Communist Party USA-A joke?

[kellyk]

Has the CPUSA ever really been a legitimate organization, or are they just interested in making money? It seems as if they aren't really devoted to the cause, and to try and do it through elected officials won't work anyway (maybe in Oregon).

[timbaly]

They seem to see the democrats as champions of the working class. :D

Why do you think it might work in Oregon? Is it some kind of a joke I don't understand.

[demonedge]

I don't believe that the American communist party has ever had any real influence. I do know that various communist parties in Canada have had a small degree in power over the years, I believe they held a few seats in parliment in the 20s and 30s.

[Phalanx]

It has a mere 25,000 members, most of which are located in New York. Nothing against New York, but when the vast majority of a party's membership is located in a single city, i don't believe they could ever get any power. And it does seem to me that they try to associate themselves with the democrats all the time.

[American_Trotskyist]

No, it is 2,500, practically nothing. You send in a fourm and you are part of the "Vangard"Party. But they had enormious influence in the 30s and till the end of the 40s, mostly in the Unions. But, they lost most of the influence because of their social chauvanist deeds and words during WWII. They also lost a lot of support after the Hittler Stalin Pact and when they supported the No Strike Policy in WWII. The were very influencial with the Unions, which gave them power. Now they are the appitemy of the Menshevik, to get a good discription of them read Lenin's State and Revolution, they contradict everything he says there.

[SonofRage]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2005, 10:55 PM
No, it is 2,500, practically nothing.
Sadly, that's bigger than any other communist/socialist group (except for perhaps DSA which I had around 5,000 last I heard, but they are paper members).

The CPUSA had it's day, and they did they good mass work. But, as others have said, these days they are mostly just supporting to Democratic Party. Here in NYC, they seem to have a big influence in UFPJ.

[J-MAL]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2005, 06:19 PM
They seem to see the democrats as champions of the working class. :D

Why do you think it might work in Oregon? Is it some kind of a joke I don't understand.
it works in oregon because no one is there...

[NYer565]

Yes, the American Communist Party is a joke. Just like the American fascist Party, and Libertarian Party.

[marxist_socialist_aussie]

I don't really know much about the CPUSA however, with America arguably the, if not atleast one of the most anti communist nmations on earth, isn't it possibly better that they use what small influence they still have to try and get the democrats into power considering the threat to world peace that currently runs America. Also, since I am not American I am not sure this statement is entriely correct, correct me if I am wrong but, could the Communist party actually get anywhere even if it wanted to in a country such as America?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Regarding Communists / Canada:

The several MPs you speak of were probably members of The Ginger Group - left-inclined democratic socialists who weilded some small influence. The Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation also elected MPs at various points, but moved steadily to the right, eventually evolving into the New DEmocratic Party, whose platform bares little resemblance (Unfortunately) to the Regina Manifesto.

The Communist Party Of Canada did play an important role in various extra-parliamentary struggles, especially during the Depression where Communists helped organize the Winnipeg General Strike, various unions of the unemployed, On To Ottawa Trek, and so on.

In addition, one MP for the Communist Party, Fred Rose, was elected twice in the Early 1940s. However, the Gouzenko Affair (Essentially the event that kicked off the cold war) cut his career short and after spending a time in prison (The typical immunity for MPs was ignored. Surprised?) he went into voluntary exile in Poland, at which time his Canadian citizenship was withdrawn.

Coincidently, I am the Secretary of the Fred Rose Club - the PCQ's (Quebec wing of the CPC) only anglophone club, set up within spitting distance of the electoral district that put him into power twice.

[flyby]

here are my views:

a) the CPUSA is not a joke -- it has been at times a dangerous and reactionary force withinthe various movements of resistance and revolution, promoting bourgeois politics and non-revolutoinary strategies. They worked to infiltrate the Panthers (for example) to work against revolutoinary politics and tendencies within the panthers. (Something discussed in interesting detail in Avakian's new memoir "From Ike to Mao... And Beyond.)

b) They had a period that was more revolutionary, before 1934. But even then they were very "economist" -- i.e. based on the idea that focusing on the workers economic struggles was the best way to build a revolutionary movement. After 1934 they were openly flag-waving U.S. patriotic, aligned with the Democratic Party, with all that those things implied. (For years their newspaper has been red, white and blue -- which would be ridiculous if it wasn't politically so sick.)

c) size is not the main issue. And we should not evaluate forces mainly by whether they have already reached some "criticial mass" of national presense.

