February 16, 2011

Decision Time for the CPUSA Written by Edward A. Drummond in M-L Today Feb 15, 2011

http://fwd4.me/vrD

 
Editors' Note: we received this article from Edward A. Drummond. His criticisms of Sam Webb’s “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century” are severe. We invite responses from our readers in the weeks and months ahead.



I welcome the mounting calls in the CPUSA to replace Sam Webb in order to restore and revive the Communist Party.

I urge that he resign now, and spare us a messy internal fight. 

It is now necessary to remove him. Not to remove him is not an option. His job is a political post, and he doesn’t have the appropriate politics. How do we know that? He says so in his new 10,000-word think piece “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century.” [1]

It’s not personal. He simply doesn’t do what we pay him to do. He isn’t doing his real job. Evidently, he does not intend to do it. He has made gigantic mistakes. He has presided over organizational decline. But he shuns accountability. Self-criticism is rare, whispered, and tucked away in paragraph 17. He conceals information from us. He has a pattern of dissembling.[2]  He has become an ideological émigré from the Communist movement. But he beckons us to follow him.

It's time to reassign him to other work where he can do less damage.  With this outrageous essay he has thrown down the gauntlet. If we don’t move him out as national chair, how can we say we have any self–respect?

I concede: Sam Webb has the right to change his politics and become a non-Communist. That he has exercised that right is evident  in the article under discussion. Webb, however, does not have the right to be a non-Communist and at same time be chair of our party, the CPUSA. Nobody has such a right.

I will grant, also, that Sam Webb is an accomplished speechwriter. Moving words around on a page, he can produce "truthiness," a useful term invented by comedian Stephen Colbert.  Webb can make apostasy seem like common sense.  For example, he throws out Lenin’s party of a new type -- in favor of an opportunist party of the old type -- with these sentences:

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.

A more accurate title for his confessional essay would have been “How I Became a Social Democrat, and Why You Should Too.” Most of its ideas he has expressed before, but here they are more boldly expressed. Various writers, including me, have critiqued them on this web site.[3] A tenth of the article is devoted to his personal political evolution away from Communism. Sadly, all Party members will not read a ten thousand-word think piece. If they do not, the damage inflicted will be all the greater.

Top Ten Reasons to Remove Him

On the basis of this document alone, Comrade Webb should be required by the NC to vacate his post. Its most egregious disclosure is this: he doesn’t   believe any longer in the goals of the CPUSA. It took him ten years to confess to this. Those paying attention had deduced it years ago. Webb declares:

1. Lenin and Leninism are Out. “As for "Marxism-Leninism," the term should be retired in favor of simply "Marxism." No wonder the CPUSA opposition to US imperialist wars -- Iraq, Afghanistan -- has been enfeebled.

Marxism? He says he is for it. However, there are few more fundamental Marxist ideas than historical inevitability, and the class character of the state. Having dumped Leninism, it turns out he’s not really in favor of Marxism either. Historical inevitability? Out. “After all, there is no direct or inevitable path to socialism.” Class character of the state? Out. “Struggle within the state is no less important than struggle against the state.”

The core principle of Party organization -- democratic centralism -- is out.  There is a remaining prohibition against factionalism that he applies to others, but not to his own faction. I will return to this.

Leadership  of mass movements, i.e. a struggle for a CPUSA vanguard role in people’s movements? Out. He says he is for it. But not when you read the fine print. [4]

The Party Program is out. His socialism is “a work in progress.” The CPUSA Program says Marxism-Leninism is the ideological guidance of the Party. He says no.

2. Fake internationalism. He says he is for internationalism, but rails against “foreign-sounding” words.[5] He is quite selective about foreign-ness. Leninism is foreign-sounding; Marxism is not foreign-sounding. This is deceitful hogwash rooted in reformism and national chauvinism.

3. Sophistry and double talk. A document so rife with bunkum surely says something about its author’s character.  His version of “dialectics” is mumbo jumbo.[6] He is clueless about real dialectics. He claims that a “party of socialism in the 21st century is  “steeped in class struggle.” Class struggle is what he is running away from. His labored, fake modesty is repellent. He declares  that  these are just a few exploratory ideas…which I humbly submit… knowing we all make mistakes ...it’s a work in progress.  In 2005, he sprang his  “Reflections on Socialism” on the Party convention on its last day. It was similarly billed as a personal viewpoint, just a few tentative ideas. It has been on the Party web site as a canonical text ever since.

