Where to Begin? The Communist Party USA and The Present Crisis

Originally posted at: http://toilerstruggle.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/where-to-begin-the-communist-party-usa-and-the-present-crisis/

At the present moment, the revolutionary movement of the proletariat is confronted with historic challenges and obstacles which boldly stand in the way of the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large in the interests of working and oppressed people.  The reality at hand is the ongoing onslaught that the capitalists are forcing down the throats of working people by means of their ruthless austerity regimes and imperialist plunders.  By now, no one can hide the fact that even those in the imperialist First World are suffering from the current crisis of capitalism.  While the ruling classes of the West are crucifying Libyans in the name of freedom and democracy, and while the Syrian people, bloodied and exhausted, are struggling to resist imperialist invasion and a brutal civil war engineered and perpetuated by the West, working people of America are being stimulated, and beginning to wake up to the sights around them and realize the gravity of the situation.  Witnessing the fury of cuts, austerity, and encroachments on democratic rights at home, and at the same time looking on at the terroristic wars being waged by their government throughout the world, American working people are showing signs of an increasingly awakened class consciousness in response to the crisis of the global capitalist-imperialist system.  The achievement of a socialist consciousness, however, is still a complex and dynamic work in progress, and a protracted one at that.

As has been admitted, considerable challenges and obstacles litter the road to such a culmination.  A capitalist crisis brings not only a responsive class consciousness or political resurgence of proletarian revolution, but also heightened offensives launched with the aim of sustaining the capitalist system regardless of the suffering by the masses of people entailed.  The ruling class, split or divided, is fundamentally united by its “better dead than red” mentality, and, driven by this, is determined to fight to the death before surrendering state power to any revolutionary forces.

At such a time, and considering such realities, the fundamental question of the revolutionary Marxist agenda is the means by which the American proletariat can be organized, educated, and agitated to the point of realizing and being capable of successfully enacting the necessity of overthrowing capitalism.  This is not only a question of strategy and means that has been discussed many a time around the tables of communists or in the essays and articles of radicals, but also a crucial problem concerning the very livelihood of the revolutionary movement and those involved.  It must be borne in mind that, regardless of what phrasemongering may be uttered by various comrades here and there, we are living in a time of definite systemic crisis and radical rupture of capitalism, and our actions and orientation must be suited accordingly to this state of conditions.  It is simply unpardonable to ignore or be “innocent” of seeing the conditions that we are facing, the statistics and facts of which can be found presented anywhere, even in the pages of the bourgeois press.

Unfortunately, however, there are comrades who, although they may recognize the realities of capitalism at hand, shut their eyes to the realities of socialism and revolution which are inseparable from the problems of capitalism and their solution. This tendency is distinguished by its proposal of petty reformist and revisionist distortions in place of genuinely radical theory and practice, and one of the gravest aspects of this tendency is its very position within the working class movement.

There is no use in hiding the fact that the greatest representatives of the reformist and revisionist tendency within the ranks of the proletarian movement are those who constitute the present leadership of the Communist Party USA, i.e., Sam Webb and co.  This group, this organized tendency, is responsible for proudly and unabashedly asserting and suggesting numerous theses concerning the path and means by which to deal with the current situation of capitalism which are entirely irreconcilable with Marxism, proletarian revolution, and even the realities of capitalism.  As Comrade Mark Anderson has pointed out in his article The Old Bug of Right Opportunism Returns, these include, but are not limited to the following:

