Official Site of the National Board of the Communist Party, USA

Our friend Barack Obama is being attacked; please rise to help me defend him

2011-07-06T11:23:00.002-04:00

This has been posted in places for people to read:

"Obama is the full and complete embodiment of state monopoly capitalism in an era dominated by Wall Street's imperialism."

The name of a very good man is being besmirched.

We must rise to defend the President from these kinds of slanderous attacks.

All rise until I give the command to be seated.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Please call Bruce Bostick

2011-06-13T13:10:00.002-04:00

We had to have Bruce Bostick committed to Bellevue, again. We caught him looking at inappropriate information.

Please call Bruce. He continues to be confused and depressed.

Let's help out this poor depressed guy.

Give him a call; call Bruce often: 614-313-6145

Sam Webb, your confused national leader

Open letter to corporate America

2011-06-12T21:11:00.004-04:00

Open letter to corporate America

by: Harold Wallace a pseudonym

June 8 2011

Dear capitalists and friends of capital,

You threw the world into financial collapse in 2008. In the intervening years, through "too big to fail" excuses, austerity programs, union busting and deficit fear mongering, you've managed to burden workers with the task of mopping up your sorry mess. By dint of extraordinary sacrifice, despite the demoralizing anxiety of massive unemployment, we have met most of your demands, mostly peaceably. Your profits are safe and the stock market has rebounded, even if our retirement savings, job security, and benefits packages haven't.

Fair is fair, after all, so here are our demands. Here are the rudimentary protections that workers expect from the employers they enrich with their labor and the government they empower with their votes:

1.) Tax the rich. The more you own, the more you owe. The more you benefit from "market-oriented" policies, the more you should pay to help those whom the same policies force into conditions of poverty and precarity. We demand a progressive income tax that progresses all the way to the top, with commensurate increases in estate and capital gains taxes, the revenue to be allocated to public education, job creation programs, and the social safety net.

2.) Jobs for all. Everyone who can work-regardless of race, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or disability status-has a right to a job with fair pay, security, and the right to organize and bargain collectively. No more using high labor costs to justify exporting oppressive labor practices; no more passing off part-time, low-wage jobs as a solution to the unemployment crisis; no more blaming workers and their unions for your unwillingness to create jobs. No more scabs, no more lock-outs, no more intimidation. We demand that wages and hours be determined on a sliding scale: wages increasing with prices, and hours varying (without reductions in compensation) to ensure full employment.

3.) People before profits. Food, water, energy, shelter, education, and health care are basic human rights whose distribution cannot be governed by market considerations. We demand that these sectors be re-organized on a worker-owned or state-run basis. Furthermore, we demand an end to the privatization of national security, military operations, and the prison system: areas where for-profit firms are guilty of shameful abuses of human rights and civil liberties.

If these needs can be met under the current economic organization of the United States, we encourage you to meet them. Our program is not only just, it is eminently rational. It will curb dangerous financial speculation, level out the income inequality that makes real democracy impossible, and build a healthy, prosperous, and highly innovative nation of workers who will make American industry the marvel of the world-not only for its productivity, but for its fairness and sustainability.

If these needs cannot be met within the current mode of production-as I suspect they cannot-then they are revolutionary demands for a new economy, and a different mode of production. In that case, we welcome your collaboration in building a better world, but we do not require it. The working class will see to it that these needs are met, one way or another, at the ballot box, on the picket line, and in the street.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels claim that "[the capitalist class] is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to the slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him rather than being fed by him... [The existence of this class] is no longer compatible with society." Prove Marx and Engels wrong, or the workers will prove them right.

Here's hoping, and working, for the latter!

Harold Wallace

Harold Wallace might one of the many names used by Bruce Bostick as he writes for us from his special room at Bellevue.

We are reprinting this letter here because it doesn't mention any of the messy embarrassing stuff about wars and military spending.

Approved by Sam Webb, Chair, National Board of the combined CoC and CPUSA.

Can someone help me?

2011-05-27T16:59:00.003-04:00

Please, help me.

I'm lost.

I was on my way to Maine and now the sign says Minneapolis 20 miles. Did I go the wrong way?

Help!!!!!! Get me out of here.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

This very dangerous e-mail came to my desk today

2011-05-21T00:37:00.002-04:00

I want to make it clear this point of view does not reflect my thinking or the thinking of our Party since I have put us on the road to an important partnership with Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. I will not stand for ideas like this to break the partnership bonds I have forged. We are now partners with some of the largest and most farsighted big-business interests so I must distance myself completely from these Marxist-Leninist thoughts.

I have issued an order not to tolerate any consideration for this kind of dangerous viewpoint.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Some thoughts on Richard Trumka's heavily publicized speech to the National Press Club

by Alan L. Maki on Friday, May 20, 2011

A lot of people are ecstatic over Richard Trumka's speech to the National Press Club today. I have been following Trumka's speech, and his comments afterwards, very closely.

Some thoughts...

I would note something Trumka stated later, after his presentation, which I think needs to be stressed because it demonstrates just how two-faced and hypocritical he is. He has only repackaged and re-worded the longstanding positions of the AFL-CIO going back many decades to its conception and further back to when it was the AFL--- for about a decade or so the CIO had a real pro-worker stance on elections, supporting candidates and voting, and even running worker candidates.

But here is the most important point Trumka made TODAY which was not included in his remarks--- he had to be pressed knowing this was not going to be popular among working people after delivering a militant sounding speech:

"Later, Trumka said that President Obama was working for workers and that the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor group, would continue to support the president."

Link to statement- http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/20/news/economy/afl_cio_washington/?section=money_latest

Here are some other links to the National Press Club Luncheon:

http://press.org/events/npc-luncheon-richard-trumka

http://press.org/news-multimedia/news/union-leader-promises-fight-states-over-worker-rights

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/20/977808/-Trumka-denounces-Republicans,-declares-labor-independence

Here is a link to the official AFL-CIO website:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/20/trumka-working-people-want-a-strong-independent-labor-movement/

I would note that Richard Trumka does understand what working people want: political independence. But, when pressed as to whom the AFL-CIO will endorse for president Trumka says: Barack Obama--- this is not political independence from Wall Street in any way, shape or form. Nor has Barack Obama done a damn thing for working people justifying this endorsement; quite to the contrary, Obama has hurt working people and his wars are making us all poor.

Trumka has failed to grasp the very simple and basic understanding of these budget battles as articulated by my friend, Virg Bernero in Michigan: "Budgets are a reflection of our true priorities."

Trumka, at this late date, refuses to recognize what both liberal Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has articulated along with Virg Bernero: We can't continue to squander our Nation's resources on wars and expect to have the resources to take care of the needs of the people. Again, a recognition of this Wall Street government's priorities when it comes to these budget battles. Why does Trumka refuse to ask the all important question of the working women and men whose dues pay has big, fat salary: How is Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

Check out Richard Trumka's complete speech. We need to ask: How is it that Trumka can make a speech like this and not one single mention of these dirty imperialist wars killing working people abroad and our own youth while working people and being forced into funding these wars abroad through austerity measures here at home as Wall Street coupon clippers fatten their bank accounts from profits derived from these wars as well as profiting directly from the austerity measures being imposed creating so much poverty resulting in untold misery; we need answers from Trumka as to why he is not properly formulating a response and call to action.

Also, I am sharing with all of you a website for what might be the beginnings of a national movement for a progressive political movement that has the potential to help us free ourselves from the two-party trap set for us by our Wall Street enemies.

I would encourage all of you to consider getting involved in any way you can. Please feel free to contact Anthony Noel--- his email is next to Mike's in the "To" line. Here is the link to the website: http://newprogs.org/

Also, I would like to make you aware of what is the most important book on progressive politics that you could possibly read--- bar none. The book is, "Keep True, a life in politics" by Howard Pawley who was elected and re-elected for almost twenty years to the Manitoba Provincial Legislature, having served about ten of those years as Manitoba's Premier (kind of like a state governor). The New Democratic Party government of Howard Pawley (during the 1980's) remains an example of the most progressive government in North America--- of course, with the exception of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party socialist governments of governors Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson. All joking aside, Pawley's government was a majority government a distinction the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party governments never quite achieved since capturing majority control of the Senate was never achieved.

Here is a link to ordering Pawley's book: http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=4250

All too often U.S. progressives think there is nothing to learn from our northern neighbors. I can assure you we have much to learn from our northern neighbors when it comes to politics and if you read this book by Howard Pawley you will quickly find out a lot of what we have missed. Personally, I lived in Manitoba as the Pawley government fell because of a traitor inside of the NDP and I saw and experienced the sharp contrast in quality of life going from the most progressive government in North America to what was most definitely one of the most reactionary governments in North America. What we do in politics most definitely determines the quality of life working people have. Please, do yourself a favor and those you are politically engaged with a favor, by reading this most important book, "Keep True." For any political activist the purchase of this book will be the best money you have ever spent.

I also want to share with you an alternative to Obama's Wall Street agenda. This comes from my meetings and conversations with working people across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan--- dozens of discussions in union halls, hundreds of meeting around kitchen tables and in living rooms and from conversations I have had with people after speaking at demonstrations, vigils and on picket-lines and at various protests...

The most important question, in my opinion, that we need to be asking people is:

"How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?"

After asking this question, we need to offer up some real alternatives like this:

A program for real change...

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and shutdown the 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* WPA - three million new jobs.

* CCC - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Defend democracy by defending workers' rights including the right to collective bargaining for improving the lives and livelihoods of working people.

* Roll-back and freeze the price of food, electricity, gas and heating fuels; not wages, benefits or pensions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for a real change.

Don't forget, Cindy Sheehan talks in the Twin Cities this weekend (tomorrow) and there is a Fighting Bob festival in Wisconsin.

Yours in solidarity and struggle,

Alan L. Maki

(contact info at very bottom)

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 6:45 PM, greenpartymike wrote:

President of the AFL-CIO warns Democrats, says workers want a more ‘independent’ labor movement
May 20th, 2011 · No Comments

From the Hill (H/T to Third Party and Independent Daily):

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Friday that workers want an “independent” labor movement designed to help the working class, not a specific party or candidate…

“Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It’s to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our economy, our country…”

In a question-and-answer session after his speech, the labor leader elaborated on how unions plan to change their political operations for the 2012 election cycle.

“We are actually redoing our entire political program and the way we do things,” Trumka said. “We will change the way we spend … the way we function in a way that creates power for workers.”

The AFL-CIO, which spends most of its funds on member education and get-out-the-vote efforts, wants to better coordinate with their affiliated unions that tend to make direct campaign contributions to candidates. In addition, the labor federation wants to mobilize its members year-round to campaign on issues dear to labor, instead of dismantling its political program after every election, which makes it harder to motivate workers when the next election comes around in two years, Trumka said.

Asked if labor will campaign against Democrats, Trumka responded, “Ask Blanche Lincoln.”

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

E-mail: alan.maki1951mn@gmail.com

Blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

The challenge before us

2011-05-12T08:17:00.000-04:00

We have a big challenge before us.

President Obama is in deep doo-doo.

Our task is to pull the President out of trouble. There are wars and more wars to be fought. There are more homes to be foreclosed on. There are still many workers waiting to be unemployed. Gas prices need to be raised. The price of food is still too low.

We supported President Obama. We have to help him complete the mission embarked on by the high-road capitalists who need to accumulate more wealth so they can overcome the extreme right-wing low-road capitalists. We need to get behind the President so the better capitalists win this struggle to defeat their right-wing rivals.

I have been hearing some grumblings that we in the leadership of the CPUSA say one thing at closed meetings and we say another thing publicly through our public speeches, the PW and PA. What is not understood is that this is the new normal of American politics. We want to fit in.

Tears come to my eyes every time I see President Obama standing in front of the Stars and Stripes.

We are in a new era.

This is a new day.

Forward, comrades, to another Obama victory.

New allies in old enemies

2011-05-11T16:24:00.000-04:00

I want to thank the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party for standing up for me and my new thinking.

Louis Proyect is providing very insightful leadership to the new left. Right on Louis!

Thanks to our friend Mark Lause too.

I knew we would eventually begin building new alliances and coalitions.

I'm glad we have taken on Trotskyists like Joel Wendland.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swp_usa/message/14642

Is CP spawning LaRouche like spin-off?

I was recently startled to see a sophomoric sectarian redbaiting rant on FB
against Carl Davidson railing against him for being being a stooge of
imperialism because of his alleged adoption of that "imperialist ideology",
pragmatism. I was even more startled when I learned that this rant came not from
a Healyite sectarian but from an ostensible member of the CPUSA. Davidson
informs us they are from a "mini-faction" of the CP. Nonetheless they seem like
provacateurs headed down the road of NCLC. Below is a link to the FB page
referenced above together with a link to a faux CP page they have put up which
just reeks of paper overed Glen Beck.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sally-robbins/carl-davidsons-pragmatism-from-pol-p\
ot-to-barack-obama/180569418657890

http://cpusanationalboard.blogspot.com/2010/03/cpusa-national-committee-member-m\
ark.html

Re: [swp_usa] Is CP spawning LaRouche like spin-off?

Nothing works for everyone. But, admittedly, there is a lot of dross and trivia
mixed in with useful material. And Louis is absolutely correct about the format
being one in which a serious debate cannot flower. On the other hand, it is a
very good place to find out where the debates are and to track down those that
seem worthwhile. I would never recommend it as anyone's sole discussion forum or
place to lurk.

Arthur

--- In swp_usa@yahoogroups.com, Louis Proyect wrote:
>

Most of these Trotskyists are members of our Special Agents' Club.

Me and Louis Proyect have shared Special Agent status for years.

Once we get the LaRouchies on board with us we will be all set.

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board CPUSA

Barack Obama chooses CPUSA National Committee member Mark Froemke!

2011-05-07T13:17:00.002-04:00

Mark Froemke, an important leader in the U.S. labor movement and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA, has been chosen as the poster boy for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign.

Congratulations to Mark Froemke!

Nifty hat, by the way.

Sam Webb, National Chair, CPUSA

Truth and Honesty

2011-05-04T09:18:00.002-04:00

I want to bring the National Board up-to-date on Party growth and our mass activities.

Some people say I am a liar when I say our Party is growing. I want to tell you that you can trust me as much as you can trust President Obama. My word is as good as gold, too. I'm not real good with figures so some other time I will have someone provide the figures on membership. Numbers were never my strong point. I never set empty beer bottles up in front of me to count. To me, new members as far as numbers go are just like beer bottles. Each and every recruit is number 1.

I have received some little amount of criticism for promoting mass action by using the example of the Royal Wedding. What we want is people in the streets, do we not? Well, the Royal Wedding provides us a good example of how to bring people out into the streets as we wait for celebrations of Barack Obama being re-elected; the second term is going to be one big mass mobilization. We Communists will be right there celebrating the accomplishments of Obama's first term. The celebrations are going to be huge. Everyone is tickled pink with Obama's wonderful new world.

We are preparing plans for a national fundraising drive. We are calling it "Project Geronimo." We have reserved space at the World Trade Center site for the Fourth of July.

Its been one hell-uv-a-week full of mass mobilizations. First we get the Royal Wedding; then we get Osama bin Laden which brought out hundreds of people at the White House. We promised to mobilize the people. Let's take a little time off to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Our campaign for incremental reforms is moving along very nicely. No one can tell we are leading the way to socialism.

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board
Communist Party USA

It may be time for another district purge

2011-04-29T10:30:00.001-04:00

I will be commenting on these remarks in the near future. Expulsions and a purge of this entire District might be in order. I will let everyone know what I decide to do about these misfits.

The Minnesota Problem continues to drag on. I must continue to put my foot down.

Sam Webb

National Chair, CPUSA

This comment results from discussion in the Connecticut State Committee of "A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century"by Sam Webb.

The 25 points are wide ranging and it is difficult to address all of them. We agreed on the relationship between democracy and socialism. However, a number of the projections in the article run counter to the successful methods we have used and continue to use successfully in building the Communist Party and YCL in Connecticut.

Our Connecticut district enjoys a good relationship with the mass movement in Connecticut and continues to increase its influence in both the trade union movement and other democratic movements at high levels of recognition. We are aware that developmental growth of a district can be influenced by the nature of mass movement development in districts, the particular nature of economic and social crisis in different districts, different strengths and weaknesses in personnel in districts and many other factors that make it important that our national party has adopted a “no one size fits all” approach to the growth of districts. But we bring up our particular method of growth because it has led to a high level of confidence amidst our district membership on how to grow, how we confidently expect to grow both in the size of our Party and our Party’s influence in the mass movement.

What is discomforting about the article is that some of the basics we have used to make this growth are what is being called into question. To begin with our district follows the “bill of rights socialism” strategy with its all people’s front component and core forces analysis as we all do. The dialectical and supportive relationship between democracy and working class advancement is constant and always integrated. We do not sacrifice one for the other. However, we have found that this dialectical relationship between democracy and working class advancement is not spontaneously adopted by our allies in the mass movement especially in the nitty gritty of adopting specific tactics in specific crises. Gramsci has a great insight here that has been borne out by present conditions. He says that not even an advanced union can always avoid the temptation to pursue its own advantage over what might be a class position. For instance, we are all aware of militant unions that will support a candidate who will do right by their union but will not do right by other unions or other components of the working class. Even the most advanced electoral formations with great positions on working class needs and demands will be tempted to choose a candidate for office that can win even if their position on a particular trade union struggle is poor. We have seen that in our district. It takes a Communist Party to always see the relationship between working class advancement and democracy. Of course, we do not reduce ourselves to rhetorical demands that lead to lecturing rather than implementing in a specific and persuasive way a class position in a particular crisis and to do this with discussion with our allies in the mass movement. It is always done with keeping our eyes on the true class enemy and not on allies we are gently criticizing and persuading to do otherwise. These are not tactics easily developed by many allies in the mass movement. We have a constructive role to play here.

There have been moments when our state committee was able to suggest certain ideas based on our analysis that have been critical to the mass movement. For example, when even progressive forces were dismissing the idea of tax the rich, we devised a child poverty bill in our state committee that state legislators who we had worked for and knew our party through attending our club meetings, and campaigning on our PW routes introduced in the state legislature. Even those progressive legislators most discouraged by tax the rich initiatives felt morally compelled to campaign for this bill and its tax the rich components in order to protect these children in poverty. It led to actions by the legislature that involved the first steps in resurrecting tax the rich initiatives in our legislature. Another example: When two unions were involved in a raiding situation leading to a bitter standoff, we were able to bring them together after some negotiation as both wanted to appear at our Communist Awards event. In the midst of the present economic crisis we were able to draft “A Modest Proposal” that included specific tax actions that could be taken that was added gratefully by members of various unions to their analysis. We are talking here about another concept missing from the article's analysis i.e., the Communist Plus. It is the result of applying “bill of rights socialism” and it is the result of our working class outlook, particularly our bedrock principles of class struggle and class unity. that our Party is most consistently able to do.

It is our clubs that are the basic implementors of these tactics and policies. Our district has found the neighborhood and workplace clubs that seek to meet every two weeks as tremendous sources of strength. By meeting together club members understand each others capabilities, personalities and enjoy the socializing that goes beyond the agenda of the meeting. These clubs are tremendous recruiters to the Party and rapidly put new members at ease and adjust their language to the most comfortable levels without losing the essence of our tactics and strategy. The sustainability of membership is extremely high and has led to now four generations in some families that have taken on major responsibilities in the Party and YCL organization in our district. The fact that they were built in particular neighborhoods and workplaces over many years has strengthened the racial and ethnic composition of our Party. That racial and ethnic composition of our party has been one of the factors most admired by other members of the mass movement in Connecticut. These are concepts of Party building that have proven themselves and continue to prove themselves. These are not old formulas with no relevance to the present.

There was discomfort at our state committee on the handling of the Soviet Union and Leninism. The Soviet Union continued to be a source of international working class solidarity and advancement despite the criminal acts of Stalin. Lenin, as the article says, will be admired in time to come. To put more criticism on the Soviet Union then was already put forward in Sam Webb’s "Reflections on Socialism" seems unnecessary. Or to drop Leninism because it sounds foreign, when we agree with Sam that the future will acknowledge Lenin, is not only to hurt our history but to hurt history in general.

Finally, while analysis of new conditions and theory is always in order, our state committee finds the publication of this article at this moment in time as unfortunate. It has led to internal discussion and debate at a time when our focus must be outward on the mass movement, building the upsurge and combating the horrible successes of the tea baggers. We felt that this was not the time for this discussion

Posted by Joelle and Brian, Connecticut, 03/24/2011 1:46pm

Carl Davidson is wrong

2011-04-26T13:56:00.005-04:00

"You don't mention the wars, Sam. That's the 'elephant in the Dems room,' so to speak. It's going to be very difficult to mobilize for a candidate for more wars and a little less austerity. That's the huge wedge driven into the progressive forces, especially among the young, and it wasn't put there by us. Few want to stay home, especially where they can elect an antiwar Member of Congress. But unless something changes, they don't have anyone antiwar at the top of the ticket."

Posted by Carl Davidson, 04/23/2011

I did mention the wars. I did mention the wars very delicately so as not to offend the President.

Here is what I wrote:

"When the broader movement takes part in the battle of ideas, people respond positively. Some of the ideas that already resonate with millions include: tax the rich, racism chains working people of all colors, economic crises hit racially and nationally oppressed people harder, wealth comes from labor and nature, working people have no stake in wars of occupation, and the country is not broke."

We should be more careful who we give our awards to.

Here is a candidate at the top of the ticket for peace right here. Look. President Obama is speaking at a peace demonstration. What better peace candidate could we have? This is Barack Obama on the "Progressives for Obama" website. Doesn't Davidson read the website he created?

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Position of KKE on the Webb's platform and the developments in the CPUSA

2011-04-13T16:33:00.002-04:00

This is what I wanted to see; a discussion.

I shall respond in due time.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2011/2011-04-13-kke-to-cpusa

Position of KKE on the Webb's platform and the developments in the CPUSA

Athens, 13 April 2011

To the members and cadre of the CPUSA,
To the workers that struggle in the USA
To the communist and workers parties

Dear comrades,

In February 2011 the chairperson of the CPUSA, Sam Webb, published an article in Political Affairs, the electronic publication of the CPUSA, entitled “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does”. Even if the specific article is accompanied by an editorial note which claims that “The following article represents the views of its author alone. It doesn't necessarily reflect the official views of any organization or collective.”, it is obvious to us that the public position of the head of a Communist Party concerning such an important issue requires special attention.

On the 16^th of February we received a letter from the editorial team of Political Affairs which invited us to send in our opinion.

Our party, after studying this article and the reactions it has provoked within the ranks of communists both in the USA and internationally, considers it necessary to take a public position through this letter, as is required by its responsibility as a part of the international communist movement.

Our assessment is that we are dealing with a comprehensive liquidationist platform of 29 theses which has been placed before the international communist movement and proposes the total revision of the principles and revolutionary traditions of the communist movement.

The KKE, as a section of the international communist movement, considers as its duty the refutation of this platform, which questions the need for the existence of a party of the working class in the USA, and in general is directed against the revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement internationally. The 18^th Congress of our party stressed that “The battle against social-democratisation tendencies in Communist Parties – through the intervention of imperialist mechanisms, anti-communism and the bourgeois media – must be fought firmly and consistently by defending the historic role of the working class and its organised vanguard, the principles of Marxism-Leninism and of socialism. This task takes on even greater significance in face of the growing anti-communist offensive in the EU and internationally.”

Dear comrades,

The platform that has been presented today, through the article of the chairperson of the CPUSA, constitutes the culmination of a course of “adjustment” in the last decade as the author himself points out. There have already been developments in this intervening period which communists in Greece, as well as in the USA and other countries have monitored with concern, such as:

The handing over of the Party’s archives to the imperialists, the bourgeois state of the USA in 2007.
The closure of the print publication of the newspaper (People’s Weekly World) and the journal Political Affairs, with the simultaneous alteration of its character.
The organizational shrinkage and dislocation of the party.
The political “tailing”, behind one of the two pillars of the bourgeois political system of the USA, that is to say behind the Democratic Party.
The stance in relation to the ambitions of US imperialism ( e.g. rejection of the demand for the immediate withdrawal from Iraq)
The blocking of the Joint Statement of the Emergency Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in Damascus, because in the final text there was the position for the withdrawal of the imperialist occupation forces from Iraq.
These elements intensified after the 29^th Congress of the CPUSA. It was not by chance that immediately after the congress, an article was published in Political Affairs which called into question not only the need to maintain the name of the party, but the possibility and even the necessity of a Communist Party’s existence in the USA today.

Today the Webb platform comes as the culmination of this course and openly propagandises the abandonment of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, the abolition of democratic centralism, and the undermining of the principles of the party of a new type.

We would like to draw your attention to the following basic aspects of this platform:

ON THE QUESTION OF THE THEORY OF THE PARTY

It proposes the replacement of our theory by an eclectic hotchpotch which does not go beyond the limits of liberal bourgeois ideology. It attacks Marxism-Leninism directly, which constitutes one of the central laws of the existence and activity of the party of the new type, as V.I.Lenin pointed out “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement… role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.” In this specific platform various extremely old opportunist positions are promoted as new (e.g. Marxism-Leninism is foreign, anti-democratic, it is a distortion of Marxism by Stalin etc.), these are positions which disarm the labour movement and surrender it, without theoretical tools, to the claws of the exploitative system.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE POLITICAL PROPOSAL OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY:

It promotes the view that there can be solutions in favour of the working class within the framework of capitalism. In this way, it promotes as an alternative solution the line of the so-called “green” capitalist restructurings. In addition, the Webb platform considers the characterisation of the crisis as a capitalist crisis of overproduction insufficient. It distorts the essence of the over-accumulation of capital as it associates it with…. A lack of investment opportunities. It states characteristically: “Short of a new New Green Deal on a global level, it is hard to see where the dynamism for a sustained upswing, let alone a long boom, is going to come from.”

These views recycle social-democratic and opportunist theories on economic recession and development which whitewash capitalism and conceal its class essence, leading the Communist Party to give up on its strategic goal and support political proposals, which have as their goal the acquisition of new super-profits by the capitalists, in the name of “ecology”, at the same time when they are turning nature and natural wealth into commodities, and destroying the planet in various ways.

THE QUESTION OF THE SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE:

It renounces the struggle for socialism. The notion of revolution is entirely absent. It proposes an endless process of successive stages, in which the alliances will be formed not on the basis of the criterion of the era and the class interests of the working class. Webb proposes working for “- the balance of forces is to shift in a progressive direction”. This view condemns the party to submit itself to the temporary circumstances and not to work with a strategy for the overthrow of capitalism through the concentration of forces.