If he were really modest he would acknowledge the complete failure of his analysis. Recall how wrong – and how haughty – his opinions were, when he chastised domestic and foreign skeptics as “ostriches.”

Labor and its allies now have a friend, a people's advocate in the White House. ... it is obvious that the Obama administration represents a qualitative break with rightwing extremism and free-market fundamentalism. Not to see this, not to acknowledge this, not to welcome this, no matter whether you live in or outside U.S. borders, is to act like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand and misses what is happening on the ground. [7]

4. Misleading the members. Good leaders don’t make big mistakes, and they revise mistakes promptly. As he now admits openly, Webb’s theories and policies are not “mistakes.” The decision to hollow out the CPUSA as a genuine Communist Party, to make it merely a pressure group inside the Democratic Party came first.  Sam Webb changed his politics in the 1990s.[8]  But he also decided to keep his job (and the perks and assets that go with it), and try by stealth and by guile the to remake CPUSA as a social democratic or perhaps a liberal Democratic organization. The two, in practice, are little different.  Since coming into office in 2000, he has been tiptoeing and wordsmithing his way toward this end.  So far, he has largely succeeded.

5. Anti-Communism. A full answer to his obsession with Stalin would require a book. Suffice it to say anti-Stalinism is the antechamber to all-out anti-Communism.  For one so preoccupied with the “ultra right,”  he uses the bitterest anti-Communist rhetoric of the ultra right in his plea for more anti-Stalinism in the CPUSA. [9]

6. Harmful impact on mass movements.  With Communists playing a smaller role in it, the antiwar movement is floundering. When was the last big antiwar demonstration in Washington? The trade unions  -- without a Communist critique, Communist skill at building left-center coalitions and Communist strategic understanding -- have no idea what to do now that Obama Administration is attacking working people almost daily. Their plan was to elect Obama and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. What’s the plan now?

7. Harmful Impact on the Party. A falling, aging membership.  Dwindling CPUSA influence on the left and people’s movements. Internal Party morale at rock bottom. Clubs drifting.

8. Incompetence. His stewardship of the organization is in itself a sufficient basis to remove him. Webb’s self–described “flexible and non-dogmatic Marxism,”[10] has led to a trail of errors. In 2008-2010 we were treated to delirious rhapsodies about the President’s alleged “community organizer” background.  A chimerical "Obama Movement" was claimed to exist, thereby conflating a movement with 1) a campaign email list of small donors, or else 2) a transient moment in November 2008 when new forces entered the voting booth. A progressive “Obama Agenda,” to which we were required to rally our new Democratic Party contacts, was said to exist. When his right-wing Cabinet appointments were made, we heard, "Don't go bananas," such appointments need not imply future policy direction.

For two years -- facts be damned -- Webb and Co. continued to swoon.   Obama became the leader of the people's movements, a "friend." Early 2009 was the "springtime of possibility." He was "brilliant," a "transformational" politician. The country was coming "out of the crisis," into "an era of democratic reform." Members were advised to attend the Inaugural festivities. Some Party leaders actually predicted that Obama would shift leftward after the Inauguration.  We heard the  "Impossible has become Possible." A mountain of evidence that Obama, not McCain, was the main recipient of Wall Street donations was dismissed. [11]

9. Webb doesn’t do his job. He is mainly responsible for carrying out the line of the Party as expressed in the Party Program.[12] Openly, he is declaring that his present political convictions lead him in another direction. A self-respecting organization cannot tolerate such behavior.

10. Webb’s ideas amout to Browderism for the 21st Century. "The historic error of social democracy is trailing behind the big bourgeoisie," wrote William Z. Foster in 1946. [13]  The ghost of Browder haunts the CPUSA today. The present course of the CPUSA is precisely the Browder error: trailing an illusory liberal monopoly bourgeoisie whose political expression is said to be the Obama Administration

Browder wrongly projected that Big Three (US-UK-USSR) wartime unity would continue after the defeat of the Axis, with the consent of US monopoly capitalists, all “intelligent men.” Browder then tried to ally the CPUSA with his imaginary “liberal” big bourgeoisie. In fact, the Truman government was becoming less liberal by the day as it became the instrument of US ruling circles’ desire to launch the Cold War and McCarthyism.