1. “The capitalist system is not moribund, as Lenin said, but is relatively strong. It is not in general crisis. Therefore, the U.S. party’s strategy should be solely to win attainable reforms within the system rather than advocate capitalism’s revolutionary replacement with socialism.”
2. “Anti-monopoly strategy, let alone anti-capitalist propaganda, is too advanced for this stage of struggle, and the main focus should instead be on rebuffing the most extreme right and the Republican Party.”
3. “Historically, socialism has shown itself to be unable to solve economic and social problems. Central planning is a failure; a market-oriented economy is the way to go. It’s not even clear anymore what socialism is.”
4. “The class struggle has ceased to be the central pivot around which all questions revolve.”
5. “Racism and national oppression are gradually receding. It is no longer necessary to aggressively push for affirmative action.”
6. “Issues of discrimination, anti-Semitism, and the struggle for the full equality of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Asian-Pacific and Arab Americans, LGBT, women, and youth no longer requires special attention. Party Commissions and special demands on these questions are unnecessary.”
7. “The term “U.S. imperialism” is too simplistic. The U.S. government, especially under President Obama, can play a positive and humanitarian role in world politics. For this reason it is permissible for the U.S. military and NATO forces to occupy other nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, impose “democratic” reforms, and secure neoliberal economic advantages. Peace and solidarity work is therefore not as important as it once was.”
8. “Electoral politics should be limited to work within the Democratic Party. Any attempt to go outside the two-party system is sectarian and futile. Running candidates on the Communist Party ticket is especially narrow and self-defeating.”
9. “The CPUSA is bogged down by dogmatism, sectarianism and rigidity. Many of the stock slanders of the Party are indeed justified. It may not survive unless it abandons its outdated dogmas, including the dogma that it should play a leading, vanguard role.”
10. “The Party should emulate social democracy and seek to merge with the broad left. The “Communist plus” should be given a quiet burial, and Marxist-Leninist education and literature (including a printed news paper) are relatively unimportant. Strong party organization is no longer necessary.”

These notions, although perpetrated and implied in nearly every article or speech that the leadership puts forward, have yet to be presented in more of a concentrated and straightforward expression than in Sam Webb’s A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century:  What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.  An unabashed rejection and condemnation of Marxism-Leninism, a manifesto for reformism and wholesale revisionism, and, above all, the guiding orientation of the Communist Party USA’s present leadership and thus Party policy, Webb’s essay is an unavoidable and undeniably significant document.  The document is even further significant upon realizing its context in present conditions.

At such a time of glaringly evident and deep crisis of the global capitalist system, in the face of the looming environmental disaster facing humanity, and in view of US imperialism’s continued, vicious and violent onslaught against the peoples of the global south – one would think that at such a time, the leadership of the Communist Party USA would shoulder its revolutionary rifle and recognize its historic mission to organize the working class for revolutionary resistance and struggle against the world capitalist-imperialist offensive.  Sam Webb, however, has proven that a very different view is at large within the Party’s ranks, and, most unfortunately, among its leading figures.  Indeed, few pronouncements have so shocked the American Left as has Sam Webb’s A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century:  What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.

In antagonism to Webb’s theses and proposed orientation, however, there exists a revolutionary alternative which, rather than striving to cope with, accomodate, and appease the more “progressive” spectrums of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class, believes in the pivotal conclusions reached by Marx and Lenin that have made Marxism-Leninism the scientifically deduced theory and practice of the emancipation of the world’s exploited and oppressed people that has accumulated the blood, sweat, tears, triumphs and tribulations, and successes and failures of more than a hundred years of struggle.

This tendency, which very much may be the Bolshevik tendency of today (as opposed to the Menshevik tendency of Webb and co.), resolves that, in view of the existing conditions, we must not abandon but instead hold high the banner of Marxism-Leninism, and, rather than ditch truly revolutionary politics, embrace them.  The historic dilemma facing communists at the present juncture of history is one of either letting American capitalism continue its history, or, alternatively, beginning the history of American socialism. As has been said, the fundamental question of the revolutionary Marxist agenda is the means by which the American proletariat can be organized, educated, and agitated to the point of realizing and being capable of successfully enacting the necessity of transforming bourgeois society and thus opening the road for such a socialist America.  The way forward is clear: we communists must organize ourselves as the vanguard of working people and the revolution, we must develop a Party capable of educating, organizing, agitating, and leading working people and their allies in the collective struggle for socialism.

Presently, we are playing two ends against a middle in that we, in line with Party policy, are responsible for developing and maintaining a mass base of support by being activists in the struggle against the problems of capitalism, but at the same time we are allying with a “section” of the capitalists in power, the “progressive” Democrats, because they supposedly constitute a buffer against the forces of ultra-reaction, i.e., the far Right, and serve as a popular force in the interests of the “people” and “inclusive democracy”, as Sam Webb would put it.  By perpetrating such a policy, however, communists the country over are fulfilling a self-destructive prophecy of dooming the proletarian movement under the guise of “reinvigorating” or “broadening” it.  Under the present line, we are responsible for rallying the masses of people around the struggle against capitalism by means of joining and tail-ending forces which objectively bolster and support the capitalist system.  The incongruity is glaringly evident.  The lack of materialist class analysis is inexcusable.