Nevertheless, it is obvious to us, that the tactics of a Communist Party must serve its strategy, which is the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a socialist-communist society. The position of Webb in practice abolishes the strategic goal of the Communist Party, and finally aims to shake the very character of the Communist Party. Socialism is in any case on the agenda, from the moment that we live in the era of imperialism, the highest and final stage of capitalism. The timeliness and necessity of socialism-communism is projected by the impasses of capitalism, the imperialist wars, the economic crises, the huge social, economic, environmental, ecological and other problems which capitalist society gives rise to. A Communist Party must form tactics and alliances which facilitate the concentration of forces, the class unity of the working class and the social alliance with the popular strata, with the aim of maturing the subjective factor for the acquisition of power by the working class, and not to be trapped in alliances and stages, which will lead it to struggle under a “foreign flag” in the logic of managing capitalism.

-ON THE QUESTION OF THE FORMATION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

The Webb platform proposes moving beyond the Communist Parties. It says that “A party of socialism in the 21st century embraces Marxism, understood as a broad theoretical tradition that reaches beyond the communist movement.” A party that does not struggle for the interests of the working class but “fights for the interests of the entire nation.”

This position denies the necessity of the existence of the Communist Party in the USA and indeed in the entire world. The KKE successfully dealt with similar views, when they emerged in our party 20 years ago under the influence of “Gorbachevist” theories. The communists of Greece fought hard to repel these opportunist views, for the preservation of the KKE, for the preservation and strengthening of its revolutionary, class and internationalist character. Today, 20 years later, the communists not only in Greece but all over the world can judge the positive results that the outcome of this battle had for the KKE. The KKE was able to stand on its feet, to elaborate serious theoretical and political issues, without deviating from the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It approved its new programme and came to important conclusions concerning the causes of the overthrow of socialism, enriching its conception of socialism. It has taken significant initiatives for the unity of the communist movement at a regional and international level. It strengthened its bonds with the working class and the other popular strata. The influence of its positions and its prestige has been strengthened as it plays the leading role in the regrouping and development of the class-oriented labour-trade union movement and in the tough strike mobilizations of the workers in our country.

None of the above would have been achieved, if opportunism had prevailed 20 years ago in the KKE. The KKE would have gone down the road of dissolution and the labour-popular movement would have lost its basic pillar of support.

-ON IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

The Webb platform renounces the struggle against bourgeois ideology and opportunism. The party which Webb describes surrenders from the ideological struggle. He writes “A party of socialism in the 21st century doesn’t turn – liberals, advocates of identity politics, single issue movements, centrist and progressive leaders of major social organizations, social democrats, community based non-profits, NGOs, unreliable allies, and the “people” (according to some, a classless category concealing class, racial, and gender oppression) – into enemies.”

But can a Communist Party enlighten the working class, the other popular strata, if it does not have an ideological front against views which present capitalism as the only way, which simply promote different types of management of the exploitative system? The answer of the KKE to this is that it is impossible for the struggle of the people to develop without a firm and consistent ideological front against unscientific bourgeois and opportunist theories. This is especially true in today’s conditions, when the role of the various NGOs has become obvious, which are connected financially and in other ways with the imperialist organizations. In conditions when social-democracy has been in government and has demonstrated in practice that is a pillar of support for the bourgeois political system. In these conditions the communists not only must not give up on ideological work and struggle, but they must intensify the struggle even further against these forces.

-ORGANIZATIONAL OPPORTUNISM

Webb rejects the Leninist organization, the organization of the vanguard of the working class which corresponds to the needs of the class struggle for the abolition of exploitation. He rejects the Leninist organization because he rejects the struggle for socialism and has taken sides with the bourgeois class for the perpetuation of capitalism.

And so, a state machine which is both experienced and powerful will be opposed by a “party”, according to him, based on the Internet, with an open door policy for new members as an organizational principle: “Joining should be no more difficult than joining other social organizations”.

Thus we can see that not only does he reject the tried and tested organizational principles of the Communist Party of a new type, which were established in the era of Lenin, but he promotes the idea of a party of an NGO type, which corresponds to the content which he himself proposes and is in the direction of a “Communist Party” assimilated into the bourgeois system, which will work for the salvation and “correction” of capitalism and not for its overthrow.

-A PARTY OF REVOLUTION OR REFORM?

Reform is the answer given by Webb to this fundamental question, which was posed a hundred years ago. His view denies that the party is the vanguard of the working class and subordinates its activity to the lowest level of class consciousness (“A party of socialism in the 21st century takes as its point of departure the issues that masses (relative term) are ready to fight for”). Of course a reformist line is proposed as well as the prioritization of the intervention in the institutions of the bourgeois state. The struggle for reforms within imperialism is acclaimed not only as a “means” buts an end for this “new” party.

In reality, when has the path of reforming the capitalist system ever led to the abolition of the exploitation of man by man and the vindication of the workers’ desires? The “recipe” of reforms has been tested by the peoples through various social-democratic and centre-left governments, which in practice have been proved to be the main vehicles for the imposition of anti-people and anti-worker measures, and as pillars of support for the imperialist organizations and wars.

-“MARXISM”…WITHOUT MARX

Webb calls the class nature of bourgeois democracy into question. As he writes: “What I’m challenging is the notion that everything is subordinate to class and class struggle no matter what the circumstances.” He questions the class nature of the bourgeois state, that is to say the dictatorship of the US monopolies and claims that “Thus the nature of the struggle isn’t simply the people against the state, but the people winning positions and influence in the state and then utilizing them to make changes (within and outside of the state)”.

This is an old opportunist position which Marx had already rejected in his era, and was revived by the bankrupt eurocommunist current. And this alone would be enough for us to come to the conclusion that the “Marxism”, which is mentioned as being the theoretical basis of the “party of the 21^st century”, has nothing to do with Marx and his theoretical contribution but aims at its vulgar distortion, the burying of revolutionary theory, and the deception of the workers.

ILLUSIONS CONCERNING THE ROLE OF THE US GOVERNMENT AND THE MONOPOLIES:

The Webb platform fosters illusions and works for the submission of the people to the government of the USA, that is to say the world’s leading imperialist power: “The point isn’t for the U.S. government to simply to crawl into a national shell, but to reinsert itself into world affairs on the basis of cooperation, peace, equality, and mutual benefits…”

At the same time he fosters illusions concerning a “ humanized” version of the monopolies: “big sections of the transnational corporate class have pulled the plug on the American people, economy, and state…the commitment of major sections of the transnational elite to a people-friendly public sector, a vibrant domestic economy and a modern society has waned…”

As the Chairperson of the CPUSA has given up on a class approach to society, the abovementioned positions are to be expected. These are positions which not only have nothing to do with the history and struggles of the party he represents, but they bear no relation to reality either. The continuing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the new imperialist war in Libya demonstrate what kind of activity the US government has developed outside its “national shell”. And it conducts similar anti-people activity for the defence of the interests of the monopolies inside its own country.

ESCALATING THE LINE OF “TAILING” CAPITAL AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

The strengthening of political reaction which is intrinsic to imperialism and is intensifying in the conditions of crisis is interpreted as “ultra-right extremism”. This leads to conclusions which violate the truth and reality, such as “we say too definitively that the independent forces stand no chance whatsoever of taking over the Democratic Party. That still may be the case, but it is a mistake to rule it out completely at this point.” The equation of the working class and its movement with the trade union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO is consistent with the political line of alliance with sections of capital.

TURNING TO ANTICOMMUNISM

Webb’s article marks an overt siding with the class enemy and a complete alignment with contemporary state-level anticommunism. It calls for “an unequivocal break with Stalin” and lines up with the slanderous assault on socialist construction which offered so much to the Soviet peoples and played the decisive role in the anti-fascist victory of the peoples. In essence, these positions attempt to conceal the reality, the complex problems of the class struggle in the USSR and the tough confrontation of working class power with the bourgeois class in the countryside, the kulaks.

It adopts, in essence, every kind of slanderous simplification of complex problems, such as the sharpening of the class struggle in the USSR. The article goes a step further and joins up with Havel, Walesa and all the reactionary anticommunists of the EU who talk of “crimes against humanity”. It lines up with the tendency that attempts to criminalise the Communist Parties and the defence of socialism: “τo describe these atrocities as a mistake is a mistake – criminal”.

As is well known the opportunist current in Europe that forms the so called Party of the European Left (ELP) holds a similar anti-historical position.

Dear comrades of the CPUSA,

Members, friends and cadre of the CPUSA,

Conscious Workers of the US,

At this very critical moment for your party the KKE calls on you to take into account that the ideological attack against the Party of a New Type focusing on its identity, its character and its organisational principles was unleashed from the very first moment of its existence. The revisionists have always supported the dissolution of the party of the working class; they have always been a pillar of support for the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois class and its supporters understood from the very first moment the role of the party in the political emancipation of the working class and its movement. The ideological attack which was unleashed continues up to the present day as is demonstrated by Webb’s article.

We call on you to take into account the fact that the party can only fulfil the role of the proletarian vanguard on the condition that it is equipped with unity of will, unity of action, and unity of strict discipline. Its internationalist character stems from its nature; it constitutes an integral part of the world communist movement.

Experience confirms and practice which is the yardstick of truth proves that the revolutionary line of struggle not only does not restrict mass work but it reinforces it. It strengthens the expectations of the working people, it provides a way-out and a perspective, it contributes to the change of the correlation of forces. The independent action of the party is a prerequisite for the formation of a policy of alliances that will be subordinated to and serve the strategy for the overthrow of capitalism.

In addition, we consider it necessary to take into account that the necessity of the socialist revolution and the construction of the new communist socio-economic formation is not determined by the correlation of forces, which is shaped at the various historical junctures, but by the historical need to resolve the basic contradiction between capital and labour. The counterrevolutions in the USSR and the other socialist countries have not altered the character of our era which is an era of transition from capitalism to socialism which is timely and necessary as shown by the tragedy of the millions of workers and unemployed who suffer from exploitation and the intensification of the problems that the exploitative system causes.

We believe that the replacement of the principles of Marxism Leninism by revisionist approaches in the name of national peculiarities caused a great deal of damage to the communist movement and continues to do so. No national peculiarity can negate the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, the necessity for the conquest of political power by the working class, for the socialisation of production and central planning. The economic crisis that broke out in the capitalist world and the intensification of the inter-imperialist contradictions further highlight the timeliness of socialism. Under these conditions the driving back of the new wave of state anticommunism, the defence of the socialism we knew, of its great contribution to the world working class, of the identity and the revolutionary traditions of the communist movement acquire a special importance.

Dear comrades,

Historical experience, the developments themselves have refuted the views that spoke of “the end of history”, the “obsolescence of Marxism-Leninism” and the “end of the Communist Parties”. On the contrary, today there is a stronger need for the existence of Communist Parties that have roots in the working class and the workplaces, which believe in Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The labour movement must consciously act and rise to the challenge to ensure the existence of a revolutionary party of the working class. This is a crucial duty and a challenge for the most advanced workers and for communists in all the countries of the world and of course above all in the USA.

The consistent confrontation with and rejection of this opportunist-liquidationist platform is a requirement which springs from the historical traditions the labour and communist movement in the USA, it is a condition for the revival of revolutionary communist ideals in the US labour movement and society.

The International Relations Section of the CC of KKE

All aboard the Obama express. Next stop socialism.

2011-04-07T10:57:00.002-04:00

From Crisis to Socialism

by: Sam Webb

April 4 2011

Speech delivered at the Salt of the Earth Labor College in Tucson, Arizona, March 12, 2011.

We live in trying and changing times. No one is sure what tomorrow will bring. The U.S. is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Everywhere we look we run into crises.

There is a jobs crisis; despite some improvement in the official unemployment rate, nearly 25 million workers are unemployed or underemployed. And in the communities of color the impact is especially severe.

Then there is the crisis in public education. The efforts to undermine this democratic treasure that is admittedly in crisis, are as they are as insidious as they are massive.

Housing is in crisis too. Millions have lost their home thanks to Wall Street Bankers, or should I say gangsters, and many more are sitting in homes that are underwater. Meanwhile public housing is being defunded and cooperative housing privatized.

Then there is the equality crisis. No one with any sense would argue that we are in a post civil rights, post gender era. A quick glance at the impact of a stagnating economy gives plenty of evidence to the lie of that claim. And all this takes place in the context of a fierce counteroffensive in ideological and practical terms against people of color and women.

There is also a food crisis. In the South Bronx, for example, more than one in three residents could not afford enough food, while in Central Brooklyn, 30.8 percent faced food hardship. Moreover, every congressional district in the city faced significant food hardships. Similar data could be cited for other urban areas.

To this we can add the energy crisis that is sending the cost of fuel skyrocketing, thereby leaving working families with less for other essentials.

Then there is the poverty crisis. Nearly 50 million people live below the poverty line in the wealthiest country in the world. Nothing but scandalous, and the trend line is upward.

And let’s not forget the environmental crisis that worsens with each passing day and, unless checked, could cause a civilizational crisis.

Then there is the infrastructure crisis that is further aggravated by the refusal of congressional Republicans to support a modest bill to repair our crumbling country.

Finally, democracy is in crisis. Coursing through the veins of our democracy is a flood of corporate money, all of which is designed to fatten the pockets of the wealthiest families and corporations and frustrate the people’s will.

At the same time – and it’s the other side of this undemocratic coin – the corporate class is attempting to not simply weaken, but destroy the labor movement which has been the most consistent force against right wing domination and corporate policies.

On a world scale the crises signs are even of a more pronounced character. To cite a few statistics:

* 2.5 billion people, nearly half of the world’s population, survive on less than two dollars a day.
* Over 850 million people are chronically undernourished and three times that many frequently go hungry.
* Every hour of every day, 180 children die of hunger and 1200 die of preventable diseases.
* Over half a million women die every year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. 99% of them are in the global south.
* Over a billion people live in vast urban slums, without sanitation, sufficient living space, or durable housing.
* 1.3 billion people have no safe water. 3 million die of water-related diseases every year.

To make matters worse, climate change will lock the world’s poorest countries and their poorest citizens in a downward spiral.

UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervi’s writes:

… climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs.

The UN Human Development Report cites some immediate consequences of climate change in the global south:

* The breakdown of agricultural systems as a result of increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures, and more erratic rainfall, leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition.
* An additional 1.8 billion people facing water stress by 2080, with large areas of South Asia and northern China facing a grave ecological crisis as a result of glacial retreat and changed rainfall patterns.
* Displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity of up to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas. Over 70 million Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could be affected by global warming-related flooding.
* Expanding health risks, including up to 400 million more people facing the risk of malaria.

To these we can add that at least 100 million people will join the permanently hungry this year as food prices spike.

What can we conclude from all this?

One conclusion is that capitalism isn’t working for working people; its get up and go has got up and went; it’s exhausted its potential; it’s a threat to human civilization, as we know it.

The other is that socialism has acquired a new urgency. A socialist future is not simply a good idea, but rather a necessary requirement for humankind’s future.

Since its earliest days, capitalism has inflicted incalculable harm (more than any other social system) on the inhabitants of the earth. Primitive accumulation, world wars, slavery, various forms of labor servitude, ruthless wage exploitation, territorial annexation, colonialism, racist, gender, and other forms of oppression – all this and more occupy prominent places in the historical mapping of U.S. and world capitalism since its emergence roughly four centuries ago.

And yet as ghastly a history as this is, the future could be even worse for a simple reason: capitalism’s destructive power, driven by its inner logic to pump surplus value out of its primary producers and dominate global space, has grown exponentially. Unless restrained and eventually dismantled, this power is capable of doing irreversible damage (nuclear war, global warming, ecological collapse) to life in all its forms.

But – and this is a big “but” – the replacement of capitalism by a society that no longer is the slave of the logic of profit making (or should I say taking) isn’t inevitable within the time frame necessary to avert the global dangers facing humankind.

Recently, Hugo Chavez had this to say:

I believe it is time that we take up with courage and clarity a political, social, collective and ideological offensive across the world – a real offensive that permits us to move progressively, over the next years, the next decades, leaving behind the perverse, destructive, destroyer, capitalist model and go forward in constructing the socialist model to avoid barbarism and beyond that the annihilation of life on this planet.

I believe this idea has a strong connection with reality. I don’t think we have much time. Fidel Castro said in one of his speeches I read not so long ago, “tomorrow could be too late, let’s do now what we need to do.” I don’t believe that this is an exaggeration. The environment is suffering damage that could be irreversible — global warming, the greenhouse effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising sea level, hurricanes — with terrible social occurrences that will shake life on this planet.

So the situation is dire, but what do we so about it? What will it take to leave capitalism behind, to consign it to the history books?

It will take many things, but the main thing is a broad, united people’s movement possessing a fighting spirit, hope, and vision, much like we see in Wisconsin today, but nationwide and on a far bigger scale.

The journey to socialism – and it is a journey – will also take a laser like focus on issues that are agitating tens of millions, and none loom larger than the economic rights and livelihood of our multi-racial, multi-ethnic working class.

It is hard to imagine how the necessary forces can be assembled and unified at each stage of struggle including the socialist stage if the working class and peoples movements are not fully engaged in such struggles.

It will take a big tent strategy as well. Such a strategy will welcome allies, combine radical and gradual change, avoid unnecessary fights, and operate on the assumption that “only a movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority” has the power capacity to turn socialism from a dream to a reality.

It will also attach special importance to the struggle for racial and gender equality. Both are of strategic importance insofar as working class and people’s unity is concerned. No advance in radical and socialist terms is possible without a sustained struggle against racism and sexism.

Anyone who devalues the struggle for racial and gender equality limits the sweep of any victory at best; at worst, it provides an opening to the most backward sections of our ruling class and their constituency to gain ascendancy ideologically and politically.

A movement for socialism will place a high priority on independent political action and the formation of a party independent of corporate capital too. Currently, the main social forces and organizations of political independence work within the Democratic Party.

No less importantly, any transition to socialism will require a far bigger left and Communist Party. We don’t yet cause a “big wave in the big pond.” But for socialism to become a reality, our ripple has to turn into a wave that has the strength to lead the people to a better future.

Finally, it will take a modern vision of socialism that is at once deeply democratic, economically just, egalitarian, ecological, and peaceful as well as organically embedded in the American experience.

Our main objective must be to lead all the stragglers loitering around the outskirts of "the Big Tent" provided by the Democratic Party into the tent so Barack can lay out our plans for socialism in the 22nd Century.

I would like to thank the two of you for showing up for my talk here today.

A comment about my speech from a friend:

Sam Sez: 'Currently, the main social forces and organizations of political independence work within the Democratic Party.'

That's true, fortunately or unfortunately, for the leadership and institutions of labor, civil rights and so on.

But what about the 'critical force' of young people under 30? The critical force can overlap with the main force, but they are not the same.

All revolutions and even major structural reforms are made by the young of various classes, and especially the working classes. Lenin was 29 when he wrote 'One Step Forward...' The average age of the Cuban CC was 26 on their victory, with Fidel the old man of 35. The average age of China's PLA was 19. We know that the youth were dynamic in our civil rights movement and in the early IWW and other labor forces in their first upsurge.

Today I'd guess most young progressive, radical and socialist-minded youth do NOT see themselves as part of the Democratic Party, and the youth who worked for Obama are rather alienated from the White House today.

In short, this position is a little one-sided, and need to more seriously engage a critical inter-generational problem we face.

Posted by Carl Davidson, 03/28/2011

My response: Ah, yes; the youth. The alienated youth. What a pathetic lot they are. We can't depend on them to rally around our leader, President Obama. The youth are obsessed with peace. They don't understand the need for humanitarian wars. They lack patience and civility while unemployed. They fret over being marched off to war. We might better forget about the youth, they just want to protest.

A post speech thought: I have been explaining the need for us to get involved in the Democratic Party for about 15 years. I'm thinking of getting involved myself in the Democratic Party very soon.

Great article. Protects our President by not commenting on the cost of the wars

2011-03-22T19:00:00.003-04:00

Notice how Joel doesn't ask the obnoxious question: How is Obama's war economy working for you?

It's okay to talk about taxing the rich because Wall Street understands we aren't serious. We want to avoid embarrassing President Obama so we follow the lead of our Democratic Party coalition partners. When it comes to war and military spending, "mums" the word. We will just pretend military spending has nothing to to with the budgets.

Special Agent Sam Webb, National Chair CPUSA

Tax the Rich: Democrats Introduce Deficit-cutting Bill

by: JOEL WENDLAND

march 17 2011

According to recent public opinion polls, more than eight in 10 Americans want the rich to pay a fair share to cut the deficit. With Republicans poised to cut everything from Social Security benefits for seniors, to education and food safety inspections, congressional Democrats have introduced a bill that would cut the deficit by $78 billion by creating a new tax on millionaires and billionaires.

In introducing the measure, its author, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., a member of the president's fiscal commission, said, “In the United States today, the richest one percent owns 34 percent of our nation’s wealth – that’s more than the entire bottom 90 percent, who own just 29 percent of the country’s wealth.”

This vast wealth and income inequality needs to be addressed, she said. "It’s time for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, which is why I introduced the Fairness in Taxation Act."

"It’s about fairness," she added. "It’s about avoiding budget cuts that harm middle class families and those who aspire to it. We can choose to cut education, job creation and health care, or we can choose to ask those who can contribute more to do so.”

According to United for a Fair Economy, the current top tax bracket begins at $373,000 in income and fails to distinguish between the “well off” and billionaires – like the top 20 hedge fund managers whose average income last year was over $1 billion.

According to analysis of the bill, the proposal would create several new tax brackets for income earners between $1 million and $1 billion ranging from 45 percent to 49 percent. The bill would also restore capital gains tax provisions for incomes over $1 million annually.

Aside from 80 percent of Americans, the proposal is getting support from some unlikely sources. Katharine Myers, a millionaire from Pennsylvania whose income comes from royalties from a company her mother started, praised the measure. “I think very wealthy people like me should pay substantially higher taxes, since we have done exceedingly well in the last few decades,” she said. “Our taxpayer-funded government contributed to my success.”

The bill has been cosponsored by both progressive and fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “It’s time we treated multi-millionaires the same way we treat working families – by creating a tax bracket to match their income."

“There’s no reason to treat the wealthiest one percent of the country any more specially than anyone else," Grijalva added. "And right now that’s exactly what our tax system is doing."

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters, “The middle class is shrinking and deficits are rising because Republicans are giving a pass to special interests who aren’t paying their fair share. This bill is part of a plan to level the playing field.”

United for a Fair Economy, Citizens for Tax Justice, Citizen Action Illinois, U.S. Action, Campaign for America’s Future, Wealth for the Common Good, and The Agenda Project have all endorsed Schakowsky's bill.

Steve Wamhoff, tax expert from Citizens for Tax Justice, praised the tax bill's progressive character. “Millionaires have benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts enacted over the past decade, so it seems entirely reasonable that they share in the sacrifices needed to get our fiscal house in order.”

“The budget cuts being debated in Washington shamefully require middle class families to pay the price for the recklessness of the Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers who broke our economy,” said Brian Miller, Executive Director of United for a Fair Economy. “Instead of punishing middle class families and de-funding America, the Fairness in Taxation Act asks those who have benefitted so heavily from the economic bounce of Wall Street to share responsibility for getting our nation's finances on track.”

For their part, Republicans have fought to protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires above all other priorities.

Proud to announce the birth of our newest Club

2011-03-16T11:54:00.002-04:00

For more information about joining the Pink Pansy Pantie Club of the CPUSA contact:

Daniel Frontino Elash

Special Agent Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

My new policies and new thinking are making tremendous headway

2011-03-14T14:13:00.003-04:00

Who would have thunk the son of a Stalinist would ever have written an article like this without mentioning the billions of dollars going for wars.

My new thinking and ideas are paying off. Of course, with the good editors we have even if the funding for these wars had been mentioned in order to embarrass President Barack Obama we could have taken care of that. But, my training is working well. I'm not all that keen about calling our Wall Street friends, "parasites;" sounds a little to Marxist-Leninist for me. I know one guy, Daniel Elash, who might get his panties in a knot over the use of this term and another who might have to get stronger meds, I just take an Aspirin.

Sam Webb,
Special Agent in charge of the million dollar glass offices

Make Wall Street Pay

by: ART PERLO

march 14 2011

tags: banks, economy, Wall Steet, activism, GOP, state budgets, jobs, workers

With Connecticut facing a record deficit, a statewide coalition of union and community groups has formed to demand that Bank of America (BOA) contribute its fair share to the state's economy. BOA is the largest bank in Connecticut, but has avoided paying taxes to the state, and has a poor record on small business loans and foreclosures.

On March 11, protests were held at BOA branches in five towns. In New Haven, 40 union members and community residents marched into the bank and presented a bill for $2.9 billion owed to the people of Connecticut. One hundred participated in a similar action in Middletown.

Last year, the Wall Street banks paid out $120 billion in total compensation, nearly equal to the record loot they scored two years ago. This is double the amount the Republicans are trying to cut from children, nutrition programs, unemployed, community health centers, heating assistance and other essential programs for the remainder of this year.

A big share of Wall Street loot comes domes from the huge gambling operation run by the financial establishment, where high rollers speculate in stocks, derivatives, mortgage-backed-securities, commodities futures, credit-default-swaps and other high-tech and exotic forms of roulette. A very small tax on these financial transactions would have no effect on legitimate activity, but would help dampen the speculation that played a big part in the financial crisis that is still with us. Such a tax could, conservatively, bring in at least$150 billion per year.

This coming year, every state is facing huge deficits. In Connecticut, we see the results in a wave of layoffs in cities and towns, cuts in state services, tax increases on middle-income working families, and huge sacrifices demanded of state workers. The combined deficits from all the states come to about $120 billion. In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and other states, deficits are being used as an excuse for an all-out attack on workers' rights.

Michael Moore nailed it when he told workers in Madison, Wisconsin that we are not broke. It's just that the money is in the wrong place. The $150 billion that could easily come from a tax on Wall Street gambling -- a tax that would fall entirely on the big banks and the super-rich -- would erase every state deficit, with money left over to help cities and towns. So which will it be -- the students, teachers, homeowners, children, and elderly -- or Bank of America and the rest of Wall Street parasites? Which side are we on?

Dispose of Lenin and bring on John Case

2011-03-13T23:33:00.002-04:00

Analysis of imperialism needs to be brought up to date

March 2011

By John Case; lead economist and theorist for Sam Webb

I disagree with much of Emile's article Imperialism 2011: Steps Going Forward.

First, because I do not see what it clarifies about any aspect of the current challenges in bringing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a close. I do not see how it helps guide our thinking about the implications of the uprisings in North Africa and the Mid-east. I don't see how it helps frame the main questions in addressing the many-sided challenges of globalization. The references to Lenin's pamphlet on Imperialism are entirely uncritical and unhistorical, despite the passage of a century. It's as if time has not passed at all except to make the scripture of Lenin's words more sanctified.

