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”.
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).