Rather than miseducating and misleading people in struggle in this manner, however, the Communist Party USA must be tasked with handling its historic mission of organizing the forces of revolution against those of reaction, with shouldering its task of educating, agitating, organizing, and leading working people against the reactionary forces of capitalism, whether or not they label themselves Democrat, or Republican, or Libertarian, etc.

A revolution is on the agenda when people can no longer go on living in the old way.  Such a horizon is extremely close in view.  We cannot pretend to know what exact day the people will be compelled to take to the streets and overthrow the current order, nor can we pretend to know the exact day on which the integuments of capitalism will burst asunder and revolution will be the only open door for humanity.  What communists, what the Communist Party USA, should do, can do, and must do, however, is prepare cadres, educate, organize, and agitate working people, and orient its work towards facing its historic mission of leading the American people in casting capitalism to the dustbin of history, and opening up, on the basis of socialism, prospects for humanity’s sustainable and just development.

What is to be done? Where to begin?

The Communist Party USA, as our Party of working and oppressed people, must be first and foremost revolutionized in its theory and practice.

As Lenin so presciently pointed out:  “In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organization.  Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labor for capital, constantly thrust back to the “lower depths” of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organization, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.” Neither the senile rule of the American imperialists nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army.  The Communist Party USA must render itself such an organization which has the theoretical foresight, fighting capacity, and determination by which to wield millions of American workers into an army committed to overthrowing capitalism and bringing fruition to the adage that has been inscribed on the Party’s banners for decades: “Peace, democracy, equality, socialism!” To this end, establishing the very organizational and ideological integrity which the Party currently lacks is an imperative matter.

Such is the guiding principle by which to begin to orient the struggle against the retrograde trends in the Party and begin to push forward the struggle for the emancipation of working and oppressed people in the United States of America.  It us up to communists around the country to realize these crucial realities of theory and practice, and contribute their lot to working out concrete methods and means of building a Communist Party which is not just interested in interpreting the world, but effectively changing it.  Limiting ourselves as we currently are to tail-ending the Democratic Party, the trade unions, “progressive” politics, and so on is systematically sabotaging and impeding the development of what has rang essential since the days of the Communist Manifesto: “They [communists] openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”  Working and oppressed people of all countries, unite!

Signed: Comrades J. Arnoldski, John Mackoviak, Analise Spencer, Jim Byrne, and E.C. Tolentino of the Tucson Club of the CPUSA

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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.

Communists and the so called “Socialism of the 21st century”

Reposted from the International Communist Review:  http://www.iccr.gr/site/en/issue2/communist-and-the-so-called-socialism-of-the-21st-century.html

Pável Blanco Cabrera

Member of the central committee of the Communist Party of México

In memory of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, on the occassion of the 140^th anniversary of his birth.

The world counterrevolution of the end of the 20th century gave impulse on the ideological field to the thesis of the end of the history, a campaign directed to affirm capitalism for all eternity, centered on questioning the validity of Marxism-Leninism and to disarm to the working class and the opressed people in their struggle for emancipation. Also known as deideologization this pretension designed by thinkers in service to imperialism had as premise to discredit the theory of communism and the praxis of socialist construction using the effect of the crisis that carried to the temporary retrogression of the working class in the USSR and other countries of the socialist field in Europe, Asia and Africa.  At the same time, taking advantage of the confusion of the momment in the workers' movement and in the communist parties – several of which renounced to their identity and objectives in order to transform themselves into socialdemocrat parties-, it cultivated the surge of new forms of dominant ideology, such as postmodernism and other variants to influence not only in universities and centers of formation, culture and art, but to permeate unions, popular movements and organizations, left political forces, progressive intellectuals and also to impact negatively in communist and workers parties.