We need a new, 'sacred'-phrase-free, popular understanding of the global democratic revolution, and the strong underlying technological, financial and social transformations of globalization that are fueling its fires. As objective global relationships extend and mature, as both labor AND capital make their journeys to all corners of the earth, so too does global citizenship become an idea that begins to descend from the world of vapors to those of solid ground. Immigration battles can only be peaceably managed by international law, founded on a system of international rights and obligations extending to persons regardless of national origin.

What does Lenin's text on Imperialism say about ending the Afghan war? Is there any practical future of any kind available to the Afghan people that does not include gigantic sums of aid and investment? What is our responsibility for or to the failed states now littering the post-USSR world, many of them relics of cold-war dictatorships, or anti-cold-war-dictatorships? What is meant by "international responsibility"? Is there not some truth to the charge by General Powell that "If you break it, you own it!"? Perhaps "Out Now" is all some need to hear. But this is a "political sidelines" position if you do not have a sober estimate of the consequences of your actions. Even with countries as backward as Afghanistan, there are now links of every description that make it NOT possible for it to remain isolated and lawless, as perhaps it could have in 1916.

It used to be the case that many on the left had grave doubts that arose from anti-democratic allegations against the USSR, but forgave the latter out of recognition of that country's material assistance to anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles throughout the post-war world. But the political and economic collapse of the USSR meant that there would be NO exceptions, no skipping of capitalist, market-oriented institutions if you want to pursue industrialization, commodity production, and economic growth.

Today, China is the biggest lender to the United States. It seeks the ability to rapidly increase the export of not only its manufactured goods, but also its reserves to investments IN the US. Ultimately, it will succeed in this effort as the force of its accumulated surpluses will be impossible to resist. Who, then, will be the imperialist? I submit many formerly 'imperialist subjects HAVE managed to accumulate substantial surpluses, have ignored IMF "Washington Consensus" policies against strategic industrial policy (an incremental socialism), and now have no interest in undermining the acquisition of new capital assets from virtually any source is they expand the social surplus, nor any destination market. I am not saying there do not remain imperial relations in many aspects of US and Western European foreign policy. But I AM saying its a lot more complicated than it was in 1916, and that the solutions now, must have a more global character than they did in 1916, meaning the content of "anti-imperial" policy is much more dependent on emerging international institutions, and their reflection of the democratic will of affected peoples, than was ever true before.

I want to make it clear John Case speaks for me. This is brilliant. I will pass it on to the designated leader of the democratic people's front our best friend President Barack Obama.

Special Agent Sam Webb

Let's not get carried away but let's note a problem...

2011-03-09T12:01:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama is taking some heat for not enforcing affirmative action. I am taking some heat for not mentioning affirmative action.

Affirmative action is a political liability for President Obama. It's even a political liability we must avoid lest we get too far out in front of the masses. It's good enough to mention racism as I have done. Advocating the enforcement of affirmative action from our president would cause him an electoral defeat and then we would lose this great leader of the democratic people's front against racism for peace and social justice.

Please read and study my article for the Party Line.

Special Agent Sam Webb

Black unemployment, working class unity

SAM WEBBfebruary 17 2011

It is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the economic crisis has a nationwide reach. Except for the upscale urban neighborhoods and suburbs where the moneyed elite live, nearly everyone and every community is showing the effects.

Unemployment is high officially and still higher unofficially. Factories are shuttered. Infrastructure is in disrepair. Streets and highways are studded with potholes. Community hospitals and clinics are closing their doors. Houses are empty.

If you are a wage or salary earner, tough times are here, and they could get a lot worse if the Republican right in Congress and their corporate boosters have their way.

What isn't so obvious is the uneven impact of the crisis on various sections of the population and country. Nonetheless, it's real.

Take, for instance, the economic conditions of the African American people. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, Black unemployment rates are uniformly higher than the unemployment rate of white working people.

In St. Louis it is twice as high, in Memphis three times as high, in Los Angeles and Philadelphia 1.7 times as high, in New York and Atlanta metropolitan areas 2.1 times as high, in Baltimore and metropolitan Miami 1.9 times as high and so on.

Interestingly, of the 18 metropolitan areas from which data was gathered the lowest ratio of Black to white unemployment was Detroit where misery has plenty of company. There, Black unemployment was 20.9 percent - the highest of any metropolitan region - and their white counterparts topped off at 13.8 percent.

Overall, the average Black unemployment rate in the study of 18 metropolitan areas was 14.3 percent, while white unemployment was 7.4 percent.

In other words, as bad as the crisis is for the American people of every nationality and race - and it's terrible - it is at the same time exacting extra pain from the African American and other communities of color that are segregated and seem hidden from general view.

Thus general appeals for jobs and relief, for public works jobs programs and for full employment legislative measures have to be combined, as the EPI suggests, with targeted job creation in those communities where the hardship is the most severe.

Such measures are not divisive, as the ideologues of racist division and oppression claim. They are, in fact, at the core of racial justice and working class unity - both of which are cornerstones of any successful struggle against the economic crisis. In the 1930s, it was no accident that the slogan of the unemployed movement, "Black and White, Unite and Fight," was heard where working people gathered to press their demands for jobs and relief.

Millions at that time, locked into a seemingly intractable economic crisis, came to the realization that it was only in their unity that they could win some measure of economic reform.

Isn't that the case today too? Our enemies on the other side of the class divide understand this quite well. It's why the vitriolic racist ideological offensive that came in the wake of the election of Barak Obama shows no sign of subsiding. In fact, the ideological offensive has been accompanied by a coordinated effort to reboot segregationist and discriminatory measures, shamelessly designed to roll back civil rights and cause tensions along racial lines.

But I'm confident that the purveyors of racism and division will be no more successful than our enemies were in the Depression years. More to the point, the election of an African American president two years ago is proof positive that the possibilities of building a united, multi-racial, multi-ethnic movement are enormous.

Carpe diem! The time is now!

Will you help me form the Barack Obama, Richard Trumka, Leo Gerard Adulation Society?

2011-02-25T01:59:00.002-05:00

Do you adore Barack Obama, Richard Trumka and Leo Gerard as much as I do?

I and the National Board of the Communist Party USA recognize Barack Obama as the heroic and great leader of the democratic people's front leading the American people to a new era of progressivism where we all will rise with the expanding fortunes of Wall Street.

Richard Trumka and Leo Gerard have covered our great leader's back faithfully and diligently in a way that has earned them our adoration.

As you are aware, in our efforts to scale back our activities, we have rented out our Henry Winston Auditorium and we would like to rename this room the "Barack Obama People's Room for Hope and Change."

We need funds for two new unisex restrooms which will be named "The Richard Trumka Room of Non-Struggle" and the "Leo Gerard Reading Room."

I am asking each and everyone of our many working class contributors to open their wallets to help us meet our very modest goals for our new remodeling and building efforts. I am no accountant but I estimate the costs will be around $3,000,000.00.

All contributions over $50,000.00 will be accepted and much larger contributions will not be turned away.

Special Agent Sam Webb,
National Chair, CPUSA
Coordinator of the Special Projects Unit for the CPUSA

Obama remains the leader we follow of the progressive Democratic front. Hip, Hip Hooray! Ahead with Obama yesterday, today and tomorrow!

2011-02-24T08:01:00.005-05:00

After being medicated back up we are happy to announce Bruce Bostick is back on the Obama team.

Bruce is quite a treasure for us to retain. In spite of being severely handicapped with mental disorders he can achieve marvelous thinking skills with some help and guidance from me.

Here is what Bruce and I have concocted together. It doesn't matter that it is not completely true:

"The Obama administration has corporate influences within its own ranks along with more progressive influences, and is facing heavily financed pressure from the ultra-right. Without pressure from an organized people's movement, the only push will be from the corporate side."

Read on! Read on!

The PW and our writers like Bruce Bostick lead the way for bright and clear thinking using modern medications.

Bruce Bostick is as clear and lucid in his thinking as Leo Gerard. I want to thank Bruce for not muddying the waters with ultra-leftist talk of "imperialist wars."

At this time I want to thank Daniel Frontino Elash for his astute understanding of problematic people of the anarchist bent as he tries to straighten his personal life.

Special Agent Sam Webb

Working on special assignment as National Chair, CPUSA

Social Security victory shows organizing is the way

by: BRUCE BOSTICK

february 14 2011

The developing struggle to protect Social Security from the Republicans and the federal Fiscal Reform Commission won a victory recently in President Obama's State of the Union address. There's an important lesson for us here.

In his speech, Obama said:

"To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities, without slashing benefits for future retirees, and without subjecting American's guaranteed income to the whims of the stock market."

This is a solid statement that won praise from activists fighting to defend Social Security. Obama took a position in opposition to the findings of the Fiscal Reform Commission that he appointed. His statement, further, is in opposition to the divisive push by corporate forces to split young folks from retirees, central to their drive to destroy Social Security.

Leaders of retiree groups had been told, right up until game time, that Obama might include language supporting the Fiscal Commission. However, retirees organized a grassroots campaign that built the ground beneath Obama, giving him room to fully support this essential program in his speech.

There has been a growing crescendo of deficit-cutting calls directed at Social Security and other programs aiding working folks. Obama, in a move that many saw as a dangerous concession to right-wing forces, set up the Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Commission. Its marching orders were to develop a "bipartisan approach" toward cutting spending.

Even though Social Security is funded by working people and has nothing to do with the nation's deficit, it immediately became the focus of the commission.

Commission co-chair Alan Simpson, the right-wing former Wyoming senator, called Social Security a "giant cow with 32 million tits." He went on to say he was "tired of people on Social Security sitting around in their gated communities, waiting to get in their Lexus to drive to the local Perkins to get their senior discount."

Worse than his arrogance, was the program that Simpson and the commission put forward to attack Social Security. They called for:

* raising the Social Security eligibility age from the present 62 to 70.
* cutting benefits for future recipients.
* introducing "means testing" for eligibility.

This was greeted with alarm by retirees and many others. Raising the eligibility age to 70 would be a death sentence for people working in hard physical jobs. The introduction of means testing for Social Security would make it more of a "welfare program" for only the poorest Americans, instead of the income base for all that it was enacted to be. This would make it an easier target for cuts. The commission said benefits wouldn't be cut for current retirees, only future retirees - trying to split youth from present retirees.

The anger at those extremist proposals made it impossible for the commission chairs to get the votes needed to officially send its plan to Congress. However, a majority on the commission did vote for the proposals. It helped create a poisonous atmosphere as the American people went to the polls last November.

The Alliance for Retired Americans and coalitions across the nation launched a fight. Many thousands signed a petition demanding that Social Security be strengthened, not cut. Mass meetings were organized. Delegations demanded their representatives NOT support the Fiscal Commission proposals. ARA leaders from every state co-signed a strongly worded letter to President Obama, urging him to oppose the commission proposals. Right up to the State of the Union, discussions continued in Washington.

A study titled "Social Security and the Future of the Democratic Party" was sent to activists. It was presented at union halls, churches and retiree centers and was given to Democratic elected officials. The study, backed up by polls and research, showed that when Democrats back Social Security, their support goes up strongly. It also showed that when they are associated with attacks on Social Security, their support plummets. It cited recent polls showing Democrats were now below Republicans in response to the question, "Which party is best at protecting Social Security?"

Clearly, the organizing bore fruit with President Obama's speech.

There has been an ongoing debate on what relationship the people's movement should have to the president and Democrats. Some have taken a "plague on both your houses" approach, saying there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Others have supported the administration but without doing enough to organize an independent fight for the people's agenda.

The Obama administration has corporate influences within its own ranks along with more progressive influences, and is facing heavily financed pressure from the ultra-right. Without pressure from an organized people's movement, the only push will be from the corporate side.

The ARA-led movement took a positive approach. They did not, even faced with real anger, break with Obama over the Fiscal Commission's plan. However, they were not going to sit on the sidelines and wait. What they did was mobilize and fight. This organized fight let all elected officials know that they attack Social Security at their own political peril. As a result, a victory was won, and retiree coalitions are stronger. With Obama's positive statement, support for him has also significantly improved.

Photo: California Alliance for Retired Americans responds to the State of the Union speech, Jan. 26. Alliance for Retired Americans / indybay.org / "More Jobs Now! Save Social Security!"

A period of transition and fluidity.

2011-02-19T16:52:00.003-05:00

President Obama is leading our Nation through a transition period of fluidity.

The problems and contradictions may appear to be enormous. There is no need to worry.These contradictions reflect the fluidity of a transition period.

Rest assured my new ideology will help guide our leader, President Obama.

I call our new ideology replacing Marxism-Leninism: Tran-Flu.

It has been difficult finding 100% American words to name our new ideology. My severest critics will no doubt start attacking the name as foreign because of its Latin derivative. But, I have an answer for these Stalinists; I always do even if I have to make something new up.

Sam Webb

National Chair, Communist Party CPUSA

From the Special Agent man...

2011-02-04T11:26:00.002-05:00

Introduction from Robert S Mueller (the 3rd):

We have assigned Special Agent Sam Webb the task of turning the CPUSA into the laughing stock of the left as part of the Agency's commitment to non-violent disruption through the remaining legal aspects of our COINTELLPRO project which has had the long-running goal of creating problems in the CPUSA.

Special Agent Man Sam Webb has proven to be one of our most able Special Agents. I am proud to endorse this masterful work.

Through excellent work like this we can continue our President's commitment to non-violence in disrupting revolutionary movements all over the world.

Through statements like this which encourage docility on the part of the victims of imperialism we can avoid the need to engage in methods like waterboarding because there will be fewer activists.

When there are fewer people concerned about building movements there is less work for the Agency.

I view this work by Special Agent Man Sam Webb as part of our contribution to fiscal responsibility. The smaller the membership of the CPUSA the fewer Agents we need in the field. This frees up funding for more wars.

Robert S. Mueller (the 3rd),

Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Co-creator of Special Oops

Trever Loudon,

Special Assistant to the Director

Privately funded by XXXXXXXXXXX

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/a-party-of-socialism-in-the-21st-century-what-it-looks-like-what-it-says-and-what-it-does/

A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does

By: Sam Webb, Special Agent Man on special assignment (Special Assignment: Chair, Communist Party USA

(Note: President Barack Obama has created the Jay Lovestone "Freedom Medal" and Sam Webb will be the first recipient.)

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

"I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” -- Eugene Debs

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going for, body and soul. But … long, persistent work is required.
“In France, whose soil has for more than a hundred years absorbed revolution upon revolution ... and where the conditions for an insurrectional coup de main are far more favorable than in Germany – even in France socialists increasingly understand that no lasting victory is possible for them, without first winning over the great majority of the people ... The long work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are also recognized here as the first task of the party.” -- Frederick Engels

Introduction

These are trying and changing times. No one knows what the morrow will bring. What will it take for the Communist Party and the left in general to become more effective fighters for social justice and socialism?

Before attempting to answer that question, an autobiographical note is in order. I write from the standpoint of someone who has been a part of the communist movement for four decades. During that time, I felt very comfortable politically and ideologically. I didn’t have “big differences.” For most of that time, I was in one or another leadership position. I took sides in an internal struggle in 1991, although I see that experience differently now.

So a dissident I wasn’t. But when the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989 and the first land of socialism went belly up two years later, it raised some doubts and questions in my mind – enough to take a fresh look our conventional wisdom and practice.

I re-read Marx, Engels (especially his introduction to Class Struggles in France and his last letters), Lenin (especially Two Tactics of Social Democracy, Left Wing Communism, Tax in Kind, his speeches to the Communist International, and his final articles), Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci (I was reading Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks for the first time), Georgi Dimitrov (United Front against War and Fascism), Rosa Luxemburg, Palmiro Togliatti, and others. Meanwhile, I was reading many more contemporary authors (too numerous to mention) writing mainly, but not exclusively, in the Marxist tradition.

In doing so, I began to see our theory, methodology, politics, practice, history, and future in new hues and colors.

If I were asked to sum up what conclusions I reached it would be this: our theoretical structure – Marxism-Leninism – was too rigid and formulaic, our analysis too loaded with questionable assumptions, our methodology too undialectical, our structure too centralized, and our politics drifting from political realities.

Not for a minute did I lose sight of the wonderful comrades who graced our party at one time or another, nor the many, sometimes singular, contributions to theory and practice that communists have left in the footprint of the 20th century.

The Scottsboro Boys, the Great Sit-Down Strike, the Little Steel strike, the formation of the CIO, the Lincoln Brigade, the fight against Hitler fascism, the resistance to McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement in the 1960s, and the fight against right-wing extremism, stretching from Reagan’s election in 1980 to the present – in all these and other struggles communists made contributions, sometimes history-making.

No other organization on the left can claim the same consistency of outlook and effort, accomplished in many instances in the face of fierce repression and irrational anti-communism, to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King.

But I also realized that the future of our party isn’t in the past, but in the world of the 21st century, which presents its own unique challenges to humankind’s future.

Thus, standing still wasn’t a viable option. And to our credit, a decade ago we chose change. In the article that follows I continue this process of inquiry and adjustment.

Much of I write is exploratory. In other words, this is a work in progress, an unfinished manuscript. Readers will surely note inconsistencies, contradictions, silences and unfinished ideas.

These limitations might discourage me from publishing this paper, but I am mindful of two things that mitigate my hesitations. First, no one has a full answer to the daunting challenges of the present and future. Second, each of us has something to contribute to the renewal of the left of which the Communist Party is an integral part.

It is against this background that I offer my thoughts.

1. A party of socialism in the 21st century elaborates its theory and practice in a world defined by the following:

• a social system in which the reproduction of the conditions for exploitation of labor and nature appears to be reaching its limits;

• a hegemonic shift in power in a crowded and highly competitive world, albeit in its early stages, that could easily throw the world into fierce inter-state rivalries, generalized war, and chaos;

• a series of processes (global warming, nuclear proliferation and war, global poverty, pandemic diseases, population pressures, and the exhaustion of natural resources) are unfolding that could have catastrophic consequences, threatening the existence of most living species;

• the irruption and diffusion of new (communication especially) technologies that are reshaping the economic, occupational, class, racial, and gender structures, production methods, consumption habits, class and democratic politics, forms of social interaction and leisure time, the power of instruments of mass destruction and the nature of war, and conceptions of time and space.

Realistically speaking, a resolution of these challenges must begin well before the arrival of socialism on a global level. If we wait till then, both socialism and humanity are doomed. There is a “fierce urgency of now” that can be ignored only at a perilous price.

But here is the paradox: the “fierce urgency of now” is not yet matched by popular movements at the state and global level that possess the vision and capacity to resolve these daunting and interconnected challenges.

2. A party of socialism in the 21st century embraces Marxism, understood as a broad theoretical tradition that reaches beyond the communist movement. At the same time, it critically assimilates the American radical/democratic inheritance and the insights of other intellectual and political traditions.

As for “Marxism-Leninism,” the term should be retired in favor of simply “Marxism.” For one thing, it has a negative connotation among ordinary Americans, even in left and progressive circles. Depending on whom you ask, it either sounds foreign or dogmatic or undemocratic or all of these together.

For another thing, Marxism-Leninism isn’t identical to classical Marxism. The ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other earlier Marxists retain incredible analytical power, if studied and creatively applied to current realities.

But the same cannot be said about Marxism-Leninism. It 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.

This simplification of Marxism, coupled with the enshrinement of a single party to the status of “official interpreter” of Marxism, came with a price tag. Theoretically and practically, it hemmed in and negatively impacted our party’s work.

To what extent will be debated for years to come. But one thing is clear: Marxism, if it is going to be a robust theory of socialist transformation, has to be historical, ecological, dialectical, comprehensive and independently elaborated – without shortcuts, simplifications or official boundaries. It can’t be the sole franchise of one party or school or tradition.

Its point of departure is the real needs, struggles and interests of the working class and people – the real movement. Its focus is on social (especially class) processes, relations, contradictions, dislocations, negations, and ruptures, not neat definitions and tidy formulas.

Marxism never confuses slogans and militancy (both of which are needed) for analysis. It employs principles, generalities and abstractions (the state is nothing but the political instrument of the ruling class, the two main parties are parties of capitalism, etc.), but it also insists on a concrete presentation of every question. And it is understandably wary of the inevitable (socialism), the uninterrupted (constant radicalization of the working class and intensification of crises), and the irreversible (the world revolutionary process).

Marxism is revolutionary in theory and practice, but it doesn’t consider “gradual” and “reform” to be dirty words nor does it believe that every political moment at the level of concrete reality is actually or potentially radical and revolutionary. The status quo is a stubborn and reoccurring phenomenon that too needs explanation. Nor does it buy the notion that social change rests solely on political will (“any fortress can be stormed”) or adheres to someone’s timetable.

In short, Marxism is a scientifically grounded mode of analysis, compass of struggle, and legitimate (and necessary) current within the working class and people’s movement.

If I had to grade our party’s analytical efforts over the decades, I would say that our critical eye was at times constricted. Some matters were off limits (Soviet foreign policy and development); there were blank spaces (gender and sexual relations), too many simplifications (trajectory of the economy – “boomless era of decline and contraction”), broad claims based on anecdotal evidence (progressive radicalization of working class and a party of hundreds of thousands around the corner). And dismissive attitudes toward other Marxist, radical and social democratic currents were too frequent in our discussions.

But to leave matters here would be one-sided and wrong. Our analysis of the national question of the African American and Mexican American (Chicano) peoples, the fight against racism and the special role of white workers, African American history, monopoly capitalism and the role of the state, the imperialist nature of war, capitalist economics, “fresh winds” in the labor movement, the role of the working class and its strategic alliances, the role of democracy and democratic struggle, the growth of right-wing extremism, Marxist ecology, the possibility of a peaceful transition, Bill of Rights socialism, and so forth – all this was notable.

3. The feet of a party of socialism in the 21st century are planted on the soil of the economic crisis – and for the long term.

The world economy and the triad of the U.S., Western Europe and Japan have yet to find a developmental path and structure of economic governance that brings sustainable economic growth and near full employment.

This is not to say that the economy is entering a “stationary state.” It is far more likely that the economy will oscillate around low levels of growth and high levels of unemployment for the foreseeable future.

As corporate profits climb to record levels, there is no commensurate increase in growth and employment rates. In fact, what we observe is a decoupling of corporate profits from economic growth and especially employment.

In the short term, there is little reason to be optimistic. And in the longer term the economic and ecological barriers impeding the process of capital accumulation, economic growth and job growth are formidable. Short of a new New Green Deal on a global level, it is hard to see where the dynamism for a sustained upswing, let alone a long boom, is going to come from.

The still unfolding crisis isn’t simply a crisis of regulation and the neoliberal model. But there is little doubt that the breakdown of regulation, together with neoliberal policies, greased the skids for the rise of finance three decades ago, the growth of unprecedented inequality, the explosion of debt, the bursting of bubbles, the over-accumulation of capital (too much capital and too few investible sinks) and, alas, the generalized crisis two years ago with still no end in sight.

Not to see this, not to take note of financialization, not to give adequate weight to the role of neoliberalism, to be content to characterize the current crisis as a crisis of overproduction, is to miss something profoundly important about the concrete dynamics and movement of the U.S. and global economy over the past three decades.

For now the capitalist class, and especially its top tiers, are sitting on massive amounts of surplus capital.

Moreover, it is in no rush to do anything different. Its main push is to create the best conditions to exploit labor economically and crush it politically.

4. A party of socialism in the 21st century fights for the interests of the entire nation. Since the 1980s, we have seen 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.

In a real sense, big sections of the transnational corporate class have pulled the plug on the American people, economy, and state.

Their operational strategy is worldwide in scope. It goes far beyond our borders. The evolution, dynamics and profit imperatives of the capitalism in recent decades have turned the world economy into the main unit of analysis for the U.S. transnational corporate class.

Markets, supplies of exploitable labor, and investment strategies of U.S. transnational corporations are worldwide in scope now. Their production sites stretch across regions and time zones, thanks to new technologies and available labor.

That doesn't mean that domestic production sites, consumption markets and workforces are of no consequence, the transnational masters of the world headquartered in the U.S. are less and less tethered to the national economy. This being so, the commitment of major sections of the transnational elite to a people-friendly public sector, a vibrant domestic economy and a modern society has waned. In fact, this elite is turning the state into its personal ATM machine and a military juggernaut to enforce its will at home and abroad. It's not an exaggeration to say that this social grouping has become a parasite sucking the life out of our government, economy and society, while living in bubbles of luxury, racial exclusion and class privilege.

This new reality has ominous implications for the future of the American people. It doesn't alter the strategic necessity of defeating right-wing extremists, whose plan is to regain complete control of the federal government in 2012 and shove this new reality down people’s throats.

What it does do is extend the ground for broadening and deepening a people’s fightback for the country’s future.

5. A party of socialism in the 21st century elaborates a strategic policy at each stage of struggle. After all, there is no direct or inevitable path to socialism. Nor is the working class isn’t going to simply “rise up” at some appointed time and fight for a society of justice. The struggle for socialism goes through phases and stages, probably more than we allow for in our current writings and program.

Thus, a strategic policy that traverses in broad outline the terrain of struggle from here to socialism is necessary. It rests on an estimate of the alignment of political and social forces at each stage of struggle along the road to socialism. On this basis, a specific strategic and tactical policy emerges that brings into bold relief the contending array of class and social forces, the main democratic and class tasks at any given moment, and the political coalition that has to be assembled if the balance of forces is to shift in a progressive direction.

The historical landscape of our country is marked by periods during which such transformations occurred: 1765-1790, 1840-1876, 1890-1915, 1932-1948, 1954-1965.

In each period the contending forces and the nature of the struggle were different in content. But in each instance, the boundaries of democracy were qualitatively enlarged, a new alignment of forces took shape, and new democratic tasks came to the fore.

The election victory in 2008 cracked opened the door for another “burst of freedom.”

But the realization of this possibility has been blocked so far by right wing extremism – the political grouping that dominates the Republican Party and does the bidding for the most reactionary sections of the transnational capitalist class. It is not simply an, or the only obstacle to social change and transformation.

What is it is the main obstacle to social progress at this stage of struggle. And only broad people’s unity has the wherewithal to decisively defeat the deeply entrenched power of right-wing extremism, which would, in turn, weaken the corporate class and its allied bloc as a whole.

It makes little sense to take on the entire capitalist class when it is not necessary. Similarly, it is boneheaded to artificially “hurry” the political process along when pursuing such an option would likely result in defeat.

6. 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.

The main social forces in this coalition, as we see it, are the working class, people of color, women, youth and seniors. And the overarching challenge is to transform these social forces (a category of analysis whose interests are conditioned by the place they occupy in a social structure) into social movements (a category of struggle), distinguished by their differing degrees of unity, organizational capacity, mobilization, alliance relationships, and not least, depth and consistency of political outlook.

The most dramatic illustration of this transformation of social forces into social movements was evidenced in the 2008 election campaign. Unfortunately, the “movement” of these broad social forces was not sustained in the post-election period.

7. A party of socialism in the 21st century takes as its point of departure the issues that masses (relative term) are ready to fight for.

