MLToday on the 29th Convention of the old CPUSA

The following article is being posted here not as a full endorsement of the views expressed therein but rather to share some insights on the Right opportunist line in the old Communist Party USA.  It is originally from the website Marxism-Leninism Today:

CPUSA Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner speaking in front of the flag of U.S. imperialism at the 29th CPUSA convention

[ML Today editor's note:  a number of delegates to the recent CPUSA convention have forwarded to MLToday the following document, reflecting their considered, collective opinion of the 29th CPUSA Convention.]

Many friends and comrades have asked us:  what really happened at the CPUSA Convention on May 21-23, eleven weeks ago, at Party headquarters in New York City?
So far, there are only the self-congratulatory appraisals, one by Party chair Sam Webb and another by his supporter John Case. Both are champions of the social reformist trend in the Party.

In the view of the Communist (that is, the Marxist-Leninist) wing of the CPUSA, however, the May 21-23, 2010 convention was a disaster. We see the Convention as a scandalous retreat from the US Party’s honorable history of principled struggle. The Convention was a retreat from socialism, class struggle, political independence, and internationalism. The Convention gave up ground on the fight against racism, imperialism, and monopoly. 
It was not a convention rich in substance. What little substance there was, was objectionable, and came in the Main Report and the Composite Resolutions, which are available in full at www.cpusa.org/a-way-out-of-the-deepening-crisis/ and http://www.cpusa.org/29th-national-convention/.
The Main Report

Sam Webb, leader of the old CPUSA, speaking at the 29th Convention

Sam Webb’s report could have been written by any liberal. When his followers dutifully referred to it as “brilliant,” many a delegate could barely believe it.
It is known that one or more members of the National Board (NB) urged Sam Webb to take into account preconvention discussion critical of his line. He refused, calling such criticism the outpouring of a “small minority.” In the old days many ideas in preconvention discussion — even if critical of the leadership — would have been taken into account and discussed in the Main Report. That did not happen this time.
His Main Report is full of Straw Men deployed against his left critics in the Party.  Skillful at writing opportunist double talk, Webb can compose sentences that, to the unwary reader, sound like common sense. Read more closely, however, his formulations throw open the door through which have marched the reformism, tailism, and American Exceptionalism that are aggravating the crisis in the CPUSA. For example:

Enclosing him [Obama] in a narrowly defined, tightly sealed political category – as many on the left and right do – is a mistake…it also goes in the direction of pitting the president against the working class and the people. That the right does this is no surprise. But when left and progressive people do it, it is wrong strategically and thus extremely harmful politically.

Our vision of socialism is a work in progress…

Our socialist vision should have a contemporary and dynamic feel; it should be rooted in today’s conditions and our national experience. If it has a “foreign” feel to it, people will reject it.
What I want to do is correct one-sidedness in our thinking. A transfer in class power — which will more likely be a series of contested moments during which qualitative changes in power relations in favor of the working-class and its allies take place…

Advances?

Webb began his report with a list of what he views as “advances” since the last CP convention in 2005. Many of these he credits to the Obama Administration which took office in January 2009.
It’s a curious list. Much of his list is simply Obama’s promises or hopes hailed as if they were achievements.  The Administration talks about “reining in Wall St.” It aspires to the abolition of nuclear weapons. Global warming has been put “on the agenda.”
Much of the list is less than earth-shaking in importance. For example, the White House issued a proclamation on Workers’ Memorial Day.
Some items are wholly imaginary: “The pendulum of power has shifted.”  He claims “progressives are on the offensive.” “Torture was prohibited.”
2005 versus 2010: Some Facts
His list of “advances,” of course, purports to be evidence justifying the CPUSA policy of tailing Obama and the Democrats. Here is counterevidence:
In 2005 the US didn’t have 30,000 fresh troops in Afghanistan. Now  it has, all told, nearly 100,000 there, not counting mercenaries.
In 2005 the US had a military budget of around $600 billion. Now it is $708 billion.  
In 2005 there was the blockade of Cuba. In 2010 there is a reauthorized blockade of Cuba.
In 2005 Honduras had a constitutionally elected government. Now it has a usurper government installed by the US and its Honduran allies.
In 2005 Guantanamo was open. In 2010 Guantanamo is still open.
In 2005 the Cuban Five were in prison. In 2010 the Cuban Five remain in prison.
In 2005, in the housing bubble, predatory lenders targeted people of color. In 2010 mortgage delinquencies, and foreclosure and evictions are at an all-time high, and the victims are disproportionately people of color.
In 2005 the unemployment rate of Black workers was double the unemployment rate of white workers. In 2010 Black workers’ unemployment rate was still double the white unemployment rate, if not more.
In 2005 we needed health care reform.  In 2010 we got a new health inurance “reform” law that entrenches the private, profit-making insurance carriers, the most parasitic sector of finance capital.
In 2005 with Bush in the White House and Republican control of Congress, the war in Iraq wasn’t winding down. In 2010 with Democratic control of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, the Iraq War is still not winding down. It is being re-branded.
In 2005 we had a president who had recently launched a war of aggression in Iraq; in 2010 we have a president who escalated a war of aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2005 before the housing bubble burst, investment bankers and other lords of high finance were raking in billions by fraudulent means. In 2010, two years after the crash exposed them, the same lords of finance, their bonuses fattened by taxpayer billions, walk in and out of Congressional hearings fearing no one. They thumb their noses at the Congress and the public.
In 2005 the party had weekly newspaper we could give out at plant gates. Now it has a cyber newspaper.
If there was anything new in Webb’s report it was the reaffirmation of tailism, more emphatically than ever.  Webb stated that for the CPUSA there is only to be “independent politics inside the Democratic Party.”
The Official “Composite” Resolutions
The content of the composite resolutions pushed through by the leadership illustrate vividly the political decay.
Historically, in the US working class movement, the chief features of right social democracy are 1) the defense of imperialism and 2) the soft-peddling of the struggle against racism. This convention marks a big shift in that direction.
The original resolutions from the Party grassroots were combined with similar resolutions and “edited” by the Resolutions Committee. But the “editing” destroyed the original political thrust of the submitted resolutions. It would be an exaggeration to say the Composite Resolutions bore any resemblance to the original resolutions.  No original resolutions were read to or voted on by the Convention body.
One hour was allowed for discussion of the resolutions. The resolutions committee spent 45 minutes reading the edited resolutions, word-for-word out loud. Discussion was cut off after 15 minutes, even though many people were lined up to speak.
“Composite” Resolution #5, the long resolution on Peace and Solidarity is the most disgraceful and dangerous of all the resolutions. It is the most removed from anti-imperialist principles. It defends the Obama foreign policy against the facts. When facts don’t conform to the tailist policy, it adjusts the facts, asserting, for example, that the US withdrawal from Iraq is “on track.”
The underlying fiction put forth by the leadership is: the Obama Administration is never guilty of any crimes. The Obama Administration only does bad things “under pressure from the right wing.”
This Peace and Solidarity resolution will be of great interest to the international Communist movement, which can only conclude that it no longer has a Communist Party ally in the belly of the beast.
This resolution means the CPUSA leadership is consciously choosing alignment with Obama instead of the struggle against imperialism. The CPUSA leaders do not want to struggle against imperialist war, which Obama is waging and expanding.
It is easier for the CPUSA to make common cause with the US Administration on the basis of the golden words of his various speeches calling for nuclear arms cuts.  The CPUSA wants “a new peace movement,” as Party peace leaders have stated, one that will dodge the issue of imperialist aggression. It will, instead, support nuclear disarmament and stress the wastefulness of military spending in terms of funds unavailable for economic and social needs.
This, then, is the most shameful consequence of this opportunist leadership’s loss of its working-class and Marxist-Leninist bearings. It is de facto acquiescing to the criminal U.S. imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Fight for Jobs, Resolution #1, was supposed to be showcased at the Convention. It is little different from the AFL-CIO program.  A clear Marxist approach, for example, would entail the class-struggle demand to cut the workweek with no cut in pay. Such a remedy would expand jobs at the expense of corporate profits. This notion is nowhere to be found. Worse, while the resolution takes note of the especially high unemployment rates among Blacks, Latinos, women, youth, etc. it opportunistically does not call for affirmative action in hiring and re-hiring them, the classic CPUSA position for many decades.
The Special Report on the Fight against Racism (Resolution # 2) True to the key policy of Webb and his allies — Tail Obama and the Democrats — this resolution sees the upsurge of racism (SB1070, the Arizona racial profiling law, the wave of anti-Muslim discrimination and repression) as a response from the ultra-right to the election of Obama. With this resolution, the CPUSA fight against racism is no longer primarily motivated by the necessity of building working class unity. Rather, the CPUSA leaders fear the ultra right is trying to “disrupt” the workings of the new Administration. In other words, the Obama Administration’s political interests, not working-class unity, are the main preoccupation. This resolution also dodges the question of affirmative action.
The Resolution on Political Action (Resolution # 3), equates the ultra- right with the Republican Party and shuns a class analysis of the Obama Administration. This resolution could have been written by the Democratic National Committee.  It pledges to “extend and defend” the “victories” won in the November 2008 election. It is, simply put, more tailism.
The Resolution on Immigrant Rights (# 4) merely restates the AFL-CIO position in favor of immigration reform. It leaves out the highly relevant fact that deportations of undocumented workers have increased under an Obama Administration eager to appease nativist sentiment. According to figures from the federal immigration enforcement agency, in 2009 the Obama Administration deported 389,834 people, about 20,000 more than in 2008, the final year of the Bush Administration.
Resolution # 6, on Party-building, manages to discuss the “challenges” to Party growth without acknowledging that the Party membership is in steep decline.  An honest discussion of why recruitment is failing was omitted.
How many party members are there? In a report on Party Internet work and Internet “recruiting,” one NB member inadvertently gave away the real size of this declining party, a number often lied about. In 2005 the CPUSA had 2500 members, according to Sam Webb.  At the 2010 convention the NB member in question declared “3 times a week a new application comes by Internet, and at this rate the party could double its size in three years.”  Do the math.  If there are 150 yearly Internet applications, the current membership may be reckoned to be around 450-500 at most.
The present leaders would have us believe, of course, that the steep decline has nothing to do with the politics of the leadership. Rather, it is subtly implied that it is the members who must change their ways. Members are to blame, and they must work differently.