Similarly, today, the leadership circle around Webb hitched its wagon to Obama in 2008, as it had earlier hitched its wagon to Congressional Democrats. Obama and the Democrats are – we are supposed to believe – the voice of the “liberal” big bourgeoisie, our rampart against the “ultra right.” Reality just won’t conform to Webb’s predictions.  The US Administration  is moving  rightward as fast as it can.

Other objectionable, dishonest features, such as the use of Straw Men, are everywhere. No Communist, ever, has said “reform is a dirty word,” as he implies.

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.

Conclusion

If the Webb line is Browderism for the 21st Century,  its end, sooner or later, will be the same. The ship is already foundering on the sharp rocks of reality. But will its end be in time to save the Party?

Ousting him in an internal fight will not be easy. On his side, for example, is the abysmally low standard of Party ideological education which he has done so much to lower. This fact works in favor of his desired transformation of the Party into a gelatinous association of liberal Democrats.

I beseech Party members, still holding back,  to re-think the “factionalism” issue. That democratic centralism is already a dead letter is clear from the open advocacy by his surrogates of a Party name change, even ending the CPUSA as a party.  Webb’s Twenty-Nine Theses tell us he is no longer a Communist. He is not binding himself by democratic centralism. You should not be either, if it impedes the fight to save the Party. If and when we restore the Party, then we can restore disciplined, democratic unity, that is to say, restore democratic centralism.

If other leaders of the National Committee (NC) and National Board (NB) have neither the wit nor common sense to understand what’s at stake -- if they cannot grasp that Webb’s stated politics make him unsuitable for the post he is in -- then  we must go to the Districts and clubs.  He holds the most important post in the Party.  He sets the line. He sets the leadership agenda and priorities. He makes assignments.  He hires and fires.  He has the last word on the assets.

So far, many Party leaders have hardly covered themselves in glory. Some still stay silent. Like Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, they hope that “something will turn up.” Some confine their opposition to sharing derisive comments about his inane ideas only among their friends, who already agree with them.  This is opportunism. The result is that nothing changes, and nothing will change. The Party is in a tailspin.  This is perhaps their last chance to redeem themselves.

If his new document stands unchallenged, Webb will have ample reason to think the way is clear to do what he pleases. He has surrounded himself, mostly, with toadies on the NB. One hopes that not all on the NB are toadies. The NC, though purged of many of its independent thinkers, still has healthy forces.

It is unacceptable for a Communist party, a revolutionary party, to be headed by a person who does not share its beliefs. Would it be acceptable for a union leader openly to take the side of the employers?

Some say, “Ignore him; we can do good work without him.” To believe that is a big mistake.  Stealthily for ten years, more or less openly for five years, he has been nudging the Party rightward. Most ignored his “class is too stiff” essay of 2000. Some ignored his speech to the Left Forum in 2004. They ignored his “Reflections on Socialism” in 2005. They ignored the dismantling process.  Physical dismantling included the bookstores, Party archives, the print PWW, and on and on.  Some, truly dead from the neck up, want to ignore even this document.

Fence-sitting is no longer possible.

Removing him from office and changing the line would start a recovery process.

When US imperialism was pushing deeper into the quagmire of the Vietnam War, Pete Seeger wrote about LBJ’s criminal folly in a famous antiwar ballad. He likened the escalation of the war to a US platoon commander who pushed his unit into the murky jungle river. The ballad’s unforgettable refrain was, “We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool says to push on.”

Today, the CPUSA is “Waist deep in the Big Muddy.” Its members must act before the waters rise over our heads. Time is short.

-End-

________________________________________________________________

Endnotes


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

[2] It took him  more than ten years  to own up to the fact that he changed his politics in the 1990s. He says he has re-thought  his decision in the 1991 CPUSA versus Committees of Correspondence battle, but he won’t tell us why or how.Here is his idea of self-criticism: “Unfortunately, the "movement" of these broad social forces was not sustained in the post-election period.”  It takes gall to write such words,  when one  was advocating that the movement adjust itself to the politics of the Obama Administration, not vice versa. He goes on to be agnostic about what is responsible  for this “unfortunate” development.