This seems like a no-brainer. And yet, the pressures to make left demands, or anti-reform reforms (the new buzz word) the point of broad unity are constant. Too many on the left still think that the role of the left is to up the ante, to double the bet, to sets its demands against the demands of the broader movement.

No one doubts that left demands have a place in class and people’s struggles; only a fool would suggest otherwise. But they are neither the takeoff point for united action nor the singular thing that the left brings to mass struggles.

More important is a strategic approach, capacity building skills, an alternative analysis, vision and values, and a sustained commitment to uniting a broad people’s movement.

8. A party of socialism in the 21st century steers clear of false oppositions between partial and more advanced demands, between gradual and radical change, between electoral forms of action and direct action, between mass action and nonviolent civil disobedience, between patriotism and anti-imperialism, between struggle against the state and struggle within the state, between anti-capitalism and sensitivity to rifts in the capitalist class, and between general (say jobs) and particular demands (say affirmative action).

I could go on, but I think my point is clear: a party of socialism in the 21st century has to appreciate that seeming opposites interpenetrate and where properly utilized, enhance class and democratic struggles.

9. A party of socialism in the 21st century doesn’t turn – liberals, advocates of identity politics, single issue movements, centrist and progressive leaders of major social organizations, social democrats, community based non-profits, NGOs, unreliable allies, and the “people” (according to some, a classless category concealing class, racial, and gender oppression) – into enemies.

Nor does it withdraw from participation in capitalist democratic institutions. Rather than participating reluctantly and intermittently and rather than seeing such participation as a lower order task, a party of socialism will elevate electoral and political struggle to a primary arena of struggle; it will see such participation as absolutely essential at every phase of struggle.

Struggle within the state is no less important than struggle against the state. The two are dialectically connected, but at various moments, one side of the dialectic may take priority over the other.

10. A party of socialism in the 21st century is steeped in concepts of class and class struggle. Our overriding aim is a society in which class divisions disappear over time. Class divisions, after all, are at the core of capitalism and its production relations, politics, and culture.

This material reality explains why the capitalist class and its far-flung ideological apparatus attempt to hide class divisions. We hear of, and of course, there exist other divisions that to one degree or another shape and reshape capitalism’s political economy, politics, and culture. But you have to look long and hard for any mention of class divisions and, heaven forbid, class antagonisms and class struggle.

Furthermore, the erasure of class and class struggle in popular discourse receives an assist from some left, progressive, and academic circles that are busy cutting the class question down to size. It is done in the name of resisting class reductionism and economic determinism on the one hand, and allowing for multiple determinations on the other.

While we should avoid class reductionism, economic determinism, and simplified explanations of the historical process, we get no closer to the truth by back benching historical materialism and the analytical and struggle categories of class and class struggle.

In fact, as the working class in the course of struggle comes forward as a leader of the broader movement (which is now happening), and as the questions of power come to the fore more sharply, don’t be surprised to see a movement back to class concepts and historical materialism – 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 body of work on questions of class, democracy, alliance policy, nationality, power, and socialist revolution.

More to the point, any thought of achieving socialism USA, is pure fantasy if it doesn’t include as a cornerstone an active, united, class conscious, and numerically large majority of the working class in the leadership of a larger people’s coalition.

Therefore a primary task of a party of socialism in the 21st century is to focus on the working class and the issues it confronts in daily life. Not since the 1930s has the working class faced such dire circumstances and felt such profound insecurity. Stalled wages, massive job losses, collapsing health care and pensions, job competition on a hitherto unheard of scale, and other factors are putting great downward pressure on living standards and working conditions. Were it not for two wage-earner households, overtime, second and even third jobs, and astronomical consumer debt, the working class would be in even worse straights.

In the bull’s-eye of our working class focus is the organized sector of the working class – the labor movement. This sector, with its political understanding, experience, organization, know-how, tactical acumen, and resources is at the core of any revitalized working class and people’s coalition.

But here is a problem: the working class’ associational power (the power that comes from organizing into trade unions and political parties) has declined significantly; roughly 12 percent of the working class is organized into trade unions. At the same time (and connected) labor’s structural power (the strategic power that comes from labor’s location at the core of the strategic sectors of the economy) that it leverages in its own interests has also been greatly weakened with the precipitous decline of mass 20th century production industries.

How to change this, how to strengthen labor’s bargaining power in the workplace and its social power in the community and state, how to build up its political and organizational capacity are compelling challenges. As long as the number of organized workers is near single digits, labor’s impact no matter how good its initiatives will be limited.

Thus, an overriding strategic task of labor, and every democratic-minded organization and person for that matter, is to enlarge the organized section of the working class. The country’s future depends on it.

Two things would greatly facilitate this: first, the defeat of right-wing extremism, thereby creating the possibility of a more labor-friendly organizing environment, and second, the continued evolution of labor into a social movement, that is, an acknowledged champion and tribune of the broader people’s movement.

11. A party of socialism in the 21st century attaches overriding importance to democratic (reform) struggles (right to a job, health care, housing, equality, education, clear air, peace, vote, speech, etc.) They are a core element in the struggle for class advance, social progress and socialism.

Anyone who demeans the struggle for democracy goes directly against the grain and experience of the great democratic reform movements and leaders (Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Eugene Debs, W.E.B. Du Bois, Fanny Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez) who fought for the expansion of rights/reforms and every inch – no matter how small – of democratic space.

That these struggles unfolded in a capitalist democratic shell doesn’t negate their significance. In fact, in each instance the protagonist took advantage of the existing space and rights available to organize for his or her cause.

A party of socialism in the 21st century should do likewise.

Indeed, the struggle for democracy/reforms is every bit as important in the 21st century as it was earlier. It is both a means and an end. It empowers people and people empower democracy. It not only brings relief from capitalist exploitation and oppression, it is also the main road to radical change.

In fact, it is hard to imagine how the necessary forces can be assembled and unified at each stage of struggle, including the socialist stage, if the working class and people’s movements are not fully engaged in democratic/reform struggles – first and foremost the right to a job at a living wage and other economic rights.

In saying this, it could be argued that I’m privileging the democratic struggle over the class struggle? Not in the least, changes in the balance of class power can and do either open up new vistas for democratic and socialist transformation or narrow them down, depending upon which class and its allies have the upper hand politically and ideologically at any given moment.

What I’m challenging is the notion that everything is subordinate to class and class struggle no matter what the circumstances.

Analytically and practically, I would strongly argue that the relationship between the two – class and democracy – is dialectical. Each interpenetrates and influences the other. Neither one can be fully realized apart from the other. And both interact in the context of a social process of capital accummulation.

12. 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.

As one keen observer, for example, wrote,

“Given how things have turned out so far, it's comfortable for some on the left to pass off the Obama phenomenon as all myth and illusion from the very beginning. The ‘neo-liberal’ label is pinned on him, he’s ‘always been a conservative', 'he's really pro Wall Street'. Such stereotyping and assignment of an individual to a closed political box runs counter to much historical experience. Movements and the flow of events can change how individuals see things and how they act. All things considered, there can be little doubt that Obama views himself as on the side of struggling Americans – nor is there any doubt that defeating him and ‘taking back the country’ is the prime objective of the neo-fascist mob.”

This is mature advice.

13. A party of socialism in the 21st century extends a welcoming hand to intellectuals; it should tease out of its political culture any anti-intellectual biases. A party that has transformative aspirations in a very complex world requires a growing group of Marxist intellectuals.

By the same token, Marxist intellectuals found on university campuses would gain greatly from connections to labor and other social movements. In too many instances, they come up empty in a strategic and tactical sense.

14. A party of socialism in the 21st century searches for rifts and fissures within the ruling class and other social forces and shows no hesitation to take advantage of these differences. A successful struggle against a united ruling class is tough sledding.

15. A party of socialism squeezes every possible concession from its opponents, but it doesn’t blink an eye to compromise when the balance of forces dictates that course of action; the compromise may only make an inch of difference, but it is likely a lot of people live on that inch.

For sure, small-bore victories can dull the urgency of change and create illusions, but they can also raise hopes and expectations, deepen understanding and unity, and set the stage for struggle on higher ground. A people’s victory, even a minimal one, can teach more lessons than the most eloquent speeches by the best of us.

16. A party of socialism in the 21st century believes that majoritarian political movements are the midwives of reforms, radical and otherwise, and eco-socialist transformations. Militant minorities of comprised of progressive and left forces make a big difference are difference makers, but they can’t and shouldn’t try to substitute for broader masses of people. The cause may be righteous and the agitation compelling, but only when righteousness nor righteous rhetoric are joined by a material force does change happen.

17. The task of a party of socialism in the 21st century is to give leadership to the movement as a whole, to be a force for broad working class and people’s unity, to interconnect the particular and general demands of a multilayered social movement, to articulate a socialist vision and values – a challenge to be sure.

We have no illusions that we can meet this challenge through our efforts alone nor do we think any other organization or social movement on the left can either. The highway to radical democracy and socialism hinges on a far bigger, broad-based, and mature left than presently exists.

At the same time, we strongly believe the Communist Party, USA fills a uniquely necessary space on the continuum of the radical movement.

Our experience, our broad and flexible strategic and tactical concepts of struggle, our keen appreciation of the imperative of broad unity, our class, internationalist, and dialectical approach, our willingness to embrace new forms of organization, communication, and united action, and our vision allow us to make a vital contribution to the project of the left and to the struggle for human emancipation.

18. A party of 21st century socialism will give special importance to the struggle for racial and gender equality.

In recent decades vast political, economic, social and demographic transformations have occurred. Nevertheless, the fight for full racial and gender equality retains its overarching importance in its own and strategic terms.

Anyone who devalues the struggle for racial and gender equality (which are better understood as internal and organic to one another rather than intersecting; much the same could be said about class and its connection to race and gender) limits the sweep of any victory at best; at worst, it provides an opening to the most backward sections of our ruling class and their constituency to gain ascendancy ideologically and politically. Indeed, for three decades racist, misogynistic and homophobic appeals were the grease that smoothed the passage to power of the extreme right.

And no ebbing of this filth has happened since the election of Barack Obama two years ago. Actually, a ramped up right-wing-driven ideological counteroffensive has occurred.

A firm rebuff to this counteroffensive is imperative, and a special responsibility falls on the shoulders of white people and workers in this regard. Neither racism nor sexism is a special product of the working-class movement, as some suggest.

Saying this doesn’t imply that the working class has no hand at all in reproducing either form of inequality and oppression. To think so would be naïve.

But it would be more naïve to think that white and male workers have no interest in the fight for racial and gender equality and against racism and male supremacy. They do, and it is moral as well as material. Racism and sexism spiritually dehumanize as well as materially impoverish the entire working class.

Despite the deep embedding of unequal relations in the structures and political economy of capitalism, and the unceasing propagation by right wing extremism especially, the struggle against racism and sexism is winnable – but only on the basis a broad, united, multiracial, class-based movement. Anything less in today’s conditions will not stand a ghost’s chance of success, and, will, in turn, forestall progressive and socialist advance.

19. A party of socialism in the 21st century will vigorously combat nativism and xenophobia.

Immigrants bring to our country their cultures, labor power, and their traditions of struggle.

No one who has been involved in struggles on the contemporary scene can help but note the role of immigrant workers in fighting for democracy, workers’ rights, quality education, community empowerment, cultural heritage, and immigration laws that are humane and just. Their spirit is militant and anti-capitalist.

No wonder that the right wing demonizes them. Immigrant-bashing and denial of rights combines with racism and other backward ideologies and practices to divide the developing people’s movement. A party of socialism in the 21st century will elevate this struggle and combat this assault on the immigrant community across the country.

20. A party of socialism in the 21st century will give proper political importance to the struggle for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights – something that it didn’t do in the past.

Socialist society should not privilege one sexual orientation over another; instead it should celebrate sex, diverse sexual orientations, and marriage arrangements. Sexual longing is a deeply individual matter and love and marital partners shouldn’t be a matter of state concern.

More immediately, the movement for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights has emerged over the past four decades into a powerful and broad social movement that occupies an important position in the people’s movement. Through its efforts victories have been won and sensibilities of society changed.

Nevertheless, right-wing extremism continues to contest this movement’s legitimacy and aims. It continues to paint gay people as despised and immoral. Homophobia remains for this backward political grouping a wedge issue to be employed to mobilize its constituency. However, right-wing extremism isn’t winning this struggle, and while much still needs to be done, there is no reason to think that this will change.

21. A party of socialism in the 21st century will place a high priority on independent political action and the formation of a party independent of corporate capital.

Two contradictory trends are observable. On the one hand, millions are registering to vote as independents; still more feel alienated from the political process; and new independent parties and forms are cropping up at the local level.

On the other hand, the main social forces and organizations of political independence and the necessary base of an independent political party continue to work within the Democratic Party.

But with this twist: they operate independently of the organizational structures of that party. And that is likely to continue; in fact, as their dissatisfaction grows they will attempt to enlarge their voice and power.

In other words, the main and necessary forces of an independent political party will likely exhaust all or nearly all of the possibilities to reform the Democratic Party, including attempts to take it over, before looking for an exit. Our tactics should take this into account.

One final observation: we say too definitively that the independent forces stand no chance whatsoever of taking over the Democratic Party. That still may be the case, but it is a mistake to rule it out completely at this point.

22. A party of socialism in the 21st century is internationalist in outlook and practice. And well it should be.

Though we are barely a decade into the 21st century we have a good glimpse of what the lay of the land will look like decades ahead.

What is most striking is the growing imperative to address and resolve global problems in a timely way – global warming and environmental degradation, nuclear weapons buildup and proliferation, unceasing wars, resource conflicts, immense poverty, uneven development, health epidemics, etc.

What is the upshot of all this? These trends unless arrested could make the world unlivable.

In this dark cloud there is a silver lining however: hundreds of millions worldwide are becoming aware of the fraught situation and conscious of the need to take action. Self-interest and internationalism are merging, but it is fast enough?

Standing in the way is U.S. imperialism, which remains the main obstacle to a peaceful, livable, and sustainable planet. Both wings of the ruling class are determined to maintain U.S. primacy in the global system, notwithstanding employing different methods of rule – one by force and the other with a mix of diplomacy, multilateralism, soft power and force, but employed more judiciously.

While the differences between one and the other method of rule are important and should not be ignored, the overarching desire for top dog status worldwide remains regardless of who is in command of U.S. foreign policy,

Thus only a popular movement at home and abroad will compel U.S. imperialism to make a strategic retreat in every region of the world beginning with Central Asia and the Middle East, to end the occupation of Afghanistan, to complete the withdrawal of U.S. military presence from Iraq, to settle the long-standing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israeli government, to lift sanction regimes against Iran and other states and end the blockade on Cuba, to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons, to close up military bases around the world and dissolve NATO, and so forth.

A big challenge for sure, and crucial to winning the American people to engage in such a movement, is re-envisioning our role in the world community. The point isn’t for the U.S. government to simply to crawl into a national shell, but to reinsert itself into world affairs on the basis of cooperation, peace, equality, and mutual benefits. But as long as the notion of Manifest Destiny, of an “indispensable nation” lingers, the fight for a new democratic foreign policy will be immensely difficult.

It follows that the role of a party of socialism in the 21st century is to assist this process, to fight for international unity and peace, and against its own imperialism, and to articulate an alternative vision of the place of the U.S. in the world community.

23. A party of socialism in the 21st century will note and draw lessons from the enormous achievements of socialist societies. Social problems (such as unemployment and the burden and inadequacy of child care, for instance) that persist in capitalist societies were, if not solved, greatly alleviated in many of the countries of socialism. Nor can we forget the solidarity that the Soviet Union and other socialist countries provided to countries fighting to break out of the web of colonialism and neocolonialism, nor the decisive role of the Red Army in crushing Nazi Germany, nor the Soviet Union’s sustained opposition to nuclear war.

That said, a party of socialism should make an unequivocal break with Stalin and his associates, not to please the enemies or critics of socialism, but to acknowledge to millions that the forced and violent collectivization of agriculture, the purges and executions of hundreds of thousands of communists and other patriots, the labor camps that incarcerated, exploited and sent untold numbers of Soviet people to early deaths, and the removal of whole peoples from their homelands can’t be justified on the grounds of historical necessity or in the name of defending socialism. They were crimes against humanity.

To describe these atrocities as a mistake is a mistake – criminal: yes, a horror: yes, a terrible stain on the values and ideals of socialism: definitely.

To make matters worse, the practices of the Stalin regime set in place theoretical notions, structures and relations of governance, laws of socialist economy, justifications for concentrated power, and a great-leader syndrome that in the end weakened socialism in the USSR and other socialist countries.

I can’t speak for other parties, and have no desire to, but our party should be unequivocal in its condemnation of the Stalin regime.

24. A party of socialism in the 21st century is well aware that the transition to socialism is complex and contingent on many factors, both intended and unintended, foreseen and unforeseen, on conscious actions of contending forces and on factors largely beyond its control (imperialist wars, economic crises, global warming, resource wars, natural disasters, terrorist actions, etc.).

There are pauses as well as surges; incremental changes give way to ruptural tears in the social fabric; positions are won in the state, economy and civil society, but setbacks and shifts in momentum are part of the package too. Dress rehearsals happen more than once.

Changes in the realm of thinking interface with changes in the realm of action. Far more than social transformations of the past, socialist transformation rests on a deep-going change in values and thinking; the working people are fully into it, mind as well as soul.

Contrary to our customary understanding that one ruptural – insurrectionary – event defines the transition process, a series of turning points, as I see it, map the transition over a protracted period of time. In other words, more than one constitutive moment defines the transition period to socialism, and in their totality creates the conditions for a flourishing socialist society.

As crucial as control over and the democratization of the state is, it is still only a piece, albeit a necessary facilitating piece, of a larger transitional and interactive process that decentralizes and diffuses people’s power throughout society.

The state in other words is one, but not the only institution to be transformed by forces within and outside of it.

Which comes first – the transforming of the state or civil society – is a question that bears little analytical fruit. The relationship between the two is dialectical and thus the two interact constantly and in complicated ways.

All this is premised on deepening and broadening of socialist consciousness, on building up the political and organizational capacity of the working class and its allies, on sustained mobilization on a scale never before seen, and on an ability to resist and block attempts to illegally and unconstitutionally reverse democratic gains.

It also rests on an organized, flexible, strategically insightful, united, and tested leadership (of parties and movements) that fights for breadth of alliances, takes advantage of the slightest differences among its adversaries, and above all, fights for broad unity and sustained mass action.

In recent years, radical social transformations have occurred in relatively peaceful (peaceful is not passive) circumstances in Latin America. There an active, organized, and overwhelming majority of the working people led by left coalitions (in which communists are a part) and its allies have democratically won political positions in state structures and then utilized them to isolate elites, dislodge neoliberal governments, and clear the ground for democratic, social, socialist transformations.

A party of socialism in the 21st century should study this experience closely. Broadly speaking, the transition to socialism in the U.S., I suspect, will follow a similar path, differences notwithstanding.

The traditional imagery of the revolutionary process – economic breakdown, insurrection, dual power, violence and bloody clashes, smash the state, and the quick rollout of socialism – provides few insights. In fact, I would argue that it is an analytical deadweight; it favors simplicity over complexity; it dulls and dumbs down the socialist imagination; and it’s disabling strategically and tactically.

Underlying much of the above is 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 internal contradictions and is a site of class and democratic struggles – not just any site though, but a crucial and decisive site.

Thus the nature of the struggle isn’t simply the people against the state, but the people winning positions and influence in the state and then utilizing them to make changes (within and outside of the state) in a highly contested political environment – an environment of sharp clashes, uncertain outcomes, and an engaged people.

Now some will say that this is highly unlikely, even utopian. But one has to ask: is the seizure of power and the quick dismantlement of the existing state in favor of a new “out of the ashes” socialist state any less utopian? The latter model has been ascendant for nearly a century and still socialism is only a wish among communists in the advanced capitalist world.

Of course, the reasons for this are many, but I don’t believe the insurrectionary model of revolution makes the road any easier or is any more realistic as a reading of the future.

25. For a party of socialism in the 21st century, its vision of socialism is a work in progress.

It will have distinctive features and characteristics, springing from our own history and experience. It will complete the unfinished democratic tasks left over from capitalism, while preserving and deepening existing democratic freedoms and civil liberties. It will breathe new life into representative democracy and uphold the rule of law. It will recognize the people as sovereign as well as register support for a multi-party system of governance and alternations of parties in power if the people so decide.

Our socialism will bring an end to exploitation of wage labor, not in one fell swoop, but over time. It will expand collective/democratic rights, while at the same time giving pride of place to human fulfillment and creativity. 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.

Our socialism will be anything but drab. It will have a modern and dynamic feel to it. It will dance to the beat of our people, our cultural diversity, and our many rhythms. It will celebrate the best traditions of our nation and give “love of country” a new democratic content.

Our socialism will embrace a new humanist ethos and value system as we overcome divisions of class, gender and race. A community of caring, kindness, equality, and solidarity will become the dominant realities of daily life.

Our socialism will encourage mass participation in every sphere of life. To do so, the workday and workweek will be reduced and a social wage will be legislated. But these measures alone are inadequate for at least half the population. The workload for women has increased in recent decades as women have entered the workplace and as the modern requirements of daily life (longer life expectancy for the elderly, for example) have fallen disproportionately on them.

Thus new social arrangements to care for the very young (free quality child care for all) and the very old as well as collective alternatives to what is still “women’s work” – cooking, cleaning, and laundry – are necessary. Women combine paid work and unpaid household labor into a pre-dawn to post-dusk workday.

Our socialism will insist on the separation of church and state, but it will also assume that people of faith will be active participants in society.

During the transition period, at socialism’s dawn in our country as in others, and then long into the day, I expect that a mixed economy, operating in a regulated socialist market and combining different forms of socialist, cooperative and private property, will prevail, albeit with tensions, contradictions and dangers.

What the exact mix is, how it changes, and the particular forms of democratic control will change as conditions – objective and subjective – change. Such ownership relations and market mechanisms do not preclude economic planning or a national investment strategy.

In fact, given that the longer term task of a socialist state and society is to shift the logic of production from wealth for the few, militarism and limitless growth to production for human need and economic sustainability, it is hard to imagine how such an enormous transformation can be successfully tackled without planning and a society-wide investment strategy, albeit based on broad consultation with and democratic control by working people and their representatives.

Unlike capitalist apologists who say that private ownership by the few is the material basis of freedom and economic security, proponents of socialism will rebut such a claim with the propaganda of the deed: they will show in practice that socialist forms of property and economic organization are the ground on which freedom can flower.

The charge of socialism’s builders is to bring the social and democratic into the main sites of socialization – the state, economy, media, and culture; socialism in this century should be every mindful of the difficult, yet necessary task of subordinating the state to social power.

In other words, the state in socialist society shouldn’t hover above and control every aspect of society. Such socialism becomes distant, alien and bureaucratic. Instead, the builders of socialism should put into place a dense network of worker and community organizations that are politically and financially empowered to govern in various institutional settings.

Contrary to some on the left, socialism essence isn’t reducible to property/ownership relations and class power in the abstract. Although both are structural foundations of socialist society, they don't by themselves constitute socialism.

What they do is create the possibility for a socialist society, but socialism becomes real, becomes socialism only to the degree that working people exchange alienation and powerlessness for engagement, empowerment and full democratic participation, only to the degree that power, decision-making and planning are diffused to the wider community. Otherwise, they become mystifying shells that conceal unsocialist structures and practices.

Working class initiative and a sense of real ownership of social property are the sinew and ligaments, of socialism, while legal relations, public ownership and structures of class power are facilitating mechanisms.

In short, a party of socialism in the 21st century will measure the degree of socialist development by real relations, not formal ones.

Socialism gives priority to sustainability and sufficiency, not growth without limits, not endless consumption. Socialist production can't be narrowly focused on inputs and outputs, nor employ purely and narrowly constructed quantitative criteria to measure efficiency and determine economic goals. Nor can status and the fulfillment of human needs be reduced to the constant expansion of consumer goods. Socialism isn’t simply a “provision and rights society.”

That said, we cannot wait for socialism to address the dangers of climate change and environmental degradation. That must be done now. We are approaching tipping points which if reached will give global warming a momentum that human actions will have little or no control over.

Finally, in order for a socialist society to flourish, the process of change has to occur on several levels almost simultaneously. Just as the emergence of capitalism rested on the coincidence of several processes interacting together, the same is the case with a socialist society.

26. A party of socialism in the 21st century will construct its own organizational model in line with its own material conditions and needs. It shouldn’t be hatched out of thin air or imported from another country. The size of the membership, the concentration and location of members, the breadth of leadership, the scope and intensity of the class struggle, and its aims are the main determinants of the organizational character of a 21st century party – its structures, forms and rules of organization.

The structures, forms and rules also depend on the organizational and cultural traditions of our country.

Organizing club meetings every two weeks, insisting that every member belong to a club and pay monthly dues, agitating clubs to focus on a shop or neighborhood, and expecting every member to support the entire party program, circulate the press, and abide by the decisions of the majority is one way to structure a communist party. But it is not the only way. We need much more flexibility as far as structures of organization and membership expectations are concerned.

We are a small party with a committed but thin layer of leaders that hopes to become a much bigger party in a non-revolutionary situation, in a far-flung country, and in the age of the Internet.

In this era defined in many ways by the internet, we shouldn’t attempt to replicate in every, or even most, details the old model of communist organization. A party with a high degree of discipline and centralized structure of organization doesn’t fit the present status of our party or the zeitgeist of our times. This isn’t 1917 – our society is exceedingly complex, the mentality of the Cold War is receding, people are busy as hell, a good number of boomers are tired, and young party members are juggling careers, debt, and activism.

These realities require new forms of interaction, communication, education , decision-making, organization and messaging. And, not least, they require new standards for party membership and a new style of leadership that politically engages the membership and leads by force of argument.

So where does this leave democratic centralism? I’m for dropping the term. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m for collective discussion, broad interaction, democratic decisions, testing decisions in life, and the struggle for unity in action.

But the rule that every member is obligated to carry out party decisions no longer fits our circumstances. The truth is that we never enforced it. If someone chose not to carry out a decision, nothing was done in most instances. If we can’t win members and leaders to a position politically then administrative action is unlikely to help.

The main way to mobilize and unite the party is through political discussions, education, transparency of decisions, persuasion, and sound political decisions.

For similar reasons I suggest we drop the term “unity of will.” Among other reasons, it’s a term, or really a concept, that can easily be abused, and it has in our past.

27. A party of the 21st century must be Internet-based. To believe otherwise is to turn one’s back on recent experience, especially President Obama’s 2008 campaign. The argument that Internet work is at war with on-ground organizing should be retired.

