illustration of the role of Big Money – Big Capital – in politics. This is why it’s called “capital”-ism.

Socialism is simply about rebuilding our society so that working people of all kinds, all colors, all languages, all faiths – the auto worker from Mississippi, the African American nurse, the computer technician in Silicon Valley, the McDonald’s worker in Florida, the teacher in Fargo, the gay family farmer and the farm laborer from Guatemala, the Korean American musician, the Irish American truck driver, the Muslim scientist, the Catholic customer service rep, the Jewish college student, the teenager trying to land a first job, and so many others – the people who make this country run – not a tiny group of super-rich corporate profiteers – are the deciders, the planners, the policymakers. The driving force is not the ruthless quest for ever-larger individual profit, as it is under our current capitalist system, but pursuit of the common good – equality, freedom from want and fear; expanding human knowledge, culture and potential; providing a chance for everyone to lead a fulfilling life on a healthy planet.

Sanders showed how socialism is rooted in American values. Socialism is about deep and wide democracy. It is not about an all-powerful central government taking over and controlling every aspect of life. It is not about nationalizing this or that or every company. But it does mean that the public will have to take on and take over a few key “evil-doers”:

Taking on Big Oil and Big Finance

* Number one on the list will probably have to be the giant energy corporations – Big Oil, the coal companies, the frackers. This section of corporate America plays a central role in the U.S. economy, but also in its politics – and it’s a dangerous and damaging one. It’s well known that these folks not only ravage our environment and worker health and safety, and hold communities hostage with the threat of job loss if they are curbed, while at the same time blocking progress on a green economy. But they also back and fund far-right policies on a whole range of issues. (It’s not just the Koch brothers.) This sector of the economy will clearly have to be restructured in the public interest.

* Number two: the giant banking and financial companies – commonly known as “Wall Street” although they are sprinkled around the country. We’ve seen how they wrecked our economy and destroyed lives and livelihoods. For what? Simple greed. They will need to be returned to their socially needed function: to protect ordinary people’s savings and to fund investment in the social good, driving a thriving economy and society: new technologies to save our planet from climate change disaster, flood protection for example;  a 21st century public education system rich in resources to enable the next generations to flourish; expanded medical research and a national health system that serves every American with top quality, humane, state of the art care from one end of life to the other; exploration of space and our own planet to enrich human society; and so many more.

You may have a few others to add to the list of key evil-doers that will probably be on top of the list to be challenged and taken over.

But aside from that, socialism can mean a mix of:

* Worker- and community-owned co-ops.

* Companies democratically owned and run by local or state entities. This is not new: we already have, for example, more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, serving more than 48 million people or about 14 percent of the nation’s electricity consumers. Then there’s the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

* Privately run companies.

* Individually owned small businesses.

For socialism to work, public expression and participation will have to be mobilized and expanded, in the economy and in all other areas of life, for example by measures like:

* Strengthening and enlarging worker-employee representation and decision-making.

* Expanding the New England town hall meeting concept.

* Implementing proportional representation and other measures to enable a wide range of views to be represented in our government at every level.

* Taking money out of political campaigns.

* Making voting easy.

Obviously there’s a lot more to think about and figure out – these are just a few suggestions.

Shedding stereotypes about socialism

Bernie Sanders and others take pains to call themselves democratic socialists. That’s because the concept of socialism – in essence, a society based on the “social” good – has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there’s nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not “socialist.” As events have shown, in fact, socialism requires expanded democracy to grow and flourish.

Socialism does not mean a small group “seizing power.” It doesn’t mean radical slogans either. Red flags and images of Che or Lenin not required, nor relevant. Socialism means an energized, inspired, mobilized vast majority from all walks of life, from “red” state and “blue,” coming together to make changes, probably one step at a time.

Socialism is not a “thing” that will “happen” on one day, in one month, one year or even one decade. History shows that vast and lasting social change hasn’t happened that way. I expect it will be a process of events, small steps and some big ones – and elections will play a big and vital role – creating transformations that perhaps we won’t even recognize as “socialism.” Perhaps it will only be in hindsight that we will look back and say, “Oh yes, we’ve got something new.” And it’s not an end product. There is no “end of history.”