The general objective of imperialist strategy was not achieved, since reality cannot be holded to a straight jacket, and class struggle did not stop for a single second, regardless of the fact that counterrevolution, triumphant at that moment, presented with propaganda historical events distorted to its favor. Today –two decades after the Berlin Wall and all that volley of irrationality- capitalism at crisis has the working class and the communist and anti-imperialist movements confronting it in all continents.  Nevertheless in a secondary way this served as breedign ground for a series of approaches that today can become constraints to carrying the struggle to new favorable levels for the international working class and the peoples of the world.  Various of these approaches converge in the so called "Socialism of the 21st century".

The so called "Socialism of the 21st century" cannot be identified with the theoretical elaboration of a single political and ideological current, since its the confluence of diverse currents identified by their hostility to Marxism-Leninism and to the international communist movement: for example various trotskyist groups; heirs of the new left; latinoamericanist marxists; supporters of movementism and neo anarquist; intellectuals that consider their contribution produced in the frameworks of the academy as indispensable and essential for social processes.  The paternity of such concept can not be attributed to a single current, to a single author, although they all have sought as platform the actual processes in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, but without renouncing to be considered as universal and disqualifying like unfeasible all that can not be grouped under its approaches.  Another element of their positioning is that they insist on the "new", “innovative”, "novel" character of their proposal in front of which they consider the workers' movement of the 20th century and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism as old and out dated.

In class struggle, since the conditions of social development made possible the creation of the materialistic conception of history, its not the first time that communists confront themselves with currents that in the name of socialism present the positions of the petite bourgeoisie, its not the first time that reform or revolution are placed face to face.

In The German ideology and in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, just fot citing two works of Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, adjustments are done with "true socialism", "reactionary socialism" ("feudal", "petite bourgeois"), with "reactionary or bourgeois socialism" and with  "critic-utopian communism and socialism".  In another work, result of the polemic of Marx and Engels with Düring (although the work as was custom in the division of tasks of the teachers of the proletariat carried only the sign of one of them) the following is affirmed:  "Since the capitalist mode of production has appeared in the arena of history there has been individuals and entire sects who projected more or less vaguely, as a future ideal, the appropriation of all means of production by society.  However, so that this was practical, so that it became a historical necessity, the objective conditions for its execution were needed to be given first.[1]”

A synthesis of the criticisms of Marx and Engels shows us that not everything that is presented in the name of socialism has to do with the historical role of the proletariat and of the communists:

The negation of socialism built in the 20th century.

Among the promoters of the so called "Socialism of the 21st century" there is a fundamental coincidence: the demarcation and rejection to the socialist construction experience in the USSR and in other countries of Europe and Asia.  Some of them go further blaming the own October Revolution assuming the old ideas of Kautsky and the opportunists of the II International on the immaturity of the conditions for the conquest of political power by the working class and the impossibility of socialism because what corresponded was to develop capitalism, deriving from here the bases for the alleged separation between democracy and communism; to explain that It was all condemned beforehand to failure.  However the generality is that although they vindicate 1917 October the developers of "Socialism of the 21st century" assume the Trotskyist critics towards socialist construction and to the role of the Bolshevik Party particularly, and to Marxism-Leninism in general, in fundamental matters that we are going to examine further ahead.  In this they are can not be differentiated from for example the theses assumed by the opportunistic group of Bertinotti for the V Congress of the Refoundation Communist Party of Italy in the year 2002, that planted a "radical interruption with regard to the experience of socialism as it was carried out", something to which they also refer as to a "radical break with stalinism".

Some of those –really reactionary- ideas preached as characteristics of the so called "socialism of the 21st century", is argued, are not criticized in the name of tactics.  In order not to torpedo the process in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador that are in the center of the anti-imperialis struggle of Latin America. There are even communist parties that integrate such concept to its routine vocabulary, to propaganda and to the programmatic question.

