On Friday, ICE made widespread raids across Los Angeles, arresting 44 people with the express purpose of deporting them without offering even the fig leaf of liberal “due process.” By Saturday afternoon, the people of Paramount had had enough. When rumors started circulating that ICE was planning a raid on a local Home Depot, the people of Paramount gathered in force to protect their community.

The revolt began at the Home Depot at 6400 Alondra Boulevard — and was provoked by the police forces themselves. Federal agents threw flash-bangs at peaceful demonstrators to try to scare them off and complete their quota of kidnappings. The demonstrators fought back. Over the course of the day, righteous anger escalated to throwing rocks and bricks, burning cars, and establishing vehicle barricades to stop ICE deportation buses.

As has become typical, the consciousness of the masses is racing ahead of any pretension of an organized revolutionary movement. Our “Marxists” are too busy calling their senators and organizing police-approved parades to get involved, except perhaps to raise their hands in surrender and loudly proclaim a policy of treasonous social peace.

But the “Marxists” who are afraid of the spontaneous wrath of the people are exposing themselves more and more to be nothing more than toothless opportunists of the old regime. Let them show their true colors! The flags they fly look red at first glance, but look at them closely — you’ll see they’re the white flags of surrender; the white flags of reaction.

This spontaneous wrath must be organized, or it will dissolve into disillusionment and defeatism! We cannot let it.

Real revolutionists must not only embrace the spontaneous rage of the people, but give it aid and support. Marxists in the affected areas must form combat brigades at once. They must be strategic, arm themselves, and openly march with the people. “But we’ll be destroyed!” Maybe, and maybe not… but if we don’t stand up, then we deserve to be destroyed. The revolutionary who hides from the people, who insists on remaining underground at all costs, or worse, aboveground but only as spokesmen for cowardly social peace, is nothing more than an enemy partisan.

If your organization forbids you from forming combat units, leave it.

We must build combat brigades! A combat brigade is a Marxist organization, composed of militant cadre, organized along military lines for the purpose of providing support and projecting power on the ground. A combat brigade is not the same as community self-defense. Community self-defense is the construction of mass organizations, with trained Marxist membership, sometimes under the direction of Marxist organizations, that mobilizes the activated masses and forms a central spine for them to act.

Quickly, now, study Mao’s On Guerilla Warfare, the Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, and the U.S. marines doctrine manual Warfighting.

Popular consciousness admits the need for violent confrontation and struggle against the state. The escalation and ultimate military defeat of the student movement, the breaking of the 2020 June Insurrections, the actions of Aaron Bushnell, the Universal Healthcare executioner, and Elias Rodriguez have prepared whole strata of the masses to act. No less, the obscene public show of the Trump immigration police are galvanizing popular resolve.

If you are a Marxist in an insurrectionary region, form your brigade. Be prepared for community defense. Establish emergency phone trees. Hold mass meetings. Assure the community that you will respond. Distribute flyers and pamphlets.

Contact the All-Empire Worker’s League if you want to help coordinate actions. Contact USU Press for propaganda resources. Join us.

The time has come to fight.

In the lead-up to the convention, the Red Clarion published a number of pieces about the CPUSA’s history, lack of democratic processes, and the tripartite problem of its Revisionism, Opportunism, and Tailism, or ROT. This culminated with the article “Claim The Convention,” in which we made it clear that any members who consider themselves Marxist-Leninists needed to seize the convention floor, expel the entrenched leaders, and put forth resolutions representative of CPUSA’s rank-and-file. We insisted that members fight tooth and nail against the party apparatus that was put in place to sheepdog and neutralize them. Of course, we suspected this would be impossible. The bureaucratic inertia of CPUSA has accreted over decades. To chip away at any individual aspect, such as the slate system or the national committee’s vetting of convention resolutions, would be like shooting a charging rhino with .223 — you might inflict a superficial wound, but the beast would still trample you underfoot. To actually slay this gigantic monster, a much higher, illegal caliber would have been necessary.

However, our agitation served a secondary purpose. It exposed the CPUSA and its leadership, before all but the most deranged, hardline party cultists, for the undemocratic careerists and DNC running dogs that they are. In support of our articles, our agents conducted postering and flyering actions at the convention. The most hardline CPUSA members revealed their cultish mentality with their drastic responses to this agitation: destroying (or, in many cases, attempting to destroy) our flyers, and scrawling misogynist insults on them (fitting for the Chauvinist Party USA). These extreme responses are typical of cult-like indoctrination. Some CPUSA members took stacks of 10 posters and ripped them apart. Our proposed resolutions were modest, but the dread they instilled in CPUSA hardliners was palpable. These cultists reacted with fear, revulsion, and logical contortion to justify the perverse “democratic centralism” of their dead organization. This type of panic is an indication of weakness and enervation in an oppressor; it is the fear that they will be exposed to be powerless before the masses; it is the fear that they are being seen as they truly are, and brought to a reckoning.