[3]  “Reflections on Revisionism" (2005); ”From Revisionism to Party Liquidation"( 2008); “the Crisis of the CPUSA” (2009). All available at <>

[4] “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.”

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

But then he also writes: “As for "Marxism-Leninism," the term should be retired in favor of simply "Marxism." ….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. 

”

[6] In Thesis #11 he declares:  “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 accumulation.
” Clear?

[7] Note that the process doesn’t work in reverse. In 2008-10 when the Democrats held, so to speak, two and one-half branches (the House, the Senate, a 5-4  balance on the US Supreme Court), there was no discussion that the political emergency was over and the ultra right was fading as the main danger. Webb has shifted the line. The mere existence of the ultra right, not its power, actual or potential, is the justification of the permanent CPUSA embrace of the Democratic Party.

[8] “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. “

[9] 
”... 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.” 



[10]  A phrase directly borrowed from Browder, by the way.

[11]  The donations bestowed on Obama by Wall Street were public information. See <>

[12] I was tempted to write “the line of the Party Convention.” The May 2010 convention was as one comrade who attended declared, “more an exercise in crowd control than a Communist convention.“  See “Impressions of the CPUSA Convention” at www.mltoday.com.

[13] “Marxism-Leninism versus Revisionism,”  Foster,  Duclos, Dennis, Williamson, Weiss. 1946

February 15, 2011

Reflections of Fidel The Revolutionary Rebellion in Egypt. February 14, 2011 (Taken from CubaDebate)

Havana.  February 14, 2011
http://fwd4.me/vpC
Reflections of Fidel
The Revolutionary Rebellion in Egypt
(Taken from CubaDebate)


I said several days ago that the die was cast for Mubarak and that not even Obama could save him.

The world knows what is taking place in the Middle East. The news is circulating at incredible speed. Politicians barely have time to read the cables coming in by the hour. Everyone is aware of the importance of what is occurring there.

After 18 days of harsh battling, the Egyptian people attained an important objective: to defeat the United States' principal ally in the heart of the Arab countries. Mubarak was oppressing and plundering his own people, he was an enemy of the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the military NATO group.

The Egyptian Armed Forces, under the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, had overthrown a submissive king and created the Republic which, with support from the USSR, defended the homeland from the Franco-British and Israeli invasion in 1956 and retained possession of the Suez Canal and the independence of this millennial nation.

Thus Egypt enjoyed a high level of prestige in the Third World. Nasser was known as one of the most outstanding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which he participated in creating, together with other eminent leaders of Asia, Africa and Oceania who were fighting for national liberation and political and economic independence from the former colonies.

Egypt always enjoyed the support and respect of the abovementioned international organization which brings together more than 100 countries. That sister nation currently presides over the Movement for the three-year period established; and the support of many of its members for the struggle which its people are now waging will not be slow in coming.

What did the Camp David Accords signify, and why are the heroic Palestinian people so passionately defending their most vital rights?

At Camp David – with the mediation of the then U.S. President Jimmy Carter – the Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the famous accords between Egypt and Israel.

It is said that they held secret talks during 12 days and, on September 17, 1979, signed two important accords: one referring to peace between Egypt and Israel, and another related to the creation of an autonomous territory in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which Al-Sadat thought – and Israel knew and shared the idea – would be the headquarters of the Palestinian state, whose existence, as well as that of the state of Israel, the United Nations Organization agreed on November 29, 1947, during the British Mandate of Palestine.

After difficult and complex talks, Israel agreed to withdraw its troops from the Egyptian territory of Sinai, although it categorically rejected the participation of Palestinian representatives in the peace negotiations.

As a result of the first agreement, Israel returned to Egypt the Sinai territory occupied in one of the Arab-Israeli wars.

In virtue of the second, both parties committed themselves to negotiate the creation of the autonomous regime in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The former comprised a territory of 5,640 square kilometers and 2.1 million inhabitants; and the latter, 360 square kilometers and 1.5 million inhabitants.

The Arab countries were angry with that agreement in which, in their judgment, Egypt did not energetically and firmly defend a Palestinian state whose right to exist had been at the center of the struggles waged for decades by the Arab states.

