I am a card carrying member of the Communist Party of the United States. I will always be until the party is no longer capable of holding the mantle of the Marxist-Leninist movement in the country. Do I believe that every member, especially higher leadership, are exactly what is needed right now in regards to ideological standards? No, of course not. Many of you here who are likely also party members share this stance, but understand that the existence of the organization is far more important as it relates to international cooperation and development of the worldwide movement.
I would like to interject just for a moment to say this is not a jab at any of those in minor communist parties or those even just sympathetic to the movement, rather just my own personal endorsement of the Communist Party.
I’ve spent many years studying the science of Marxism-Leninism. I do not believe to be some perfect communist or anything like that, but believe that I am capable of applying the science to my own observations of the history of our country and our world today.
In many instances of this website and previously on /r/GenZedong, and before that MoreTankieChapo, there is a prevalence of negative energy within our community. This idea culminates among the most ‘fundamental’ Marxist-Leninists that the revolution cannot come to the US… or that our populace is simply to placated to ever care. While I believe it’s understandable to come to the conclusion… I think it is fundamentally wrong. I think that it misses the forest for its trees. Look at the labor movement of our country: The ebbs and flows of the power of organized labor.
They are scared of us.
At it’s peak, it is estimated that the Black Panther Party had about 5,000 members nationally. Yet, it is considered one of the most dangerous communist organizations to have existed within our country. Their ability to recruit and bring about support with the most damaged by our society was profound. They had to be squashed. The full might of the mightiest imperialist power’s national security apparatus on Earth, dedicated to preserving it’s existence by any means necessary. Even today, the national security apparatus and by extension the rest of the US government is committed to disarming it’s ideas, through revision, through force.
Our Communist Party is currently estimated to be at 15,000 members. 3 times the greatest numbers of one of the ‘strongest internal threats to US security’. Gloria La Riva, a COMMUNIST. Received almost 100,000 votes in the 2020 election. Almost a quarter of the country is receptive or supportive of socialist principles in one existence or another.
Yet the idea that the country is functionally incapable of evolution is simply unscientific. Does one country have greater potential for class consciousness and development of the revolutionary party? Absolutely. That does not put us at absolute 0 on the scale of potential. I think that is a scourge, the idea that we cannot do it. It placates us at best, or it can disillusion us at worst.
It is okay to feel sometimes that the task we face is insurmountable. It is the natural reaction to want to avoid the path of hardest resistance. We must look at the steepest mountain ahead of us and not think that it is not something we can overcome, rather the greatest task that MUST be overcome for us. Our devotion and commitment is the only thing that can get us there, not nihilistic contempt and surrender to US capitalist power.
Imagine our comrades internationally held this same standard. What would the point of being a communist even be? Why should any communist party exist if capitalism cannot be destroyed in the US? It will still have it’s choke-hold forever, and will react violently to any attempts to stop it, even ending the world in it’s own ego-driven mania.
We are now at a precipice. I do not mean now as in this year, this month, or this day. I mean in the historical development of our country. The ebbs and flow of capitalism remain… it is our job to harness that understanding in the development of the new world and create the organized power to bring us there.
It will not be one strike which blows down the US, or capitalism. It will be many precise blows. Carefully coordinated and purposeful. None with the ‘bite’ that we may want to see but the damage is visible, and eventually even the greatest tree can fall with persistence.
I may not know any of you personally, but hope one day that even if we never meet, we can feel some connection in our combined power. It is our deep, embedded commitment and passion to the improvement of our world that even brings us here… and it will be that same deep, intense passion that will bring us to our victories in real life.
The population may not have read Capital, but as Bill Haywood says “… I’ve got the marks of capital all over my body”.
I’ll join cpusa when y’all manage to
- kick out people like Joe Sims from your highest positions of power (how in the world was he not purged for shit like this or this, this dude is really your fucking CO-CHAIR!?!?!?)
- actually figure out how to deal with racism within the white proletariat. The ruling class has successfully used that to crush socialism for over a century and managed to convince them to betray their BIPOC comrades for scraps, and CPUSA has done nothing meaningful to rectify this for decades. Now white communities that should be communist strongholds are completely gripped by reactionary thought and wrecked by complete poverty and drugs, BIPOC communities hold no trust in CPUSA for good reason and have also had their communist leanings completely destroyed
Holy fucking shit, that second link makes me want to headbutt a wall until I’m unconscious.
yes it’s really bad
That 15 year old blog post is from the co-chair? He sounds like he hates not only theory but also historical and literary context.