The utter perturbation of CPUSA’s staunchest advocates proved that, had the infirm and scattered opposition within CPUSA been able to unify, it would have been possible to vanquish the revisionist colossus. In other words, the revolutionary membership was much stronger than it itself believed. Had they organized with intent to derail the corrupt resolutions from the outset, rather than engaging in a Fabian delay to see what would happen, or had they chosen to disrupt the zionist speaker, instead of discreetly walking out, they would have thoroughly exposed the entrenched leaders and party as the enemies of the working class and oppressed peoples that they are. 

Fortunately, although the opposition was unable to act, CPUSA did the movement a favor and chose to out themselves. With their disavowal of settler colonialism as the principal contradiction in North America, which the Red Clarion thoroughly examines in “Against CPUSA’s Colonizer ‘Communism’,” the CPUSA have cast off any pretense to claim the title “Communist.” Through class reductionism, they revealed their fascistic intention to suppress the class struggle. In describing their rejection of settler colonialism as the “primary” contradiction, rather than by utilizing the correct term, “principal,” they proved themselves to be either illiterate or wilful distorters of Marxist theory. In cutting short debate on the proposed resolution to endorse Biden (in all but name) and leaving it to be determined by the incoming national committee, they showed that their own constitution and democratic processes are anathema to them. Through the sleight of democratic process that is the CPUSA slate system, they ensured the ROT at the core of the party remained in power without even the hope of a responsive challenge. Even the supposed floor nominations that occurred were a charade of democracy, an optical illusion for the benefit of the party’s detractors and doubters. The floor nominations appear to have been fixed in advance to nominate primarily sycophantic careerists at the expense of representatives from southern states. Of course the northern, corrupt, chauvinist bureaucracy has once again cut out the Black national heartland!

All of this seems disheartening, we know. Ultimately, however, we must recognize it for what it is: a gift. An enemy cannot be properly fought until it is known. The convention burned away any illusions that the CPUSA is in any way on the side of working and oppressed peoples. The hardliners have given us the gift of self-identifying as a real enemy to struggle against. By arguing against the continued existence of settler colonialism in the North American context, they have also drawn the battle lines along which this struggle will take place. They have denied the anti-colonial struggle and national liberation as preconditions for a just society, and denied that they constitute a vital phase of the social revolution. There is no longer any need to struggle alongside CPUSA as any sort of fellow traveler. They are labor zionists, colonizer “communists,” and may now be derided as the enemy.

Tendrils of revisionism, opportunism, and tailism (ROT) clench onto the convention documents, and seek to drag the party back into its days of bleakest reaction. The entrenched leadership clique, represented by Sims and Cambron, but avatared in the grinning form of John Bachtell, seeks only to window-dress the funneling of dues to People’s World and of hard-won radical energy back to the Democratic Party. Many of the 23 convention resolutions have openly reformist aims that content themselves with moldy scraps leftover from the bourgeois government’s table. A Communist Party must act like a Communist Party, not sleepwalk alongside sleepy Joe, shaking hands with ghosts when there’s a real world to seize. As the legendary Irish socialist James Connolly declared, “For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth.”

What does it mean to want the Earth? It means the end of imperialism, the end of the genocides in Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, and everywhere across the globe. It means decolonization of settler states such as the U.S. and Canada, and full self-determination for all peoples. It means the end of foreign domination over Haiti, and an end to the American enforced isolation of Cuba and the DPRK. It demands the depatriarchalization of society, the emancipation and structural liberation of women, LGBT+ persons, and gender nonconforming persons, and the abolition of disability as an oppressive social structure. Possibly most urgent, it demands the radical reorientation of all of society to prepare for and combat the impending climate apocalypse.

It may be true that many of these points appear within the CPUSA’s convention resolutions, but they are malformed and, like produce that has been chemically treated to not sprout, they are seedless. They cannot, in their current form, revolutionize the CPUSA into the party it needs to be, or its Communists into the revolutionaries they need to be to build the world that we demand. They have remembered to be moderate, but have forgotten to demand the earth! Each resolution is guilefully crafted to speak the words of Communism, and to enact the essence of capitulation.