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels became famous for analyzing capitalism and how it exploits and oppresses the 99 percent – OK they didn’t use that term, but that’s what they were talking about. Capitalism started out as a productive and creative force, they wrote, but it contained the seeds of its own decline. It has created a massive and ever-widening working class but most of the wealth this class produces and sustains goes into the pockets of an ever-smaller group of capitalists: that’s called exploitation. It creates so many problems that eventually it will have to be replaced. Change is on the agenda.

Thank you Bernie Sanders.

You can watch Bernie Sanders’ Georgetown speech and his responses to questions from students here (about 1-1½ hours). The text of his prepared remarks is here.

P.S.: What others are saying: a sampling

Tim Egan, a columnist at the New York Times whose writing I generally admire, suggests that socialism equates to nationalizing corporations. He suggests Sanders would have nationalized General Motors rather than bail it out in 2008-2009. But socialism really isn’t about nationalizing things, as I discuss above.

The Washington Post has a quiz: “Are you a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders?” None of the 10 quiz questions actually have to do with transforming the economy in any fundamental way.

Then there’s “Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist Capitalist.”

Historian Eric Foner advises: “How Bernie Sanders should talk about democratic socialism.”

Sociologist Staughton Lynd disagrees with Foner.

Political economist Gar Alperovitz has a different take in “Socialism with an American face.”

And so does Rand Paul … “There’s nothing sexy and there’s nothing cool about socialism,” he told Glenn Beck.

Meanwhile, “A high school teacher helps clarify ‘socialism’ for Donald Trump (and you!).” But he doesn’t!

If you read through these, you’ll find there’s a raft of confusion out there! As writer Jonathan Chait aptly notes about much of it: “[F]or a term so freighted with the capacity to inspire its supporters and terrorize everybody else, ‘socialism’ is oddly bereft of any specific meaning.”

On the other hand, this article does offer some more precise definitions.

I hope I’ve added something useful to the discussion.

Photo: Bernie Sanders speaking at a town meeting at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, in July. Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC

Repost: The poverty of ideology
| January 13, 2016 | 7:32 pm | About the CPUSA, Analysis, Party Voices, political struggle | Comments closed
http://houstoncommunistparty.com/the-poverty-of-ideology/
| February 24, 2014 | 11:01 pm | About the CPUSA, Action, Analysis, National, Party Voices

by James Thompson

As the CPUSA proceeds towards its 30th annual convention in Chicago, a number of “preconvention discussion documents” are appearing on the CPUSA website. It certainly appears that the CPUSA fully intends to continue down its self-destructive, reactionary and bourgeois boot licking path. Sam Webb has posted an essay titled “Toward a Modern & Mature 21st Century Communist Party.” http://www.cpusa.org/convention-discussion-toward-a-modern-mature-21st-century-communist-party// Although an essay is generally thought to be the personal opinion of the individual writer, since it is written by the chairperson of the party, we can assume that this will be the roadmap for the immediate future of the CPUSA.

The essay is filled with contradictions which Webb himself identifies. It is almost as if someone has tried to write an ideological bombshell which will eventually implode based on its internal contradictions and inconsistencies.

Let us examine some of these contradictions and view them through Marxist-Leninist lens.

Marx and Engels on alliances with the petty-bourgeois

It would seem appropriate to start with a quote from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels “Address of the Central Authority to the League (March, 1850)” (MECW, IP, volume 10, page 280) since Webb characterizes the CPUSA as “Marxist.” Marx and Engels wrote “The relation of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything by which they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests.” On page 283 they continue “In a word, from the first moment of victory, mistrust must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party, but against the workers’ previous allies, against the party that wishes to exploit the common victory for itself alone.” On page 284 they spell it out “Even where there is no prospect whatever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to lay before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory. The ultimate purpose of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.” On page 287, Marx and Engels concluded “But they themselves must do the utmost for their final victory by making it clear to themselves what their class interests are, by taking up their position as an independent party as soon as possible and by not allowing themselves to be misled for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeois into refraining from the independent organization of the party of the proletariat.”

