Revolutionary Communist Party

Hey guys.

I'm starting to have a lot of problems and ideological breaks with the party I'm currently a part of. I'm looking for another anti-revisionist party in the United States and a lot of my close friends have recommended the Revolutionary Communist Party. They're the Maoist party led by Bob Avakian.

Any thoughts or comments on them?

RCP suffers from "Great leader syndrome"

I was at a march in NYC and heard RCP chanting, "The empire is shaking, trust in Bob Avakian". How could I make that up? Meanwhile, PL was chanting, "Fight for communism, power to the workers."

I recommend you check out PLP. PLP is anti-revisionist with good criticisms of Mao and Stalin, but a bit sectarian (no worse than anyone else). You won't find too much PL on revleft, it is not part of the strategy. Comrade Wang Wei has some oldies but goodies on this board somewhere.

PL does not have all the internal squabbling and BS that seem to afflict RCP. RCP is smaller than PL but seems to have much more internal rancor. PLP marches under red flags every May Day in NYC and LA (not everyone marches for obvious reasons). There are small and large banquets as well (for everyone else).

There is PLP in nearly every major metropolitan area and some small cities. I think you will find PL's line on Great Leaders refreshing and PL has strong youth work and is very multi-ethnic and truly international.

The PLP supports a non-socialist transition straight to communism. Their line is pretty idealist. Sure they have some good shit on their website but their actual line goes like:

The Russian Revolution was great. So were the others, but they failed. Socialism leads to revisionism inevitably. We need to go straight to communism.

my understanding of their reputation is that it is very leader-centric on Avakian

Why waste your time when there are already larger, more active and more organized parties in existence like the Party for Socialism and Liberation? Why salvage a party when there are others that make it totally obsolete?

the RCP seems too much like Lyndon LaRouche's squad of followers in their adulation for their reclusive leader

...this is coming from the dude whose nickname is "hoxhaist" and has a photo of his favored leader as his avatar.

I knew I was going to get a comment like that

But they don't do anything. They could have 100,000,000 members for all I care. They don't participate in activist events. They aren't on the streets. They aren't supporting strikes and unions. They are totally irrelevant.

The CPUSA is basically a social democratic party and they call for voting Democratic so the Republicans win

But we are still comrades in the struggle.

I think the best option for the American communist is the CPUSA. It is the duty of the American communist to save that party and return it to a proper line. There are many true marxist-leninists in that party.

Im a member of PCB (brazilian party) having that in mind, but frankly Im starting to think how much of that is possible.











Kassad, whats wrong with PSL?

This is a disgusting joke. Feeding the masses lies, waving the American flag, and telling them to vote for Obama has nothing to do with communism, it's the same "strategy" as the Democratic Party.
After CPUSA directly denounced the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1956, it has followed the revisionist lead of Khrushchev since then. It throws democratic centralism and Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" in the trash - my dog could be a member of the CP if I filled out the relevant online form (he'd probably fit in quite nicely with that pack of revisionist lackeys).

??

Fight the capitalists and not your comrades.

the CPUSA doesn't *endorse* candidates (although I do get your point), and if they're feeding "lies" to the masses I'm unaware of what they would be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXr1mkYWeCU

This is basically the CPUSA's main political line.

I'm not saying the Communist Party is the same now as they were before, nor will they be the same years from now. But they will be around, can you say the same thing about your party (which I have refrained from directly attacking)?

Wow. You literally contradicted yourself in ONE sectence. Just when I'd thought I'd seen everything on revlib...

Communists should be working together and not against each other.

If only it were that simple, but "unity" is not always the best policy. After all, there can be "unity" with fascists, imperialists, capitalists, opportunists, etc.

I've said it somewhere else, when the government agents infiltrated the socialist parties one of their main goals was to divide the movement, to create dissension, chaos, confusion and hatred. I'd rather not buy into that. It's not too late to turn that around, but you'd never know it from parties who insist on perpetuating it.