For instance, in its Palestine resolution, there is implicit recognition of the zionist entity contained in its phrase “just peace in Israel/Palestine” and the comment concerning “supporting the work of fraternal parties in Palestine and Israel.” This recognition negates the possibility for peace. The only thing a so-called Communist party in ”israel” could adequately work towards would be the annihilation of its own state — this U.S. imperialist outpost — but we can see from their proposed, “two states for two Peoples,” that this is not their goal. Thus, the CPUSA hamstrings its own potential so long as a fraternal relationship with the Communist Party of “Israel” (CPI) exists, and the resolution as it’s phrased leads to a dead alley. A genuine resolution would exclude all colonizers, their institutions, and even their “Communists.” For no matter how friendly the fox, it can’t negotiate the return of the henhouse. Or as the Palestinian writer Mourid Barghouti said of left-wing zionists, “A killer can strangle you with a silk scarf or can smash your head in with an axe; in both cases you are dead.” We are at a time of heightened Statesian consciousness and fury towards the imperialist zionist project and the governments that give it life. Now is not the time, nor should there ever be a time, when garroters with silk scarves can influence the demands of Communists.

Implicit in the resolution on Palestine, and the resolution on an internationalist and anti-imperialist CPUSA, is a refusal to denounce colonialism, and tacit support for imperialism in its most ruthless form — the form of the zionist imperialist outpost! Through its recognition of fraternal parties in every country, regardless of the actual character of those countries or parties, the CPUSA is dragging its would-be Communists into complicity with humanity’s most depraved butchers. To “promote a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other nations; to support movements in other countries striving for national sovereignty and self-determination; to support multilateralism and equality among all nations: and to offer a correct, Marxist-Leninist analysis of imperialism” presupposes the possibility for equality between colonizers and the colonized, oppressors and the oppressed. It is a silver-tongued disavowal of Marxism-Leninism that’s calling itself correct, and a damning liquidation of class struggle.

In its resolutions concerning “full equality for Native Peoples and Tribal Communities, LGBTQ+ equality, Women’s equality, and Latina/o equality” the emphasis on equality is apparent. But equality for any of these peoples is a structural impossibility within the U.S. system, so the real demand can only be a tepid, liberal representationalism. It is ultimately a demand for more diverse oppressors and compradors; for more Indigenous betrayers and sellers of Indigenous lands and rights, for more quisling women to erode abortion rights, and more queer drone strike operators. The party does not demand national liberation or self-determination — to do so would be to demand the destruction of the capitalist state, which the leadership of CPUSA neither want nor condone.

Similarly, many of the points have CPUSA concerned with the rights of these various groups and other members of the working class to vote, but deliberately avoid mentioning in the system of which ruling class the votes will be cast. This is not work for Communists. Communists must demonstrate to the masses the real powerlessness of voting in a bourgeois system, and make it clear that the only possibility for change lies beyond that system. This cannot be achieved if the CPUSA encourages the oppressed and working classes to vote as if it’s meaningful, which is merely encouragement to invest in one’s own oppression.

In fact, numerous other resolutions, if adopted, would vitalize the bourgeois system, rather than undermine it. These include the resolutions on Social Security, Medicare for All, Immigrant Rights, and Housing. The content of these resolutions sounds pleasant, but they are bribes for the working and oppressed classes against the full realization of their real rights. Just as the original New Deal forestalled an American Communist revolution by giving the working class a greater share of the imperial plunder, so too would any of these acts be signed in the blood of Third World children. For this reason, Communists must push back against the idea that “we just want healthcare” and so on.

The root of this putrescent language, which suffuses the convention resolutions and documents, and dangles over the party’s future like a noose, grows from the mouths and literature of the party’s ideologues and organs, such as its National Committee and People’s World. It is most pungent in their insistence, which we at the Red Clarion have previously investigated, that it’s vital for the “future of democracy” to defeat “Trump, Trumpism, and the MAGA Republicans,” or that Trump represents the only real strain of fascism in the U.S. These coils of reformism, which threaten to strangle any revolutionary potential from the CPUSA, must be sliced apart through a real struggle at the convention. The principle of “curing the sickness to save the patient” must be adopted by all resolute Communists within CPUSA. These poisoned resolutions must be defeated and healthy ones planted in their stead. True Communists must lay claim to what the revisionists, opportunists and tailists have possessed since the Webb years, claim their convention and the party-still-to-be.

Can it Be Done?

In short: no. But that shouldn’t stop anyone who considers themselves to be a true Marxist-Leninist from trying. The effort will prove the question, and if it truly is impossible to seize the convention from the ROTten faction, then attempting to do so will reveal the corruption for all to see. So, why not? What are the things preventing a seizure of power by the revolutionary faction? How have the reformists secured their power completely? By examining these questions, we can also lay out the plan most likely to succeed in toppling the ROTten leadership.