Let’s see how Sam Webb’s proposals stack up against the words of Marx and Engels.lenin

More “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” or “Back to the future”

Chairperson Webb wrote on the first page of his document “For the past 25 years, our strategic objective has been the building of a labor-led people’s coalition against Republican right wing domination of our nation’s political structures. Its aim isn’t to bring us to a gate on which is inscribed “Doorway to Socialism.” He continues, “But again, our current strategy-which envisions the broader movement in a tactical, but necessary alliance with the Democratic Party against right wing extremist candidates and initiatives-is only one stage in a longer-term process whose goal is to radically reconfigure class relations as well deepen and extend the democracy (probably understood as the right to a job, living wage, healthcare and housing, right to organize into unions, quality integrated education, reproductive rights, comprehensive immigration reform, affirmative action and an end to all forms of discrimination, green environmental policies, etc.).” He follows the statements up with “While we favor a socialist solution, a far more likely political possibility in the near and medium term is a series of measures that radically roll back corporate power, privilege, and profits and overhaul the priorities of government, but still within the framework of capitalism.”

Instead of a modern Communist Manifesto which someone should be writing, the CPUSA chairperson has once again authored a paper which should be titled the Capitulation Manifesto or Class Collaboration Manifesto. He openly and unabashedly advocates an “alliance with the Democratic Party.” He would have us believe that such an alliance will lead to a reconfiguration of class relations and a deepening and extension of democracy. He also openly advocates for a continuation of capitalism. Lenin’s teachings, which he would like to drop, tell us that all reforms can be rolled back by the ruling class when it is politically expedient. This has certainly become clear in recent years.

Marxist Leninists view democracy as a form of the state. They view the state as the means by which one class, i.e. the ruling class, oppresses another class. In our current situation, this would translate to the capitalist class oppression of the working class. For a thorough discussion of Marxist-Leninist views of democracy, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoQN4mKBJtc  . Webb obfuscates the meaning of democracy by defining it as a string of reforms as indicated above. He makes no mention of the fact that in this country we have bourgeois democracy, in other words democracy for the wealthy, by the wealthy and of the wealthy.

Since Webb advocates “an alliance with the Democratic Party,” we should examine this and understand it more clearly. Amazingly, Webb clarifies by stating, “the top circles of the Democratic Party are anchored to the outlook, needs, and policies of major sections of the capitalist class, thereby making it an unreliable and inconsistent ally. My point is to underscore the importance of expanding the network of progressives and liberals at every level of government, and further building the independent parents and formations in and outside the Democratic Party-while at the same time, stressing the urgent (and hardly mundane) task of building a broad coalition against right-wing extremism, in which the President and the Democrats play a necessary role.

As for the formation of an independent People’s party at the national level, we should keep it in the conversation even if it isn’t yet on the horizon.”

Webb also says, “Ours is a party that places a high priority on independent political action. Now I am not suggesting that we do an about-face with respect to the Democratic Party. At this stage of struggle that would be a stupid mistake-strategic and tactical. The Democratic Party is an essential player in any conceivably realistic strategy for defeating the Republican Party and right-wing extremism. Although the Democratic Party comprises diverse people and interests, it has a class gravity and anchorage about which we shouldn’t lose sight.

The main seats at its table are occupied by political players and powerbrokers who by disposition, loyalty and worldview are committed, and then, to creating favorable conditions for the accumulation of capital (profits) and for the smoothest reproduction of capitalism on a national and global level.

Neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization-all of which deepened inequality, severely aggravated economic instability and crisis, undid many of the reforms of the previous century, and disempowered people-are simply creatures of the Republican right.

Now, the election of Reagan and the ascendancy of the right did play a big role in the process, and the Republican right is a leading edge of the current ruling class offensive. But the Democrats were not bystanders either. While they resisted the more extreme measures of their right-wing counterparts, they also embraced some of the main assumptions and practices of neoliberalism, financialization, and globalization.

The Carter administration was the first out of the gate, but it was the Clinton administration and the Democratic Leadership Council that really greased the skids for the rise of finance and speculation, globalization, and the reduction of government’s responsibility to the people.

And even today, the president and his advisers and leading Democrats in the Senate and House are far from free of such thinking and practices.