Their reaction reached such extreme indignation that many of them broke off relations with Egypt. In that way, the UN Resolution of November 1947 was erased from the map. The autonomous entity was never created and thus the Palestinians were deprived of the right to exist as an independent state, leading to the interminable tragedy endured there and which should have been resolved more than three decades ago.

The Arab population of Palestine is the victim of acts of genocide; their lands are being snatched from them and are deprived of water in those semi-desert areas, and their housing is destroyed with sledge hammers. In the Gaza Strip, one and a half million people are systematically attacked with explosive missiles, live phosphorus and the well-known stun grenades. The territory of the Strip is blockaded by land and sea. Why is there so much talk about the Camp David Accords and no mention of Palestine?

The United States supplies Israel with the most modern and sophisticated armament, worth billions of dollars every year. Egypt, an Arab country, was converted into the second recipient of U.S. weapons. To fight against whom? Against another Arab country? Against the Egyptian people themselves?

When the population was demanding respect for their most elemental rights and the resignation of a president whose policies consisted of exploiting and plundering his people, the repressive forces trained by the United States did not hesitate to fire on them, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

When the Egyptian people were awaiting explanations from the government of their own country, the replies came from senior officers from U.S. intelligence agencies or the U.S. government, without any respect whatsoever for Egyptian officials.

Do the leaders of the United States and their intelligence services, by any chance, know nothing of the Mubarak government's colossal theft?

Faced with the people's mass protests in Tahrir Square, neither government officials nor intelligence agents said one single word about privileges and the bold-faced robbery of billions of dollars.

It would be an error to imagine that the revolutionary popular movement in Egypt simply constitutes a reaction against the violation of their most fundamental rights. Peoples do not risk repression or death, nor do they stand fast the whole night protesting energetically about purely formal issues. They do so when their legal and material rights are pitilessly sacrificed to the insatiable demands of corrupt politicians and to the national and international forces sacking the country.

The rate of poverty already affected the vast majority of a combative, young and patriotic people, whose dignity, culture and beliefs have all been attacked.

How could they reconcile themselves to the continuing increase in the price of food with the tens of billions of dollars attributed to President Mubarak and the privileged sectors of his government and society?

At this point, it is not enough to know how high that figure is; it must be demanded that the funds be returned to the nation.

Obama is affected by the events in Egypt; he acts or appears to act as if he were the owner of the planet. What is happening in Egypt seems to be his own issue. He has not stopped talking over the telephone with leaders of other countries.

The EFE agency, for example, reports, "… He spoke with British Prime Minister

David Cameron; Jordan's King Abdala II and with the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a moderate Islamist.

"The U.S. President recognized the 'historic change' that Egyptians have made and reaffirmed his admiration for their efforts…"

The principal U.S. news agency AP released some arguments worthy of attention:

"Wanted: Moderate, Western-leaning Mideast leaders willing to be friends with Israel and cooperate in the fight against Islamic extremism while protecting human rights…

"That's the impossible wish list from the Obama administration after popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia ousted two long-serving and close but deeply flawed U.S. allies in stunning rebellions that many believe will spread.

"This dream resume doesn't exist and isn't likely to appear soon. Part of the reason is that American administrations for the past four decades sacrificed the lofty human rights ideals they espoused for the sake of stability, continuity and oil in one of the world's most volatile regions.

"'Egypt will never be the same,' Obama said as he welcomed the departure of Hosni Mubarak on Friday.

"'Through their peaceful protests,' Obama said, ‘Egyptians changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.'

"Even though governments around the Arab world are nervous, there is no sign that entrenched elites in Egypt and Tunisia are willing to cede the power and vast economic leverage they have enjoyed…

"The Obama administration has insisted ever since President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia last month – a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Arab leaders in a speech in Qatar that without reform the foundations of their countries were 'sinking into the sand…'"

The people in Tahrir Square do not appear to be very docile.

Europe Press relates:

"Thousands of demonstrators have arrived in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the mobilizations which provoked the resignation of the country's President, Hosni Mubarak, to reinforce those who have remained in the area despite attempts by the military police to dislodge them, according to reports by the BBC.

"The BBC correspondent posted in the central Cairo plaza has reiterated that the army is looking indecisive faced with the arrival of more demonstrators…

"The hardcore are situated on one of the square's corners… and have decided to stay in Tahrir to make sure that their demands are met."