- “The educators must be educated.” You can say that again.
Maybe he should listen to his own advice
right??? like, why would I ever join that party with him as the co-chair, DSA legitimately has more radical leaders at this point than him, he’s got to be either an informant or was purposefully pushed forward into leadership positions by informants
Yeah no fuck that guy. I’m not trusting my dues to them until that sort of nonsense is gone. Dude really fucking said the worst part about Marxism is all the Marxism.
I genuinely hate the CPUSA. They aren’t communists and that’s why Simms wasn’t purged
yeah, but at the same time there have to be some dedicated communists in it but wtf are they doing??? JT from 2nd thought seems much better than this, I’m not sure why he thinks the party can be turned around…
I’m sure some are true communists. I don’t know about the JT person but it does appear there are real communists in it. I don’t think the majority are though
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Here’s my issue with this testimonial-- CPUSA has historically fucked around with the Black community, too many times over the last hundred+ years for me to feel comfortable with that party. I see people who’d chase out revolutionary Black nationalists, I see people who’d rip up planks pertaining to racial justice as has been done at least once in the last hundred years; I see tailists, I see reformists, I see settler-dominated leftist spaces that will NEVER be on a proper intersectional line for me to call them ‘comrade’. If I’m talking about the liberation of my people, and the first things out of y’all’s mouth is ‘no racial issue, class war only’ in deliberate ignorance of this country’s material history, on some reductionist shit, you’re a write-off to me.
I’ve seen enough reductionist shit, especially out of CPUSA members, to no longer have faith in the the settler-left. If y’all manage any kind of revolution in this country, I expect it to be for white folk alone. Amerikans alone, and the manifold internal colonies this country’s accumulated in the last 400 years will be left to figure it out. That’s no ‘revolution’ worth humoring to me.
After they claimed we should vote for Clinton I have absolutely no faith in the CPUSA at all. And I agree wholeheartedly with your comment.
The Black Panthers were the “biggest threat” with 5000 members because they were both principled and weren’t electoralists. The CPUSA fails in both those regards and that’s why they are much less of a threat of the current way of things with 15000 members
The Panthers also had substantial base-building efforts and were fighting for self determination. The US ruling class is not scared of white dudes waving signs, they are scared of principled national liberation fighters.
I’m sorry you feel that way and my intention was not to reduce any shortcomings or problems people may/do have with the communist movement in the US. I hope you also didn’t feel I was attempting to reduce the problems we face to a simple ‘class revolution’… Nothing is that simple as we both know. This was just simply me venting my thoughts and hopefulness/pragmatism.
I do know however that you are obviously not alone in your way of thinking and hope that in time, through external forces such as black and other minority liberation and social struggles as well as internal evolution and reaction to those struggles that the party and the movement proper is able to regain the hope of those who have lost it (And by that I do not mean they will see that white majority CPUSA as their savior… rather it is able to evolve and adapt to be the multi-racial, anti-settler force that it will need to be to resolve these issues).
I’m definitely guilty of hating burgers and thinking revolution in burgerland is impossible. To the extent that I think this, it’s entirely me projecting my own personal shortcomings and labor aristocratic shortcomings onto others.
Even Lenin and Stalin thought revolution in the Russian Empire would be impossible in their lifetimes.
Marx completely disregarded Russia as a possible location of a major socialist revolution and thought that England, France, or Germany would be more likely.
Just because we think something doesn’t make it true or mean that we should disregard the possibility. If we say it’s impossible from the beginning then you only set yourself up for failure.
I may have been to rosy with my including of the CPUSA in my original post. I was more just including it as to my relationship with it.
This wasn’t really meant to be some glaring spotlight on how great everything is now and that everyone should shut the fuck up and just tow the line. Rather it was meant to try and fight the constant futility and negativity I see when it comes to the potential of organizing in the US. Is everything where it needs to be? No. Is the CPUSA the most principled and disciplined Marxist Leninist institution? No, they release plenty of dogshit and I would know as I read People’s World constantly and listen to the Co-Chairs. But is it still possible? Absolutely, we just have a harder road ahead. That’s all.