More on the Character of the Convention
The grim reality we face is that, in the May 2010 convention, the right-wing faction in the leadership led by Webb, for now, has consolidated its hold over the party.
The outcome was dreadful, but it was not entirely surprising. Opportunism has been the increasingly assertive trend in this party for years.  This is the same right opportunist direction taken by some other parties.
In the pre-convention discussion, articles like “Save the Party,” give chapter and verse of our critique of the Party’s political decline (see www.mltoday.com), and what has to be done to turn matters around.
The current Party leadership is a faction.  Factions and factionalism are not limited to oppositions to leaderships. In such cases, however, official factionalism functions in the form of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy stifles party democracy and membership criticism. It uses charges of “disruption,” and, of course, “factionalism” against its left critics. The present leaders have not — in so many words — repudiated democratic centralism.  They will enjoy the democracy. We may expect to be on the receiving end of the centralism.
In June 2009 the factional nature of the Webb leadership was most clearly revealed when it rammed through a policy of ending the print edition of the Party’s weekly paper, the People’s Weekly World. It also withheld information at subsequent National Committee (NC) meetings on the extent of leadership and membership opposition to the move.  This is one of a series of abuses for which they still have not been held accountable.
A notorious example from 2005, a CP convention year. The Illinois CP, after adopting a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, forwarded it on to the national convention for adoption. Although efforts were subsequently made by a clearly uncomfortable national Party leadership to have the maker of the motion change it (“to reflect the security interests of the Iraqi people” – i.e. to acknowledge the legitimacy of the U.S. occupiers), the maker refused, pointing out that even if he had wanted to do so (which he did not), it was already out of his hands. The resolution ultimately came before the national convention in a bundle of resolutions approved by the resolutions committee. That bundle was adopted unanimously.
Subsequently, that resolution was willfully disregarded by the Party’s leadership and editors. Its content was never reflected in the Party’s own newspaper. Efforts to have this position reflected in the Party’s publications were repeatedly quashed. Nor was the resolution implemented in the Party’s mass work, particularly on the national level. It remains a dead letter to this day.
The justification for this willful neglect was that Sam Webb, in his report to the convention, suggested a “different approach” — one acceptable to Democrats — calling for a “timetable” or an “exit strategy” from Iraq. This approach was and essentially remains a stalling tactic, an indefinite postponement of U.S. withdrawal that has resulted in many thousands of additional Iraqi and U.S. deaths and the continued presence of over 100,000 U.S. troops (and a similar number of “contractors”) in Iraq up to this very day.
Webb’s report, which was presented without any opportunity for substantive amendment, was perfunctorily adopted. His report was then used to invalidate the clear antiwar resolution.
And this from a Party leadership that purports to champion democracy!

Stifling Convention Democracy
The convention, a caricature of democracy, was tightly controlled by the present leaders.
It was small: only 158 delegates and 50 guests. Convention managers filled the three days with ludicrous time wasters, such as a bagpipe-playing session. They contrived delegate selection rules to give regions with no clubs a vote, especially if they were reliably pro-incumbent.  For example, a defender of the right-wing line represented the state of West Virginia.
Unlike previous conventions, the mood of this convention showed little sense of internationalism, and little sense of outrage against the imperialist wars being waged by the US. The convention was stacked, as much as possible, with people willing to go along to get along, as well as the current leadership and its flatterers.
What was the mood? One Party worker, a man in his 50s stated:
At the convention, I felt like an outsider. My “home in this rock,” to quote Paul Robeson, seemed to be no longer my home. My political home has been transformed without my consent or agreement. It has been stolen. They have put an end to the necessary tools of our trade, so to speak, the party paper and timely class-oriented pamphlets on the important issues facing our working class. Tailing and nonsense analysis replaced class-struggle analysis and leadership. In general, it seemed to me that our misleadership has lost their class-conscious common sense.
Clearly, the goal, which conference organizers achieved, was to run a top-down, stage-managed convention that would squelch free debate, waste time, and run out the clock.
There was little time devoted to face-to-face discussion at the convention. People could not engage in discussion to collectively shape an agenda on how to best move the organization forward.
Most of the Convention’s time was squandered on self-congratulatory speeches from the leadership that took credit for general political trends way beyond any conceivable CPUSA influence. The “calls to action” amounted to nothing more than calls for legislative lobbying and electioneering for Democrats.
Yet the rightists in leadership had been worried about loss of control the convention, though, regrettably, their worries proved unfounded. In a preconvention comment one of their supporters voiced the worry:
A narrowly based, but very persistent campaign has been waged on the Internet and in the comments sections of CP publications — by my count nearly 20% of commenters and discussants and much more if you count the number of words — with the sole effective purpose being to distract the Left, and especially the CP, from working within the broadly defined Obama coalition, or from focusing on a majority-based agenda of reforms.
The right had reason for anxiety. Most of the resolutions, like most of the pre-convention discussion (available at the www. MLToday.com website), opposed the reformist line of the present leadership. It opposed the shutting down of the print edition of the People’s World. It supported ending the fawning tailism of Obama and the Democrats. It called for the Party to shed right opportunism and to return to its anti-imperialist, class struggle, and anti-war principles.
We believe the convention outcome does not reflect the political balance in the Party membership as whole. The grassroots opposition sentiment, which is substantial, was barely reflected. The convention delegates were carefully chosen by procedures that guaranteed majority support of the incumbents. In all organizations incumbents have certain advantages. This was done by various means, quite a few of them flagrantly dishonest, such as completely ignoring the content of properly submitted resolutions from the Party grassroots.
That the national convention would be a travesty of democracy was predictable, perhaps, from the chicanery at the state conventions that preceded it – the Illinois District convention being one of the worst cases. In the Illinois convention, the organizers killed time by watching videos and holding tutorials on how to send email. In Illinois and elsewhere the Webb faction maneuvered to keep key, articulate leaders opposed to the rightist trend away from the national convention.
The national convention was held in a room small in size, allegedly for economy reasons. The Webb faction has vacillated between 1) declaring a financial crisis that rules out face-to-face meetings and 2) denying any financial crisis exists if they are claiming that there is no problem with their stewardship. The spin depends on needs of the moment. Truth and consistency are not the guiding principles.
They smothered debate not only by ignoring preconvention resolutions and discussion, but also by making the convention smaller and less representative. Rural areas of the country, even if there was only one party member in a given state, got a voting delegate. But some industrial clubs were completely unrepresented.
They also isolated those critics of the Party line who were at the convention. One of the strongest of their opponents, an NC member from Kentucky, objected to adding to the NC a Midwesterner who evinced no understanding of the role of clubs in Party structure. He also objected to another candidate involved in questionable financial activity. He was overruled and the two were added to the NC. For his pains, he himself was dropped from the NC. Whenever he rose to speak, he was surrounded by Webb loyalists.

An Air of Unreality
Most leadership speeches proclaimed a mad eagerness to work in an imaginary coalition with the liberal wing of Big Business. In his Main Report, Webb boasted, “Broadly speaking, our view of the general conditions of struggle and the strategic path forward was and is on the money.”
A long-time Party peace movement leader made such delusional statements as: “Obama is listening to us [e.g., Peace Action, Military Families Speak Out]. He meets with us. We can’t close this door by criticizing him.” “We need to help Obama resist being pushed to the right.” “Obama’s sentiment on Afghanistan is shifting our way.” “Obama has realistic assessment on the withdrawal of troops.”
Thus, the content of the convention was remarkably unconnected to the Party’s real mission – leading struggle. Such pressing issues as climate change, one billion hungry people, a waning labor movement, a health care system given over to major profiteering, populations displaced and migrating, US militarization of the planet, and more received little or no discussion.