Regardless of what may happen in Egypt, one of the most serious problems faced by imperialism at this time is the shortage of grain, which I analyzed in my January 19 Reflection.

The United States uses an important part of the corn it raises, and a large portion of soybeans, to produce biofuels. Europe, for its part, employs millions of hectares of land for this purpose.

On the other hand, as a consequence of climate change produced fundamentally by the rich, developed countries, a shortage of water and food is emerging which is incompatible with the growth of the world's population, at a rate which will result in 9 billion inhabitants within 30 years, without the United Nations or the most influential governments on the planet warning or informing the world of the situation in the wake of the fraudulent Copenhagen and Cancun meetings.

We support the valiant Egyptian people and their struggle for political rights and social justice.

We are not opposed to the people of Israel; we are opposed to the genocide of the Palestinian people and in favor of their right to an independent state.

We are not in favor of war, but rather in favor of peace among all peoples.

Fidel Castro Ruz

February 13, 2011
9:14 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

February 10, 2011

Sam Webb: Which side are you on?, a comment to Sam Webb’s article “A party of socialism in the 21st century, By the CPUSA Houston club




http://houstoncommunistparty.com/sam-webb-which-side-are-you-on/


Sam Webb: Which side are you on?
Written on 10 February 2011


Response to Sam Webb’s paper on “A party of socialism for the 21st century…”

This document has also been posted as a comment to Sam Webb’s article “A party of socialism in the 21st century: What it looks like, what it says, and what it does which appeared in Political Affairs www.politicalaffairs.net


By the CPUSA Houston club

The CPUSA Houston club met on 2/6/11 for its monthly meeting. Naturally one of the most important points of discussion was Sam Webb’s new vision of the party as presented in his recent article “A party of socialism in the 21st century: What it looks like, what it says, and what it does.” Most found the document confusing and contradictory. Confusion and contradiction are the classic tools used by the right wing to discredit Communists and the working class.

Many important points were made by club members. One of the first questions that came up was “Do xenophobia, nihilism, anti-communism and blatant self-destruction have any place in the program of the CPUSA?” These are fairly serious charges and should be examined one by one.

Xenophobia

Certainly Webb is correct that there is more opposition to anything “foreign” from the nutty nuts on the right. Does this mean that the party should capitulate to this way of thinking and formally jettison anything that might be taken as “foreign” from our ideology? He maintains that “Leninism” might be seen as “foreign” and should be removed from our ideological positions. From this logic, also Marxism, socialism, a revolutionary party and class struggle might be seen as “foreign” concepts and should be expunged as well. What does this line of thinking mean for internationalism, support for immigrant’s rights struggles as well as world peace? Back in the 60’s, the John Birch Society used to put up billboards along the highways demanding “Get U.S. out of the U.N.” Should the party embrace this thinking since the right wing view it as “pure” and not “foreign”?

One has to wonder what would have become of the great U.S. civil rights struggle led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. if he had decided to abandon Mahatma Gandi, since he was “foreign”? What if the leaders of the Haymarket uprising had been run off since they were German socialists and anarchists and were therefore “foreign”? What if Fidel Castro had sidelined Che Guevara since he was “foreign”? What if organized labor in this country silenced Joe Hill since he was “foreign”? By the way, Marx and Engels are just as “foreign” as Lenin and are equally detested by the wealthy elite.

If Leninism is seen as “foreign”, then that is a major failure of the party to educate people about what Leninism means.

Dropping Leninism from the party in any kind of formal way is not only dishonest, and self destructive but is “foreign” to the thinking of most party members.

Nihilism

The nasty stench of nihilism can also be detected in Webb’s long discourse which he, himself, describes by stating “Readers will surely note inconsistencies, contradictions, silences and unfinished ideas.” The scary part is that top CPUSA leadership seems to have finished their ideas on the party and intends to finish the party. Webb damns our party ideology (the same ideology on which a great history of working class struggle has been built) as “too rigid and formulaic, our analysis too loaded with questionable assumptions, our methodology too undialectical, our structure too centralized, and our policies drifting from political realities.” These are serious charges and Webb fails to back up his thinking with any facts. It appears that Webb is advocating nihilistic idealism and rejecting materialism. Adolf Hitler, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly could not have slammed the party more effectively.