The perversion of democratic centralism that prevents clubs from forming plans for the convention and restricts all dialogue to the convention floor means that the National Committee, which has no such bar on discussing the future of the party, forms a de facto “faction” capable of organizing and marshaling its resources prior to the convention. The National Committee will not just come into the convention with an organized plan, it has organized the entire affair. The N.C. creates the slate of candidates, approves the membership at the convention, runs the convention, etc. It is not only the chiefest of “factions,” it is a faction that is running the show at every single level, where all power is concentrated. It shouldn’t surprise you to know that all appeals of discipline also go to the N.C.

As if this weren’t enough to guarantee the N.C. control of the convention floor, the very use of the slate system secures its total dominance over party affairs and the future composition of the party itself. The N.C. signs off on expulsions and disciplines, hunts down “factions,” and so forth. It also selects its own replacements on the slate. It is functionally impossible to vote for a candidate that has not been pre-approved by the N.C. Although it remains technically possible to bring up a candidate’s nomination on the convention floor, campaigning before the convention begins is explicitly prohibited by the rules against factionalism, which rules out “campaigning” at all.

Lastly, however, and most critically, the millions of dollars of resources controlled by the leadership of CPUSA isn’t owned by the party. The New York City headquarters building, recently assessed at the value of $9 million and rented out by the party (making the party itself a landlord!), isn’t owned by the party, but rather by Advanced Realty (which also isn’t owned by the party). People’s World isn’t owned by the party, but by Longview Publishing (which isn’t owned by the party). In fact, the party, as an entity, has no legal recognition in any state and is not federally registered as anything. Each state “party” is an “unincorporated club.” This means that the party is, under bourgeois law, incapable of owning any property or money. So who owns all of these things?

Individual party leaders. John Bachtell runs Longview Publishing. Advance Realty is run by Libero Della Piana, who is also the managing director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an NGO. The party launders its money through a number of NGOs, of which the Drug Policy Alliance is only one. Others include the Alliance for a Just Society, People’s Action, Race Forward, the Center for Third World Organizing. While this may seem to be a clever scheme to keep party assets from the hands of the federal authorities, in fact it is merely a way to allow federal authorities to more appropriately manage “party” assets. By maintaining them primarily in NGOs, which receive grant money, the assets are required to report directly to their federal backers and managers exactly what every penny is spent on. Even further, party leaders employ their own significant others and children in those NGOs, from which they draw a salary. John Bachtell lives from the donations of party members to People’s World, even though the party does not own, control, or manage its own newspaper.

Even if the revolutionists were capable of making use of the rules of the convention to purge the National Committee, restructure the party, and purge all of the rot from the constitution, rectify its lines, and prevent a split, to bring the party’s money under party control would require the good will of the entire rotten leadership. The best the convention could do would be to pass a resolution demanding the current leadership turn over the assets, which the convention would have absolutely no way of enforcing. The party has no bourgeois legal “right” to that money.

Worse, these putrid leaders have shown their willingness to throw away the party constitution whenever it suits them. Should an organized opposition appear at the convention, there is no doubt that party leadership, just as C.P. Canada did two years ago, will rise up in a counter-revolutionary wave and have that revolutionary opposition completely expelled from the convention, or somehow prevented from bringing their resolutions to a vote.

So What Do We Do?

Organize now. Find your allies now. Prepare a plan for the convention floor. Build up a series of resolutions and prepare to make use of every procedural trick available to you. Pass a self-denying resolution barring all current leadership from serving on the next National Committee and pass a resolution demanding an open commitment to revolution from any future N.C. member.

During the breaks and when you have free time off the convention floor, agitate among your fellow delegates. Explain the true history of the party, and the need to purge it of its rot. Go in for the fight.

Comrades, it is up to you. You cannot afford to be tepid. You cannot afford to lower your head and accept crumbs from the corrupt leadership. It is now all or nothing.

We are with you. Generations of Communists have tread this path before you, laying down life and limb. Do you intend to crumple at the first challenge, or fight for a better world?

Claim the convention!

SAMPLE RESOLUTIONS

WHEREAS the perversion of democratic centralism that prevents full discussion of proposed resolutions and limits new resolutions to those that have been pre-approved by leadership places revisionism and opportunism fully in command of the party apparatus, LET IT BE RESOLVED that the convention rules be amended to: i) permit each speaker to hold the floor for 10 minutes, ii) adopt in full Robert’s Rules of Order to govern procedure, and iii) be explicitly permitted to offer new resolutions on the convention floor.
WHEREAS the revisionist drift of the party for the past fifty years has caused it to fall away from the masses, tail the Democratic Party, and lose its character as a proletarian institution, LET IT BE RESOLVED that this convention hereby enacts a self-denying resolution which shall disbar any present members of the National Committee or anyone who has served on the National Committee in the past decade from appearing on any slate before this convention or being elected or appointed to the National Committee or its subcommittees for at least four years and LET IT FURTHER BE RESOLVED that any candidate for the National Committee shall be required to take an oath of commitment to the proletarian revolution before the convention prior to being placed on the slate.

