Signed by: Comrades J. Arnoldski, John Mackoviak, Analise Spencer, Jim Byrne, and E.C. Tolentino of the Tucson Club of the CPUSA, Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Source: www.savethecpusablogspot.calink: http://savethecpusa.blogspot.ca/2013/03/where-to-begin-communist-party-usa-and.html
Originally posted at: http://toilerstruggle.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/where-to-begin-the-communist-party-usa-and-the-present-crisis/
Where to Begin? The Communist Party USA and The Present Crisis
At the present moment, the revolutionary movement of the proletariat is
confronted with historic challenges and obstacles which boldly stand in
the way of the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large in the
interests of working and oppressed people. The reality at hand is the
ongoing onslaught that the capitalists are forcing down the throats of
working people by means of their ruthless austerity regimes and
imperialist plunders. By now, no one can hide the fact that even those
in the imperialist First World are suffering from the current crisis of
capitalism. While the ruling classes of the West are crucifying Libyans
in the name of freedom and democracy, and while the Syrian people,
bloodied and exhausted, are struggling to resist imperialist invasion
and a brutal civil war engineered and perpetuated by the West, working
people of America are being stimulated, and beginning to wake up to the
sights around them and realize the gravity of the situation. Witnessing
the fury of cuts, austerity, and encroachments on democratic rights at
home, and at the same time looking on at the terroristic wars being
waged by their government throughout the world, American working people
are showing signs of an increasingly awakened class consciousness in
response to the crisis of the global capitalist-imperialist system. The
achievement of a socialist consciousness, however, is still a complex
and dynamic work in progress, and a protracted one at that.
As has been admitted, considerable challenges and obstacles litter the
road to such a culmination. A capitalist crisis brings not only a
responsive class consciousness or political resurgence of proletarian
revolution, but also heightened offensives launched with the aim of
sustaining the capitalist system regardless of the suffering by the
masses of people entailed. The ruling class, split or divided, is
fundamentally united by its “better dead than red” mentality, and,
driven by this, is determined to fight to the death before surrendering
state power to any revolutionary forces.
At such a time, and considering such realities, the fundamental question
of the revolutionary Marxist agenda is the means by which the American
proletariat can be organized, educated, and agitated to the point of
realizing and being capable of successfully enacting the necessity of
overthrowing capitalism. This is not only a question of strategy and
means that has been discussed many a time around the tables of
communists or in the essays and articles of radicals, but also a crucial
problem concerning the very livelihood of the revolutionary movement
and those involved. It
must be borne in mind that, regardless of what phrasemongering may be
uttered by various comrades here and there, we are living in a time of
definite systemic crisis and radical rupture of capitalism, and our
actions and orientation must be suited accordingly to this state of
conditions. It is simply unpardonable to ignore or be “innocent” of
seeing the conditions that we are facing, the statistics and facts of
which can be found presented anywhere, even in the pages of the
bourgeois press.
Unfortunately, however, there are comrades who, although they may
recognize the realities of capitalism at hand, shut their eyes to the
realities of socialism and revolution which are inseparable from the
problems of capitalism and their solution. This tendency is
distinguished by its proposal of petty reformist and revisionist
distortions in place of genuinely radical theory and practice, and one
of the gravest aspects of this tendency is its very position within the
working class movement.
There is no use in hiding the fact that the greatest representatives of
the reformist and revisionist tendency within the ranks of the
proletarian movement are those who constitute the present leadership of
the Communist Party USA, i.e., Sam Webb and co. This group, this
organized tendency, is responsible for proudly and unabashedly asserting
and suggesting numerous theses concerning the path and means by which
to deal with the current situation of capitalism which are entirely
irreconcilable with Marxism, proletarian revolution, and even the
realities of capitalism. As Comrade Mark Anderson has pointed out in
his article The Old Bug of Right Opportunism Returns, these include, but are not limited to the following:
- “The capitalist system is not moribund, as Lenin said, but is relatively strong. It is not in general crisis. Therefore, the U.S. party’s strategy should be solely to win attainable reforms within the system rather than advocate capitalism’s revolutionary replacement with socialism.”