We do not believe –upon setting our divergent and critical point of view- to lack respect for those processes, which we support, of which we are supportive.  These processes were not born with the flag of "socialism of the 21st century" and they have advanced a lot with relation to their initial programs, but is necessary to add that they are not consolidated processes and that the ideological confusion that is promoted with the "socialism of the 21st century" can carry them to defeat.  With Marx we say that a step of the real movement is worth more than a thousand programs, adding that an erroneous program as north of the movement can conduct it off the cliff.  It is a duty of the communists to place scientific socialism as the road of the working class and of all the peoples, defending Marxist-Leninist theory and the praxis of socialist construction in the USSR and in other socialist countries.

Before proceeding to a serious, scientific study of the experience to extract the necessary lessons for overthrowing capitalism the historical experience of the working class is condemned based on premises elaborated by reaction or by opportunism, reformism and revisionism.  Communists reaffirm that in the same way in which the little more than 70 days of the Comune of Paris provided extraordinary teachings that enriched the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, the experience of socialist construction that started with the Great Socialist Revolution of October constitutes a valuable patrimony for the heritage of the proletariat in its fight for socialism and communism and that it constitutes a serious error to reject or avoid it.  We coincide with what is expressed in the document of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece On the 90^th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October "One of the main tasks of communist ideological front is to restore to the eyes of the working class the truth about socialism in the 20th century, without idealizations, objectively, free of petite bourgeois slanders.  The defense of the laws of development of socialism and, at the same time, the defense of the contribution of socialism in the 20th century suppose an answer to the opportunistic theories that speak of "models" of socialism adapted to "national" pecularities, they also respond to the defeatist discussion about errors.[2]”

Emerging subjects versus working class

The developers of "Socialism of the 21st century" coincide all in that the revolutionary role of the working class today is occupied by other "subjects", calling inclusive to the construction of new social agents; They resort to arguments of the new left, of marcusianism, of t 60’s and 70’s, on the gentrification of the working class, on their fragmentation, on the "end of labor".  They call to rethink the concept of "worker" and without performing that exercise they pass to claim social movements, indigenous, the "multitude" as the center of the transformation.

A very important aspect of Marxism-Leninism is the clarification of the role of the proletariat.  Lenin express it thus:  "The fundamental thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it emphasizes the historical international role of the proletariat as the builder of socialist society" and further on the same work he expresses:  "All doctrines of socialism that have not a class character and of the politics that are not of the class, showed to be a simple absurd[3]”. There have been changes that is true, but in no way they destroy the contradiction in capitalism that is the one existing between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; in no way do they destroy the fact that the proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary class to carry to the very end not only the overthrow of bourgeois order, but the emancipation of the whole human genre.  They do not take into account that their role is determined by their place in production, by their objective role in economy. The proletariat, the working class, the workers, in function of acquiring class conscience "for themselves" not only emancipate themselves, but all human kind.

Nobody will deny that in political struggle the working class needs and should forge alliances with the opressed mass of the peoples. But there exists a distance with that and the affirmations of those who search for "new social actors" assigning them a liberating role above class conflict when reality shows how passenger movements are.

Socialism without Revolution and… without party

"Socialism of the 21st century" claims that neither the conquest of power or destruction of the State is necessary, but with the conquest of government it is possible to initiate a new road. Because of it all its developers do not speak of overthrowing, of breaking, of Revolution, but jumping that vital need, they present post capitalism and they devise already programs to transit to a new society.  Because of it in the speech of this political-ideological nonsense not the most minimum strategic approach exists that conducts to the destruction of the State.  Consequently neither any worry regarding the construction of a revolutionary party of the working class exists, a party of vanguard, a communist party.  What for? if it does not claim the working class as the interested in burying the exploiters?, If Revolution is not claimed as the moment in which the working class overthrows capitalism?, If the possibility of undertaking post capitalist transformations is claimed in the framework of the old bourgeois State?

Let us take into account that besides planting that "in the Socialism of the 21st century" private and social property are able to and should coexist, inclusive the praise of a socialist market is done.

