Troubles of the communist party [Archive]

TheGodlessUtopian

4th September 2010, 02:47

I have been reading some of the posts here regarding opinions on Communist Party USA and have found not many marxists have a high opinion of it.Why is that so?Leadership struggles or something along that route?

Also the parties which seem to posses the most stablity/popularity seem to be the PSL and the SPUSA.Are there any communist parties that are getting things right or have events gravitated more to socialist organizations?

graymouser

4th September 2010, 12:17

I have been reading some of the posts here regarding opinions on Communist Party USA and have found not many marxists have a high opinion of it.Why is that so?Leadership struggles or something along that route?

Well.... the anarchists and left communists don't like the CPUSA because it's Leninist. We Trotskyists don't like it because it's Stalinist (in the broader sense of the word we use it in, identifying with the politics of "socialism in one country"). Anti-revisionists don't like it because it is revisionist (in the framework of the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Albanian splits).

Politically, the CPUSA has been attached to the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party for over half a century now. There was more of a pretense that it was a revolutionary party under Gus Hall, but since Hall's death in 2000 the Sam Webb leadership has been pretty much taking a liquidationist course where work around the Democratic Party is practically all that it does. This has discredited it among more or less everybody who isn't scared off by the name "Communist Party," and to be honest I don't expect it will be around in another five years.

Also the parties which seem to posses the most stablity/popularity seem to be the PSL and the SPUSA.Are there any communist parties that are getting things right or have events gravitated more to socialist organizations?
I'm pretty sure the PSL would call itself a communist party, although the SP certainly wouldn't do the same. "Socialist" and "Communist" entail a wide range of politics, and for instance even the right wing of the SPUSA is somewhat to the left of the CPUSA. So I wouldn't use those words as a guidepost to much except what the group liked at the time.