Thanks for contributing to this discussion :)
Sadly the cpusa mention overshadowed what you were trying to say, but I agree it’s something that needs to be constantly reiterated which is that third worldism is a fallacious ideology and needs to be combatted. One thing in particular is that American comrades really need to read more communist American history if they want to understand the condition of the American working class beyond “labor aristocracy” epithets. Every single gain the working class in the imperial core has made has been the result of both external AND internal movement and the over emphasis on the external leads to a disregard of emphasis on the internal.
Even for instance the civil war, which yes was fought on the part of the northern industrial capitalists to overcome the South’s political and state dominance, was also actually fought for with the blood of northern communists and leftists who understood the horrors of slavery and the need for solidarity against it. Bill Haywood as you mentioned consistently fought against backwards elements in the union movement against integrated unions up until his death. CPUSA or not there’s a long history of communism’s struggle here in the US and to deny our predecessor’s efforts is to say that all they have fought and died for is all for nothing.
I wouldn’t count labor aristocracy out as counter revolutionary so quickly. Charles Post wrote a pretty solid piece about it if you’re curious.
Any chance you have a link?No worries, I found it in your other comment.
Could you share the article? I would like to give it a read
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/128.html
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/129.html
It’s from a trot, would take it with a grain of salt it has interesting ideas but quite frankly I feel I’m not educated enough as a marxist yet to properly analyze it.
Thank you for sharing
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/128.html
Part one links part two. It’s short and well cited.
He has another paper where he revists this with self criticism. I think it’s on his professor page or something.
https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/faculty/charles-post/
here’s his page, which one is it?
i don’t remember it’s been a while since i read either
can you tell if it’s this one from the abstract? https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0161-723020140000029008/full/html
No that’s another response paper I’ll look for the update tomorrow sorry.
e: I can’t fudging find it, i know i read it though
I completely agree in the importance of organizing within the US and not falling into doomerism. Even if revolution may not happen in our lifetimes, there’s still much we can do to set things up for future generations and help people however we can in the meanwhile. To write off this country as a lost cause is to allow the subjugated working class to become radicalized by fascists instead.
I agree we shouldn’t give up on revolution in the US, but I also think we need to have national liberation front and center in our struggle. I’m wary of putting too much hope in the white working class movement as it has fallen into reformism and begging for scraps from imperialism time and time again. As a cracker myself, I think we should be focused on the land back and new Afrikan struggles not as white saviors but as settler Allies.
Gloria La Riva, a COMMUNIST. Received almost 100,000 votes in the 2020 election. Almost a quarter of the country is receptive or supportive of socialist principles in one existence or another.
Gloria La Riva represents PSL, one of the “minor parties”.
/*Edit: i don’t think I understand the point of this post. Is it a recruitment drive for CPUSA, or trying to say revolution is possible in the U$ without addressing the colonial contradictions?
I’m not here to tell you to join any particular political organ… was just including it to point to my relationship in regards to the bigger picture. And at no point did I imply that colonial contradictions don’t exist either… just simply a venting of the constant futility and negativity on the subject. Thanks for contributing your thoughts :)
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A lot of principled Marxists do not want to join the CPUSA, because of their electoralism and incompetent leadership (not to mention their tendency to ignore the black community and other minorities struggles).
But this creates a kind of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If principled people never join, they can never change the organisation. We have a similar issue in my country, our largest “communist” party are against everything communists should actually stand for. So principled communists never join them, so they never improve.
Ultimately, I think this kind of thing is inevitable in western nations. The largest “communist” party will almost certainly be infiltrated and neutered, pacified so they aren’t a threat to the status quo. Unfortunately, I don’t if anyone has come up with a solution for this kind of “previsionism” as if they had, we probably would’ve seen far more successful communist parties in the west.
A year or two ago I was a lone communist on my area. Now I have converted two friends to it. One whom has surpassed me in his historical knowledge. Where there was one now 3 stand. It will take time but once knowledge is obtained it doesn’t just go away. Once the eyes are opened it’s hard to close. Just keep trying comrades. Keep pushing their buttons and always be ready for an opportunity.
Well said comrade. Many others have made good points. The CPUSA has a lot of problems, but so do we all. I’m not american, but I share everyone’s skepticism with the larger movements of our time. In my country, I support the org I’m in even though I disagree with the members on many things because imo it’s about building strength. It is a powerful contradiction. We need to lead by example.