A Dearth of Internationalism
In the Convention’s deliberations there was little discussion of developments abroad: the multiplying wars, global economic crisis, struggles like that of the Haitian people for survival against racism and colonialism, resistance to US bases and militarization, popular resistance to the coup government in Honduras, and a real push to end the blockade and free the Cuban Five.
As for our relations with other Communist parties, Convention organizers minimized the number of observers from the international Communist movement. When realistic comrades pointed out that, if budgetary considerations were paramount, then inviting the UN or consular staff resident in New York from such counties as China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea was an option, for the price of a subway ride. The Party leadership resisted that obvious solution.
In the end, several parties did appear to give short greetings. The Vietnamese delegate spoke.
Convention managers minimized delegates’ knowledge what the international Communist movement was saying to the CPUSA.
For example, the Webb circle tried to suppress the full Greek Communist Party (KKE) greetings, especially the paragraphs that dealt with opportunism in the international Communist movement. When the full KKE text was handed in writing to the delegates (thanks to the fact that the KKE had speedily posted the greetings in English at its website) Webb and his supporters were forced to issue a message of solidarity to the KKE and eventually to post the whole KKE statement at the CPUSA web site. Of course, now that it is there, they are making no effort to call attention to it.
Youth
One of the most active YCLers expressed alarm at the lack of young delegates at the convention. There were, of course, YCL guests (and a few delegates) but participation from youth was scant. A healthy and vibrant Communist Party would give special attention to the training and support of young leaders and cadre. The lack of youth participation is a portent that the current political line of the leadership has no future.
The convention was stacked, as much as possible, with people willing to “go along to get along,” as well as the current leaders and their hangers-on. YCLers were given a code to register as guests, and when some leaders of the YCL tried to register they were denied access to the convention for the reason that “there was no room.” This was systematically done for political reasons.

Resistance to the Line
With plenary sessions a choreographed sham, what rebellion there was could only take place in skirmishes in the workshops and panels, not the plenaries. There were good discussions in the workshops. However, there were no minutes taken or reports given back to the larger body.
In one workshop, for example, the information technology panacea was challenged by an Arizona delegate who pointed out the reality of the digital divide.
In the “Club Life and Education” workshop the majority of participants steered the discussion towards theory – i.e., the leadership’s failure to incorporate and develop it and the need to focus on the Marxist-Leninist theoretical education of existing and new members. Indeed, the consensus of this workshop was that the leadership needed to be told that the Party needs to pay more attention to theory. The YCL co-convener of the workshop attempted to shift the discussion and assert control a number of times, without much success

Two Controversies
Two controversies burst out into the open at the Convention. One was the censorship of the KKE greetings, mentioned above.
The other was the treatment of the resolution on independence for Puerto Rico. The Massachusetts District resolution on Puerto Rican liberation was substantially the same as in the last convention. However, the nervous chair, People’s World editor Terrie Albano, perceived the resolution as an act of insurrection from rebel districts (Massachusetts, Kentucky, Indiana). Afraid of debate, Albano shut down discussion. This enraged Party members of Puerto Rican descent and other backers of the Massachusetts resolution, several of whom walked out.
One mendacious “special resolution” deserves a word. It emanated from the national leadership, commending the New York District for helping to re-launch May Day. New York trade union comrades familiar with the facts pointed out that national Party leaders had done their best not to participate in May Day on the grounds that  “Obama need support; he doesn’t need criticism.” Sam Webb and Scott Marshall, Party labor secretary, had rejected early pleas for help from the trade unionists and immigrant groups trying to relaunch it.

More Liquidation
The “Composite” resolutions represent ideological liquidation. All the resolutions repudiate the idea that the CPUSA will seek to play a leading role in anything or initiate anything. It will merely “participate in,” “help,” “encourage,” “join in,” “give support to,” and so on.
But there was physical liquidation too. The convention decided henceforth to hold only one National Committee meeting a year. The other three meetings will be conference calls, which are, of course, easier to manipulate.
It was clear from the comments of Roberta Wood, Party secretary-treasurer, that the Party will rent Winston-Unity Hall, a floor of the New York City headquarters building, to finance a pay raise for Party staff. It increasing appears that the paid staff is asserting its group interests regardless of the consequences to the organization or its rank and file members who were not present as delegates.
The CPUSA leadership composition became more skewed with near total removal of independent and critical voices from the NC. The leadership is now quite inbred, both politically and otherwise. The daughter of Sam and Sue Webb — a schoolteacher in Boston who plays little or no role in Party life there — was put on the National Committee.
There was an unsuccessful effort by Danny Rubin, an ideological ally and mentor of Webb, to enhance the powers of the National Board (NB), which has become really a rubber-stamp council of Webb loyalists. Rubin wished to centralize power at the expense of the NC on matters of Party constitutional change.
The incoming NC’s size remains about the same, still 82 or 84. The convention dropped 12 or 14 NC members, and added a like amount. Some departing NC members were not removed, they resigned in disgust.
Party veterans noted that the reports on local activity, customary at such gatherings were not “what we are doing” They were “what’s going on,” that is, what others are doing. It was another expression of the Party’s loss of purpose.
At the convention younger comrades barely spoke, most wondering what to make of the proceedings. Veterans of many Party conventions saw no — or at any rate few — new faces in key districts
Forty-five minutes of Webb’s keynote remarks were taped for C-SPAN. His supporters considered this to be of great importance. It seems to us that inviting C-SPAN to tape Webb’s presentation demonstrated that his intended audience is the TV-viewing public, not specifically Communists. His generalizations and lack of analysis could only be directed to non-Communists.

Conclusions
The Convention was undemocratic, scripted, non-Communist (in fact anti-Communist at times), and devoid of Marxist analysis of present conditions. One delegate, completely disgusted, predicted, “They won’t even bother to hold another convention.”
Validating our pessimistic analysis, since the convention, matters have continued to slide down the slippery slope. The first NC conference call took up the topic of “re-branding” the Party, as if the Party were a tube of toothpaste requiring a more modern name, like changing “Ipana” to “Aquafresh.”  Reportedly, a consultant will be hired to advise on re-branding, including re-naming.
As one seasoned comrade who has subsequently resigned said privately to us, the convention result shows “the political gangrene of opportunism has spread very far indeed.”
Gangrene looks like this: one of the most appalling moments in this appalling convention came when Joel Wendland, editor of Political Affairs, a “Journal of Marxist Thought,” stated: “Isn’t it great we can have a CPUSA convention and not hear ‘Marx said this’ and ‘Lenin said that’?!” “We need to shed old skin on theoretical level.”
Evidently, Wendland is following his own advice. A few weeks back, he abandoned any theory of imperialism. He posted without criticism a proclamation from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Venezuelan Independence Day, as if the US State Department were a champion of Venezuelan independence.  We believe the real State Department view is expressed in the seven new US military bases in neighboring Colombia, authorized by Obama and Clinton, aimed at strangling Venezuelan independence and democracy.
We view this convention as a hijacking of the Party by a faction of the leadership. Many good Party members are wondering: Can this party be saved?
We don’t know. It will take a fierce struggle. But most of us intend to try.
The present leadership is already in consultation with social reformist groups (DSA, CCDS, the reformist Freedom Road). It’s obvious that most of the present leaders don’t want a Communist Party. They view Leninism and even the name CPUSA as “baggage.”
As for us, a few voices among many, we are urging the healthy forces in the Party not to quit, but to stay and fight. How many will leave we do not yet know. Those who have left are honorable comrades who see resignation as a matter of principle. We have resolved to stay close to them and to work together closely. They have welcomed that.
Matters are serious. Yet, there are factors on our side. Here are a few: our opponents often miscalculate. For example, delaying the convention for one year proved a miscalculation on their part, insofar as it more easily enabled the left opposition in the Party to point out how absurd the official CPUSA “analysis” of Obama and the Democrats is.  The international Communist movement is on our side. It is looking on with dismay and alarm at the deterioration within the CPUSA leadership. As the present US Administration moves steadily rightward, to justify its policies becomes ever more difficult. Disgusted by a Party that sees its sole mission the election of Democrats, people walk away or give up. The membership dwindles, and the organizational crisis deepens.  The class struggle is sharpening in the US and around the world. Reformism has no solutions for US working people.
We doubt that there can be any recovery in the CPUSA until Sam Webb and his allies are removed from their present positions.
The daunting immediate task ahead for Marxist-Leninists in the US is to figure out how to move forward inside and outside the CPUSA.
_____________________________________________
August 18, 2010

Reply to Sam Webb's Essay on A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What Will It Look Like?

From: L.A. Metro  Club
            Los Angeles, CA. 

Let us begin by  saying that we appreciate the work it took to produce the 
essay. It was  put together with honesty and I believe that Sam Webb truly 
believes what  he writes. That being said, we offer a different  perspective.
 
We cannot afford to  do away or retire the term, Marxism-Leninism. For one 
thing, to say that  “it has a negative connotation among ordinary Americans, 
even in left and  progressive circles” is running from the class struggle. 
Our job as  communists is to educate ordinary Americans about communism and 
what it is  all about. For instance, production   and manufacturing in this 
country are at an all time low. What  little there is being produced is not 
socially useful production. That is  one reason why unemployment levels are 
so high. To begin with, our party  should review its industrial 
concentration policy and call for a return of  manufacturing jobs to the USA. We
should 
use all legal means at our  disposal to initiate unemployed councils, lobby 
for legislation, work with  industrial unions that are on the same page, and 
put out information in  our communities that says that the Communist Party 
is for full employment  and we have the science to prove it. The pamphlet, “
Feeling locked out of  the American Dream?” is a good start. We should 
return to our roots. The  term Marxism-Leninism has served our party well for 
ninety years. Running  away from it gains us nothing.
 