And as for foreign-policy, the differences between the two parties are more tactical than strategic. While such differences can be of enormous consequences to the preservation of a peaceful world and thus shouldn’t be dismissed by progressive and left people and organizations, it is also a fact that both parties are committed to US global dominance and the growth of the national security state.”

Untangling the Webb

So, let’s see if we can untangle this Webb of ideas. He admits right away that the strategic objective of the CPUSA is not to seek Socialism at this stage in the struggle. He indicates that the strategic objective of the party is to combat the demons of the right wing. The fatal contradiction in this thinking becomes apparent when Webb himself asserts that right wing elements are very visible and influential within the Democratic Party. Although Webb’s obfuscation makes clarity a stranger to the party, it appears that he is telling us that in order to further the interests of the working class, we workers must ally with our class enemies. What would have been the outcome of World War II if Stalin had commanded members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to ally themselves with the fascist elements in the Soviet Union? What would have been the outcome of the struggle against the Vietnam War if the Communist Party leadership had advocated uncritical support and alliance with the imperialist administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was a progressive Democrat, because he was a progressive Democrat? President Johnson helped move the civil rights struggle forward, but at the same time his policies resulted in the unnecessary deaths of many people of the working class in the United States and Vietnam.

Webb himself notes that there is little difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in terms of foreign-policy.

This hypocrisy and contradictory thinking cannot in any sense be characterized as Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, communist, or socialist and it certainly does not promote the interests of the working class.

Webb has a history of surrender before the battle even starts. In an interview with Glenn Beck several years ago he announced that “socialism is off the table.” Even though a large percentage of the US population favor socialism over capitalism according to recent polls, Webb has not budged from this negativistic position. What would have been the outcome of the 1917 Russian Revolution if Lenin had said “socialism is off the table?”

Fighting the right wing is a necessary and ever present part of the struggle for socialism. The history of socialist countries instructs us that the struggle against the right wing continues after socialism has been achieved. Webb also states that the CPUSA places a priority on independent political action. One Democratic Party candidate for president asked the question some years ago “Where’s the beef?” We must apply this question to the CPUSA in the current situation. It would be one thing if the CPUSA was attempting to confront the right wing ideologically, politically, or any other way. However, rather than criticizing the right wing, Webb and other party writers concentrate on criticizing left thinkers such as Chris Hedges. Instead of mounting a program to train party cadre in political struggle, and running communist candidates for public office, members are told to merely “vote Democratic!” Their slogan appears to be “All power to the Democrats!”

Webb has mired the Communist Party in this idea of an unholy alliance with the Democrats and has repeatedly expelled party members who speak out against this twisted path. I should know since I was expelled for this reason in August, 2012 on the same day that I received a diagnosis of oral cancer. Commanding party members to support the Democrats is tantamount to the Pope telling Catholics to convert to Judaism. This is a slick way to destroy the identity and mission of an organization, i.e. simply ally the organization with an organization with which members do not identify. Once the self-destructive edict is issued, the next step is to excommunicate any member who refuses to follow the edict. This is the modus operandi of the CPUSA currently.

What would an alliance with the Democrats mean?

Realistically speaking, if an alliance could be forged with the Democrats, what would this mean? For example, a few years ago in Germany the leading Social Democratic Party was unable to form a majority coalition in the legislature. The Communist Party offered to join a coalition with the Social Democratic Party in order to achieve a majority coalition. The Social Democratic Party refused to form a coalition with the Communist Party even though this would have meant that they would have stayed in power. Such a coalition would have prevented Angela Merkel of the right wing Christian Democratic Union from taking power.

In the United States, such an alliance between the Communist Party and the Democratic Party might be characterized as an annoying tick attaching itself to a donkey. The donkey would be periodically irritated by the presence of the tick which would appropriately be attached to the donkey’s tail. The donkey would swish the tail in an effort to rid itself of the tick. Eventually, if the tick was irritating enough, the donkey might go to extraordinary lengths to get rid of the parasite.