A force that is now thousands can soon influence and lead millions. We have to gather revolutionary forces, organize ourselves, clarify our line and approach, while we carry out political work. The Maoists talk about "hasten and await" -- meaning we hasten the approach of revolutonary situations, while we also await the larger changes in the world that will ripen contradictions and opportunities.

d) After the restoration of capitalism in the soviet union -- the CPUSA became a complete and slavish instrument of the Soviet Social imperialists, justifying every crime and state capitalist feature. Their vision of "socialism" was an awful, grey, and oppressive welfare state. And their vision of what people should do politically was non-rebellious, slavish, reformist, and bourgeois in every detail and feature. (I have a lot of experience watching and colliding with them, so if people are interested in some history, I can oblige.)

[flyby]

I wanted to touch on sonofrage's view that "they did good mass work."

Sonofrage is raising a common view and an important question -- how to assess the "success" the CP had at its high point (which was also the same point where it turned to super-patriotism and pro-FDR electoralism and extreme pro-war policies.)

This view (that they "did good mass work") is a view elaborated by a whole trend among recent left-leaning historians -- who have written books on the thirties. Their line essentially is that the CP had two sides: It's connection with the comintern, the Soviet Union and ML were its "bad side" -- but its mass work among the masses (organizing the unions, the unemployed, anti-jim crow etc.) were its "good side."

And part of that, is a desire to dublicate (now) the success of the CP in its most rightist (browderite) days, when it had influence in high places, various people elected to office occasionally, leadership of several unions, etc.

But this whole approach separates "mass work" from political goals.

If you do "good mass work" (meaning you sucessfully organize people into unions) but you *at the same time* hand over those people to bourgeois politics, the Democratic party and the imperialist war effort.... then how "good" is the mass work?

Let me put it like this: At the beginning of the 1930s there was a real and significant revolutionary movement among workers -- in the garment districts of NYC, among coal miners, and elsewhere. There were whole sections of the working class (overwhelmingly immigrants) who were revolutionary-minded and partisan toward the communist party. Flash to a decade later: The communist party had taken its forces, submerged them into the Democratic Party, buried itself into trade union and electoral work, and then guided them all into the most loyal and passionate support for the U.S. army and imperialist war effort in the second great war for global division .

(And this took extreme and shameful forms: The CPUSA was notorious for supporting and enforcing a no-strike pledge on workers, supporting the sedition persecution of trotskyists, supporting the round up of Japanese and supporting the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima!! Think about it!)

In a famous and revealing exchange, John L. Lewis (the conservative head of the CIO organizing drives) was asked why he used communists as organizers. And he said: "Never forget who is the hunter and who is the hound."

In other words, the communists were used as the "hounds" of the union drives, and as footsoldiers for FDR's New Deal electoral politics -- but it is hunter, i.e. the system and the imperialists themselves, who bagged the game. And the masses of U.S. workers were welded onto the butt end of the Democratic party for a generation. And when the imperialists wanted to expell the CP from the unions, they could do it easily -- because there was no independent base for communist and left politics that had been build. They even liquidated their own party in many ways -- shut down their branches in the jim crow south, refused to allow immigrant workers to speak languages other than english, insisted that members become U.S. citizens, and officially transformed their party into a "political association" operating inside the Democratic party!)

When they were done with that decade of "mass work" there was no revolutionary current left among the working class -- and even those cadre who called themselves "communists" were now little more than left New Dealers. It would be a whole new generation (in the 1960s) that would have to take up revolutionary communist politics, virtually from scratch, and sharply in opposition to everything the CPUSA had long stood for.

In other words, you can't evaluate "mass work" apart from the politics it serves. And we have to sum up that the CP's famous "heyday" was really their rapid disintegration into reactionary bourgeois politics, (i.e. complete and utter revisionism).