As for Stalin, the  main reason for using the term, Marxism-Leninism has to 
do with his (and  Lenin's) work on the national question. He was faced with 
uniting a nation  by  protecting the rights of  peoples that were not 
Russian, fighting against great Russian chauvinism,  while at the same time, 
fighting against nationalism. Using the science of  Marxism-Leninism  this was  
accomplished, culminating in the so-called Stalin constitution of 1936  
which guaranteed the rights of   all citizens in the U.S.S.R. Further, the 
science of  Marxism-Leninism corrected the error in the theory of Marx and Engels 
that  assumed that socialism would first come to the industrially advanced  
countries of the world. As we now see, socialism first came to Russia (the  
U.S.S.R.), the eastern bloc countries, and then China, and then Korea, and  
then Cuba, and then Viet Nam and Laos. None of these countries were  
industrially advanced. Stalin wrote volumes on the need to support  national 
liberation movements to bring about socialism in underdeveloped  countries and 
provided material support toward that  end.
 
To say that  Marxism-Leninism “took formal shape during the Stalin period 
during which  Soviet scholars, under Stalin's guidance, systematized and 
simplified  earlier Marxist writings-not to mention adapted ideology to the 
needs of  the Soviet state and party” does not mean that we can not do the same 
in  the United States. Of course Stalin and the Central Committee of the 
party  adapted ideology to the needs of the soviet state and party! That is 
what  every political party that takes power does. That is what we should do.  
But that does not mean that the term Marxism-Leninism is foreign by any  
means. Stalin learned from Lenin. Hence the term,  Marxism-Leninism.
 
Where it is said,  “Marxism is revolutionary in theory and practice, but it 
doesn't consider  “gradual” and “reform” to be dirty words,” no one is 
suggesting that about  Marxism-Leninism.  Perú and  their party led by 
Secretaty General Roberto De La Cruz Huamán are leaders  of large numbers of 
masses. At a recent demonstration that was called by a  “coalition” of left 
parties of which the PCP is a part, along with the  Confederación General de 
Trabajadores de Perú (CGTP) the workers of Perú  made minimum demands. It was a 
huge legal demonstration against  neo-liberalism  and the  selling off of 
public entities (privatization). This demonstration is just  part of the 
effort by the five left parties that includes the PCP and the  CGTP to win the 
Presidency of the nation on April 10. There is a good  chance. Of course, they 
are using Marxist-Leninist tactics that work in  their country, as the 
Chinese party is fond of saying ,with their own  “characteristics.”
 
Before we fight for  the interests of the entire nation, we must fight for 
the interests of the  working class. When people see us fighting for the 
workers, many will join  us, including small business people and people from 
other parties. To wait  until the working class is destroyed “to fight for the 
interests of the  entire nation” is just wrong.
“The deterioration  of infrastructure, the destruction of the social safety 
net, the  undermining of the public school system, the decay of urban and 
rural  communities, the privatization of public assets, the growth of poverty 
and  inequality, the hollowing out of manufacturing and cities, the 
lowering of  workers wages, and a faltering -now stagnant-domestic economy” are the 
 reasons why we should be fighting for the working class  first.
It is no secret  that pension funds in OECD countries lost $3.5 trillion 
(US)  in market value during the global  financial crisis and are still unable 
to fully restore savings to their  2008 levels. Defined benefit pension 
funds are underfunded because of wild  speculation throughout the world's 
capitalist markets. The workers are  punished through no fault of their own. This 
is one area of the financial  mess that needs to be properly explained. The 
CPUSA should issue a  position paper on the subject of pension funds, 
noting first of all that  workers take less money in wages with the expectation 
that pension funds  will be available when they reach retirement age.    

This is not to say  that there are problems that effect all of humanity, 
like global warming,  nuclear power and weapons, and natural disasters. Of 
course we do all we  can to identify  these  problems and make the struggle for 
a better world part of our  program.
 
“The struggle for  socialism goes through phases and stages, probably more 
than we allow for  in our current writings and program.” Exactly! We have a 
defeat and  retreat strategy. The CPUSA seems to be afraid of the capitalist 
system.  Workers can sense this. They know when the party is weak. That is 
one  reason they don't join in greater  numbers.
 
“A party of  socialism understands that in any broad coalition of social 
change,  competing views are inevitable.” The role of the left is to express 
its  views candidly, but in a way that strengthens rather than fractures 
broad  unity, which is a prerequisite for social progress.”  That is why Lenin 
and the  bolsheviks  formed “a party of  a new type.” A communist party. 
They found that working with the social  democrats was a defeatist policy. 
Later they found that working with the  Trotskyites was a bad idea. It depends 
on how one defines left. We all  know that the CIA works overtime since the 
end of the cold war setting up  left groups that are for the purpose of 
discrediting the communist  movements and parties. There is another very 
important reason they form  these groups. They finance them to fool workers who are 
looking for  solutions to their problems. A party of the 21st century must  
be ideologically strong so as not to be enamored by the glitz and glamor  of 
capitalism. Now the social-democratic elites have  cell phones and  
blackberries, and  laptops and they drink their  Starbucks coffee in the morning   
and they travel like kings while the majority of people in the  world have 
nothing to eat!  We  must have humility  if we are  to be real communists.
 
“Don't be surprised  to see a movement back to class concepts and 
historical materialsm -not to  mention a new interest in the theoretical 
contributions and political  biography of Lenin. No one in this or the last century
can 
match his  theoretical  body of work on  questions of class, democracy, 
alliance policy, nationality, power, and  socialist revolution.” In fact in the 
former Soviet Union, there is  renewed interest in the lives of Lenin and 
Stalin, and their popularity  there is rising. The Communist Party of the 
Russian Federation placed  second in the regional elections, passing the Russia 
United party. All the  more reason not to change Marxism-Leninism to simply  
Marxism.
 
“A party of  socialism in the 21st century doesn't irrevocably lock social  
forces, organizations and political personalities into tightly enclosed  
social categories that allow no space for these same forces, organizations  
and personalities to change under the impact of issues, events, and  changing 
correlations of power.”   We seriously doubt that a party as small as the 
CPUSA can have this  kind of power. We had better grow first, before we assume 
such  things.
 
Regarding  immigrants having a tradition of struggle, suggesting that their 
spirit is  militant and anti-capitalist while failing to mention the neo - 
liberal  policies in their countries of origin that caused them to emmigrate 
makes  the assumption that they were born that way and that all immigrants 
are  that way. They have to continue the fight in their own communities in 
the  United States which is why many immigrants don't join the party. We have 
 witnessed this with my own eyes. We work with immigrants every day.  Immigr
ants work within their own community. We have worked many years in  the 
past within the Irish community and had to fight against nationalism  and 
anti-communism. Despite this, we were able to establish a  party club of Irish 
immigrants,  and they were mainly concerned with problems back home. We are 
not  suggesting that all communities are the same, but we are patient, and we  
observe how immigrants react to our party. Are we really interested in  
their problems or are we just using them?  It is something we should discuss  
before  assume that all  immigrants will jump at the chance to join the party 
because they are  immigrants.
 
We have to ask, why  take over the Democratic Party? What can be gained by 
such talk? Are we  organizing them or are they organizing us? Are we having 
influence with  them, or are they having influence with us? Who is leading 
whom? Wouldn't  it be better to work with workers' organizations directly,  
that is to say, the unions and the  union movement? Wouldn't it be better to 
organize a coalition of parties  and left forces into an electoral coalition 
that can win real political  power like they have done successfully in Perú 
and El Salvador?  A party with its own independence  and it's own name, led 
by labor and communists? That is what we see . And  it is working. First we 
tried to work with the old parties, and we were  sold out. That is what the 
Democratic Party is good  at.
 
When we speak of  Stalin, we need too speak of him in the continuum of  
history. Before there was a Soviet  Union there was Russia, with its culture, 
tradition, and its brutality.  Stalin acknowledged publicly that “the purges 
and executions of hundreds  of thousands of communists and other   patriots 
and the labor camps that  incarcerated,
exploited and sent  untold numbers of [innocent] Soviet people to early 
deaths, and the  removal of whole peoples from their homelands.” The most 
precise number of  deaths from purges and executions of innocent Soviet citizens 
is 640,000.  Most of this was done by Nicolai Eshov, a German spy working 
under direct  orders of the German SS. When he was discovered, he tried to 
hide his  crimes. He was promptly tried and executed. Others with authority 
high in  the Soviet government were also found to be murdering innocent Soviet  
citizens. They were also double dealers working for the Germans. Following  
Lenin's death, many intellectuals doubted that the Soviet Union would  
continue. They joined the party, acted like loyal party members, worked  their 
way up into positions of authority and worked as spies Germany. The  
assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934 was the first major provocation of  the Bloc 
of Rights and Trotskyites. There was sabotage including  falsifying of grain  
and  cotton harvest reports, killing of livestock including horses, 
destroying  railroads, blowing up mines, and so on. In short, there was a fifth 
column  operating in Soviet Russia. The threat was real. And the man who was  
charged with stopping the sabotage , Nicolai  Eshov, was protecting the 
spies,  and conducting trials of innocent Soviet citizens, and lying to the  
Central Committee of the CPSU the whole time. What do you do when people  lie to 
you? Do you take their testimony at face value? Can they be  trusted? Are 
they loyal comrades? Or are they lying and destroying the  lives of innocent 
people?
 