The Internet gives us a tool to organize people far beyond our organized spaces; it allows us to grow faster in old and new places; it provides a menu of programs and services that any member or club can easily access; it allows us to compensate for our thinness of leadership; it makes possible a new division of labor; it gives us the ability to communicate regularly with the whole membership in a timely way; it makes it possible for the People’s World and Political Affairs to reach an infinitely bigger audience; it makes it possible for us to organize meetings in cyber space across thousands of miles, and to expand our visibility and presence.

So far our experience has been positive, but we have only scratched the surface of the Internet’s potential.

28. A party of socialism in the 21st century should open the door to new members. Joining should be no more difficult than joining other social organizations; going through political hoops and close vetting aren’t necessary. That is for White House appointees, not people who take a liking to us.

What is needed is not more stringent standards, but a range of ways that new members can become familiar with our program, policies and activities. The Internet is critical in this regard, but I would also add that we need an on-the-ground team to travel into organized and unorganized areas to meet and greet new members, to acquaint them with our party and its positions, and to hear what they are thinking.

29. A party of socialism in the 21st century will examine its history with a critical eye. To do otherwise is to cut severe today’s party from our. No party of social movement on the left can claim as rich a history as we can. But that treasure-trove becomes valuable only to the degree that we see it in all of its complexity.

Sometimes we act as if the only mistake we made was our failure to rein in Earl Browder; other times we mechanically transport forms of organization and struggle from one era to another as if nothing has happened in the meantime.

At still other times we resist shedding old ideas, schemes dogmas, symbols and practices that time has passed by or cast a negative judgment on.

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.

We do no favors to past or future generations of communists when we keep the lid on our mistakes. If we could conjure up our deceased comrades, I’m sure that they would insist that we look at our past with a critical and mature eye; they would tell us not to worry about their feelings or legacy, which I would add stands on its own quite well.

A party of the 21st century takes inspiration from our past but shouldn’t be imprisoned by it. The past should only be a general guide to the future, but no a blueprint for the future.

As mentioned at the outset of this article the effective forces and coalitions to meet the challenges of the 21st century are not yet gathered together. But we are quietly confident that they will be as we go deeper into the 21st century. We are also confident that the Communist Party will meet history’s challenge as well, that is, we will change, grow, and provide leadership to people searching for a better life and more just society.

Special Agent of the week

2010-09-28T17:34:00.001-04:00

On the FBI raids across the country

2010-09-25T16:33:00.003-04:00

As many of you know I am the Chair of the Special Agents Club #1. We will be releasing a statement in the distant future. We are pledging full support for these raids. Carry on comrades.

Special Agent Jordan will be in charge of coordinating our activities across the country. Most of the Special Agents are young.

We will be looking to recruit Special Agents in keeping with our goal of initiating mass activity. These raids are sparking interest in our movement.

Now that we have so many Special Agents in our Party we will begin to influence the politics of our country in many unique ways.

I have ordered no publication on any information in the PW.

The Educational Director of the Special Agents Club #1 is Joel Wendland.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Please I beg you to stop attacking me and the CPUSA

2010-09-15T21:27:00.003-04:00

I have just about had it. I am at my wits end. The Minnesota Problem has gone viral.

I am going bonkers.

I have now engaged in debate with a pseudonym. Now I am thinking Thomas Kenny might be my own daughter.

Someone, anyone, please help me put an end to the Minnesota Problem.

Please. I am begging for your help.

The PW website has been taken over by Minnesotanites.

Can someone go out and bring Bruce Bostick back? I need more Prozac.

Damn I wish we would have changed the name of this Party.

I feel like giving this Party back to the Communists.

Will someone have my back covered in Washington?

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board, CPUSA

YCL leads the way in dropping Marxism-Leninism and education from Club activity

2010-09-15T01:09:00.002-04:00

Oh, what a relief. Young people who don't give us any problems.

The Young Communist League is to be commended for dropping the teaching of Marxism-Leninism from its Clubs.

I never like the concept of Marxism-Leninism anyways.

I am asking that anyone seen carrying copies around of the "The Ten Classics of Marxism" be reported immediately to the National Office for purging.

Look at this excellent "how to" article about how to build a YCL Club.

I think we still have a few CPUSA Clubs around. We need them to follow the lead of the YCL:

How to Build a YCL Club

Building a YCL Club

Every YCL club has to start somewhere, so take a chance. If you feel like the only communist in your city or sometimes even your state, build a Young Communist club to fight for economic and social justice. Look around at the developments in your city or in your school. Are there issues that piss other people off?

Policies that discriminate against people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians or women?

How are poor and working students treated by authorities?

The best way to build a club is to build solidarity around issues, and to develop understanding of what the problems are, what systems are in place and most importantly, how those systems can be changed. Call a meeting around a problem in your area, invite people to join a YCL club in order to fight the issue. At first the weight will be on your shoulders, persuade a friend or friends to help you run and plan the meeting.

Don't limit your invitations just to friends or people you know. Post fliers with either a phone number or a place they can meet to ask questions. Call other community and youth groups in your area. Talk to anyone who will listen. With time and perseverence you will develop other leaders and organizers who will share in future events.

Building Solidarity

The best way to fight isolation is to build solidarity. Take the first step towards building a YCL club in your area: Invite a speaker from the Young Communist League or the Communist Party. Post fliers madly, overwhelming odds are that other people also want to fight capitalism.

Set up a YCL table at a school event. Call the national office for literature to hand out. Ask questions about what is the YCL so you are comfortable answering other people's questions. Stress that the strength of the YCL is the sum of its members-- members ultimately determine what YCL can mean, what YCL can achieve.

Throw a YCL party. Do you belong to a band or know a DJ that has similar interests? Communism is rooted in culture, solidarity and unity, what more does a good party need? Lenin puts it in his own way, "Revolutions are festivals of the oppressed."

Be creative. You could run a comic strip contest or a poetry reading around a leftist theme, whatever you're into can help build the movement.

Ask for advise from veterans of the movement and communisty leaders. Getting tips from the wise halps you avoid the mistakes they've learned from.

Sign up sheets are great. Use them. Call back people who sign up to find out more about YCL. Call back once, twice, three times, leave messages, don't give up on those who are always "out."

Distribute responsibilities among members, do not let a small leadership assume all of the work.

Invite a wide circle of people, at all costs avoid cliques. The greater numbers of people you draw into the club the greater range of talents and skills you will have.

Share the joys of phone calls among all the members. Give each club member a phone list of people to call, contacting these people is their responsibility.

Pair up a new member with a more experienced member, working in teams builds confidence and organizing skills.

Nuts and Bolts

You've put together a club of people who come to meetings consistently, or who work steadily on campaigns. How do you build an organization out of a core group? The club structure varies slightly from club to club, but most clubs have elected office holders, regular (ish) meetings and membership lists. The following suggestions are for guidance, not hard and fast rules. Different clubs develop their own styles for running an effective and participatory meeting.

Structure

Officers can help a YCL club run smoothly and ensure that club decisions are followed through. Commonly, clubs elect three officers: coordinator, educational coordinator and treasurer who are accountable to the YCL members and club policies.

Meetings

At the end of each meeting: elect a meeting chair for the following meeting. The meeting chair could be a new member or an older member, for the next meeting they must draw up a tentative agenda (with help from other YCLers), present the agenda at the meeting and make any necessary changes or additions. The meeting chair can write down people's names in the order they raise their hands and call on speakers in turn. The meeting chair makes sure the meeting doesn't go through the night, that all members get a chance to speak, that discussions are respectful and to the point.

Members

Members should sign a membership list once they decide to join, keep the national YCL informed about new members. Membership dues for the YCL are presently a bargain at $1 per year. To build a strong club, all members should be involved in strategy sessions: one person cannot decide what campaigns to run and how to proceed in campaigns. Member discussions about the club goals and direction are vital to developing a strong club.

Leaders

The primary responsibility of a leader is to find and develop other leaders. A leader helps other members build the skills to mobilize, inspire and educate other people. A strong leader motivates others to take on more responsibility rather than do everything her or himself. A powerful club builds on the strengths of all its members to build a star team rather than one star player. A good organization demands many different skills and abilities, so build initiative and creativity in members' responses, and trust in the abilities of your comrades. To repeat an old YCL slogan, "Every YCLer should become a leader."

Strategy

Strong political activism develops from a united YCL. Discuss the club's strategies and goals in meetings, give members a space to express disagreement and come to resolutions about how the club should proceed. Build the line together, give ample room to hear different opinions, actively work to persuade and consolidate different perspectives, since squelching dissent can only lead to problems further down the way. When the club votes on a strategy all members should follow the club's decision as best as possible given the changing political conditions.

Communication

YCL is a national organization and your club is part of a larger movement to organize young people. Keep the YCL national informed about what's going on in your highschool and city. Drop a note or give a call from time to time.

Planning a YCL Campaign

The primary purpose of an organizing campaign is to educate people. Campaigns develop leadership, teach people about their collective strength, and most importantly, illustrate in concrete terms how capitalism functions to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. A well-run campaign can win important concessions, build broad solidarity between people to combat injustice, and strengthen YCL clubs to fight the next battle.

Questions to Begin a Campaign:

What is the political and economic context of this problem?

How does this campaign raise issues of class struggle and the fight against racism, sexism and homophobia?

What problem are we trying to address?

How can we change this problem?

Has this problem come up before? Where? How did people respond?

Who are the front-line decision makers on this issue?

How will this campaign build and strengthen the YCL club?

Who is most affected by the problem? Who is our constituency?

Who are our allies? Who are our opponents?

Define your long-range and short-term goals: for whom and for what is the YCL club being organized? Be specific in your answers.

Characteristics of a Campaign

Clear time frame-- There are advantages to short and long-term time frames. While long terms campaigns develop leadership skills and in-depth analysis, they can suffer from burn-out. Look at the conditions for your campaign: keep in mind when and how long vacations are, whether people are around in the summer, and how long members can participate. Most importantly, lay out the incremental steps for a campaign so that people feel a sense of progress.

Clear target or enemy-- The campaign should be focused to target either the person who has the power to grant your demands, or someone who can pressure that person to concede. Figure out what structures the target hides behind, and who can influence the target. Also, know your target's soft spots and self-interest. The target may change in the campaign, but aim for specific people rather than amorphous bureaucracies.

Clear issues--Define your campaigns so that solutions are brought to the fore. Also, demand specific changes in the system. Rather than organize around a larger problem such as "poor schools," target racist and ethnocentric curriculum and books, weak or nonexistent rape and sexual harassment policies, elitist funding policies that give huge salaries to administrators and peanuts for books, computers and teachers' salaries.

Clear constituency--Define the issue to appeal to the broadest possible constituency without compromising the integrity of your campaign.

Clear ideological position--Develop a strong critique of the capitalist system to draw the connections between your specific campaign and larger systems at work. Denial of human rights and equal access to resources are an integral facet of a global capitalism. Only in solidarity with each other can we build the strength to combat exploitative and oppressive conditions. The campaign should build your constituency's sense of their collective strength and their rights to economic and political equality.

Solidifying the Campaign

Once your club has thought through the general campaign, the second stage is to solidify. In this phase you research potential campaign handles, consider your club's resources and plan a strategy which contains tactical steps.

Research

Identify and thoroughly research your opponents, in the process don't forget to locate your allies. Investigate the dirt on your opponents, you can use this information to draw wider support for your campaign. Research can help you build ethical, political and economic arguments that legitimate the justice of your campaign. Your analysis of the issue shows how your position is good, fair, just, constitutional, legal etc.

Use this information to develop a campaign handle. A handle is your point of entry--of turning a "problem" (poor public schools) into an "issue" (failure to allocate enough money towards school resources such as books, teachers and computers). A handle relates your position to specific decision-making authorities who can act to do what is right. A handle does not define the parameters of your campaign but helps your organization and your issue gain legitimacy.

Every issue has a wide variety of handles. In the case of poor schools, handles might include: the provisions of an act on public education (get specifics) a federal mandate on minimum standards for public schools (get specifics) a legal case on public neglect of schoolchildren (get specifics) a specific school board member or college trustee who fights for economic justice in education misused federal funds that fail to support the educational future of all students.

Resources

To effectively plan your campaign take a clear look at your club's resources. Evaluate your club funds, active members in the club, the experience of your club leadership, your club's strength to disrupt the system, any internal problems to solve in order for the campaign to succeed, media contacts, access to decision-makers, and alliances that could lead to other resources.

Strategy

Clearly outline your long range approach (strategy) and your short range approach (tactics). Strategy includes all of the following parts: Definition of your goals An evaluation of your resources Identification of your constituents, allies and opponents Definition of your target(s) An outline of your tactics.

Tactics

Tactics include media events, actions for information and demands, public hearings, strikes, law suits, accountability sessions, elections and negotiations Tactics should be fresh, creative, witty, imaginative and pointed. Tactics develop from the idea that you have the numbers and/or the capacity to embarrass a target and alter the usual course of business. Some tips about tactics from Mike Miller, director of the Organizing Training Center: Use tactics that your club understands and are excited by Power is what you have and what the enemy thinks you have The press plays a role in the latter.

Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy. Try to catch them off guard, do the unexpected, put pressure where it is not expected. Ridicule (and flattery) are important tools--label the enemy. Keep up the pressure on a campaign. Pick new fights. Have a new action every week. Keep on top of the issues. Have constructive alternatives to offer. Always press for written and binding agreements, for timetables and due dates. Pick the target, personalize it, and don't let the target diffuse responsibility.

Know Your Opposition

At the beginning of your campaign try to neutralize your opponents by inviting as many as possible to join the campaign. Consult potential opponents to put them in the position of encouraging your action. Recruit individuals who know opposition leaders to ask for their support. For a public meeting, invite a representative of the opposition to attend (you may want to sandwich the speaker between your most effective speakers, or cut down on their time to talk, but the invitation defuses a potential attempt to disrupt the event).

Research the background and spokesperson of your opposition carefully. If opponents try to disrupt your event, you can expose their true interests and counter their efforts. If publicity will stir opposition into actions, don't publicize your specific actions in advance.

Evaluating the Campaign

After an action, or after one leg of the campaign review your actions. The purpose of reviewing the action is to develop a consensus definition of the experience. To build consensus, elicit as many opinions and reactions from participants as possible. Evaluate what meaningful concessions were gained, assess turnout, and press coverage, check the performance of leaders and committees. Connect each event to the campaign as a whole, since the evaluation stage can develop and change your club's conceptualization of the problem and your strategy.

Press Coverage

Press coverage of YCL campaigns and actions can build your base of support, recruit new members and bring additional people to your events. Press coverage is not entirely predictable, but typing your own stories can help bring you the coverage you want. Also, develop contacts in the press who are sympathetic to the YCL and your campaigns. A press release includes the following: Cover letter -- the cover letter should provide a YCL club member's name who will act as a press contact, the name of the YCL or coalition and a phone number.

If possible, address the fax to a specific journalist's or editor's name, the newsroom's or paper's name, and add their fax and phone number (in case your fax goes astray). In "memo" you can tell them if there is a particular release date for the article. If it's reporting a surprise action, ask them to hold the article until a certain time and date. Article -- the article should give a short, engaging and clear account of your event, action or position. Include quotations from people involved in the action or event, provide some analysis of the issues involved. Draw the media into covering the event through your reportage.

Chances are that your framing of the issue will affect how the press reports it-- your article gives them a shortcut and can give you good publicity.

Press release procedure:

Fax the cover letter and article to your local and/or national papers and news channels. For announcements of upcoming events, give your paper time to publish your bulletin, a week or more depending on your paper's policy. The morning before the event is scheduled to take place call the newspaper or TV station: Find out if they received (and filed) your fax Ask if they will cover the story Try to get a definite answer about whether they will attend

The Young Communist League is to be commended for dropping the teaching of Marxism-Leninism from its Clubs.

I never like the concept of Marxism-Leninism anyways.

I am asking that anyone seen carrying copies around of the "The Ten Classics of Marxism" be reported immediately to the National Office for purging.

Going as we are we should be able to smoothly phase our operations into the Democratic Party sooner than I anticipated. It is always nice to know we can work so effectively towards our goal.

Beware of anyone calling us Dumb Donkeys. They are probably Republican trolls.

Sam Webb

Chair, National Board CPUSA

Get up, stand up....

2010-09-12T23:04:00.000-04:00

Ok.

Sit down; we aren't going to fight.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

The great thinkers

2010-08-27T23:19:00.002-04:00

We have decided to do away with the labels like Party Theoretician.

We will now have Party Thinkers.

I will be designating the Party Thinkers.

Joining me as Party Thinkers are:

Joel Wendland from Podunk Town, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

John Case the loony lonesome hobo from Blueberry Hill.

Erwin Marquit from the Twin Cities.

Bruce Bostick our thinker extraordinaire.

I hereby proclaim these people to be our official Party Thinkers.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Overlooked item

2010-08-27T14:05:00.004-04:00

We need to vote to give Carl Davidson permission to speak for the CPUSA.

Let me hear from the Nays first.

Ok, now the Yeas.

The yeas have it; Carl Davidson now has permission to speak for the CPUSA.

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board, CPUSA

2010-08-27T14:05:00.001-04:00

Two items today

2010-08-27T13:48:00.002-04:00

Everyone has been asking about Bruce Bostick. We gave Bruce a couple of bottles of anti-depressants and told him to come back to us when he feels up to working for the Democrats and Obama.

This other gem is being distributed against my orders. Some delegates to our convention have taken steps that will bring them into conflict with my explicit orders that no one is to bad mouth me.

If anyone knows who these delegates are please give me or one of my Special Agents a call.

Of course everyone is entitled to their opinions as long as they agree with me.

I think I might now who this is from Kentucky. I have thought about this for two weeks. I think I have it figured out.

Here is what they say. A Trotskyist of all people is mailing this around:

Impressions of the CPUSA convention

Written by A Group of Delegates

Many friends and comrades have asked us: what really happened at the CPUSA Convention on May 21-23, eleven weeks ago, at Party headquarters in New York City?

So far, there are only the self-congratulatory appraisals, one by Party chair Sam Webb and another by his supporter John Case. Both are champions of the social reformist trend in the Party.

In the view of the Communist (that is, the Marxist-Leninist) wing of the CPUSA, however, the May 21-23, 2010 convention was a disaster. We see the Convention as a scandalous retreat from the US Party’s honorable history of principled struggle. The Convention was a retreat from socialism, class struggle, political independence, and internationalism. The Convention gave up ground on the fight against racism, imperialism, and monopoly.

It was not a convention rich in substance. What little substance there was, was objectionable, and came in the Main Report and the Composite Resolutions, which are available in full at www.cpusa.org/a-way-out-of-the-deepening-crisis/ and http://www.cpusa.org/29th-national-convention/.

The Main Report
Sam Webb’s report could have been written by any liberal. When his followers dutifully referred to it as "brilliant," many a delegate could barely believe it.

It is known that one or more members of the National Board (NB) urged Sam Webb to take into account preconvention discussion critical of his line. He refused, calling such criticism the outpouring of a “small minority.” In the old days many ideas in preconvention discussion -- even if critical of the leadership -- would have been taken into account and discussed in the Main Report. That did not happen this time.

His Main Report is full of Straw Men deployed against his left critics in the Party. Skillful at writing opportunist double talk, Webb can compose sentences that, to the unwary reader, sound like common sense. Read more closely, however, his formulations throw open the door through which have marched the reformism, tailism, and American Exceptionalism that are aggravating the crisis in the CPUSA. For example:

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

Our vision of socialism is a work in progress…

Our socialist vision should have a contemporary and dynamic feel; it should be rooted in today’s conditions and our national experience. If it has a “foreign” feel to it, people will reject it.

What I want to do is correct one-sidedness in our thinking. A transfer in class power -- which will more likely be a series of contested moments during which qualitative changes in power relations in favor of the working-class and its allies take place...

Advances?
Webb began his report with a list of what he views as “advances” since the last CP convention in 2005. Many of these he credits to the Obama Administration which took office in January 2009.

It’s a curious list. Much of his list is simply Obama’s promises or hopes hailed as if they were achievements. The Administration talks about “reining in Wall Street.” It aspires to the abolition of nuclear weapons. Global warming has been put “on the agenda.”

Much of the list is less than earth-shaking in importance. For example, the White House issued a proclamation on Workers’ Memorial Day.

Some items are wholly imaginary: “The pendulum of power has shifted.” He claims “progressives are on the offensive.” “Torture was prohibited.”

2005 versus 2010: Some Facts
His list of “advances,” of course, purports to be evidence justifying the CPUSA policy of tailing Obama and the Democrats. Here is counterevidence:

In 2005 the US didn’t have 30,000 fresh troops in Afghanistan. Now it has, all told, nearly 100,000 there, not counting mercenaries.

In 2005 the US had a military budget of around $600 billion. Now it is around $708 billion.

In 2005 there was the blockade of Cuba. In 2010 there is a reauthorized blockade of Cuba.

In 2005 Honduras had a constitutionally elected government. Now it has a usurper government installed by the US and its Honduran allies.

In 2005 Guantanamo was open. In 2010 Guantanamo is still open.

In 2005 the Cuban Five were in prison. In 2010 the Cuban Five remain in prison.

In 2005, in the housing bubble, predatory lenders targeted people of color. In 2010 mortgage delinquencies, and foreclosure and evictions are at an all-time high, and the victims are disproportionately people of color.

In 2005 the unemployment rate of Black workers was double the unemployment rate of white workers. In 2010 Black workers’ unemployment rate was still double the white unemployment rate, if not more.

In 2005 we needed health care reform. In 2010 we got a new health inurance "reform" law that entrenches the private, profit-making insurance carriers, the most parasitic sector of finance capital.

In 2005 with Bush in the White House and Republican control of Congress, the war in Iraq wasn’t winding down. In 2010 with Democratic control of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, the Iraq War is still not winding down. It is being re-branded.

In 2005 we had a president who had recently launched a war of aggression in Iraq; in 2010 we have a president who escalated a war of aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2005 before the housing bubble burst, investment bankers and other lords of high finance were raking in billions by fraudulent means. In 2010, two years after the crash exposed them, the same lords of finance, their bonuses fattened by taxpayer billions, walk in and out of Congressional hearings fearing no one. They thumb their noses at the Congress and the public.

In 2005 the party had weekly newspaper we could give out at plant gates. Now it has a cyber newspaper.

If there was anything new in Webb’s report it was the reaffirmation of tailism, more emphatically than ever. Webb stated that for the CPUSA there is only to be “independent politics inside the Democratic Party.”

The Official “Composite” Resolutions

The content of the composite resolutions pushed through by the leadership illustrate vividly the political decay.

Historically, in the US working class movement, the chief features of right social democracy are 1) the defense of imperialism and 2) the soft-peddling of the struggle against racism. This convention marks a big shift in that direction.

The original resolutions from the Party grassroots were combined with similar resolutions and “edited” by the Resolutions Committee. But the “editing” destroyed the original political thrust of the submitted resolutions. It would be an exaggeration to say the Composite Resolutions bore any resemblance to the original resolutions. No original resolutions were read to or voted on by the Convention body.

One hour was allowed for discussion of the resolutions. The resolutions committee spent 45 minutes reading the edited resolutions, word-for-word out loud. Discussion was cut off after 15 minutes, even though many people were lined up to speak.

“Composite” Resolution #5, the long resolution on Peace and Solidarity is the most disgraceful and dangerous of all the resolutions. It is the most removed from anti-imperialist principles. It defends the Obama foreign policy against the facts. When facts don’t conform to the tailist policy, it adjusts the facts, asserting, for example, that the US withdrawal from Iraq is “on track.”

The underlying fiction put forth by the leadership is: the Obama Administration is never guilty of any crimes. The Obama Administration only does bad things “under pressure from the right wing.”

This Peace and Solidarity resolution will be of great interest to the international Communist movement, which can only conclude that it no longer has a Communist Party ally in the belly of the beast.

This resolution means the CPUSA leadership is consciously choosing alignment with Obama instead of the struggle against imperialism. The CPUSA leaders do not want to struggle against imperialist war, which Obama is waging and expanding.

It is easier for the CPUSA to make common cause with the US Administration on the basis of the golden words of his various speeches calling for nuclear arms cuts. The CPUSA wants “a new peace movement,” as Party peace leaders have stated, one that will dodge the issue of imperialist aggression. It will, instead, support nuclear disarmament and stress the wastefulness of military spending in terms of funds unavailable for economic and social needs.

This, then, is the most shameful consequence of this opportunist leadership's loss of its working-class and Marxist-Leninist bearings. It is de facto acquiescing to the criminal U.S. imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Fight for Jobs, Resolution #1, was supposed to be showcased at the Convention. It is little different from the AFL-CIO program. A clear Marxist approach, for example, would entail the class-struggle demand to cut the workweek with no cut in pay. Such a remedy would expand jobs at the expense of corporate profits. This notion is nowhere to be found. Worse, while the resolution takes note of the especially high unemployment rates among Blacks, Latinos, women, youth, etc. it opportunistically does not call for affirmative action in hiring and re-hiring them, the classic CPUSA position for many decades.

The Special Report on the Fight against Racism (Resolution # 2) True to the key policy of Webb and his allies -- Tail Obama and the Democrats -- this resolution sees the upsurge of racism (SB1070, the Arizona racial profiling law, the wave of anti-Muslim discrimination and repression) as a response from the ultra-right to the election of Obama. With this resolution, the CPUSA fight against racism is no longer primarily motivated by the necessity of building working class unity. Rather, the CPUSA leaders fear the ultra right is trying to “disrupt” the workings of the new Administration. In other words, the Obama Administration’s political interests, not working-class unity, are the main preoccupation. This resolution also dodges the question of affirmative action.

The Resolution on Political Action (Resolution # 3), equates the ultra- right with the Republican Party and shuns a class analysis of the Obama Administration. This resolution could have been written by the Democratic National Committee. It pledges to “extend and defend” the “victories” won in the November 2008 election. It is, simply put, more tailism.

The Resolution on Immigrant Rights (# 4) merely restates the AFL-CIO position in favor of immigration reform. It leaves out the highly relevant fact that deportations of undocumented workers have increased under an Obama Administration eager to appease nativist sentiment. According to figures from the federal immigration enforcement agency, in 2009 the Obama Administration deported 389,834 people, about 20,000 more than in 2008, the final year of the Bush Administration.

Resolution # 6, on Party-building, manages to discuss the “challenges” to Party growth without acknowledging that the Party membership is in steep decline. An honest discussion of why recruitment is failing was omitted.

How many party members are there? In a report on Party Internet work and Internet “recruiting,” one NB member inadvertently gave away the real size of this declining party, a number often lied about. In 2005 the CPUSA had 2500 members, according to Sam Webb. At the 2010 convention the NB member in question declared “3 times a week a new application comes by Internet, and at this rate the party could double its size in three years.” Do the math. If there are 150 yearly Internet applications, the current membership may be reckoned to be around 450-500 at most.

The present leaders would have us believe, of course, that the steep decline has nothing to do with the politics of the leadership. Rather, it is subtly implied that it is the members who must change their ways. Members are to blame, and they must work differently.