If the CPUSA was able to form an alliance with the Democrats, it would be a parasitic relationship and it is clear that the CPUSA would be the parasite. It is clear that the Democratic Party does not need any more parasites. Indeed, it has plenty of leeches from the capitalists which weigh it down and make it difficult for it to operate effectively. If there was a recognizable and visible alliance between the Democratic Party and the Communist Party, this would become a very effective weapon that the neofascists could use against the Democratic Party. A party member once told me that the Communist Party “does not want to be the issue.” If the CPUSA formed an alliance with the Democrats, it is quite likely that the CPUSA would be the issue in the struggle against the ultra-right. This strategy is not only anti-Communist, and divorced from Marxism Leninism but it is also divorced from reality.

What do workers need?

Progressive workers in the United States need a Communist Party which serves them by acting as a guiding light in the struggle for workers to gain state power. Workers need a Communist Party which fearlessly and unflinchingly fights for the interests of working people. Workers need a Communist Party which critically analyzes its own work and the policies of Social Democrats as well as the right wing reactionaries. Indeed, as in the past, workers need a Communist Party which leads a movement to oppose the antiworker policies of whatever bourgeois political party is in power, Republican or Democrat. Certainly, the right wing, which is merely the guard dog for the ultra-wealthy class, is not shy about applying pressure for the interests of the wealthy. It would be beneficial if the Communist Party was not shy about applying pressure for the interests of the workers.

But here Webb departs from Marxism Leninism again. In his paper he admits that the CPUSA has jettisoned the idea of a vanguard party of the working class. In addition to disavowing the leading role of the party, he notes that “a few decades ago we scrapped the hammer and sickle, mothballed the red flag, and dropped phrases like ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ We worked hard to get rid of leftist jargon, and change the names of our collective bodies and leaders’ titles.” He goes on to state, “In recent years, many party leaders, myself included, have dropped the term “Marxism Leninism” and simply use “Marxism.” There have been reports from around the country that Webb has strongly advocated at various meetings dropping the word “communist” from the CPUSA. Apparently, he has met with some resistance among party members who realize that if the current leadership sheds the skin of the party, there will be nothing left and nothing left to do but dissolve the party.

Rather than celebrate the glorious history of the party in leading the struggle for socialism and against fascism/nazism, Webb says, “It is a party that utilizes slogans, symbols and terminology that resonate with a broad audience. And it should shed those that no longer fit today’s circumstances or are freighted with negative connotations, and not only because of the mass media, but also because of the practices of the communist movement in the last century.” Here he dismisses not only the achievements and contributions of various socialist states ruled by Communist parties such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos and many others, but also dismisses the achievements and contributions of communist parties in non-socialist countries such as the United States, Canada, Greece, Mexico, India, South Africa, Venezuela, Brazil, England, France and Germany and many others. If there ever was an anti-Communist statement, this would be it.

Summary

In summary, this preconvention discussion document which is the roadmap for the future of the party since it is written by the party’s highest leader is full of contradictions and self-destructive actions. It jettisons almost all of the central ideas of Marxism Leninism and damns the history of the party. It argues that workers should ally themselves with their class enemy in order to struggle against the class enemy. He promises “pie-in-the-sky when you die” to party members as well as the working class if they subscribe to his prescription for disaster.

Instead of this idealistic claptrap, the working class has earned through struggle a party which will lead it and prepare it for its historic mission which is the winning of state power for working people. Workers need education and training in political struggle so that they can fight for their interests without being confused by anti-worker parasitic parties. Workers are becoming increasingly aware that their interests are not advanced by financial bailouts of multinational corporations, expanding wars which serve to protect and increase profits, rollbacks of the social network, interference in the affairs of sovereign nations, and an ever-increasing military industrial complex and national security state. Workers know which parties have implemented these policies and are growing increasingly hostile to those leaders responsible. An alliance with those leaders would be poison to any organization which claims to be a worker’s party.

Hopefully, the CPUSA will come to its senses and resist the contradictory and irrational proposed program at its upcoming convention. The future of this country and the world depends on the development of a realistic workers party program. Without socialism, the world will continue to see ever-increasing economic and social crises which will lead to catastrophe. The slogan of the CPUSA convention should be “Forward to a Socialist USA!”

PHill1917@comcast.net

« Older Posts