When the programmatic approaches of "Socialism of the 21st century" are observed one can not stop from noting the similarity with what was the democratic- bourgeois Revolution of 1910 in Mexico and the period of greater radical nature in the developments that happened during the government of Lazaro Cardenas in 1934-1940.  During that six-year period it was established that in schools, social organizations and in state administrations along with the national anthem, The Marsellaise and The Internationale were sung; an impressive distribution of lands was carried out, a true agrarian reform; oil up till then in the hands of the American and English monopolies was nationalized and in general a politics of nationalizations was opened that conducted to the result that in the 80’s 70% of the Mexican economy was nationalized; even a great aid to the Spanish Republic was given.  From this, under the influence exercised  by browderism illusions on the Mexican Revolution as way to socialism grew. Just like the followers of today’s "Socialism of the 21st century" then they spoke of a State placed above classes and of class struggle, as a lever for development.  For Marxists-Leninists the State is not a referee above the classes in combat, its the apparatus of domination, of repression, in the case of capitalism, of the class that has the property of the means of production and of change, the bourgeoisie.  Nationalizations are not by themselves socialists, therefore in the case of Mexico they showed to be a mechanism for centralization and concentration of capitalism.

In stead of contradiction among capital and labor: north against south, center against periphery.

Another notion sustained by "Socialism of the 21st century" notes as a fundamental problem to resolve the contradiction between the rich North and the poor South, parting from deceitful statistics and above all leaving sideways that both in the north and the south of the Planet class struggle exists; the same thing is the harmful idea of the center versus periphery that intends to ignore that we live in the monopolist phase of capitalism, the higher phase of capitalism which is imperialism and that all the countries are immersed in it, as well as with relations of interdependency.

It is not a matter of minor differences but of different roads.

There are those who sustain that in reality such proposal has come to bring up to date the debate on the alternative against capitalism today in crisis; that that is its value and relevance and that besides its a critical  focus that with a similar ideological base than ours helps to surpass the errors of socialist construction bringing fresh air.

We try to show here some questions in which the followers of "Socialism of the 21st century" converge, however it is necessary to affirm that we face a proposal that is not structured, but that results from a mixture of positions, in some cases based on aspects of marxism, of christianity, of the ideas of bolivarianism; eclecticism dominates.

They express that participatory democracy, cooperatives and self-management will come to give answer to the "authoritarianism" of the Dictatorship of the proletariat.  And in short they throw incoherent concepts with the purpose of torpedoing communist theory; but without arguments; nowadays a position, tomorrow another; full confusion as the calling to the construction of a "V International" with enemies of the workers like the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico.

Contemporary struggle requires to advance firmly grouped around the red flag of communism, for the transformation of the material conditions of life, for the abolition of bourgeois relations of production by the only possible way, the revolutionary way. Confusion helps In nothing, the maelstrom of incoherent approaches that are raised with the debated concept and that in last instance only are presented to retouch capitalism trying the unrealizable operation of "humanizing it".  For the working class, and not only in Latin America, for the class-conscious forces and revolutionary forces the duty is to fortify the communist parties that inscribe in their principles and program, in their action the historic experience of the workers of the world to overthrow capitalism and to build socialism, from the Paris Comune to the October Revolution.

It is nevertheless necessary to conclude that “Socialism of the 21^st century” is an alien position and even opposed to Marxism-Leninism and to the international communist movement in not only questions of politics but ideological matters.  It corresponds to the communist parties to raise the red flag for the development of class conscience, the organization in class of the proletariat and the assembly of exploited and opressed workers, the construction of the necessary alliances with all interested in overthrowing capitalism with an objective that since 1917 has full force and validity, Socialist Revolution. Its a task of the epoch that we live at, that of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, and there is no space left for "compromises" neither for confusion.

Bibliography

Marx, K.; Engels, F.; Collected Works in two Tomes; Progress Editorial; Moscow; 1971

Marx, K.; Engels, F.; The German ideology; Ediciones de Cultura Popular; México; 1979

Lenin, V.I.; Collected works in three tomes; Progress Editorial; Moscow; 1977.

---

[1] Engels, F.; From utopian to scientific socialism; in Collected Works by Marx & Engels in two Tomes; Tome II; Progress Editorial; Moscow; 1971; Pg. 149

[2] Communist Party of Greece; On the 90th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October; in Propuesta Comunista number 51; Ediciones del Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España; 2007; Pg. 48.

[3] Lenin, Vladimir Ilich; Historical destiny of K. Marx’s doctrine; in Marx, Engels, Marxism; Foreign Languages Editions; Moscow; 1950; Pág. 77 y 78.