- “Anti-monopoly strategy, let alone anti-capitalist propaganda, is too advanced for this stage of struggle, and the main focus should instead be on rebuffing the most extreme right and the Republican Party.”
- “Historically, socialism has shown itself to be unable to solve economic and social problems. Central planning is a failure; a market-oriented economy is the way to go. It’s not even clear anymore what socialism is.”
- “The class struggle has ceased to be the central pivot around which all questions revolve.”
- “Racism and national oppression are gradually receding. It is no longer necessary to aggressively push for affirmative action.”
- “Issues of discrimination, anti-Semitism, and the struggle for the full equality of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Asian-Pacific and Arab Americans, LGBT, women, and youth no longer requires special attention. Party Commissions and special demands on these questions are unnecessary.”
- “The term “U.S. imperialism” is too simplistic. The U.S. government, especially under President Obama, can play a positive and humanitarian role in world politics. For this reason it is permissible for the U.S. military and NATO forces to occupy other nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, impose “democratic” reforms, and secure neoliberal economic advantages. Peace and solidarity work is therefore not as important as it once was.”
- “Electoral politics should be limited to work within the Democratic Party. Any attempt to go outside the two-party system is sectarian and futile. Running candidates on the Communist Party ticket is especially narrow and self-defeating.”
- “The CPUSA is bogged down by dogmatism, sectarianism and rigidity. Many of the stock slanders of the Party are indeed justified. It may not survive unless it abandons its outdated dogmas, including the dogma that it should play a leading, vanguard role.”
- “The Party should emulate social democracy and seek to merge with the broad left. The “Communist plus” should be given a quiet burial, and Marxist-Leninist education and literature (including a printed news paper) are relatively unimportant. Strong party organization is no longer necessary.”
These notions, although perpetrated and implied in nearly every article
or speech that the leadership puts forward, have yet to be presented in
more of a concentrated and straightforward expression than in Sam
Webb’s A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.
An unabashed rejection and condemnation of Marxism-Leninism, a
manifesto for reformism and wholesale revisionism, and, above all, the
guiding orientation of the Communist Party USA’s present leadership and
thus Party policy, Webb’s essay is an unavoidable and undeniably
significant document. The document is even further significant upon
realizing its context in present conditions.
At such a time of glaringly evident and deep crisis of the global
capitalist system, in the face of the looming environmental disaster
facing humanity, and in view of US imperialism’s continued, vicious and
violent onslaught against the peoples of the global south – one would
think that at such a time, the leadership of the Communist Party USA
would shoulder its revolutionary rifle and recognize its historic
mission to organize the working class for revolutionary resistance and
struggle against the world capitalist-imperialist offensive. Sam Webb,
however, has proven that a very different view is at large within the
Party’s ranks, and, most unfortunately, among its leading figures.
Indeed, few pronouncements have so shocked the American Left as has Sam
Webb’s A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.
In antagonism to Webb’s theses and proposed orientation, however, there
exists a revolutionary alternative which, rather than striving to cope
with, accomodate, and appease the more “progressive” spectrums of the
capitalist-imperialist ruling class, believes in the pivotal conclusions
reached by Marx and Lenin that have made Marxism-Leninism the
scientifically deduced theory and practice of the emancipation of the
world’s exploited and oppressed people that has accumulated the blood,
sweat, tears, triumphs and tribulations, and successes and failures of
more than a hundred years of struggle.
This tendency, which very much may be the Bolshevik tendency of today
(as opposed to the Menshevik tendency of Webb and co.), resolves that,
in view of the existing conditions, we must not abandon but instead hold
high the banner of Marxism-Leninism, and, rather than ditch truly
revolutionary politics, embrace them. The historic dilemma facing
communists at the present juncture of history is one of either letting
American capitalism continue its history, or, alternatively, beginning
the history of American socialism. As has been said, the fundamental
question of the revolutionary Marxist agenda is the means by which the
American proletariat can be organized, educated, and agitated to the
point of realizing and being capable of successfully enacting the
necessity of transforming bourgeois society and thus opening the road
for such a socialist America. The way forward is clear: we communists
must organize ourselves as the vanguard of working people and the
revolution, we must develop a Party capable of educating, organizing,
agitating, and leading working people and their allies in the collective
struggle for socialism.