More on the Character of the Convention
The grim reality we face is that, in the May 2010 convention, the right-wing faction in the leadership led by Webb, for now, has consolidated its hold over the party.

The outcome was dreadful, but it was not entirely surprising. Opportunism has been the increasingly assertive trend in this party for years. This is the same right opportunist direction taken by some other parties.

In the pre-convention discussion, articles like “Save the Party,” give chapter and verse of our critique of the Party’s political decline (see www.mltoday.com), and what has to be done to turn matters around.

The current Party leadership is a faction. Factions and factionalism are not limited to oppositions to leaderships. In such cases, however, official factionalism functions in the form of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy stifles party democracy and membership criticism. It uses charges of “disruption,” and, of course, “factionalism” against its left critics. The present leaders have not -- in so many words -- repudiated democratic centralism. They will enjoy the democracy. We may expect to be on the receiving end of the centralism.

In June 2009 the factional nature of the Webb leadership was most clearly revealed when it rammed through a policy of ending the print edition of the Party’s weekly paper, the People’s Weekly World. It also withheld information at subsequent National Committee (NC) meetings on the extent of leadership and membership opposition to the move. This is one of a series of abuses for which they still have not been held accountable.

A notorious example from 2005, a CP convention year. The Illinois CP, after adopting a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, forwarded it on to the national convention for adoption. Although efforts were subsequently made by a clearly uncomfortable national Party leadership to have the maker of the motion change it ("to reflect the security interests of the Iraqi people" - i.e. to acknowledge the legitimacy of the U.S. occupiers), the maker refused, pointing out that even if he had wanted to do so (which he did not), it was already out of his hands. The resolution ultimately came before the national convention in a bundle of resolutions approved by the resolutions committee. That bundle was adopted unanimously.

Subsequently, that resolution was willfully disregarded by the Party's leadership and editors. Its content was never reflected in the Party's own newspaper. Efforts to have this position reflected in the Party's publications were repeatedly quashed. Nor was the resolution implemented in the Party's mass work, particularly on the national level. It remains a dead letter to this day.

The justification for this willful neglect was that Sam Webb, in his report to the convention, suggested a "different approach" -- one acceptable to Democrats -- calling for a "timetable" or an "exit strategy" from Iraq. This approach was and essentially remains a stalling tactic, an indefinite postponement of U.S. withdrawal that has resulted in many thousands of additional Iraqi and U.S. deaths and the continued presence of over 100,000 U.S. troops (and a similar number of "contractors") in Iraq up to this very day.

Webb's report, which was presented without any opportunity for substantive amendment, was perfunctorily adopted. His report was then used to invalidate the clear antiwar resolution.

And this from a Party leadership that purports to champion democracy!

Stifling Convention Democracy

The convention, a caricature of democracy, was tightly controlled by the present leaders.

It was small: only 158 delegates and 50 guests. Convention managers filled the three days with ludicrous time wasters, such as a bagpipe-playing session. They contrived delegate selection rules to give regions with no clubs a vote, especially if they were reliably pro-incumbent. For example, a defender of the right-wing line represented the state of West Virginia.

Unlike previous conventions, the mood of this convention showed little sense of internationalism, and little sense of outrage against the imperialist wars being waged by the US. The convention was stacked, as much as possible, with people willing to go along to get along, as well as the current leadership and its flatterers.

What was the mood? One Party worker, a man in his 50s stated:
At the convention, I felt like an outsider. My "home in this rock," to quote Paul Robeson, seemed to be no longer my home. My political home has been transformed without my consent or agreement. It has been stolen. They have put an end to the necessary tools of our trade, so to speak, the party paper and timely class-oriented pamphlets on the important issues facing our working class. Tailing and nonsense analysis replaced class-struggle analysis and leadership. In general, it seemed to me that our misleadership has lost their class-conscious common sense.

Clearly, the goal, which conference organizers achieved, was to run a top-down, stage-managed convention that would squelch free debate, waste time, and run out the clock.

There was little time devoted to face-to-face discussion at the convention. People could not engage in discussion to collectively shape an agenda on how to best move the organization forward.

Most of the Convention’s time was squandered on self-congratulatory speeches from the leadership that took credit for general political trends way beyond any conceivable CPUSA influence. The “calls to action” amounted to nothing more than calls for legislative lobbying and electioneering for Democrats.

Yet the rightists in leadership had been worried about loss of control the convention, though, regrettably, their worries proved unfounded. In a preconvention comment one of their supporters voiced the worry:

A narrowly based, but very persistent campaign has been waged on the Internet and in the comments sections of CP publications — by my count nearly 20% of commenters and discussants and much more if you count the number of words — with the sole effective purpose being to distract the Left, and especially the CP, from working within the broadly defined Obama coalition, or from focusing on a majority-based agenda of reforms.

The right had reason for anxiety. Most of the resolutions, like most of the pre-convention discussion (available at the www. MLToday.com website), opposed the reformist line of the present leadership. It opposed the shutting down of the print edition of the People’s World. It supported ending the fawning tailism of Obama and the Democrats. It called for the Party to shed right opportunism and to return to its anti-imperialist, class struggle, and anti-war principles.

We believe the convention outcome does not reflect the political balance in the Party membership as whole. The grassroots opposition sentiment, which is substantial, was barely reflected. The convention delegates were carefully chosen by procedures that guaranteed majority support of the incumbents. In all organizations incumbents have certain advantages. This was done by various means, quite a few of them flagrantly dishonest, such as completely ignoring the content of properly submitted resolutions from the Party grassroots.

That the national convention would be a travesty of democracy was predictable, perhaps, from the chicanery at the state conventions that preceded it – the Illinois District convention being one of the worst cases. In the Illinois convention, the organizers killed time by watching videos and holding tutorials on how to send email. In Illinois and elsewhere the Webb faction maneuvered to keep key, articulate leaders opposed to the rightist trend away from the national convention.

The national convention was held in a room small in size, allegedly for economy reasons. The Webb faction has vacillated between 1) declaring a financial crisis that rules out face-to-face meetings and 2) denying any financial crisis exists if they are claiming that there is no problem with their stewardship. The spin depends on needs of the moment. Truth and consistency are not the guiding principles.

They smothered debate not only by ignoring preconvention resolutions and discussion, but also by making the convention smaller and less representative. Rural areas of the country, even if there was only one party member in a given state, got a voting delegate. But some industrial clubs were completely unrepresented.

They also isolated those critics of the Party line who were at the convention. One of the strongest of their opponents, an NC member from Kentucky, objected to adding to the NC a Midwesterner who evinced no understanding of the role of clubs in Party structure. He also objected to another candidate involved in questionable financial activity. He was overruled and the two were added to the NC. For his pains, he himself was dropped from the NC. Whenever he rose to speak, he was surrounded by Webb loyalists.

An Air of Unreality
Most leadership speeches proclaimed a mad eagerness to work in an imaginary coalition with the liberal wing of Big Business. In his Main Report, Webb boasted, “Broadly speaking, our view of the general conditions of struggle and the strategic path forward was and is on the money.”

A long-time Party peace movement leader made such delusional statements as: “Obama is listening to us [e.g., Peace Action, Military Families Speak Out]. He meets with us. We can’t close this door by criticizing him.” “We need to help Obama resist being pushed to the right.” “Obama’s sentiment on Afghanistan is shifting our way.” “Obama has realistic assessment on the withdrawal of troops.”

Thus, the content of the convention was remarkably unconnected to the Party’s real mission – leading struggle. Such pressing issues as climate change, one billion hungry people, a waning labor movement, a health care system given over to major profiteering, populations displaced and migrating, US militarization of the planet, and more received little or no discussion.

A Dearth of Internationalism
In the Convention’s deliberations there was little discussion of developments abroad: the multiplying wars, global economic crisis, struggles like that of the Haitian people for survival against racism and colonialism, resistance to US bases and militarization, popular resistance to the coup government in Honduras, and a real push to end the blockade and free the Cuban Five.

As for our relations with other Communist parties, Convention organizers minimized the number of observers from the international Communist movement. When realistic comrades pointed out that, if budgetary considerations were paramount, then inviting the UN or consular staff resident in New York from such counties as China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea was an option, for the price of a subway ride. The Party leadership resisted that obvious solution.

In the end, several parties did appear to give short greetings. The Vietnamese delegate spoke.

Convention managers minimized delegates’ knowledge what the international Communist movement was saying to the CPUSA.

For example, the Webb circle tried to suppress the full Greek Communist Party (KKE) greetings, especially the paragraphs that dealt with opportunism in the international Communist movement. When the full KKE text was handed in writing to the delegates (thanks to the fact that the KKE had speedily posted the greetings in English at its website) Webb and his supporters were forced to issue a message of solidarity to the KKE and eventually to post the whole KKE statement at the CPUSA web site. Of course, now that it is there, they are making no effort to call attention to it.

Youth
One of the most active YCLers expressed alarm at the lack of young delegates at the convention. There were, of course, YCL guests (and a few delegates) but participation from youth was scant. A healthy and vibrant Communist Party would give special attention to the training and support of young leaders and cadre. The lack of youth participation is a portent that the current political line of the leadership has no future.

The convention was stacked, as much as possible, with people willing to “go along to get along,” as well as the current leaders and their hangers-on. YCLers were given a code to register as guests, and when some leaders of the YCL tried to register they were denied access to the convention for the reason that “there was no room.” This was systematically done for political reasons.

Resistance to the Line
With plenary sessions a choreographed sham, what rebellion there was could only take place in skirmishes in the workshops and panels, not the plenaries. There were good discussions in the workshops. However, there were no minutes taken or reports given back to the larger body.

In one workshop, for example, the information technology panacea was challenged by an Arizona delegate who pointed out the reality of the digital divide.

In the “Club Life and Education” workshop the majority of participants steered the discussion towards theory – i.e., the leadership’s failure to incorporate and develop it and the need to focus on the Marxist-Leninist theoretical education of existing and new members. Indeed, the consensus of this workshop was that the leadership needed to be told that the Party needs to pay more attention to theory. The YCL co-convener of the workshop attempted to shift the discussion and assert control a number of times, without much success

Two Controversies
Two controversies burst out into the open at the Convention. One was the censorship of the KKE greetings, mentioned above.

The other was the treatment of the resolution on independence for Puerto Rico. The Massachusetts District resolution on Puerto Rican liberation was substantially the same as in the last convention. However, the nervous chair, People’s World editor Terrie Albano, perceived the resolution as an act of insurrection from rebel districts (Massachusetts, Kentucky, Indiana). Afraid of debate, Albano shut down discussion. This enraged Party members of Puerto Rican descent and other backers of the Massachusetts resolution, several of whom walked out.

One mendacious “special resolution” deserves a word. It emanated from the national leadership, commending the New York District for helping to re-launch May Day. New York trade union comrades familiar with the facts pointed out that national Party leaders had done their best not to participate in May Day on the grounds that “Obama need support; he doesn’t need criticism.” Sam Webb and Scott Marshall, Party labor secretary, had rejected early pleas for help from the trade unionists and immigrant groups trying to relaunch it.

More Liquidation
The “Composite” resolutions represent ideological liquidation. All the resolutions repudiate the idea that the CPUSA will seek to play a leading role in anything or initiate anything. It will merely “participate in,” “help,” “encourage,” “join in,” “give support to,” and so on.

But there was physical liquidation too. The convention decided henceforth to hold only one National Committee meeting a year. The other three meetings will be conference calls, which are, of course, easier to manipulate.

It was clear from the comments of Roberta Wood, Party secretary-treasurer, that the Party will rent Winston-Unity Hall, a floor of the New York City headquarters building, to finance a pay raise for Party staff. It increasing appears that the paid staff is asserting its group interests regardless of the consequences to the organization or its rank and file members who were not present as delegates.

The CPUSA leadership composition became more skewed with near total removal of independent and critical voices from the NC. The leadership is now quite inbred, both politically and otherwise. The daughter of Sam and Sue Webb -- a schoolteacher in Boston who plays little or no role in Party life there -- was put on the National Committee.

There was an unsuccessful effort by Danny Rubin, an ideological ally and mentor of Webb, to enhance the powers of the National Board (NB), which has become really a rubber-stamp council of Webb loyalists. Rubin wished to centralize power at the expense of the NC on matters of Party constitutional change.

The incoming NC’s size remains about the same, still 82 or 84. The convention dropped 12 or 14 NC members, and added a like amount. Some departing NC members were not removed, they resigned in disgust.

Party veterans noted that the reports on local activity, customary at such gatherings were not “what we are doing” They were “what’s going on,” that is, what others are doing. It was another expression of the Party’s loss of purpose.

At the convention younger comrades barely spoke, most wondering what to make of the proceedings. Veterans of many Party conventions saw no -- or at any rate few -- new faces in key districts

Forty-five minutes of Webb's keynote remarks were taped for C-SPAN. His supporters considered this to be of great importance. It seems to us that inviting C-SPAN to tape Webb’s presentation demonstrated that his intended audience is the TV-viewing public, not specifically Communists. His generalizations and lack of analysis could only be directed to non-Communists.

Conclusions
The Convention was undemocratic, scripted, non-Communist (in fact anti-Communist at times), and devoid of Marxist analysis of present conditions. One delegate, completely disgusted, predicted, “They won’t even bother to hold another convention.”

Validating our pessimistic analysis, since the convention, matters have continued to slide down the slippery slope. The first NC conference call took up the topic of “re-branding” the Party, as if the Party were a tube of toothpaste requiring a more modern name, like changing “Ipana” to “Aquafresh.” Reportedly, a consultant will be hired to advise on re-branding, including re-naming.

As one seasoned comrade who has subsequently resigned said privately to us, the convention result shows “the political gangrene of opportunism has spread very far indeed.”

Gangrene looks like this: one of the most appalling moments in this appalling convention came when Joel Wendland, editor of Political Affairs, a “Journal of Marxist Thought,” stated: “Isn’t it great we can have a CPUSA convention and not hear ‘Marx said this’ and ‘Lenin said that’?!” “We need to shed old skin on theoretical level.”

Evidently, Wendland is following his own advice. A few weeks back, he abandoned any theory of imperialism. He posted without criticism a proclamation from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Venezuelan Independence Day, as if the US State Department were a champion of Venezuelan independence. We believe the real State Department view is expressed in the seven new US military bases in neighboring Colombia, authorized by Obama and Clinton, aimed at strangling Venezuelan independence and democracy.

We view this convention as a hijacking of the Party by a faction of the leadership. Many good Party members are wondering: Can this party be saved?

We don’t know. It will take a fierce struggle. But most of us intend to try.

The present leadership is already in consultation with social reformist groups (DSA, CCDS, the reformist Freedom Road). It’s obvious that most of the present leaders don’t want a Communist Party. They view Leninism and even the name CPUSA as “baggage.”

As for us, a few voices among many, we are urging the healthy forces in the Party not to quit, but to stay and fight. How many will leave we do not yet know. Those who have left are honorable comrades who see resignation as a matter of principle. We have resolved to stay close to them and to work together closely. They have welcomed that.

Matters are serious. Yet, there are factors on our side. Here are a few: our opponents often miscalculate. For example, delaying the convention for one year proved a miscalculation on their part, insofar as it more easily enabled the left opposition in the Party to point out how absurd the official CPUSA “analysis” of Obama and the Democrats is. The international Communist movement is on our side. It is looking on with dismay and alarm at the deterioration within the CPUSA leadership. As the present US Administration moves steadily rightward, to justify its policies becomes ever more difficult. Disgusted by a Party that sees its sole mission the election of Democrats, people walk away or give up. The membership dwindles, and the organizational crisis deepens. The class struggle is sharpening in the US and around the world. Reformism has no solutions for US working people.

We doubt that there can be any recovery in the CPUSA until Sam Webb and his allies are removed from their present positions.

The daunting immediate task ahead for Marxist-Leninists in the US is to figure out how to move forward inside and outside the CPUSA.
_____________________________________________
August 18, 2010

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board, CPUSA

A little late in sharing this beautiful summation of our National Convention

2010-08-23T17:07:00.002-04:00

This summation of our National Convention is my own written by one of the outstanding movement organizers theoreticians of our time, the brilliant John Case:

Reflections on the 29th Convention of the CPUSA

By John Case

[Submitted to Portside by author]

Reckoning

The US Communist Party held its 29th Convention this
past weekend in New York city on the 90th anniversary
of its founding. I last attended a CP convention in
1991, a time of great turmoil throughout all parties
and movements that identified with socialist or
communist ideals. The collapse of the USSR and the fall
of quite a few socialist led governments had persuaded
many that the entire socialist experiment had failed,
that Marxism was false.

For those who had came to view the vision and theories
of Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin, more as religion than
contributions to economic and political science; for
those who followed dogma over facts; for those who
believed political regimes by will alone were capable
of leaping over the real laws of economic and social
development -- a reckoning was certainly due.

Return of the Specter

But time has not been kind to those forces who believed
Bush the First when he proclaimed the dawn of a new
world order in love with the vicissitudes of
capitalism, and lawless globalization. Despite vigorous
attempts to bury the socialist and communist movements
-- and social democratic regimes too -- and poison the
atmosphere against their ideologies, both organization
and ideas on the Left appear to be returning in new,
more robust and energetic forms, judging by the new
wave of activists and rebels attending the 29th CP
convention.

Of course the CP has been around for a long time. But
it gives every evidence of shedding old skin and
reinvigorating itself. It takes multitudes of working
people, of many races and nationalities, men and women,
gay and straight, youth and seniors -- together --- to
move the mountains of inequity and injustice arising
from the past 35 years of financialization of the US
economy, and the greatest economic crisis since the
1930's. And the end of this crisis is not yet in sight,
which in itself gives rise to new thinking about the
nature of capitalism, and its ability to reproduce
itself. This convention marked a sharp break with any
remaining legacy within the party for narrow or
defensive conceptions of party organization. It
rejected notions of the path to US socialism other than
through the struggles to defeat the ultra right, and
raise the wealth and democratic rights of working
people, at the expense of monopoly corporate power.

Both old and new defenses from the ideologists of
capitalism are being broadly challenged. Robert Rubin's
well-managed society whose economy rests in the hands
of liberal investment banks has crashed. David Brooks
can't decide what to think. The right wing crazies are
probably too agitated and medicated to even be allowed
to drive a car. In this atmosphere of permanent hot
media and ceaseless information streams, no wonder
Obama's coolness stood out as a virtue voters thought
we might need! Thus, no surprise that Karl Marx, and
revised, more democratized conceptions of socialism,
are gaining renewed interest as the economic crisis
once again confronts society with the grave
difficulties of reining in capitalism's terrible
instability. Under the right constraints, capitalism
has been shown to generate great innovative successes.
Yet as each technological revolution overthrows and
succeeds a previous order, the conflicts between
private anarchy and public stability appear to have
grown sharper, to become destabilizing on an ever
greater scale. Globalization, left to the management,
or non-management might be a better term, of a few
large powers and central banks greatly aggravates this
conflict on a worldwide scale. Vladimir Lenin,
liberated in recent years from the grim Stalin legacy
that followed him in Russia, also seems to be making a
comeback via diverse and mixed socialist parties and
governments from China and Vietnam, to the popular
social-democracies in South and Central America.

Emulating the Working Class, Diversity and Equality

The beautiful and diverse composition of the delegates
to the CP convention was its most striking feature.
Always striving to reflect the character of the US
working class in its own composition, the Communist
Party has been one of the most integrated political
organizations in the United States -- going all the way
back to its founding. Of all left organizations in the
US, a CP meeting is the most like a union meeting --
there is a century long and deep commitment to
strengthening the organized section of the working
class. The party focuses much of its work on, and draws
much of its strength from, the US labor movement.
Working people need strong unity to exercise power, and
organizing multi-national, multi-racial cooperation and
solidarity are values that the CP in particular has
long placed front and center in every political fight.
No change there. Except the breadth and depth of the
Obama coalition, building on the always deepening
diversity of the US population, makes the CP not so
unique in this respect. Perhaps it even makes this part
of its task easier. Inequality and inequities abound.
Yet young people are raised in a much less segregated,
and much more diverse, culture than the generations
before.

Delegates to the convention appeared steeped in trade
union and working class movements. The African
American, Latino, Asia and Pacific island, LGBT, Native
American, gender, youth and senior, immigrant and
naturalized composition genuinely reflected the real
colors and shades, cultures, traditions, lifestyles,
dialects and languages of this land. Watching them
struggle and reach for agreement on an advanced but
realizable progressive platform gives one hope about
our country, despite the many storms and furies that
seek to divide us.

Sam Webb's Report

The convention opening report of Chairman Sam Webb
focused on the compelling need to accelerate the
democratic upsurge of working people and all
progressive forces combating persistent joblessness,
which stands near 20% of the workforce when all are
counted, and to defeat a resurgent ultra right-wing,
racist offensive designed to derail and destroy the
entire Obama progressive reform agenda, and Obama's
historic presidency as well. Webb targets the 2010 mid-
term elections were as the focus of political activity
for the next 6 months. Both the ultra-right challenge,
and the prospects for deepening reform and kicking up
the strength of the coalition that elected Obama, will
meet their next big test on November 2, 2010. That's
just 160 days from now.

Chairman Webb made strong appeals not to underestimate
the important and positive changes in the political
environment since the campaign and election of Barack
Obama. The broad coalition that gave birth to the Obama
phenomenon went to sleep for a while after the
election. But if the recent primary elections are any
sign, it is waking up again! And none too soon! This
movement is taking us all to school in the art of
grassroots majority politics.

The Ultra-right, racist danger

The dangers posed by unambiguously racist propaganda
emanating from not just the fringes but the leadership
of the Republican Party -- were specifically addressed
by Executive Vice Chairman Jarvis Tyner. He argued that
the so called "tea party" forces' unchecked resorts to
vicious slurs, threats of violence, and provocations
are well organized and are picking up steam in some
areas of the country. The goal being to distract and
divide folks who are in near panic over the prolonged
economic crisis. Rand Paul, an open opponent of the old
Republican establishment, wins the Kentucky Senate
primary. Like his father, so-called Libertarian Ron
Paul, this "Tea Party" candidate is a front and cover
for outright white supremacist organizations, as was
revealed in press conferences following the election
where Paul criticized the foundations of de-segregation
laws. Fox news pundits and the Limbaugh-talk radio,
drug-crazed crowd running the new Republican Party are
also riding these racist diversions to challenge
longstanding civil rights legislation on affirmative
action and bars against public segregation, as well as
celebrations of the Confederacy.

Tyner, and many speakers, noted the intense anti-
immigrant fever that has broken out like an infected
sore in Arizona. The state legislature and Governor
enacted a draconian law directing state law enforcement
to arrest and demand "papers" of anyone they "suspect"
is "illegal". A large, multi-racial and multi national
movement to "legalize Arizona" has emerged in
response, gaining a hat tip from President Obama, and
direct pledge of support from the President of Mexico
and other international forces. Yet, as convention
participants noted, polls currently show two to one
support for the law, both in Arizona and across the US,
reflecting again both a profound level of panic over
jobs, and frustration with failure to pass
comprehensive immigration reform.

Highlights

Despite warnings about the danger from the ultra right,
the mood was upbeat at the convention. Convention
reports noted the results of the recent primary
elections that, in the main, repudiated Republican and
ultra right campaigns, and asserted that the majority
of voters, while divided on some questions, are in
support of the Obama reform agenda and in many cases
moving toward even more progressive proposals.

Expressions of greeting and solidarity were received
from many communist, socialist and workers' parties,
including remarks from an official rep of the Communist
Party of Vietnam.

Highlights also included reports of many rich
experiences of delegates in electoral, grassroots,
trade union, health care, May Day, financial reform,
and varied community struggles and campaigns.
Communists are winning or in serious contention in
several races across the country. They are running
primarily in the Democratic party. There were strong
messages of solidarity from UE Republic Windows,
victorious sit-down strikers in Chicago, and from
organizers and leaders in the immigrants rights
movement, and from the many moving and emotional song,
letter and speech tributes, from many nations, at the
Saturday evening international solidarity and 90th
anniversary celebration.

Reports on the struggle for peace focused on
accelerating and advancing the withdrawal from Iraq,
returning to regional diplomacy over war in
Afghanistan, and addressing the urgent needs to
implement the two state solution in Israel-Palestine.
The world wide improvement in unity in preventing the
proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction needs to be buttressed with legislation.

Much attention was paid to building and expanding
online media initiatives and responding to increased
demands for flexibility in tactics.

Unity

Sometimes in reports on political conventions,
especially those on the Left, there is a tendency to
overstate, or perhaps mis-characterize the overall
impression of unity. Of course all political parties
can only move decisively forward on those matters where
there is the broadest agreement. There is indeed broad
CP unity on strengthening the democratic upsurge behind
a reform agenda that is friendly to that of the
president. But the convention was not a boring
recitation of people rising to associate themselves
with the remarks of the chairman. There are very
diverse, and quite different, conceptions of how
socialism, or mixed market - socialism, or the
transition to socialism, is developing in the United
States, and around the world.

Sam Webb, Jarvis Tyner and Roberta Wood were re-elected
as officers, Chair, Exec Vice-Chair and Secretary-
Treasury, respectively.

The meeting opened singing "This land is your land",
and closed on the "International".

How come not bigger?

It's an odd and somewhat uneasy juxtaposition of
thoughts and feelings that witnesses the truly
beautiful composition and spirit of the delegates to
this CP convention alongside the small size of the
Communist Party --- which has not enjoyed a strong base
of strength since the beginning of the McCarthy
repression in the late 1940's and the 1950's.

I keep asking -- how come? How come such a lively
outfit as this crowd does not have 20,000, or 100,000
members? The same question could be asked about the
organized Left in general. But I think when its
answered for the CP, it will be similar to the answer
for the Left too. The most important part of the answer
is rejecting all political doubts about the importance
of the democratic struggle for workers, and not
picturing the path to socialism as in any way separate
from the tasks of this struggle. The CP focus on labor
and its explicit class orientation has always been the
essence of its survival strategy even in the darkest
times. And now --now that the time for an offensive is
at hand --- the class base and focus is helping it make
the necessary adjustments in political program,
strategy and tactics. This convention got that done!
Which should alone enable it to grow its membership if
folks do as they have pledged!