When Stalin acknowledged the  atrocities, he did not call them a mistake. 
He said that horrible crimes  were committed that have nothing to do with 
socialism, and those crimes  were committed by Nicolai Eshov, a German spy. 
When we speak of  war crimes or crimes against  humanity, we have to put the 
blame where it belongs, not on the people who  discovered the horrible crimes, 
Stalin and Beria. There are many witnesses  to Stalin's leadership of the 
USSR. Firstly, there is the American  ambassador to the USSR, Joseph E. 
Davies, author of the book, Mission  to Moscow. Then there is Anna Louise Strong, 
who wrote, The Stalin  Era, which is her account of her time in the USSR 
under Stalin's  leadership. There is also the book, Stalin, written by a 
German  biographer, Emil Ludwig. There is also The Red Archbishop, the Dean of  
Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson and his book, The Soviet Power.  There is plenty 
to read on the  subject of the soviet Union during WW   II.
 
 On the subject of war crimes and  labor camps, it should be pointed that 
the United States bombed Dresden  and murdered hundreds of thousands of 
German citizens, and later dropped  not one but two atom bombs on Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki Japan, killing  hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese citizens. 
These bombs were  dropped on civilian targets where they would do the most 
damage. The  reason for these atrocities had nothing to do with winning the 
war. The  goal of the capitalism was to destroy the  industrial capacity of 
Germany and  Japan so that the United States and United Kingdom would be 
unchallenged  superpowers in the world. The Soviet Union decided not to use 
nuclear  weapons and instead attacked the Japanese main land, liberated the  
Sakhalin Islands, and kept the Japanese Army from valuable fuel to  continue 
the war. In short, the use of nuclear weapons was  unnecessary.
 
Before and during  the war, there was no “forced” collectivization of 
Soviet agriculture. It  was entirely voluntary. “it was found that the voluntary 
principle  of forming collective farms was being violated, and that in a 
number of  districts the peasants were being forced into the collective farms  
under threat of being disspossed, disfranchised, and so on.” (History of  
the CPSU, p.307, International Publishers, 1939 ed.)This was in direct  
violation of the order of the Central Committee of the CPSU which was  “against 
any attempts whatsoever to force the collective-farm movement by  'decrees' 
from above, which might involve the danger of the substitution  of 
mock-collectivization for real Socialist emulation in the organization  of collective 
farms.” (Resolutions of the C.P.S.U.[B] russ. ed., Part II,  page 662.)      
What there was was a discontinuation of Lenin's New Economic  Policy, which 
had become outdated. Stalin needed to ramp up agricultural  output so that 
there would not be food shortages during and after the war.  There was 
nothing forced about it. In fact having received a number of  alarming signals of 
distortions of the Party line that might jeopardize  collectivization, on 
March 2, 1930 Stalin's article “dizzy With Success,”  was published. This 
article was a warning to all who had been carried away  by the success of 
collectivization.
 
When whole peoples  were relocated from their homelands, this was done 
because their homelands  were under attack. In fact, Soviet troop trucks were 
sent to Poland to  relocate Jewish people behind the Ural mountains so that 
they would be  safe. Once again, the threat was real.
 
With regard to  Stalin's so-called labor camps,   we should consider that 
most of the people in the camps were  deserters from the armed forces that 
were  captured.
This has been  researched and verified by the writer Geoffrey Roberts in 
his book,  Stalin's Wars.
 
 Secondly, we had labor camps of our  own. Japanese-Americans were 
relocated from the major cities on the west  coast into internment or concentration 
camps. These people were American  citizens, many of whom served in the 
244th army regiment in  Europe while their families stayed behind. This was a 
great violation of  civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Before 
we find fault and  throw stones at Stalin, who has been dead for more than 50 
years, who led  the USSR in the great patriotic war and saved socialism, th
e legacy of  Lenin, we should first look at our own country's “mistakes.” 
The United  States also had a “cult of personality.” His name was Franklin 
D.  Roosevelt, and while he did many good things, internment of  
Japanese-Americans wasn't one of them.
 
Regarding the  statement that “The state isn't simply the instrument of the 
ruling class  – a monolithic and tightly integrated class bloc and weapon. 
While the  capitalist class is dominant, the state is filled with with 
internal  contradictions and is a site of class and democratic struggles – not 
just  any site though, but a crucial and decisive site.” What you fail to  
mention is that Gorbachev and his social-democratic friends used this idea  to 
destroy socialism and the USSR. The history of social-democracy of one  of 
anti-communism and anti-Leninism. The social-democrats do not want       
socialism. They want to reform capitalism. The communists on the other  hand, 
have always been guided by the revolutionary teachings of  Marxism-Leninism. 
In the new conditions of the era of imperialism,  imperialist wars and 
proletarian revolutions, its leaders further  developed the teachings of Marx and 
Engels and raised them to a new  level.  That is what the CPUSA  must do if 
we are to call ourselves  “communist.”
 
regarding the  statement. “Bureaucratic collectivism and a command economy 
that reduce  people to cogs, social relations into things, and culture to a 
dull gray  will be resisted by a 21st century party of socialism” who is  
suggesting that a command economy has to reduce people to cogs?  The command 
economy will be run by  the workers themselves, not the party. That is what 
socialism is! Why  assume that the party will run everything? It certainly 
does not in Brazil  or Venezuela, or Cuba.
 
As for the  statement that “Our socialism will embrace a new humanist ethos 
and value  system, that is what Marxism-Leninism does. Marxism-Leninism is 
synonymous  with humanism. This has nothing to do with whether or not there 
is a  command economy under socialism. Furthermore, a command style economy 
with  bureaucratic collectivism could be construed as trade unionism, 
something  that will be replaced by socialism in the 21st century. The  dream that 
“the builders of socialism should put into place a dense  network of worker 
and community organizations that are politically and  financially empowered 
to govern” assumes that everyone will participate.  Unless incentives are 
put in place, this will not  work.
 
As for dropping the  term democratic centralism, this cannot be done in a 
communist party. This  is how we function. Democratic Centralism “is” force 
of argument. That is  how unions decide questions of major importance such 
as the decision to  strike. The conscience of the majority, by unity of will. 
Remember that  the Bolsheviks we busy in 1917 too. Workers worked more than 
the customary  8 hours a day. What makes us any different. Membership in 
our party is  voluntary. If members can't follow what is in our constitution, 
they  shouldn't be members. That is what distinguishes us from other 
political  parties. We are disciplined. We make a plan and we stick with it. We are 
 not like the social-democratic parties that spend all their time in  
endless debates.
 
Regarding the  internet, the party should not abandon ground organizing if 
favor of the  internet. It should use both. Our clubs depend on literature 
to reach  people in our communities. We can't neglect this work. The internet 
that  we have seen is very limited. There isn't much there to see. There 
has to  be more on those pages like the CPUSA website. There should be a 
direct  link to International Publishers on the home page. We shouldn't have to  
surf through endless links to find it. International Publications is a  
party entity and should be treated as such. Currently there is no members  
section. There is no on-line store to purchase party supplies or to order  
pamphlets in print. We should have position papers on things effecting the  
working class: a paper on the foreclosure crisis, a paper on homelessness,  a 
paper on war and peace, a paper on the struggle to reform labor law, a  paper on 
immigration and citizenship. If these were on the web page,in PDF  format, 
our clubs could download them and use them in our communities. If  we are 
concentrating on the web so much, we need to use it to our  advantage. Right 
now it looks like something  of a command style  bureaucracy.
 
Regarding the  statement that, “No party , including ours, is mistake free; 
we make  mistakes and we make them in the present as well as the past. 
Politics is  complex and fluid, and mistakes in theory, assessments and 
practices are  inevitable” it would be nice if the party of the first country of  
socialism was afforded that same luxury!  What gives us the right to judge  
Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union in the great patriotic war? What  right 
do we have to distance ourselves from him? None. What was achieved  until 
1953, the year of Stalin's death could never be achieved by the  CPUSA. 
Never!  The USSR saved  the world from fascism and fought a war on two fronts. To 
distance  ourselves from Stalin is anti-communism at its worst. This is not 
worthy  of our party. Let us reunite ourselves with the legitimate 
communist and  workers parties of the world. It is ours to win in the 21st  century.

Time to Change the Line

Reblogged from Espresso Stalinist: http://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/cpusa-job-interview/

To: Fellow CPUSA members
From: Transit Club, New York City
Subject: Time to Change the Line
Date: April 12, 2012

Below are some facts for Party members to ponder before again accepting the false and harmful “unity against the ultra right” line stubbornly promoted by our top CPUSA leaders.

Our Party’s line, to be stressed at the April 21-23 national meeting in New York means, objectively, CPUSA support for corrupt, reactionary corporate Democrats in the White House, Congress, and in many state houses. Our governor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, (D-NY) is an example. He is an instrument of Wall Street power.