The CPUSA has been circulating numerous discussion articles for its upcoming June convention, at which the future direction of the party will be determined. These articles and their content indicate a forthcoming line struggle within the party on a number of questions. By line struggle we mean, “1. the Ideological struggle within the Communist movement for correct program, strategy and tactics for proletarian revolution, and 2. the Ideological struggle between the Communist movement and the spontaneous movements, particularly the advanced elements.” Some of the questions for CPUSA involve whether the party should finally expunge Marxism-Leninism from its programme once and for all, and how the party should engage with the broader worker’s movement. But two burning questions for CPUSA, around which several articles have been written, and which represent the crux of the struggle are:

1. What is fascism?
2. Is fascism already here?

These questions undergird every convention discussion article, and each author’s position on them becomes apparent throughout, or even from the title alone — take “The United States is not a Fascist Country,” for example. While this article doesn’t have a cogent answer of what fascism is, it wants to be clear that whatever it is, it’s not here. Other articles, such as “Redefining Fascism” and “It is Time to Expand our Definition of the Fascist Threat” grasp the urgency around finding a better answer to the first question, and are at least open to the idea that the United States is already a fascist country, or that the sole threat of fascism in the U.S. is not Trumpism alone.

Some of these articles were published prior to the eruption of the student protest movement, and some of them are more recent. But despite being able to bear direct witness to the brutality unleashed by the pig government against the student movement at Columbia, UCLA, Irvine and other universities, along with the general silencing of dissent against the genocide in Palestine, some CPUSA writers (and, indeed, the party’s most prominent voices and leadership) insist that Trump and the MAGA movement remain a unique threat to working class interests. This is despite the genocide being financiered by Democrats and the most violent repression of students taking place on campuses with Democrat administrators, located in cities with Democrat mayors, in states with Democrat governors, under a Democrat’s presidency.

But even these plain facts are not enough to break the hold of the triumvirate of revisionism, opportunism, and tailism — call it ROT for short — over CPUSA, and some of the articles are truly so heinous as to necessitate being dragged through the mud individually.

We’ll begin this process with Callum Wilson’s egregious and ROT-filled, “Not One Step Back — Vote Against Fascism 2024” — the very title of which is a slap in the face of the heroic sacrifices made by the USSR in World War II. The author identifies “Not One Step Back” as an anti-fascist battlecry from that time, but the phrase more specifically refers to Stalin’s famous decree of July 28 1942. This doctrine essentially prohibited the Red Army from withdrawing or retreating from battles against the Nazis, and was a major factor in reversing the Nazi onslaught. The metaphor that our little bacterium is attempting to evoke is that voting for the Democrats will turn the tide against “MAGA Fascism” just as Order 227 turned the tide of World War II in Russia. To even compare these situations is daft and nauseating. Consider: “Not One Step Back… out of line to vote,” vs. “Not One Step Back: lay your life down to kill the Nazis.” For this author, the size of a step out of the polling line is the size of a step into a Nazi grave. To him, not voting for Democrats is as horrible as avoiding confrontation with the monsters who raped and slaughtered millions of your countrymen.

The article begins by referring to a previous article by the same author, which is all but indistinguishable from this article, but focused on the 2022 election battle between Shapiro and Mastriano in Pennsylvania rather than the forthcoming federal election. In that article, Wilson failed to consider that avid zionist and pig financier Shapiro could just be a different manifestation of fascism than his Christian white nationalist opponent. In this article, fascistic qualities of the Democrats are completely ignored. MAGA fascism and Donald Trump are the only concerns. This level of analysis is woefully inadequate for someone calling themselves a Communist, but apparently makes sense to the single celled organism that wrote it.

In fact, this misconstrual of the Democrats and Republicans as diametric opponents, with nary a mention of their aligned class interests or the various factions within them, permeates the article, which, for reasons upon which we can speculate, is a painful 2,585 words in length… twice as long as the restriction placed upon other writers. And its length is not the sole cause of torment. When sentences like, “If the people’s movement fails to defeat Trump at the ballot box, the future of democracy in our republic will be in doubt” are broken down, there’s much to cringe about. Namely what people’s movement? Why specify at the ballot box? The future of democracy for which class? Why’d you say “our republic,” Callum? To which class does your republic currently belong, and why do you identify as a member of that class? Ah, well, we know why. To even ask these questions answers them. 