The name "Communist"

Beyond that, while it did not come up on the agenda, or
in speeches, one of the elephants in the room --not far
from my own mind, at least -- is the linkage between
the name "Communist" and the failed USSR, so identified
with it. To ask American workers to find their way
through all of cold war history in order to help work
with and lead the class and democratic fight that the
delegates to the CP convention committed themselves to
-- is asking too much, in this writer's opinion.
However, even if that association were to fade with
time and be overtaken by the record of sound, sober,
serious and solid leadership in this struggle before
us, its hard to picture a large workers party in the US
calling itself "Communist". Why? Because such a party
is tasked in this era chiefly with fully exhausting the
democratic struggle to raise workers incomes and rights
under capitalism. Further, even strategically such a
party must be willing and able to participate in and
help lead coalitions capable of running a sustained
mixed -- part capitalist, part socialist --- economy
for a likely lengthy transition period. Naming this
party "Communist" before such time as the tasks of
constructing a society reflecting the communist ideal
are fully prepared, is premature in a mass context, at
least in the US. However, since all political
obstacles to full participation in this great
democratic upheaval of our time have been set aside, I
am sure this one too will in due course be set aside if
it remains a block to the growth that the CP's program
and broad approach most definitely deserves. I
recommend its serious consideration by all.

Single slate elections

The other elephant in the room, from this writers point
of view, is the single slate method of electing
leadership. To most Americans familiar with trade
unions or other political parties, it would seem
strange. Most of the latter have a more "federal" style
of electing leadership. That is, geographical and other
established party or union organizational components
are each given some proportion of seats on the leading
committees. Delegates to conventions of more federal
organizations do not vote on leading committees as a
whole, but by district, state or other type of sector.
Officers are typically elected at large, and with a
broader mandate than members of leading committees. The
CP in the US does it differently, due to three factors.
First, preserving a balanced class, racial, national,
gender, youth and cultural composition in leadership
has always been a high priority -- a priority that can
sometimes be sacrificed to regional or other sectarian
tendencies. Second, the repressions against the CP for
years made it very difficult to operate as other
organizations. And a fully open or transparent process
still poses some risks -- although these are declining
in the current period --- of retaliation from members'
employers or other forces meaning harm. Third, the
slate method arguably constructs a more harmonious
leading collective able to perform multiple tasks, both
regional and national, with better coordination. In the
single slate election a presiding committee, elected by
the delegates, prepares a proposal for the entire
incoming national leadership, subject to amendment by
the convention.

So, there is cause to proceed carefully and in a manner
that does not provoke unnecessary division. But it is
hard to see the single slate method adaptable to a
larger party without risking bureaucratic distortions.
Yes --- becoming more "federal" might weaken
collectivity and give more ground to factions. But
dealing with factions, and building unity, is a never-
ending task in all mass organizations. Further, single
slate methods can weaken individual leadership
accountability to members. Lastly, I don't see the
single slate method adapting easily to a party much
more focused on elections and electability, as a mass
party must be.

Si Se Puede!!

I will no doubt be accused of quibbling about less
important matters by some, or exposing liberal
ideological tendencies by others. But I remain
convinced these are important quibbles, weighty
elephants indeed!

Nonetheless, it is clear from this convention that
these challenges will be addressed in order, and
constructively. These delegates are serious, and
practical. They elected officers completely committed
to the democratic tasks before working people. They are
bowing to no authority but reason and necessity. The
enthusiasm, the si se puede!! spirit, the stubborn
determination and grit of the delegates and leaders
gathered in New York for the 29th Convention of the
CPUSA do not look like folks who will be stopped, or
driven in any cultish or sectarian direction. They have
the main tasks down! And they seem ready to lay it all
on the line to move the working class and popular
democratic movement forward, for peace, and a higher
standard of living. From this convention, I predict
they will not be blocked by any trees fallen across the
road that stand in the way!

As Robert Frost wrote:

"...And yet [Nature] knows obstruction is in vain: We
will not be put off the final goal We have it hidden in
us to attain, Not though we have to seize earth by the
pole And, tired of aimless circling in one place, Steer
straight off after something into space."

...and across the Universe

yes we can! si se puede!

With deep appreciation to my most loyal follower and my most trusted adviser John Case,

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

More on our beautiful country

2010-08-16T13:36:00.002-04:00

I am receiving some flack about my trip.

I am being asked why I never stopped in and met with workers at the sugar beet refineries of American Crystal Sugar to see how they liked their pay and working conditions.

In fact, we have a member of our National Committee, Mark Froemke, who is a big shot in the Grain Millers union and the AFL-CIO who sees to it that these workers get a nice hefty 3% raise every few years. For the big money these people make a little bad air isn't going to hurt them.

I don't like breathing the air in these refineries. I would just as soon ride down the highway with my air conditioner on.

All this talk about working conditions comes from ultra-leftists and I have previously explained I don't think their questions are worth answering.

I think it is important we look for what is good in our country so we don't have to protest so much while Obama is our President. Barack will take care of all of us. Let's not sweat the little problems like working conditions when we have a major problem in front of us like how we are going to re-elect the Democrats.

Let's pray for clear blue skies and clean air.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

America the beautiful!

2010-08-13T21:57:00.002-04:00

This article below I wrote has received rave reviews from my most loyal admirers.

I forgot to notice if affirmative action was being enforced as I drove down the highways and by-ways but as we know President Obama can't be too out front on such things because it might jeopardize his re-election.

There is nothing like a wedding. Divorces are good, too.

Being as how I am a national officer of the CPUSA I don't think I should comment about the way Mark Dayton defeated our favorite candidate in Minnesota, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher. I will defer a discussion of this to our distinguished scholar, Erwin Marquit.

Happy Trails to all of you. Next time I will be riding my favorite horse.

Sam Webb
National Chair, Chairman of the Board, CPUSA

Road trip in the heartland

by: Sam Webb

August 9 2010

It was a road trip! Not in the raucous style of Jack Kerouac ("On the Road") or Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters ("Electric Kool Aid Acid Test") or Neal Cassady, the legendary driver on both trips. This trip, by comparison, was tame, even dull. The only pills were for high blood pressure, my drink of choice was water and Pepsi, and marijuana is not on my menu.

Beginning in Chicago, I drove to the Twin Cities, then on to Fargo, North Dakota. From there I steered down the east side of North and South Dakota in my orange-red rental car at a 80-mile-an-hour clip (75 mph is the speed limit), landing myself in Des Moines - all in the space of 36 hours and three meetings to boot.

The next morning I zoomed off to Davenport, Iowa and then on to Michigan - Detroit and Grand Rapids - and back to Chicago, where I grabbed a plane for New York City. The End!

In the course of this trip, I met wonderful people - teachers, office workers, writers, real estate agents, academics, retirees, young people, union activists and leaders, political candidates, old and new mothers, fathers and grandparents, students of all ages and sizes, people of different races and nationalities, a radical clergyman bedecked in very formal cloth who gave a wicked good homily - it was America in the heartland. Next time I will kiss a baby!

So what did this blue-eyed, gray-haired son (paraphrasing Bob Dylan) observe?

Observation: Motel 6 is good value, the price of gas isn't outrageous, cruise control makes driving long distances easier, snoozes in rest stops are delicious ... and stimulus dollars are at work repairing highways in every state I drove in. My biggest complaint is that the Obama administration doesn't publicize this fact - no big (or even modest-sized) signs bringing this to a driver's attention, thus making the stimulus monies invisible - something that the "Party of No" and its amplifiers take advantage of. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn - and loudly!

Observation: Driving down the eastern side of the Dakotas impressed on my eye the beauty of this land - as Woody Guthrie says: "Our land." No matter what the changes in the topography (plains grass to farmland) this swath of the country is as pleasing and glorious to the eye as the magnificent mountains and coasts. I'm sure some of you "sipping lattes" in "New York and Berkeley" will disagree, but as the late and inimitable Peoples World writer Fred Gaboury would say, "You have a right to be wrong."

The big sky, the heavenly sunsets, the fields bathed in green and gold, the solitary farmhouse, the empty, straight and seemingly endless farm roads, the flat land and the rolling hills - all this filled me with awe for the web of life of which we are only a link, despite our pretentions.

The high grass of the plains (first nature) is rare now, replaced by the huge, rectangular tracts of farmland (second, third, fourth ... nature) on which grow corn, sugar beets, wheat, and much more. Moreover, because of the rise of huge agribusinesses and the use of machinery that would comfortably fit on a Star Wars set, it is easy to forget that successive peoples, beginning with Native Indians (who were displaced by superior military power and forced onto reservations) lived, worked and transformed (sometimes for better, other times for worse) the ecology, land, politics, economics and culture of this geographic space that we call the Great Plains. On this land and in the commodities that originate here enormous amounts of past and present sweated labor are embedded. Which makes me think that by any measure of justice, the land, its bountiful gifts and its way of life belong to the people of the Great Plains rather than to the predatory and profit-maximizing corporations that systematically degrade and destroy the heartland's two sources of wealth - nature and labor. In the headquarters of Monsanto or Tyson Foods, no one talks about the Plains as Mother Earth, as the first peoples did.

Observation: The trip would have been lonely, but I had some companions: my imagination which was on roaming, music - a lot of country, which as Ray Charles says, tells interesting stories if you listen closely, and a heavy dose of right-wing radio talk. Oops, I'm forgetting ESPN which featured incessant commentary on Brett Favre's decision to retire - something I will believe when I see it.

But back to talk radio, where I heard the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and lesser lights - ugh! Talk about a scary bunch! To say that they are a fascist-like, slimy gang is not far from the truth. I like to think that their message is too shrill and extreme to resonate broadly. But, even assuming that is so, this gang still represents a present danger and could easily become a much bigger danger down the road. In their sights are, no surprise, President Obama (Ingraham was outraged that he wore sandals on one occasion), the Democratic (or as they say, the Democrat) Party, the alleged ethical indiscretions of Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel, immigration (draconian measures against the undocumented), the deficit (eliminate the "welfare state"), and tax cuts, especially for the wealthy (their answer for nearly everything).

All of them weave the fall congressional elections into their harangues. The possibility of the Republicans regaining control of the House makes their mouths water.

Just imagine, they say, how much more effective Republicans will be, not only in wrecking every initiative of the administration, but also in positioning the GOP to defeat the president's reelection bid and to take over both houses of Congress in 2012.

Even with a minority in the House and Senate, their record of obstruction is the pride of Wall Street, Big Oil, the military-industrial complex, and right-wing moneybags. Only recently the passage of a $26 billion bill to help state and local governments make Medicaid payments and avoid laying off 140,000 teachers came at a high price - some would say too high. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was only able to break a Republican filibuster by promising offsets largely through - if you can believe it - $12 billion in cuts to food stamps.

You heard right - food stamp cuts taken from poor working people who are already living at best on the edge, fighting to survive in a very hostile economic environment.

If they can do this as a congressional minority imagine what they will do if they have a majority. Everything will be blocked, while at the same time they will heap blame on the president for the economic crisis.

This possibility has the right-wing mouthpieces of hate and pain acting like crazed tigers as their prey comes into sight.

Observation: The highlight of my excursion, hands down. was the marriage of two beautiful women in Iowa. I left the ceremony thinking how outrageous it is that something so natural and beautiful could still be illegal in many other states. The whole notion that heterosexual marriage, families and sex is superior to homosexual marriage, families and sex is simply ludicrous. As far as I'm concerned, it is an anachronism, best left as a relic of the 20th century. Joy, intimacy, deeply felt desires, and marital unions are private matters that society should respect and support.

There is much more I could comment on, for example, how much I like Subway's 12-inch veggie with no lettuce (poor quality) and lots of hot peppers (spicy is good), but enough is enough. Happy Trails!

Where are our censors?

2010-06-24T11:40:00.002-04:00

Somehow this got posted to our PW website today after I ordered all comments and postings from this individual to be banned:

Comments

Sam Webb is a hypocrite of the worst kind. First he sets up a false scenario to prove he is a Communist leader as he refuses to engage in the very struggle he claims needs to be undertaken: working inside the Democratic Party.

Webb has "elevated" the class struggle to simply voting for Democrats without fully participating in the Democratic Party.

When was the last time Sam Webb suggested specific resolutions to be discussed and debated at Democratic Party precinct caucuses, county conventions, nominating conventions, state conventions or national conventions.

In fact, when was the last time Sam Webb even suggested that Communists get involved in the Democratic Party and participate at the very grassroots level?

Is Webb himself involved in any way in the Democratic Party other than sitting in his glass offices trying to imagine what is beyond the brick walls that he peers upon from his office?

Webb, as an excuse for his own inaction, creates these responses to imaginary situations because he doesn't know about participation in the Democratic Party from his own personal experiences nor has he ever participated in any way in the Democratic Party; if he had this kind of personal experience he would be able to discuss how we should try to advance the needs of working people through the Democratic Party.

Webb now "elevates" the participation of working people in the Democratic Party--- not to how working people should participate in the Democratic Party to advance a progressive agenda aimed at bringing forward real solutions to the problems the working class and working people are experiencing--- but to simply relegating the participation of workers to voting for Democratic candidates who, for the most part--- because of lack of Communist participation--- do not have to even respond to the problems working people are experiencing.

What is the obstacle to Sam Webb personally spending time involved in the Democratic Party? What is the obstacle to Webb writing about his experiences in the Democratic Party? If Webb is going to make the case--- a case completely justifiable and correct in my opinion--- that Communists need to be involved in the Democratic Party then he has some responsibility to be involved in the Democratic Party himself... and, he is obviously not involved in any way in the Democratic Party.

Webb's ignorance of the real nature of the Democratic Party--- beyond just saying it is a corporate dominated party--- shines right through in everything he writes.

It is bad enough that Webb sees the main form of working class involvement as simply going to the polls on Election Day to cast one's ballot for Democrats; the real problem is that Webb doesn't even encourage working people to struggle inside the Democratic Party to advance the interests of working people.

Of course, Webb then proceeds to advocate for some kind of alternative to the Democrats; but, here again, Webb has no "hands on" experience.

The question which really needs to be asked is, "In what areas of struggle does Sam Webb have any experience" which would provide him with any credibility to write about anything other then telling us about his views on basketball and and how to organize college beer bashes?

If this ever happens again, heads are going to role.

Yes, Bruce, what is it?

Sam, I'm sorry this got through. I was in for my monthly electro-shock treatment.

Ok, Bruce; thank you for the explanation.

Everyone back to your desks.

Scottie, could you clean those dirty bricks on the wall and put that "Wonderful World of Barack Obama" painting back where I can see it?

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

Look at me... I'm ready to fight... come on, follow me---

2010-06-15T14:25:00.001-04:00

2010-06-13T18:28:00.003-04:00

This is an excellent article.

I like the way it doesn't make any suggestions for concrete activity. Making concrete suggestions for activity is where we lose many people. As long as we stick to framing things we will be alright.

We want to make sure this gets over to the leader of the democratic people's front. Is anyone dropping by the White House today?

Joel is one of those rare geniuses who can write a lot of words that never takes us anywhere. This is a real gift.

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board, CPUSA

Radical Ideas, Real Politics: Some Thoughts on the Coming Period

By Joel Wendland and Peter Zerner

6-02-10, 10:04 am

Additional resources:
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Political Affairs #116 - Labor History vs. the Cold War

It's June 3rd, 2010. On this episode we talk with Political Affairs contributing editor Ben Sears about his new book, Generation of Resistance: The Electrical Unions and the Cold War, out now in paperback at Amazon.com. So stay with us.

Download the mp3 version of episode #116 here

Political Affairs Magazine

Subscribe to this Feed

PA Editors Blog

Subscribe to this Feed

Follow PA on Twitter

Due to the economic crisis, rapid technological developments, globalization, and the new political terrain that has emerged as a result of the election of Barack Obama, the present moment is quite unlike any other. Because it is so different, we require a new understanding of the moment, as well as a theoretical agenda that matches this new reality.

This brief essay does not pretend to be a comprehensive discussion of the changed political and economic terrain or a detailed policy road map. Rather, it is intended to launch a discussion in the web pages of Political Affairs of why Marxism remains an essential, objective, and working-class-based theoretical process for meeting the challenges that lie ahead.

Our aim is to develop a focus on the key questions related to social progress and working-class empowerment, a focus centered on building and strengthening a broad people's coalition, like the movement that brought Barack Obama into office, and a sober assessment of reality in its present form, and the potential for creating a new world: an economy, society and system of values that reflect the basic interests of the American people and its working families.

To do so, the theoretical basis of our work, the presentation of our view of the world and society, must accurately reflect the new objective reality, the economic and political crisis faced by working men and women, and the hundreds of millions of marginalized human beings who currently are excluded from the Wall-Street-ravaged global economy.

No one can deny the intensity of the economic oppression that the working class today confronts. We offer a theory of society and a political method that provides the working class, broadly conceived, with essential tools for understanding, joining together with its allies, and confronting the forces that now control most of the wealth and power, America's plutocracy. Our task is to develop the critical weaponry they need to resist and open a pathway to a new kind of society focused on meeting the needs of the people: good paying jobs, affordable housing and health care, universal access to education, racial, ethnic, gender and LGBT equality, and the establishment of a truly democratic political system.

We begin with thoughts on some central features of the present moment and the struggles arising from them.

The Economy

With more than 15 million people out of work, and millions more underemployed, creating good-paying jobs should be the top priority of America’s political leaders. It is time to put the needs of working families on Main Street ahead of the profits of Wall Street. Today too much is at stake for too many to continue to wander blindly down the path of endless bank bailouts devoid of any oversight and a government by and for the wealthiest, the richest 2-3 percent of Americans.

Battered by the economic crisis, working families are joining everyday with the activist organizations and coalitions spearheaded by a revitalized labor movement to demand good-paying jobs and an economic recovery that won't settle for permanently high unemployment rates as the new reality.

Under Bush and the Republicans, Wall Street got the keys to the store (not to mention the bank) and created the economic disaster we’re living with today. Because of their reckless and criminal behavior, they have proven themselves incapable of knowing what is best "for the rest of us." It is obvious, from their huge bailout bonuses and continued record profits, that the rich and powerful care only about what is best for themselves.

Given this reality, we urge democratization of the financial sector of the economy, the banks, the insurance companies, and the brokerage firms. The creators of the economic crisis did their utmost to maximize their profits by concocting criminal schemes that exploited the desire of "ordinary Americans" for a home of their own. The banks and brokerage houses bundled up sub-prime loans in a labyrinthine web, and when the housing bubble popped it resulted in a tidal wave of economic ruin on a scale unprecedented since the Great Depression. To avoid repeating the same mistakes, fundamental changes and genuine regulation of the financial industry are absolutely necessary. Alternative models for democratization of the financial services sectors already; see for example North Dakota's public option in banking.

The deregulation of the financial services sector and the Bush administration’s laissez-faire anti-regulation policies sparked the financial meltdown which caused the Great Recession of 2007, and we are by no means out of the woods yet. Without financial regulation and democratic oversight of the banks and Wall Street, the horizon that marks the end of the Great Recession will continue to recede.

Signs of Recovery?

Although we have started to see the first fruits of Obama's Recovery Act, with over 500,000 jobs created in the past three months, the economy must do much more to meet the needs of all working families. While few working families are out of the woods, unemployment remains disproportionately high for African American and Latino workers, who face home foreclosures, school closings, and declining public services. Congress needs to pass a comprehensive jobs bill in proportion to the size of the unemployment crisis, such as the Local Jobs for America Act authored by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. The push to create jobs should contain four essential features:

1) affirmative action principles are needed to ensure new federal investments flow to the communities hardest hit by the economic crisis;

2) special funds must be set aside to protect the jobs of teachers (and other school staff) threatened by state-level budget cuts that promise nothing but further economic harm in the near future and long-term difficulties for the country's youth;

3) conversion to a green economy that produces alternative energy and builds a public infrastructure using renewable and recyclable materials will create about 5 million new jobs with a sustainable future;

4) and, meaningful investments in our country’s vital social infrastructure – schools, hospitals, libraries, universities, and public transportation – would create 20 million jobs, starting immediately.

People are justifiably worried about the rising federal deficit, but we can pay for a proportionate jobs bill, our schools, health reform, and environmental improvements by bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a quick end and shifting federal budget priorities from militarism to people’s needs. Further tax code fixes should require the rich to pay their fair share, end revenue-draining loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes by moving offshore, and force Wall Street pay for its corrupt practices and failures by taxing, for example, the billions made each day by means of lightning-fast electronic transactions.

The Cost of War

A recent study by the National Priorities Project shows that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds $1 trillion, and some 58 percent of the federal budget annually is consumed by the Pentagon. An economic recovery for Main Street is directly linked to reducing military spending. Opponents of spending cuts for the military often insist military contracts create jobs. But the evidence of the past nine years of war shows the bloated military budget has proven inadequate to stave off massive unemployment. War has made working families poorer.

Today, the US is number one in military spending, accounting for 45 percent of the entire world's military spending. Reducing militarism means putting an end to foreign interventionism and bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end.

In addition to the cost of war, a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute reveals that the richest Americans have greatly benefited from the carefully-targeted Bush tax cuts, which resulted in the 400 richest families averaging $345 million in annual income seeing their effective rate fall from 26 percent in 1992 to 16 percent in 2007. At the same time, working families saw their tax rate virtually unchanged. Robbed of tax revenue from the wealthiest Americans and drained by payments for Bush's war of choice in Iraq, the federal deficit skyrocketed.

There will be a true economic recovery only when working families have good-paying jobs, comprehensive benefits, and the guaranteed right to join a union. President Obama’s staunch defense of workers’ rights deserves wide support and applause, but the labor movement has vowed to intensify its fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. EFCA would make it far easier for workers to form unions and win the right to collectively bargain for a decent standard of living and safe working conditions. As an example of the safer conditions provided by union representation, the non-union miners who perished at Massey Coal would not have been bullied and intimidated into working in an unsafe mine for fear of losing their jobs if they had had a union. UMW safety teams would have quickly reported the methane danger, and workers would have had the union-guaranteed right of refusing to work in the hazardous conditions that took their lives.

The Tea Party

The Tea Party is a well-financed, corporate-backed movement that exploits the real anxieties and fears of working Americans about the economic crisis in order to promote a right-wing agenda that has nothing to do with meeting the needs of working families. The Tea Party uses inflammatory racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric to exploit anxieties and promote divisions.

In fact, the new darling of the Tea Party, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, stated recently that he opposes the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and clarified his statement by insisting that businesses should have been allowed to continue to discriminate against African Americans. Right-wing media personalities at Fox News and other outlets fuel an atmosphere of hate, violence, and even sedition. For example, Fox News commentator Jon Stossel defended Paul, telling his viewers that white people should be allowed to be racist, and we shouldn’t think badly of them for it.

Rand Paul also called the Americans with Disabilities Act an infringement on the basic freedoms of Americans, and rails at the Obama Administration for stomping on the neck of oil-giant BP with "its jack boots," observing that "accidents will happen." However, it is interesting to note that in his practice as an ophthalmologist Rand derives fifty percent of his income from Medicare reimbursements. Perhaps he would consider replacing that cash with bartered chickens, as the wacky Tea Party Senate Republican candidate in Nevada has suggested as a way for hard-up patients to pay for their doctor visits.

In sharp contrast to the Tea Party, the labor and people's movements (including civil rights, women's, environmental, and gay rights organizations) represent the real interests of working families. Together with coalitions like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which includes a broad array of civil rights and democratic organizations, labor has in recent years played a central role at the forefront of the people's movement in the fight for jobs and economic recovery, as well as for civil rights and equality. For example, at the eloquent urging of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the labor movement took the lead in fighting racist influences in the working class that the Republicans were actively fomenting during the 2008 election campaign. The struggle against racism and its divisive influence remains a top priority of the labor movement. Racism has long been a key weapon in the arsenal of capitalism to divide working people, thereby allowing the ruling class, the arch-enemies of real democracy, to conquer.

In addition, the labor movement, along with civil right organizations such as the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, is leading the legal challenges in the courts against the new Tea Party-backed, anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. Increasingly people in Arizona and around the country are realizing that the right-wing's racist anti-immigrant onslaught offers no solution to the economic crisis. According to the Immigration Policy Center, unauthorized immigrants add some $25 billion a year to Arizona’s economy. The right-wing drive to force immigrants out will not only destroy immigrant families, many of whom have lived, worked and paid taxes in this country for decades, it will hurt all working families.

Every person and family – regardless of political leanings – who have been hurt by the economic crisis, those who want real solutions, and reject divisive and racist anti-immigrant campaigns like those of the Tea Party and the Arizona Republicans, have a home in the labor movement. They are the natural allies of the groups and organizations that promote equality, fairness, unity, and workers' rights. United action, democracy, and common solutions to social problems, like health reform, are the best ways to overcome the problems at the root of today’s crisis.

The organizations that make up the People's Movement offer real solutions for working families, not just corporate-sponsored soundbites that appeal to people's basest instincts by promoting racism and reaction. Unlike the Tea Party, America's broad coalition of progressive forces has the potential of returning American democracy to its revolutionary roots. The recent union-led rallies that confronted the big banks and Wall Street, along with the massive rallies against racist anti-immigrant legislation around the country on May 1, equaled the passion of the Tea Party, exceeded them in numbers, and far surpassed the enemies of progress in the soundness and rationality of their political message.

Health care reform

Providing affordable access to universal healthcare is one area to which our country’s resources should be shifted to improve the lives of working families. The passage of meaningful health reform in March was a major victory for America’s working families, and all the cynical and anti-family efforts by the Republicans to block and weaken reform are contemptible, since they serve only the interests of the health insurance monopolies. Labor and democratic-minded organizations that support health reform are now working to educate the public about their new rights and benefits under the Affordable Care Act, as well as those areas that need further improvement. Here are some of its benefits:

1) Starting immediately, insurance companies will be required to stop the profit-motivated practices of denying coverage based on gender, preexisting conditions, or the high cost of chronic diseases.

2) America's lowest income families will soon receive subsidies to cover all or part of the cost of insurance.

3) Small business owners are already seeing a new tax credit to help them provide insurance for their employees and themselves.

4) Seniors have begun to see the prescription drug “donut hole” that required them to pay high out-of-pocket expenses, immediately begin to shrink significantly, and soon it will be completely eliminated.

5) There are also huge benefits for young people under the new health law:

According to the New York Times, "Almost one-third of the 46 million uninsured in the United States are 18-29 – the age group that is most likely to be without coverage, since so many work in part-time or entry level jobs." The Times cites a new report by the Commonwealth Fund that finds that "most of the 13.7 million young adults who are uninsured could gain coverage when the act goes into full force in 2014, either through public programs like Medicaid or by buying private policies on competitive insurance exchanges established by the law." And beginning in late September the law mandates that the 1.2 million young people who were dropped from their parents' policies when they graduated from high school or college, will now remain covered by family plans through age 25. In many ways, says the Commonwealth Fund, "the affordable health care act is a graduation gift to young adults," a gift which is especially appropriate because of the enthusiastic support shown by young people for Obama's politics of change during the election campaign.

According to a number of public opinion polls conducted before final passage of health reform, more than six in 10 Americans wanted a public insurance option to provide more competition, control the costs of care, and improve quality of healthcare. Ongoing efforts to create a public option should be vigorously supported, because everyone in this country has a human right to affordable, comprehensive health care. It is also clear that the best and most efficient way to reform the health care system and provide comprehensive care for everyone would be the creation of a Medicare-for-all program.