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Editor's Note: Compare this then to Sam Webb's  "A Party of 21st Century Socialism: What it says and what it does"...  - Koba

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.

Zoltan Zigedy responds to Sam Webb (from 2009)

Reposted from: http://willamettereds.blogspot.com/2009/10/zoltan-zigedy-responds-to-us-and-sam.html

It’s a curious thing about revisionism: once it takes root, it continues unabated - inexorably towards further compromise and dilution - even in the face of stubborn, contrary facts. This was the case with Earl Browder who devised a new “Communist” strategy in the midst of an all-class war against fascism, a strategy that he doggedly and dogmatically clung to even when alarming signs of a new ruling class offensive were apparent to all at the end of World War II.

 Similarly, Sam Webb has dug his heels in, defending and even expanding, his class-compromising views on the path that Communists should take. Maybe its now time to anoint this path with its own name: Webbism.

 Webb sees the Obama election, as Browder saw the World War II anti-fascist alliance, as a historic marker, a qualitative turning point. “It constituted”, he maintains, “a serious setback for neoliberalism in both its conservative and liberal skin.” It did nothing of the sort.

 Webb confuses, willingly or not, a rejection of Bush’s rule on the part of the US electorate with a sea change in the dominant ideology. Given that both Parties have thoroughly absorbed the basics of neo-liberalism – free markets, the primacy of the private sector, and minimal regulation – the notion that a regime change counts as “a serious setback” for the reigning ideology is pure fantasy. Certainly Obama’s election creates more favorable conditions for waging a concerted struggle against neo-liberalism. But Webb doesn’t want to lead or even join that struggle. With nearly a decade of railing against the rule of the “ultra-right”, Webb treads water when the tide begins to turn, clinging to the leaky vessels of the Democratic Party and mainstream trade union leadership. He is content to not only defer to their course, but defend that course against any more challenging alternative.

 “The notion of the capitalist class on the one side and the working class on the other may sound ‘radical’,” he asserts, “but it is neither Marxist, nor found in life and politics.” This surprising remark stands glaringly at odds with the words of the first Marxists, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who wrote in the opening to the Communist Manifesto: “Freeman and slave, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in a constant opposition to one another… Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie possesses, however, this distinctive feature: It has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.” This is the Marxism of the Communist tradition, but not the “Marxism” of Sam Webb.

 Webb’s quotes of Lenin’s work are telling. He attempts to bolster his argument for collaborating uncritically with capitalist forces by noting that Lenin urged the exploitation of differences within the ruling class and the necessity of compromise with allies: “to refuse beforehand to maneuver, to utilize the conflict of interests (even though only temporary) among one's enemies, to refuse to temporize and compromise with possible (even though transitory, unstable, vacillating and conditional) allies - is this not ridiculous in the extreme?” It is important to distinguish between exploiting differences between enemies and compromising with allies – a distinction that Webb seems not to grasp. Monopoly capital and its henchmen are not allies, but enemies. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party (those who support single-payer, oppose the war, etc), most African-American leaders, some small business groups, etc. are potential allies, “though transitory, unstable, vacillating and conditional”.

Webb fails to reveal the target of Lenin’s polemic in this quote from “Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: it is not principled Communists who recognize “the absolute necessity of a separate, independent, strictly class party”, as Lenin wrote, but those who refuse to work in “reactionary” trade unions or participate in parliamentary activities.

Lenin closes his pamphlet with the following emphatic statement: “The immediate task that confronts the class-conscious vanguard of the international labour movement, i.e., the Communist Parties… is to lead the broad masses (now, for the most part, slumbering, apathetic, hidebound, inert and dormant) to their new position, or, rather, to be able to lead not only their own party, but also these masses in their approach, their transition to the new position.”[Lenin’s emphasis].

In the context of warning about left-wing excesses, Lenin, calculatedly and deliberately, reminds the reader of “the first historic task” of Communist Parties. Sam Webb, willfully or inadvertently, retreats from this imperative, consigning a subordinate role to the CPUSA, a role of subservience and apology for the lesser of two evils.

Zoltan Zigedy