Anyone who thinks working for corporate Democrats is a stage on the road to socialism, which is what our Party leaders claim, should study the appalling record below.

Before anyone counters, “But the GOP is much worse!” a notion which is, at best a half truth, there is another political line open to our Party besides Lesser Evilism, the present policy.

It is this: Support progressives and independents in the two major parties and elsewhere, whenever it still makes sense, i.e., when they fight corporate power. But the CPUSA should devote its main strength to leading the union movement — all the people’s movements — toward building an independent political voice, divorced from both Democrats and Republicans.

This is our Party’s historic position. It is a longer, harder road than Lesser Evilism. With some 16 million members across the US, organized labor still represents a powerful political force that can criticize or support a US Administration, as it sees fit.

Only the CPUSA has the history and theory to lead this effort. The social reformists, the ultra left, the liberals, and the anarchists are clueless or unwilling. About three months ago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka agreed to build an independent voice for labor. He conceded that is what union members are asking for.

If the Party doesn’t act soon — if it leaves matters as they are — our Party will continue to spiral downward.

In unity,
Austin Hogan Transit Club, New York City
(Signed, unanimously)
__________________________________________
Corporate Democrats in Power: a Select List of Misdeeds

Politics
• After the 2008 elections, Democrats squandered the people’s good will and desire for change. They squandered the large Congressional majorities enjoyed in the first two years, from January 2009 through January 2011.
• After election, the Democratic White House appointed right-wing economists, advisers, Cabinet members (Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Rahm Emmanuel, and William Daley) to oversee policy. Many were the same people responsible for the deregulation that made the crash more severe. Result: The people who created the crisis were bailed out; and the working class has been forced to pay the bill;
• It refused to change direction after disastrous November 2010 elections, and the early 2010 Massachusetts Senate special election. Results of the 2010 Congressional elections showed widespread anger in the Democratic mass base at the direction of their Party;
• Massachusetts’s special Senate election to replace Ted Kennedy should have been a shoo-in. It resulted in a major Republican win, with blame placed on the woman candidate, not where it belonged: the Administration’s insistence all through 2009 on taxing union health benefits. Its betrayal was cited by union activists and others for the refusal of Massachusetts union workers to vote for or to campaign for the Democratic candidate.
• In November 2010 Republicans took over the House of Representatives and in effect the Senate. Further result: the Democratic drifted further to the right, with more appointments and policies to appease corporate America, Wall Street, and the Pentagon.

Labor & Economy
• On taxation, the Bush tax cuts for billionaires, the main cause of federal deficits, are still in place.
• In November 2010, to placate Republicans on the deficit issue, the US Administration ordered a two-year wage freeze for federal civilian workers. Many state governments followed its lead.
• The White House continued Bush policy of bailing out the banks unconditionally.
• It abandoned promises on Employee Free Choice Act, the supreme priority of organized labor and a matter of survival for private sector unions. This was the centerpiece of the argument for unions to support Democrats and bring them back into power. It was scuttled from Day 1.
• In February 2012 the president signed a bill into law that will make it more difficult for airline and other workers to join unions. The FAA Reauthorization Act contains a provision that requires a union in order to succeed in a representation election, to win not a majority of workers in a bargaining unit but a majority of all potential worker voters. Worse, in order for an election to be held, the union must submit signatures from a majority, not 35 percent as formerly.
• It offered little or no support for unionized public workers under all-out assault in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere.
• In almost four years, no significant worker safety and health regulations were promulgated.
• Its auto industry bailout approach was to slash auto workers wages in half; to force workers to pay more for a diminishing health care benefits; and in most cases to turn defined benefits pension plans into 401K plans (“defined contributions”) a boon for Wall Street investment management companies; auto industry “reorganization” amounted to forced plant shutdowns, large-scale layoffs and major union givebacks.
• On trade policy, the White House supported job-destroying free trade deals with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama, over organized labor’s strong objections.
• On Feb 22, 2012 Trumka denounced the White House “corporate tax reform” proposal. While it contained a few progressive ideas (for example, making leveraged buyouts more difficult) it failed to raise any revenue beyond what is needed to pay for business tax breaks.
• On international economic policy, through Treasury Department and the IMF (controlled by the US Treasury Department) the US Administration, in league with the German-dominated European Union and European Central Bank, has toughened austerity against debt-ridden European peripheral states such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy, hurting the working class of these lands including their Communist Parties with whom we say we are in solidarity.

Racism
• There are sins of omission and commission. The US Administration boycotted the UN’s International Conference on Racism in South Africa in 2009 and actively worked to undermine any action coming out of it.
• Domestic policies of action and inaction have dramatically increased unemployment, poverty and inequality across the board; but by far joblessness is worst in African-American working class and poor communities. Yet no special measures to address mass unemployment among Black youth, near 50 percent in big cities.
• Even before the 2008 crash, Black religious leaders were protesting on Wall Street that their congregations were special victims of predatory subprime mortgage lending, but there have been few special measures from the Administration to help them avoid foreclosure and eviction.
• Increase in federal deportation of undocumented workers, mostly Latino, above the level seen in the Bush era.
• No concerted federal drive against racial profiling of Blacks and Muslims. Local police departments are often out of control in this matter.

Foreign and Military Policy; War and War Budget
• The Administration reappointed Robert Gates, Bush’s defense secretary as its own defense secretary.
• It continues the 50-year blockade of socialist Cuba.
• It has given the green light to Israeli aggression. Indifferent to Palestinian suffering, it has no objection to Israeli bombing of Gaza and seizure and detention of humanitarian relief ships to Gaza. It has cravenly capitulated to the Israel Lobby. It renewed loan guarantees for Israel. It has failed to come down firmly against continuing Israeli settlements.
• It is threatening and encircling People’s China. It forced Australia to accept a US base on its territory at its closest point to China; it began a ten-year projected buildup of US forces in East Asia, aimed at China.
• It committed aggression against Libya and Honduras. It overthrew both legitimate governments. In the former, there was all-out US military and political support for aggression by other NATO powers. It assassinated the Libyan head of state. It gave at least tacit approval to the Honduras coup, refusing to label it as such. It has recognized the elections run by the coup government in Honduras.
• It is now working on destabilizing Syria, in preparation for “regime change.”
• It continues demonization, threats and military pressure against socialist North Korea.
• It continues the Bush-era policy aimed at internal subversion of and military pressure on Venezuela and other progressive Latin American governments. It continues Bush buildup of Fourth Fleet encircling Latin America.
• It is building AFRICOM, a network of US military bases in Africa. US Navy is increasing patrols off Somali coast.
• Like Clinton and later, Bush, this White House has refused to sign the land mine treaty
• Its “departure” from Iraq is bogus. The US will keep at least 15,000 troops and mercenaries indefinitely, not to mention a Baghdad embassy the size of a small state.
• It deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. (the “Surge”) Despite latest atrocities (premeditated mass murder of children, Koran-burnings, desecration of the dead) US still committed to full-scale war in Afghanistan.
• It uses drones in Pakistan. Now such drones are allowed, with the agreement of Congress, to be used within the U.S.
• It talks the talk about a “nuclear-free world,” as did Ronald Reagan. On the other hand, after intensifying economic warfare against Iran, it is joining Israel in threatening Iran with bombing, for non-existent nuclear weapons program. It carries out unofficial, un-declared wars by means of Special Forces in Iran border areas.
• It appointed Bill Clinton to be UN Special Representative to Haiti. As president, Clinton consistently undermined Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the most progressive elected Haitian leader in modern times.
• It wages a “secret” border war, as well as a drone war in Pakistan and Yemen. It expanded CIA and US Special Forces interventions in both countries.
• It gave military support to Saudis to crush opposition in Bahrain, the seat of the main US naval base in Persian Gulf.
• It introduced the largest military budget in history, nearly $700 billion.

Civil Liberties; Constitutional Rights; Repression

• A provision of Defense Reauthorization Act, recently signed by the President allows any US president to assassinate a US citizen suspected of terrorism anywhere in the world, without due process of law.
• The Administration expanded extrajudicial killings and assassinations by drones and US Special Forces
• Supported impunity for Bush era war criminals and torturers; refused to release Bush-era military prison and torture photos; refused to release Bush era documents on torture, mistreatment of prisoners and other illegal acts
• Despite campaign promises and a signed Executive Order, White House has not shut down Guantanamo
• Continuing the build up of Baghram air base in Afghanistan as a second Guantanamo. Civil liberties groups, US and international, believe “extraordinary rendition” is going on there, despite Administration denials.
• Seeking to extend the Patriot Act with all its repressive sections.
• Dismantled the Occupy encampments in big cities, in cooperation with mayors, most of them Democrats, with tactics suggested and coordinated by Homeland Security Department

Environment
• In 2009 the international “global warming” conference at Copenhagen, supposed to reverse Bush’s reactionary stance at Kyoto, was a fiasco. It merely cemented the Bush direction on global warming and, in some ways, made it worse. White House actively worked to undermine any effective outcome from the UN Climate Change Summit.
• Pushing thoroughly ineffective climate change legislation, which will be a bonanza to Wall St.
• White House has failed to stop mountain-top removal coal mining
• OSHA regulations and EPA regulations have been stripped of original meaning; and no new regulations of any note have been adopted;

Social Safety Net
• Handpicked the Bowles-Simpson Commission whose report, accepting Wall St. assumptions, favored cuts in social safety net, shrinkage of social insurance systems and expansion of private insurance systems to give bigger role to Wall Street.
• In accordance with Bowles-Simpson recommendations, White House promised to cut Medicare and Social Security in the 2011 “debate” on debt ceiling.
• White House ordered all federal agencies to undertake a study and make recommendations for ways to cut spending.