Wilson then makes the laughably pathetic and flaccid claim that, “There will be the time to press the attack against the Democratic party, when we become leaders in the all people’s front. By getting out the vote to defeat fascism, we advance the cause of socialism.” This is a rephrase of the fool’s errand in attempting to “push Biden/the Democrats/etc. left.” A fool’s errand because the Democrats, as chosen mouthpieces of the U.S. ruling class, are some of the most vicious and irredeemable terrorist scum in the history of humanity. Can you push a hyena left? What about a shark? Will you push them left when they finally count the bodies of this genocide and find two or three hundred thousand or more Palestinian corpses? A major impetus for the Biden administration towards not counting the dead, besides the fact there’s nobody left to count them, is that it raises questions of how much worse Trump could possibly be for the people of Gaza. Will there be anyone left alive in Gaza, come election day?

The body of the article is then swallowed up by analysis and fearmongering about the Republicans that could have been found on MSNBC. Trump would be a scary dictator, ushering in waves of unspeakable repression and horror, but he can still be defeated within the existing legal constraints of the Empire for some reason. Of course, Biden isn’t called dictatorial in the same article for exercising these same extraordinary legal powers to circumvent “our dysfunctional and gridlocked political system.” This is definitively tailist — words by a so-called Communist that mirror exactly the reactionary Democrat. 

Wilson goes on to beat that famous, dead and all but decomposed horse — the paragraph of Dimitrov’s 1935 Speech to the Communist International that, according to Wilson puts forth the ”Marxist definition of fascism” as:

“the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital… It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.”

Is Wilson aware that this definition is not even the definition used in his own supposedly Marxist party’s constitution? The CPUSA’s revision of Dimitrov’s quote defines fascism as follows:

“Fascism would be the open terrorist dictatorship by the most reactionary, militarist, racist section of monopoly capital and the elimination of all avenues of popular resistance and protest.”

This is CPUSA’s answer to the first question we posed at the beginning of the article, slyly worded so that the answer to the second question can always be no. After all, no matter how many campus protests against the Palestinian genocide are viciously curbed, the protesters are technically still allowed to protest. We can’t say all avenues of popular resistance and protest have been eliminated, and it’s of course impossible for Trump to eliminate all of them either. We can see how Dimitrov’s actual formulation fits the United States, regardless of which party is in power, while the CPUSA’s bastardization of it is conveniently targeted at Republicans.

But Republicans are not Wilson’s only target. The article seems to be nefariously constructed to drive actual readers of Lenin to madness.. Wilson has the audacity to write “Ultra leftists have attempted to turn Lenin into a mascot of their immature fanaticism while ignoring the brilliant Marxist and enlightened small-d democrat he actually was.” At some point, people must admit when they haven’t done the reading, or when they have the comprehension of a bacterium. Demanding that authors like Callum cease their rancid opportunism by keeping Lenin’s name and vision out of their mouths and papers, however, might be too much to ask. 

The Red Clarion has previously noted that the CPUSA only quotes directly from Lenin briefly or, in this article’s case, not at all. If they did so, they might be at risk of printing something useful for developing revolutionary consciousness and potential. Instead, we are stuck with the deep fried sentiment, “If you cannot organize voter turnouts, then forget about your revolution.” This is not something Lenin ever said, or even alluded to. Consider the following real Lenin quote, which expresses his perspective on participating in the enemy’s electoral politics: “we shall not refuse to utilise this arena, but we shall not exaggerate its modest importance; on the contrary, guided by the experience already provided by history, we shall entirely subordinate the struggle we wage in the Duma to another form of struggle, namely, strikes, up risings, etc.” Guided by the experience already provided by history. These words, already written in 1906.

Wilson concludes the article with an impotent critique of Biden. While he uses the proper “Genocide Joe” epithet, the argument made in these final paragraphs is a jumbled mess of lesser-evilism. For instance, he writes “In order to successfully defeat Trump, and protect democracy, we must mobilize, organize, and rally the great masses of the working class majority in this country, which the Democratic Party often fails to do themselves.” What does this really mean? We must mobilize, organize, and rally the working masses to the Democrats so that the Democrats can win against their will? It apparently does say that, because it’s reiterated further down: “While Biden will have no one to blame but himself for his defeat, the results would be catastrophic.” We must help this pudding-brained octogenarian win against not only his own will, but while struggling uphill against the entire Democratic political establishment to boot. And speaking of pudding brains, check out this sentence that Callum includes from Joe Sims — “defeating Biden’s support for the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza is the path to defeating fascism in November.” The working class movement must again, do what? Defeat Biden’s will to support the zionist entity against his own wishes so that he doesn’t lose the election? Did anyone read this before it was published? Who reads that sentence and says, “yeah, sounds good, put that in.” What about “After all, the 2020 Democratic victory in Georgia, was accredited to non-partisan grassroots community organizers, instead of the Democratic National Committee political machine.” By narrowly organizing against the Republicans, and funneling any radical sentiment back towards voting Democrat, the non-partisan grassroots community organizers completely betrayed their own interests and the interests of the people they organized.