The struggle for health care reform has shown progressive forces what they could accomplish when they helped to build a broad, multi-class coalition that challenged the power of the health insurance industry, the greedy giant that has for far too long dominated and reaped enormous profits from our broken health care system. The struggle for health care reform can also serve as a valuable model for the future struggles that must be waged to achieve other vital democratic and structural reforms, such as civil rights protections, climate change legislation, ending the wars, passage of stronger labor union protections, and even socialism itself.

The Environment

Without quick and comprehensive controls on global warming-causing pollution, there will be no democracy, socialism, freedom, capitalism, or even cockroaches on a dead planet. All humans beings share a common stake, regardless of class or geography, in a healthy environment. Unfortunately, we do not all share a common vision of how to attain that goal. Some do not even agree about how serious the problems are. The different ways we assess the environmental threat do not result from differences of social class or geography alone, whether we are rich or poor, residents of the developed North or the underdeveloped South.

For example, some capitalists, such as venture capitalists trying to launch the alternative energy industry, have a special, profit-driven interest in solving the planet’s climate crisis, while some working-class people, especially those in countries where the demand for development and daily survival often seems to contradict global concerns about the climate. Other capitalists are hell-bent on exploitation of the environment for profit regardless of the dangers and disasters they create. And still yet others workers, scientists, and environmentalists are urgently calling for a swift transition to a green economy where renewable resources are produced, used and distributed – a new energy model that will provide millions of green jobs and a healthier, wealthier, more sustainable future.

Bringing these competing and contradictory interests into constructive alignment is no easy task, but it is a basic prerequisite for human survival and social progress.

Socialism

Socialism is a scary word for some people; for others it offers a glimmer of hope. But one thing everyone now understands and can agree upon is that the collapse of the global financial system in 2007 resulted from greed, corruption, and the capitalist imperative to maximize profits. The collapse proved that capitalism can never be self-regulating and that in times of crisis massive government intervention is required just to keep the system afloat. Unfortunately (although perhaps not unexpectedly) the victims of the crisis, which includes everyone but the wealthiest Americans, are now confronted with corporate efforts (backed by the politicians they control) to make working families pay the cost of the government intervention precipitated by the financial sector's own criminal misdeeds.

Increasing numbers of people now recognize that there are fundamental flaws inherent in the capitalist system. As recent polls demonstrate, more and more Americans do not believe that capitalism offers the best answers to society's problems. A significant percentage of people in the United States view socialism favorably or see it as a better alternative to the present system, and the percentage is even higher among younger Americans. (Rasmussen, 2009 [conservative]; Gallup, Feb. 2010 [non-partisan]; Pew Research Center, May 2010 [non-partisan]) Indeed, younger adults increasingly tend to view socialism positively.

At Political Affairs, we totally agree with this part of the population, and we encourage them to help us develop an idea of socialism rooted in the American experience, its culture and traditions. There are no past experiences in other societies which can serve as models for today’s complexities, contradictions, and possibilities. Although we seek alliances with working people all over the world to develop joint solutions to the plethora of common problems we face, no other country or historical model can provide us with a road map to a fully democratic, socialist United States. We ourselves can best discern the problems we face, why they exist, and how we can solve them.

Theory going forward

Given this fact, our basic theoretical task is to carefully articulate the special conditions we face in the United States. In order to accomplish this, we need to develop a careful understanding of how we can best build local and global coalitions, alliances, movements, and forms of political activism that take full advantage of 21st century technologies. We also need to develop ways of communicating our message that are familiar and comprehensible to the audience we are trying to reach - America's working people. This is our constituency, and to get the American people to listen to our views, we need to express them in a way that helps to create a new coalition, a commonality of shared interests and goals. To succeed in this effort we need to jettison outmoded ways of expression that emphasize sectarian differences. To reach the people we need to reach, we must articulate an agenda for change that matches the complex reality of the present.

This means we must be actively engaged with all possible allies in the center and on the left, helping to build and develop the range and depth of the emerging coalition of working-class people and organizations, along with the wide range of groups, representing every segment of US society, that has emerged in recent decades, organizing around issues such as the environment, peace, civil rights, health care, and gender equality. We should have no qualms about engaging with the political center as if social progress depended on it (because it does). We need to engage with the political center in order to revive, improve upon, and modernize the democratic traditions envisaged by our country’s founders, traditions which have been built on and expanded by working-class and democratic-minded Americans for the past 200 years.

On a final note, socialism cannot be won because the Communist Party decides it should. It will be won when tens of millions of Americans join together and choose to democratize the economy, when we develop the institutions that will give us a greater measure of control in the workplace, a direct influence on decisions made in corporate boardrooms, and far greater control of our government.

This goal can only be achieved by winning democratically-based political power at all levels of government – local, state and federal. We can already see the broad outlines of a new, more democratic form of government and a different economic system – by and for the people – slowly but steadily taking shape. We see it in the fightback for jobs and racial and gender equality, in the campaign for a cleaner environment, in the struggle for human rights for all who live and work in this country. We can see it in the mobilizations for peace and in the calls for a re-focused foreign policy that emphasizes multilateralism, non-intervention, diplomacy, fair trade practices, and economic development. We will begin to see it even more fully materialize when we we attain the strength necessary to take back our government at every level and make it our natural ally in improving the lives of working people on the job and in the community.

The power to do so lies in the hundreds of millions of working people, the "ordinary" Americans who constitute the vast majority in this country. A key to making this dream a reality is the creation of a new green economy that no longer depends on foreign oil or the catastrophic results of "drill, baby, drill" off our coasts. By striving to implement a 21st century green vision of democracy we can build a new America based on a different vision of society, and an economic structure that is capable of providing a safe and nurturing environment where everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, age, religion, or national origin can fully achieve their human potential. The vision will become a reality when we, as a united people, share the belief that individual liberty and personal happiness are directly linked to the general welfare, development, and social progress of the communities in which we live.

In order to successfully achieve this goal, we – as a 21st century Communist Party – must carefully refine and polish the ideological tools that are necessary to win people over to an American vision of socialism, a vision that is both deeply rooted in the revolutionary traditions of American democracy and finely attuned to the challenges the American people face in the complexity of the present. We must rise to this challenge, because the future is at stake.

The Minnesota Problem- the counter measures we are taking

2010-06-13T10:46:00.003-04:00

As you know we have not been able to shake off the Minnesota Problem.

I met with my brightest counter-intelligence agents--- Bruce Bostick, Dan Margolis, Erwin Marquit and Gary Hicks.

You will be glad to know that each of these very capable comrades has begun a campaign directed at certain individuals on MySpace and FaceBook as well as to e-mail lists.

They are sending messages behind the cloak of anonymity and pseudonyms to their MySpace and FaceBook friends. Anything to suggest they are perverted and deviants.

This worked quite well for us during the COINTELPRO operations; it should work even better using these hi-tech methods now.

This operation will be code-named: Hang 'em in Duluth.

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board, CPUSA

The long march...

2010-06-11T12:05:00.003-04:00

"The era of reforms is long over for the U.S. Whatever meaningful reforms or advances that could be achieved under capitalism have been made, and nothing more is now possible. "
The esteemed leader of the long march, Gary Hicks

Comrades. As the re-elected Chair of the CPUSA, I want to welcome all of you here to the head of the long march we are about to embark on led by Gay Hicks and the responsible members of the CPUSA working through the previous anonymity of the Communist Century. Under their brilliant guidance we are about to embark on the experience of a life-time.

Please take the time to read this because it will be guiding our work in the period ahead as we embark on the long march...

All aboard the Red Express!

Sam Webb
Chair, National Board CPUSA

The Main Immediate Task of the CPUSA

The Main Discussion Document is a serious effort by leadership to come to grips with the complexities of the U.S. political and economic situation. Nonetheless, we have disagreements with some of its formulations and conclusions. If we are to understand the current crisis, we cannot treat it as a replay of the Great Depression. It marks a new, more acute stage of the crisis of US and world capitalism. It cannot be resolved as the Depression was by war and its attendant massive worldwide capital destruction, large-scale technological advances and opening up of new areas to capitalist exploitation. The era of reforms is long over for the U.S. Whatever meaningful reforms or advances that could be achieved under capitalism have been made, and nothing more is now possible. All the present shifting (reforming) is simply to guarantee the profits of one capitalist grouping at the expense of others, and the tax-paying proletariat. Everybody knows or senses this, which explains the lack of political energy for piecemeal changes in the general population. The only way forward now is to socialism. The only possibility for human survival is socialism. There are no more intermediate stages of social development, no unfinished pre-revolutionary 'democratic' tasks. The idea of an anti-monopoly, anti-transnational stage of social development or of struggle has no real meaning

The main barrier to socialist transformation is the US state. The capitalist state must be dismantled or de-constructed and replaced by a proletarian state and socialist republic. But the advanced sections of the working class are woefully unprepared to take on the bourgeois state. The weakness and demoralization of the working class derives from the deep penetration of bourgeois ideas in the class. The only antidote is Marxism, the main pillars of which are materialism – the knowledge of the primacy of material conditions in physical and social life- and dialectics – the knowledge of the dynamic, multi-sidedness of all phenomena, including social relations. Only the absorption of a theory of revolution by the class will give it the strength and self-confidence to take and exercise power. For the Party to play its leading role in this titanic struggle it must itself become thoroughly imbued with Marxism throughout its ranks.

The old organizations of reform are incapable of displacing the bourgeois state. The sections of the working class that were once its cutting edge have, for various reasons, largely exhausted their revolutionary potential. New leading contingents of the class, new organizational forms and new methods of struggle have now begun to emerge. Only an organization armed with materialist dialectics can discern and nurture the sprouts of the new in the wreckage of the old.

The adoption by the Party of advanced communication technologies is an implicit acknowledgement of the primacy of science and technology in contemporary social development. This development is a tentative opening to those sections of the working class that are the protagonists of the scientific and technological revolution and who are key to building the new society. We must develop this opening further.

Many individuals and organizations attempt to work in a Marxist framework. However, the unique, special place of the CPUSA in American political life derives from its historical roots in the Communist International and its status as an integral organizational component of the World Communist Movement (WCM). We need to reaffirm decisively our adherence to the WCM and reconnect especially to its rich historical experience, which is critical for developing our revolutionary capabilities.

We propose to the incoming NC that it initiate as its primary immediate task a party rectification campaign aimed at saturating the Party with a thorough-going study of Marxism. This would consist initially of Party wide study of Marxist theory and then study of the political, social and economic reality of US. On the basis of the results of this campaign, we anticipate there will be a need to draft a new Party program, a new Party constitution and a new mass line. When these processes are well under way or completed, the Party could consider the launching of several mass organizations of a revolutionary nature. Here are possible examples.

Rally for a Republic – mass organization joining all people opposed to the US State

Movement for Socialism Now – a mass organization for revolutionary restructuring

Communist Constructors/Builders of Abundance – a movement of workers building advanced economy – engineers, scientists, and directors of production, distribution and services.

Submitted by responsible members of the CPUSA who lead the work of www.communistcentury.com.

Notice

2010-06-11T12:04:00.002-04:00

We have changed our look to catch up with our changed ideas.

National Board, CPUSA

Campaign for America's Future

2010-06-10T17:56:00.002-04:00

CAF had a great national conference.

We contributed a lot to it.

Without our participation the conference would have been a so-so lackluster affair.

My favorite speaker was Roger Hickey. Just brilliant. The shining star of America's future.

Bob Herbert and Roger Wilkins were way out in left field standing behind the home run fence. We have finally begun to get a grip on things and the ultra-leftists are starting to see things our way.

Our presence at the conference was modest; our presence was welcome. You might say we were the hit of the gala affair. Our message was aimed on target and we hit the bulls-eye on every try.

I'm all charged up and raring and ready to go. Come on everyone; coffees on me.

Say, brother; can you spare a dime?

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

We need to revise Gus Halls' thinking ever so much

2010-06-06T18:39:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Joel Wendland the working class intellectual who does such a fine job with Political Affairs we have begun to explain things the way Gus Hall wanted me to do when I inherited the CPUSA leadership from him per his wishes made know to me by him.

This is a fantastic article so we have reprinted it in part to keep our detractors at bay for awhile.

The editing has been minor.

Joel's reinterpretation of Gus Hall's old ideas to fit our new ways is simply brilliant.

I must say, Joel's brilliance in deception is second to none except for me. My brilliance in controlling and manipulating the smallest National Convention in CPUSA history is just phenomenal.

We weren't able to get away with shedding our name; not yet. But did you take note of the way we got through an entire National Convention without having to pass a resolution in support of Barack Obama remaining the leader of the democratic all-people's front?

We are just about through with the ultra-leftism brought into our Party by Gus Hall and to finish them off we will use some edited and slightly changed writings from Gus Hall.

Joel, won't you step forward and take a bow before reading your edited version of Gus Hall's polemic.

Yes, Perlo, what is it?

Sam, can we see the original unedited version of this?

Perlo, why would you want to see that; you can take my word the editing has been ever so slight. If you really want to read the original you should go look through the boxes of stuff we gave to the Tamiment Library.

We are going to use our edited version to kick off a discussion about "vanguard party."

Yes, Scottie; what is it?

Sam, I thought you said we could start discarding the idea about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" first.

Scottie, you just hold that thought for a few more months... Peter Molenaar! Not that thought! Leave those damn Viagra pills at home from now on.

Bruce! Bruce Bostick! Why are you bobbing your head that way. Jesus that is distracting and annoying. I know getting through the convention was tough on you and added to your depression because the Soviet agents didn't all come out of the woodwork yet. This is enough to depress anyone. Why don't you pass the Prozac around the room for all of us. Learn to share man.

Ok, Joel; let us have your best middle class thoughts. Read us Gus Hall's ideas:

Working-class Intellectuals

By Gus Hall

Editor's note: We have to take every opportunity to oppose what may be called the Sarah Palinization of working-class politics, that is the reduction of politics to sound bites, appeals to wedge issues and hate, and promotion of the idea that working people can't think for themselves. To help, here is an excerpted and slightly edited version of an article that originally appeared in Political Affairs, April 1977. Additional editor's comments appear in the text for definitions and additional context for today's reader. The purpose of republishing this article is to open a discussion on theory, what it is, why it is and must be rooted in our experiences within historically specific social relations, who is capable of developing it, and why it must have a working-class basis.

The Party has already entered the straight road of leadership of the working masses by advancing "intellectuals" drawn from the ranks of the workers themselves. -- Lenin

Many working people, especially in the capitalist world, go through life in the belief that the world of ideas, of theory and science, is beyond their ability to understand. They believe theory and science have very little to do with their everyday lives or activities. They accept the idea that the world of ideas, the realm of thought, is for intellectuals and professionals.

That, of course, is how the ruling class of all past and present exploitative societies have wanted it. They know that a class that thinks will not long accept exploitation or slavery. In all past exploitative societies book and schools were for the ruling-class elite. These elites were "ordained" to do the thinking for the working people. Such concepts, of course, reflect reality in societies where there is a sharp division between physical and mental labor.

U.S. capitalism has always promoted the concept that thinking should be limited to the chosen few. The capitalist class fought against the establishment of the public education system. They lost the battle but never gave up. They have continued their attempts to limit the number of students and as much as possible to limit the scope of education only to satisfying industry's technological requirements.

Educational restrictions have always been aimed against working-class youth. And there have always been special racist restrictions against Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano and other racially oppressed young people. The stubborn resistance to bilingual education is one current instance of this resistance. [Editor's note: Education activists, such as Jonathan Kozol, have long noted the class and racial divides in America that persist today. Though Hall wrote this in 1977, the battle to protect or extend bilingual education persists.]

After World War II, the government's education program for veterans opened the door to higher education to tens of millions of young working people. Now, however, it is attempting to close that door again. Today, state monopoly capitalism is continuing to enforce the policy of limiting the scope of education for the working class. [Editor's note: Hall's argument holds true for the 1970s as the Nixon administration repeatedly blocked efforts to boost GI Bill benefits for veterans of the Vietnam War. Congressional Democrats, along with strong support from veterans' organizations and the labor movement, in 2008 won a huge victory by overcoming Republican opposition to the expansion of college benefits for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with passage of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Expansions of the bill's programs in 2009 under President Obama's economic recovery act also passed over Republican opposition. Obviously, these changes will prove to be a big step forward for hundreds of thousands of working-class men and women.]

But that is not the whole story. Because of the internal contradictions of capitalism, the advance of science and technology, and because of strong public demand, capitalism has not been able to keep the realms of thought, science and theory closed in the same way previous exploitative societies did. In this sense reality has changed. But many old notions and prejudices stubbornly resist the new reality. [Editor's note: The development of the Internet and new information technologies have proven these remarks ever more true today.]

This is an important question because a historic truth is being used by many to put over ideas that are not true, including the anti-working-class concept that working people are not able to think. For many the reflection of past realities has become the basis for a timeless, anti-working-class dogma.

One does not have to be a professional historian to realize that important changes have taken place which have their effects on the working class, such as the availability of mass public education and higher education, the higher rates of literacy in the industrialized countries and the mass publication of basic books. Even winning the eight-hour day has given workers more time for studying and thinking. The new level of mass communication, of science and technology has created new relationships between the broad masses and the world of theory and thought.

Many still hold to outdated and very narrow notions of what intellectuality is and who intellectuals are. Many cling to the old, elitist concept that only those who "think full-time" qualify. That, of course, conveniently disqualifies all who work with their hands.

Many intellectuals use the past reality to justify and sustain their prejudices that workers are not able to think. Even in some of the best circles this erroneous concept gives rise to attitudes of intellectual snobbishness or elitism. In many instances it gives rise to ideas that only people with professional training, or middle-class intellectuals, can or should lead working-class organizations.

This problem is not limited to the U.S., or to capitalist countries in general. There are reflections of this in the world Communist movement and it occasionally appears in Marxist-Leninist literature. However, it is necessary to state that, while not he surface the problem appears the same, in essence there is a difference.

In the non-capitalist world it is a leftover of old ideas. The following is a rather typical example of this kind of statement appearing in Marxist literature. As a rule it seems to appear without much thought. It is not defended, discussed or elaborated upon:

It must be borne in mind that in an exploitative society, where there is an impassable gulf between mental and manual labor, the classes whose lot is manual labor are unable as a rule to advance ideologists from their own ranks. Their ideologists most often are members of other classes who have enough time and money to get an education, and at the same time are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving.

Such a formulation, while having an element of historical truth, leaves the door wide open to all kinds of misinterpretations. It certainly does not indicate that there are and have been changes in class relationships and in the role of classes in society.

When referring to the working class, phrases like "are unable," combined with the implication that other classes "are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving," are unacceptable. If the working class is not "able" to provide people "from its own ranks" who "are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving," then it is not capable of providing people who are "capable" of understanding Marxism-Leninism. However, life proves otherwise every day.

With the advent of capitalism there emerged a new class – the working class, which in many ways is unique and to which history has assigned the unique task of the final elimination of all classes, including itself. A class that is capable of carrying out such a monumental task is more than capable of making contributions in the field of thought.

Even in the last century when the educational gap between manual workers and intellectuals was much greater, the advantage in grasping complicated ideas was not always on the side of intellectuals. For example, as Engels noted in his Introduction to Marx's Wage Labor and Capital: "The uneducated workers, who can be easily made to grasp the most difficult economic analyses, excel our supercilious 'cultured' folk, for whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble for their whole life long."

The question of theory/science and its relationship to the working class must be dealt with in present-day terms. It can not be approached as a timeless cliche.

As the working class matures and develops and as it fulfills its historic assignment, two processes take place. The first is that the class struggle and the working class become increasingly greater influences in molding a new type of intellectual: an intellectual who, although not of working-class background, is a working-class partisan. An outstanding example of this kind of intellectual is John Reed, a founder of our Party, who was described by Mike Gold in these words: "He identified himself so completely with the working class. He undertook every danger for the revolution. He forgot his Harvard education, his genius, his popularity, his gifted body and mind, so completely that no one else remembered them anymore. There is no gap between Jack Reed and the workers any longer."

The second process is that the working class is increasingly producing new working-class intellectuals from among its own ranks.

It must be kept in mind not to confuse the role of the intellectual with the role of a vanguard working-class revolutionary party. The task of such a party was defined clearly by Lenin: "The task of the proletarian party is to introduce socialist consciousness into the spontaneous working-class movement, to impart to it a conscious nature."[Editor's note: The concept of "vanguard role" is a complicated one. It deserves new thinking. We do not adhere – and never did – to the pseudo-political idea that a small group of people who hold some special insights into the nature of society will cause some revolutionary break with capitalism. Change will come when tens of millions of people vote in new ways, build the power of the labor movement and working class, and create new or renew existing democratic institutions that shift power away from banks, oil companies, military contractors, etc. to working families.]

How well the Communist Party fulfills this task in a planned, organized way is a very basic measure of how it fulfills its vanguard role and how well it helps to prepare the working class for more advanced struggles. This task is fulfilled by parties in which the cadre who come from working-class backgrounds and those whom from non-working-class backgrounds blend into one Communist, working-class revolutionary/intellectual collective.

Therefore, the concept of introducing class and socialist consciousness "not the spontaneous working-class movement" must not be interpreted to mean that this can be done only by intellectuals of non-working-class origins and status.

There are many significant changes that must be taken into consideration when dealing with the questions of intellectuals and the working class.

The birth and building of socialism in the world has added a new – a qualitatively new – element to this question, because the working class in socialist societies is the dominant influence, not only in everyday political affairs but also in the development of theory and science. As socialism does away with differences between mental and physical activities, it is also removing the barriers which have prevented worker from making their full contribution int he field of thought and ideas.

In the socialist countries the working class is doing what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels said, in The Holy Family it would be forced to do. The working class "cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which is summed up in its own situation."

The effects of the changes in the socialist countries are felt worldwide. This is a very important new factor, a new influence on the development of intellectuals from the ranks of the working class. The example of the historic achievements of societies where the working class is the leading force acts as a source of confidence for workers, a stimulant to enter the area of ideas, of theory and of science.

The Communist parties have made unique and historic contributions to opening up the world of thought, the world of theory and science, to workers. The Communist parties are themselves schools for the development of intellectuals with a partisan class viewpoint.

As capitalism decays, the capitalist class becomes less and less the basis for the development of intellectuals with a healthy social consciousness, and even less so for intellectuals with a partisan working-class consciousness. Life has shifted that historic responsibility to the working class.

As working-class parties, Communists parties are a factor in helping the working class carry out that responsibility.

The idea that the working class is not able to develop intellectuals from its own ranks is turned into a coverup for anti-working-class concepts.

In some cases this weakness leads to situations where middle-class, professional intellectuals tend to take over and hog the leadership of Communist parties in capitalist countries. Often they use the words "class struggle" and "the working class" as cliches, but take not steps to make it possible for the working-class cadre of these parties to be a factor in policy decisions. [Editor's note: "cadre" refers to party activists.]

Such leaders are not willing to accept the leading role of the working class in the field of thought or in their parties. They dilute the concept of class struggle. They downgrade the historic role of the working class. They eliminate the working class in the struggle for socialism and they do not think the working class is able to produce an intellectual.

The time has come to bury the idea that the working class is unable to think. In fact, Marxism-Leninism is a science so closely related to the rise of the working-class movement that eliminate the working class as a basic influence and participant in the further development of the science is like eliminating the heart in a living being.

The historic role of the working class was clearly placed by Marx and Engels: "Before the proletariat fights out its victories on the barricades and in the lines of battle, it gives notice of its impending rule with a series of intellectual victories."

Many errors in the history of our Party can be traced to periods when there was a lack of working-class participation in the leadership of the Party. The history of the world Communist movement argues for greater participation of workers in the field of theory and science. It is time to drop concepts and cliches that do not correspond to the new realities of this period of history.

Fantastic Joel; just fantastic.

As all of you can see, middle class muddle-headedness has a great future in our Party.

I can't wait to see what you do with Vic Perlo's work.

Bruce, how are you coming on those leafets?

Well, Sam, we are trying to find a printer. You want ten million leaflets about this instigator of the Minnesota Problem and Al Marder said he wants half the ten dollars you gave me to print up leaflets for the U.S. Peace Council to cover the Nation.

Bruce, why aren't you using our printing presses?

Sam, you sold off that stuff when you said we didn't need it anymore. You bought all these computers made by Apple in China with the money. Have you heard about all the depressed workers they have over there?

Bruce, have you checked out our rooftop?

Sam, I haven't. No not yet. I still have some Prozac left and Sam Stark told me he can get me more. If he can't I'll checkout our rooftop before I ever check in to Bellevue again. That Club there just isn't working out for me.

Ok, Bruce; why don't you get one of the mimeograph machines out of the closet.

But Sam, they are all hand-crank jobs.

Ok, Peter Molenaar, you get to work cranking the mimeo you like to use your hands.

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA

New leaflet issued by CPUSA

2010-06-05T01:45:00.003-04:00

I am going to revert back to the old ways of doing some things.

We have printed this leaflet.

I am placing Mark Froemke and Bruce Bostick in charge of its distribution.

We have ordered this guy to keep his mouth shut. He won't listen.

Posting this on the internet on our sites hasn't worked. Let's give leafleting a try; its 20th Century but 21st Century methods haven't worked as anticipated.

Let's see if we can't get complete participation from all 230 members of our Party or at least the 85 members still paying dues.

We might need a little more money for this campaign; Erwin, can you see if Morris Childs has any spare cash laying around?

Yes, Scottie what is it?

Sam, what if this doesn't work? We have been trying to get this Minnesota Problem under control for the last 12 years. It seems like the more we talk about it the worse the Problem gets.

Scottie, this is why I am sending both Bruce Bostick and Mark Froemke out to do the job this time. You let us down the last time we sent you out.

Yes, Joelle; what is it?

Sam, do you think we should include that he is bad mouthing our current President, too?

No Joelle I don't. This might create sympathy for the guy. Look out these windows here. How many people do you see supporting Barack besides us?

This leaflet will be delivered to plant gates for the security guards in the USIS Club to distribute:

Thursday, September 06, 2007

CPUSA Statement

Issues concerning recent emails/statements by Alan Maki

The Communist Party, USA is taking the unusual step of issuing this statement because of a barrage of recent emails and public statements by Alan Maki. Many have received emails from Alan Maki attacking a broad range of progressive activists. In many he represents himself as a member of the Communist Party, USA.

Alan Maki is not a member of nor does he reflect the views of the Communist Party, USA. He was dropped from membership three years ago because of his attacks on progressives. He continues to target elected officials, union leaders, and other leaders in the broader mass movements for social change.

The Communist Party believes the only path to social and economic justice is through the struggle for unity. We are deeply involved in efforts to organize the broadest possible coalitions against the Bush administration and its policies. The policies of the Communist Party have long been premised on working to unite all who struggle for democracy, peace and justice.

National Board, CPUSA 8.24.2007

Sam Webb
National Chair, CPUSA