Not all splits are in the interests of the imperialists. In fact, splits with wrong lines are to the benefit of the movement and to the detriment of the imperialist Democrats, whom the CPUSA endorsed.

And it's not quite as easy to get in the CPUSA as you think. The online form is there, yes, but it takes more than that.

I have no evidence, but I doubt that.

It's true that prospective members aren't required to pledge allegiance to a "precious" demigod who cowers somewhere unknown for decades like...who's a lackey, again?

What was that about not attacking, again?

It's true, UFPJ helped wreck the 2008 DNC protest. Under the liberal, pro-Democrat umbrellla, the Coalition for Real Democracy, they organized an inauguration watching party and a delegate meet and greet rather than protests. San Webb has called Obama a friend of the working people (to which I asked, which working people).

CPUSA is a revisionist, pro-American geriatric party which objectively tails the Democrats and thus aids imperialism and capitalism. There is absolutely no excuse for revolutionaries to support the CPUSA.

It was worded incorrectly.

Issues of the RCP aside, the CPUSA are firmly wrapped up in liberal sectarianism themselves. The CPUSA waters down radicalism in group politics until they become a bunch of shrill sign wavers more concerned about a wholesome public image and not pissing people, including the pigs, off. If they want to do that, it's fine. But the problem is that they go out of their way to wreck and exclude more radical groups.

The CPUSA has been struggling with revisionism since the 30's. It's a liberal intellectual club which uses the word 'communist' to sound more radical than they really are. It doesn't need to be saved, it needs to be sued for false advertising.

On the RCP, sure they are sectarian in their own way. But the bigger general impedment is liberal sectarianism.

They basically campaigned for Obama. That they attached idealistic phrases such as "socialism" to their positions is worthless in the face of their objectively pro-system work.

Plenty of people think we shouldn't have gone in the First place, including a number of Democrats. Show where the CPUSA has gone on record in explicitly supporting attacks against imperialist occupation forces.

Moreover, i don't know that the liberal statement is that the U.S. is going to loose. Obviously, the 'liberal' leadership and its supporters are at this moment crafting a plan and cheering on U.S. victory in Iraq, however that is construed.

Your view of the CPUSA is ahistorical. Like I said, they have been challenged by revisionism since the 30's. I honestly can't take you seriously. Either you have a warped and inaccurate view of the CPUSA or a warped and inaccurate view of global class and revolution. Probably both.

Kassad, whats wrong with PSL?

Very minor issues. One of the main things was that they are so focused on claimin that there is no genocide in Darfur, stating that it is a civil war, that they literally ignore the fact that people are dying nearly 100%. I don't advocate intervention or anything by imperialist powers, but there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that 'yeah, people are dying.'

They're also a little too uncritical of some regimes and they rally behind the banner of anyone that even claims to be socialist. Also, they uphold that the Soviet Union struggled after Lenin and totally lost sight of the path to socialism after Stalin's death, but they only seem to pay lip service to that statement. They still support a lot of the socio-imperialist interventions of the Soviet Union, some of which I can understand and others that I can't. Regardless, I'm sticking with them, half because their ideology is about 85% on target and the other half because they are the most efficient party out there right now.

roughly how many members do the PSL have?

I'm wondering if before long, in this economic climate if the older more established parties like the SPUSA, SWP and CPUSA aren't surpassed in membership by the likes of the mroe active PSL

http://www.frso.org
Freedom Road Socialist Organization

http://www.workers.org/
Workers World Party

roughly how many members do the PSL have?

I'm wondering if before long, in this economic climate if the older more established parties like the SPUSA, SWP and CPUSA aren't surpassed in membership by the likes of the mroe active PSL

I've heard estimates of around 350. This doesn't take into account candidates for membership, like me. I've heard we pulled in 20-30 new candidate members just from the March 21st protests, so we're growing incredibly quickly.