In sum, the article in question demonstrates that its author, Callum Wilson is a spineless weasel and careerist, who should choose between joining the Democrats, purging himself of his pathetic revisionism, opportunism, and tailism (ROT), or doing some sort of secret third thing. Wilson’s article shows a woeful misunderstanding of fascism as a phenomenon somehow beholden to the legal framework of Empire, rather than that Empire’s defense against the working and oppressed classes of the world. It erroneously construes fascism and liberal democracy as two mass movements at odds with one another, where it is possible to stop one by simply voting for the other.

In order to advance the Communist movement within the imperial core, it is the duty of CPUSA members to struggle against this naivety and rot within their ranks. They must formulate a better answer to the question of what truly constitutes fascism in order to be capable of waging a revolutionary struggle suited to the actual conditions of the Empire. Certainly, the notion that pervades this and similar articles and their authors, this idea that “voting against fascism can deal it a devastating blow,” must be expunged from the party and the Communist movement.

After all, in his 1904 text One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Lenin thoroughly and specifically denounces the notion of a mass party — one open to anyone in the class without exception — when he states: “I thereby express clearly and precisely my wish, my demand, that the Party, as the vanguard of the class, should be as organised as possible, that the Party should admit to its ranks only such elements as allow of at least a minimum of organisation” and goes on to say, “The Party, as the vanguard of the working class, must not be confused, after all, with the entire class.” Lenin’s arguments in this text were directed at Martov, leader of the capitulationist Mensheviks, and Nadezhdin, a social democrat of his time, who were advocating for just the type of social organization the CPUSA’s National Committee describes now, 120 years later. (So much for “changed conditions.”)

It’s frankly unbelievable that after the Bolshevik victory in the 1917 October Revolution  Lenin would make an unprompted about-face and advise international Communists to repudiate this key tenet of Bolshevism in favor of the then-defeated Menshevism, or worse, Kautsky’s social democracy. If the authors are even a little familiar with Lenin, they are no doubt aware of his meticulous denunciation of Kautsky.

One anticipates that the CPUSA speechwriters will attempt to point to places where Lenin spoke of the mass party after 1905, while failing to include the critical context that he did not mean “a party composed of the masses,” but rather “a highly organized cadre-party to whom the masses will flock during the time of revolution.” Be prepared!

What the CPUSA wordsmiths are doing with their article is the same rhetorical trick used by Flat Earthers to befuddle people who understand that the Earth is round, yet lack the technical savvy to say why that’s true. They are claiming something that a layperson can sense is untrue, but that requires more than a layperson’s knowledge to prove is untrue. For instance, when the article says, “at Lenin’s initiative, the international Communist movement adopted new organizational principles for countries with bourgeois democracies” they have again avoided explaining precisely what he said, and at which congress or in which text he said it, so that if they are confronted, as we are confronting them here, they can point to another text in which he said something they can construe as supporting their claims. Nevermind that if you do as Lenin actually implored at the Third Congress and “read the whole passage” you’ll find the “first step was to create a real Communist Party so as to know whom we were talking to and whom we could fully trust,” rather than create “mass parties [that would] also work at training cadres,” which is nonsense, or worse, Menshevism. At the Fourth Congress, the first task for the Communist International was again, not the formation of mass organizations or proletarian united front, but “to establish the nucleus of a Communist Party ” capable of implementing those tactics!

As far as tactics are concerned, CPUSA’s National Committee has rightfully identified that “an essential part of re-emphasizing Marxist-Leninist basics” is a press that serves as a mass agitator and propagandist, and as a mass organizer. Unfortunately, they suggest People’s World is that press. As Lenin described in Where to Begin? and elaborated upon in What is to be Done?:

In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper… Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly fulfill our task — that of concentrating all the elements of political discontent and protest, of vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

People’s World, however, is a far cry from Iskra, and the people who make positive comparisons between them are either uninformed or proprietors of People’s World. For instance, People’s World routinely publishes content unbefitting of a Marxist press, presenting  no coherent program besides pleading with its readers to “Vote Democrat” and “Donate to People’s World.” Party members had previously been able to defend People’s World by saying it wasn’t the party’s newspaper, despite being operated by and having the majority of its articles written by CPUSA members and being the primary recipient of CPUSA’s fundraising efforts. But Build the Party, Build the Clubs has stripped even that excuse from the newspaper’s staunchest sycophants, with a full section called “Building the party around our press.” Thus, People’s World’s defenders must now make awkward contortions to justify the paper’s liberalism, revisionism, and liquidationist attitude towards Marxism-Leninism. For example, they allude to unnamed laws which prevent the party from exercising “full editorial control” over the paper, again despite the party and paper being operated by all the same people, and the fact that only the newspaper (not the party!) is a legal entity, begging the question of which controls the other. Even if it is the party in control, the lack of “full editorial control” means they’re holding a gun, but occasionally allowing someone else to aim it and pull the trigger. 