Health Care Policy
• Accommodated corporate insistence that single-payer and any other progressive proposals be rejected. Corrupt US Senators (e.g., Max Baucus, D-MT) ensured such proposals were “off the table.”
• The resulting Administration “reform” (ACA) entrenches private insurance carriers and Big Pharma – which together are the main cause of the health care cost crisis – in the system. ACA makes future real reform a heavier lift.
• After promises that, in national health care reform law (ACA), no one would lose what they have, in secret meetings with health industry lobbyists, White House agreed to tax the health benefits of union workers which would a) force employers to ante up 40% more in payment for existing benefits; or b) force workers to accept 40% less in benefits, or c) force workers to pay the 40% out of their pockets. After promises in campaign speeches that “single payer” would get a fair hearing, but, in office, tossed out single payer approach as not being insurance-carrier friendly and therefore not realistic. ACA forces uninsured to buy their insurance from state-based, for-profit insurance carriers, with benefits to patients still being highly questionable in terms of their breadth and depth.
• White House sold a national health reform as universal; when in fact, it is not universal and it is a major bailout in the form of a guaranteed permanent market) of already giant health insurance carriers.

Women’s Equality
• It has repeatedly caved in to the right on women’s equality

Education
• Education Secretary Arnie Duncan is the main proponent of charter schools, as well as more standardized testing and “merit pay” for teachers. He is promoting the privatization and corporatization of public schools and profit-making schools. It threatens states with reduced federal support unless they privatize more public schools.
• It is threatening higher education in the USA, as in 2012 State of the Union Address, with reduced federal support unless states reduce spending on higher education; thus, objectively threatening the wages and benefits of faculty.
• It has furthered the attack on public school teachers by continuing to agree with the right wing ideologues that the problem in the schools is bad teachers. There is little or no White House or US Senate effort to stop demonization of teachers.
Regulation
• Administration’s mortgage rescue plan only helps banks and real estate industry, despite campaign promises.
• Despite campaign promises, it gave industry lobbyists positions in governments. The private heath insurers essentially wrote the health care “reform” law. Another example, White House appointed Cass Sunstein, a self -described “libertarian paternalist,” to oversee regulatory policy.

Pre Convention 2010: "Our struggles and arguments are defined by the interests of the working class, not the practical victories of the Democratic Party."

 Reposted from:http://cpusa.org/convention-discussion-summary-of-pre-convention-discussion/

This is part of the pre-convention documents circulated in 2010. One is forced to wonder, given the breakneck speed the Webb faction has been pushing the CPUSA down the path of revisionism, whether they even bothered reading this excellent document. [-Koba, Ed.]

The Central Indiana Club sees the decline in our local manufacturing sector and recognizes that the CPUSA needs more emphasis on service industry organizing for the many reasons listed below. The local service sector is essentially the only employment option for young people coming out of Indianapolis Public Schools, if they're even able to get a job. With education under attack for the purpose of creating a cheap labor source for the service sector, it is essential that this sector of labor receive the same attention that industrial unionization has in the past. Furthermore, this sector of the workforce is comprised of the most vulnerable members of the working class, especially those who are undocumented workers. The service sector is also where young workers are and the CPUSA and YCL can play an integral part in bringing the Communist Plus to their organizing efforts.

The Central Indiana Club sees the priorities of the CPUSA as encumbered by the focus on electoral struggle which seems to trump the focus on working class issues and movements. Our Club is concerned about where working class priorities come into conflict with a Democratic Party agenda and the stifling of any criticism or critique of the Obama administration by CPUSA leadership. Our club supports President Obama and worked alongside with the campaign; however, Obama's agenda is not always the same as the dire needs of working people. Electoral struggle is not to be ignored, but it must not come at the expense of genuine working class struggles.

The Central Indiana Club recognizes the need for more ideological discipline for the CPUSA. This is due to a disturbing trend where the capitalist class is not seen as the enemy of working class interests. The significant shift in the party line where "the notion of only the capitalist class on the one side and the working class on the other...isn't Marxist" is profoundly disturbing and contradicts the very existence of our Party. The capitalist class is indeed on the opposite side and works tirelessly at intimidating workers, such as threatening picketing workers outside the Whirlpool plant in Evansville where hundreds lost their jobs, or the outright killing of union organizers in the nation of Colombia.

In Indiana, workers have been under extreme attack by the Daniels administration since he took office on January 10, 2005. It began with Daniels canceling collective bargaining contracts with public employees. The attack got worse when Governor Daniels and the director of the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), Mr. Mitch Roob, attempted to privatize FSSA. In the meantime, while Governor Daniels and Mitch Roob worked their butts off to limit access to public assistance, Governor Daniels and the Republican-controlled state senate privatized the toll roads and looked the other way while industry closed down steel mills and automotive plants. The once booming manufacturing towns of Elkhart and Anderson are wastelands--visual proof of the class war waged on workers in places like this throughout the nation. During the past five years, Indiana has led the nation in the percentage of industrial jobs lost. The governor has created the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) which has single-handedly given substantial property tax abatements to lure corporations into the state and create jobs. The result of the IEDC's efforts have been more burdens on the working class homeowners to make up the losses in property taxes and no new jobs! In Tipton County, a massive factory is empty and padlocked despite the IEDC's claims of 1400 new jobs. Getrag Transmission Manufacturing declared bankruptcy before it could hire a single Hoosier to assemble dual clutch transmissions but still got the property tax abatement.

Enter the mayor of Indianapolis, a Republican, who campaigned on property tax reform in 2007. Mayor Ballard and those who elected him have further worked to cap property taxes. The Mayor, in effect, cut the funding to public schools and is attempting to sell off the water utility without any safety or financial guarantees. Their plan is simple, bankrupt the government (i.e., the people) and privatize everything thereby transferring public assets into private hands. The maniacal genius of this capitalist octopus knows no limits and can achieve so many victories with this plan. Not only do the public schools get underfunded, the children, primarily Latino and African-American, receive little to no education, thereby creating a never-ending source of cheap labor. The graduation rate for students in Indianapolis Public Schools was around 68% in 2008, the second lowest in the nation behind Detroit.

Indianapolis is the host of the Super Bowl in 2012. This city is also a major convention destination for various organizations and entities. Hotel construction is booming and with the addition of Lucas Oil Stadium, the time is ripe for organizing. As of this point in time, there are no organized hotels in Indianapolis, but UNITE is working to change that. Indianapolis Jobs with Justice and our club have been engaged in struggle alongside the hotel workers and janitors. The goal of that struggle is to ensure that all the new service industry jobs created in the midst of this economic crisis are union jobs. Indianapolis library workers and school bus drivers were successful in their efforts and this has set an example that service sector employees and public workers can be represented by a union in Indianapolis.

This governor's administration is very dangerous to workers' interests, especially African-Americans, Latino immigrants, women, and young workers, those sections of the working class that are most vulnerable. The governor and his attorney general, Mr. Greg Zoeller, are, as this is being written, mounting a legal challenge to the health care bill that just passed congress. During every legislative session there are right-to-work initiatives introduced. There is no end to the Capitalist efforts to destroy working people in every way imaginable.

The people in Anderson and Elkhart voted for Obama because of the hope he represented and the need for universal health care, a living wage, jobs and an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those people are still waiting on those promises to be fulfilled, and the CPUSA needs to fight for those demands, not just those that are "winnable" in the short term because, as Communists, our Party rejects the limits of bourgeois democracy and advances the struggle beyond the confines of Capitalist political boundaries. Our Party's, and Communist Parties' struggles around the globe, are actually defined by the level of working class unity, organization, and class consciousness, as well as material conditions. Communists utilize our organizing efforts as well as Marxist/Leninist theory to illuminate today's struggles and guide our work. Our struggles and arguments are defined by the interests of the working class, not the practical victories of the Democratic Party.

The Central Indiana Club submits this document as part of the pre-convention discussion and looks forward to being a part of the debate to shape our party and our future.

The road to socialism can’t be ridden on the wrong horse.

From CPUSA New Hampshire's Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/notes/cpusa-new-hampshire/the-road-to-socialism-cant-be-ridden-on-the-wrong-horse/501714323190647

“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. 

Here we are in the midst of another national election cycle. Here we are once again jostling for place and relevancy among the various single issue campaigns and fringe groups, trying to get our voice heard in the chaos and doing what we can to make money and members aka: surviving. And here we are, pushing the same failed position of the “united front” against the fringe right, and oddly enough supporting a party and candidate which, by any standard, qualifies as “ultra right” in and of itself.