Webb’s nihilism does not stop here. He predicts war, climate disaster and all manner of apocalyptic catastrophes which could prevent any forward movement of the working class. He certainly does not provide any answers as to how working people can fight back against these overwhelming forces. He opines “After all, there is no direct or inevitable path to socialism. Nor is the working class going to simply ‘rise up’ at some appointed time and fight for a society of justice.” With a CPUSA cowering in the corner, where can the working class seek leadership and guidance?

From this line of thinking should our new slogans be “Workers of the world, come to your senses! Your chains are better than starvation!”? and/or “What do we want? Nothing! When do we want it? Whenever!”

Anti-Communism

Again, it is appalling that the ugly face of anti-communism appears at our top leadership. One Houston member pointed out “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.” Webb is using the ideological weapons of right wing opportunism and liquidationism to mount an anti-communist assault on the party of the working class.

We have theory as a guide to action based on scientific socialist principles discovered by Marx, Engels and Lenin as well as others. The uniqueness of our party is that our theory (Marxism Leninism) is interconnected, interdependent and coherent as well as flexible and fluid to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. We have a method of analysis (dialectical materialism), practice (historical materialism) and organizational principles (democratic centralism – democracy and unity of action). Without theory, we have no vision that is based on sound foundations, leaving us to flop around aimlessly. Without a path forward based on material conditions, we grow frustrated and ineffective. Without organizational cohesiveness, our force is greatly diminished, easily split and made to work at counter purposes. What Webb proposes is to discard those elements which make us a revolutionary party.

While most of the article was an attack against an imaginary left sectarianism, the most effective disruption of the CPUSA program has been from the right. This is easily demonstrated in our history – Jay Lovestone, Earl Browder, Committees of Correspondence, etc. Have we forgotten Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev? How did their “new ideas” work out for them? Gorbachev and Yakovlev are some of the most despised people in the former Soviet Union. It is often said that those that do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. Have we learned nothing from the experience in the former Soviet Union where opportunists in the party gutted the CPSU until there was nothing much left to defend?

Liquidationism is the elimination of the party of the working class as an independent force, gutting its theory and purpose and blurring the lines of fundamental class conflict.

Webb has propelled the CPUSA onto the slippery slope of right wing opportunism, reformism, economism and finally liquidation of the party

Self Destruction

Continuing along the road chosen by Webb will only lead to the self destruction of the party. We are reminded of the boiling frog analogy. If a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out and save itself. This is what happened when Earl Browder proposed dismantling the party. Webb is being much more subtle and potentially much more effective in destroying the party. If you place a frog in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.”

The future of the party and the working class

Obviously, anti-communism, xenophobia, and nihilism are poison to a working class party of action. It is up to the members, friends and allies as well as local clubs and district organizers to recognize the self-destructive path we are on and take concrete steps to get us back on course. Obviously, the tactics and strategies we use to fight the class struggle cannot be identical to those strategies and tactics used by Lenin, and Stalin. But to renounce them because the right wing might find them distasteful is unforgiveable. We must not throw out the baby and keep the bathwater. It is up to us to educate working people about our history and what our theory has to offer them in their everyday struggles against the real enemy, capitalism. If we renounce Stalin completely, then we are saying that his contributions to the defeat of German fascism and Japanese imperialism were wrong and we are renouncing the fact that he was a powerful ally of the U.S. in those global struggles.

Since the left and organized labor are in disarray, our party needs to seize the moment and reclaim our role as the vanguard party of the working class. No one is going to award it to us just because we’re good looking. We are going to have to earn it through struggle and victories for the working class.

We, the Houston club of the CPUSA, call on all members to demand an extraordinary National Convention to decide the future of the party. We are calling for a people’s trial of the Webb faction for its blatant and open betrayal of our Party Program and Constitution, mismanagement of party resources, disassembling of the party organizational structure as well as the right wing opportunism and efforts to liquidate the party. Such a trial should be easy to carry out since Webb and his small group of cronies have been very public about their treachery against the CPUSA. If found guilty of crimes against the working class and the CPUSA, they should be unceremoniously removed from office and the control of party resources should be wrenched out of their grasp. It is time to close this humiliating chapter of CPUSA history and move forward with a fully rejuvenated party.

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