Presently, we are playing two ends against a middle in that we, in line
with Party policy, are responsible for developing and maintaining a mass
base of support by being activists in the struggle against the problems
of capitalism, but at the same time we are allying with a “section” of
the capitalists in power, the “progressive” Democrats, because they
supposedly constitute a buffer against the forces of ultra-reaction,
i.e., the far Right, and serve as a popular force in the interests of
the “people” and “inclusive democracy”, as Sam Webb would put it. By
perpetrating such a policy, however, communists the country over are
fulfilling a self-destructive prophecy of dooming the proletarian
movement under the guise of “reinvigorating” or “broadening” it. Under
the present line, we are responsible for rallying the masses of people
around the struggle against capitalism by means of joining and
tail-ending forces which objectively bolster and support the capitalist
system. The incongruity is glaringly evident. The lack of materialist
class analysis is inexcusable.
Rather than miseducating and misleading people in struggle in this
manner, however, the Communist Party USA must be tasked with handling
its historic mission of organizing the forces of revolution against
those of reaction, with shouldering its task of educating, agitating,
organizing, and leading working people against the reactionary forces of
capitalism, whether or not they label themselves Democrat, or
Republican, or Libertarian, etc.
A revolution is on the agenda when people can no longer go on living in
the old way. Such a horizon is extremely close in view. We cannot
pretend to know what exact day the people will be compelled to take to
the streets and overthrow the current order, nor can we pretend to know
the exact day on which the integuments of capitalism will burst asunder
and revolution will be the only open door for humanity. What
communists, what the Communist Party USA, should do, can do, and must
do, however, is prepare cadres, educate, organize, and agitate working
people, and orient its work towards facing its historic mission of
leading the American people in casting capitalism to the dustbin of
history, and opening up, on the basis of socialism, prospects for
humanity’s sustainable and just development.
What is to be done? Where to begin?
The Communist Party USA, as our Party of working and oppressed people,
must be first and foremost revolutionized in its theory and practice.
As Lenin so presciently pointed out: “In its struggle for power the
proletariat has no other weapon but organization. Disunited by the rule
of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced
labor for capital, constantly thrust back to the “lower depths” of utter
destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can become an
invincible force only through its ideological unification on the
principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of
organization, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the
working class.” Neither the senile rule of the American imperialists nor
the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand
this army. The Communist Party USA must render itself such an
organization which has the theoretical foresight, fighting capacity, and
determination by which to wield millions of American workers into an
army committed to overthrowing capitalism and bringing fruition to the
adage that has been inscribed on the Party’s banners for decades:
“Peace, democracy, equality, socialism!” To this end, establishing the
very organizational and ideological integrity which the Party currently
lacks is an imperative matter.
Such is the guiding principle by which to begin to orient the struggle
against the retrograde trends in the Party and begin to push forward the
struggle for the emancipation of working and oppressed people in the
United States of America. It us up to communists around the country to
realize these crucial realities of theory and practice, and contribute
their lot to working out concrete methods and means of building a
Communist Party which is not just interested in interpreting the world,
but effectively changing it. Limiting ourselves as we currently are to
tail-ending the Democratic Party, the trade unions, “progressive”
politics, and so on is systematically sabotaging and impeding the
development of what has rang essential since the days of the Communist
Manifesto: “They [communists] openly declare that their ends can be
attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social
conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a
world to win.” Working and oppressed people of all countries, unite!
Signed: Comrades J. Arnoldski, John Mackoviak, Analise Spencer, Jim Byrne, and E.C. Tolentino of the Tucson Club of the CPUSA
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