 Make no mistake, despite wishful thinking to the contrary in America we basically have a one party system- the capitalist party- having two wings. The liberal wing is called the Democratic Party and the conservative wing is called the Republican Party. Neither party is capable of change on a systematic level but only of granting miniscule, expedient, and convenient concessions easily taken back once no longer convenient. It’s not a recent development, the American political system was designed to be largely reactionary and ineffective, passing the least amount of concessions it can bear and only at the behest of their capitalist masters like good little puppets. But what can giveth can be taketh away just as easily.  This is why discussing the elimination of social security is on the table these days, because Wall Street needs new blood and they sense a tasty new morsel with all that potential investment money to squander and profit from. It’s why they’ve even been discussing the elimination of Medicare and Medicaid. It’s why they’ve already eliminated so many social programs.  It’s because they are only supported when convenient. They never would have dared to consider these extreme ideas in the past, but things have escalated due to the loss of two factors, the conditions which led to their creations.

 These programs were created and supported on two conditions- our competition with a functioning socialist alternative and massive grassroots support for their creation and continuation.  Neither of these exists anymore, and in the case of grassroots support it is unlikely it would even affect the election of either party without an electoral alternative to threaten them with, and when they both agree on something we are stuck with it. They have the chance to eliminate the programs and we have no way to stop them. We have a government that can now act with complete impunity. But how did it get this way?

 Over the last 30 years the entire political compass has shifted, and the Democrats are headed on one direction, my friends, and it isn’t leftward. Starting in the mid 70’s the Democrats have been moving rightward, being pulled in that direction by fanatics on the right who kept trying to move the entire map right-ward, which is why the political “center” is still objectively right-wing. The move to the right in the national sphere started with Clinton, who would have been considered a Republican 30 years prior, and that it is both an accident of history, and a booming economy that helps people forget that Clinton presided over the wholesale destruction of nearly the entire social welfare system in America. He’s also responsible for the massive deregulation of the banking system that has brought us the last two recessions and which, in time, may signal the beginning of the end of Democracy here in America. Clinton not only deregulated like a champ, but there was also his little adventure in Bosnia, where we intervened in a religious war between Muslims and Catholics that was killing people on both sides. Not something leftist would do. And let’s not forget the literally millions of Iraqi children whose blood are staining his hands.

 But that was almost 20 years ago, so where does the present Democratic Party stand now? They’ve illegally assassinated American citizens; they’re contributed to massive military adventures and humanitarian crisis illegally and unconstitutionally. They’ve invaded sovereign countries illegally. How does that make them any different than the Republicans? We’re also still fighting two wars that are still technically illegal by the constitution, still torturing people, Gitmo is still open, and whistleblowers are being prosecuted at a record pace. And what about ACTA, a secret treaty that the Obama administration refuses to divulge any parts of, illegally, despite multiple FOIA requests they refuse to tell us about it. And this is Obama, folks, not the republican boogeyman we had 10 years ago.

The fact of the matter is, things are worse now than under either Bush or Clinton. We’ve got massive political suppression of votes with voter ID and with the Department of Homeland Security orchestrating the local police responses to the occupy movement. We’ve got massive invasion of privacy issues, we’ve got illegal secret treaties that will destroy the internet as we know it. We’ve got massive unemployment and their only idea is to make construction jobs or give money to banks. We’ve got record deficits caused largely by Bush era tax cuts that the democrats can’t even summon the courage to fight with any energy. We’ve got the largest instance of political graft ever with the Affordable Healthcare act, in which the government will now force every American to buy private, for profit healthcare or be taxed.

Despite these facts, there are still some who argue that the Democrats pose an alternative, that they are capable of real progression, that their revolution by baby steps can eventually (in a couple of lifetimes of wishful thinking I suppose), take us to the end goal of socialism in America; and that the Democrats are somehow not to be included in the ranks of the “ultra right”.

Here’s a brief glimpse into some of their so-called accomplishments according to the CPUSA so-called “Political Action Commission”:

• Affordable Health Care Act extends coverage to 35 million uninsured people, outlaws denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and extends until age 26 the coverage of children under their parents’ plans.

Better to be called “Insurance company subsidy/  life support bill”,  mandates that everybody help keep our broken, for-profit system going by making sure we all stay enslaved to it for life, and punishes us for not having insurance by raising our taxes. The problem isn’t that we don’t have insurance, insurance agents don’t give our one pill. The problem is access to healthcare, and the only acceptable response by the party should be an unequivocal and resolute demand for single payer. It is an utter disgrace that the party continues to support the bill, even upon the flimsiest of arguments. Golden chains are still chains, and for-profit corporations are still the enemy, or are we no longer communists?  

• Stabilized the economy with $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that saved or created 3 million jobs. Invested billions in clean energy jobs, saved the auto industry.

Stabilized? Hardly. We’re still in the hole, unemployment is still over 10%, we’re still bleeding jobs, and zero necessary banking regulations are in place for when the next inevitable and identical crash. Keynesian solutions to market problems need to be done with cash on hand, not debt. What will happen is that our national debt will become larger than our budget, and we’ll eventually have to either raise taxes (impossible these days) or start cutting vital services. This bill is likely going to be the death knell to all the Great Society programs, and possibly even the New Deal ones. 

• Appointed two women to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the first Latina woman, who supports the rights of working people.

Race has nothing to do with political allegiance. What he did is appoint another ant-abortion catholic who has a history of ruling against a woman’s right to choose, and an inexperienced law professor who opposes same sex marriage. They seem pretty status quo to me.

• Ended the war in Iraq and moved toward ending the war in Afghanistan.

Really? When did that happen? Quick, somebody tell the tens of thousands of contractors and private security operatives that still operate in Iraq fighting now in proxy and without the constraints of international law.  Also, hate to break it to you, but to-date the war in Afghanistan is still booming, with over 80,000 troops still operating in country. Obama only removed a token number of troops to make some of his democratic supporters, who obviously don’t pay attention, happy. 

 Perpetual war? Illegal invasions? Invasions of privacy? Secret treaties? Funneling taxpayer money away from social programs to fund tax breaks to billionaires and bail out obsolete companies? Corruption, inefficiency, theft, murder, torture, kidnapping, oppression, and brutality- and all under the leadership of the promised candidate promising hope, transparency, and a new beginning- is this what we want more of?

My friends this isn’t the road to socialism, it’s the road to fascism, and the democrats are pushing the horses faster than the republicans ever were.

Here’s my solution.

We need to break the two-party monopoly. However, in many states it’s easier to just run as an independent than as a declared third party. So run as a socialist independent.  Do whatever it takes. We need to get people used to real socialists in local elections, and running the governments competently and effectively. Make the issue about the economy and be reasonable. Sound like a moderate (because even a center left is closer to the middle than a far right). In debates be the adult in the room. Once socialists are in office they can run for re-election under a declared socialist party of some type. This will put us on the map.

In other states we may need to challenge laws that keep third parties off the ballots. An alliance with other third parties can help us do this; make it about breaking the hegemony and expanding democracy. Organize third party debates. Don’t run from the tea party, they’re in the same boat with the Republicans as you are with the Democrats- sick of being used for votes and then ignored once elected.

Remember in 1968, when the people wanted to end the Vietnam War? The argument was whether a democrat, being more or less liberal, would end the war. In the end it was a Republican, Nixon, who finally ended it. And it wasn’t the ballot box that persuaded him to do so- it was the people on the streets. And they weren’t getting permits to march or put up with police oppression back then like we do now.

The point is to get to socialism- that is our end goal. This will never happen utilizing the slavish strategy whereby we beg for concessions bit by bit, and hope our overlords are in a giving mood. It will only ever be accomplished if we stand up on our two feet, and we lead by example. We must be the change we want to see.

 Socialism will never arrive via the Democratic Party, and it is foolish to try. We tried to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by voting, and that didn’t even work. The DNC money poured into anti-war organizations between 2003 and 2008 and our ranks were swelled and our coffers were full. As a result the leadership of these organizations was filled with people who bought the idea that, if only we had the right party in charge the wars could be over and everything would be ok. So what happened? Obama won in 2008, the money dried up, and we’re still at war. Nothing has changed for the better, and in some ways its gotten much worse.

 Their dirty little secret is this: they need our votes to validate themselves, but your vote does not obligate them to actually do what you voted them to do. And once you do what they need you for, they drop you. Which is why we are not only ignored now, but the leadership of these organizations are still very weary to retain people critical of the Democrats. Their job isn’t to lead these organizations, it’s to keep them in line with mainstream politics, and to keep people who may be interested in an alternative out of mainstream politics, or too frustrated to stay in activism. Their job is to prevent change, not create it.  Every time the leadership of an organization puts party before principle the whole organization suffers.

On a personal note, it didn’t occur to me how bad the problem was until 2007.  I gave an anti-war speech in NH, and the video ended up on YouTube. What I discovered, however, was that the main punch of my speech was removed. My final statement was that if the democrats won’t end the war, we’d find a party that did. Removed from my speech, it sounds like I was supporting the election of a democrat out of principle, or that I was anti-war because I was a democrat. Later, I discovered that following Obama’s election the organization I belonged to saw their national budget shrink to almost nothing.

  It’s the little things that does much to discredit an organization to its membership and makes it a slave to electoral politics rather than principal. And a party that doesn’t stand for anything really isn’t a party anymore.