The result of this is that the National Committee expects People’s World to “build broad all-people’s unity,” by which they cunningly mean to liquidate Marxism-Leninism, while saying, in the very same document no-less, that Marxism-Leninism is the one, grounding ideology of the party! That this needs to be explicated is a symptom of the failure and suppression of real Marxists and of miseducation in the Communist movement: Marxism-Leninism is NOT the ideology of “all-people’s unity.” It is the materialist science with which the proletarian and oppressed classes overthrow their oppressors, and, in turn, repress the exploiting classes through the dictatorship of the proletariat. We understand “dictatorship” is a scary word for CPUSA — doubly so since one of their current chairs once wrote that it was time to ditch the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” — but Lenin never minced words about this subject. In The Dictatorship of The Proletariat he posits, “Suppression of the resistance of the exploiters as the task and content of the epoch” and that this “is entirely forgotten by the opportunists and socialists.” Although Lenin was referring to Kautsky, he easily could have been referring to Joe Sims. In a recent People’s World article, “The World Is a Better Place Because Lenin Lived, Sims writes, “the answer to it all is democracy, democracy, and more democracy. But not just any democracy — class democracy, advanced democracy giving all power to the workers and the people.” Again, this sounds pleasant, but it has forgotten or avoided what Lenin articulated above. To quote another Marxist-Leninist that the CPUSA finds too scary, Stalin wrote the following in Foundations of Leninism:

The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be “complete” democracy, democracy for all, for the rich as well as for the poor; the dictatorship of the proletariat “must be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletarians and the non-propertied in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie)” (see Vol. XXI, p. 393). The talk of Kautsky and Co. about universal equality, about “pure” democracy, about “perfect” democracy, and the like, is a bourgeois disguise of the indubitable fact that equality between exploited and exploiters is impossible.

The “all-peoples unity” advocated for by CPUSA is exactly the same— a bourgeois disguise of the fact that true proletarian democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is “the democracy of the exploited majority, based on the restriction of the rights of the exploiting minority and directed against this minority.” It does not, and must not, include “all people.”

With articles such as Build the Party, Build the Clubs, and the winceworthy Not One Step Back, which the Red Clarion will soon polemicize against, the National Committee is signaling its intention to fully expunge Marxism-Leninism from the CPUSA at its convention and become yet another “progressive” organization. It has already done this once before, when it attempted to strike the words “Marxism-Leninism” from the party constitution.

The power of the people’s organization, of the proletarian vanguard party, is such that even the mere mention of the words still drips with energy. Like a magnet, it attracts the advanced members of the working class. Thus, although they have long-since destroyed any remnant of Marxism-Leninism at work within their party, they have found they cannot effectively divert class-consciousness without paying lip service to Marxism-Leninism. But it is just that: lip service.

Such organizations exist only to siphon dues and shove revolutionary energy and revolutionaries back toward the Democratic Party. Whether the CPUSA, or some fragments of it, can escape this dead alley is undetermined. The slow liquidation of the party has been an ongoing struggle since the party’s earliest days. But if the CPUSA actually develops “party activists” who are “well versed in theory and practice as well as the history of Marxist-Leninist politics,” as they claim to want to in Build the Party, Build the Clubs, such activists could well become the counterrevolutionary leadership’s grave diggers. The true Marxist-Leninist strain, long asleep and seldom dominant within CPUSA, must awaken.

What this strain does once it is awake remains to be seen. Perhaps the party can be purged of its revisionist and careerist leadership. More likely, however, is that these true Marxist-Leninists must extricate themselves from the dead hulk that surrounds them and join with the rest of the Marxist-Leninists in North America, toward the foundation of a Communist Party that bridges the mystifying state lines of the U.S. and Canada — a Communist Party of North America.

Assume camaraderie, not attack. Sometimes, more impassioned parts of conversation can lead us to feel we are being put on the defensive, but, in principled discussion, this should not be the case. It is not you versus your conversation partners; it is critical to remember that you are trying to deepen your communal understanding. You can’t “win” a discussion. 

Assume your comrades in conversation carry trauma and difficult experiences with them. Statistically, this is a safe bet to make. An oft-cited 2015 study carried out by the World Mental Health Survey Consortium across 24 countries found an over 70% rate of traumatic event occurrence in adults, with nearly 30.5% of participants exposed to more than four traumatic events.¹ This does not account for protracted traumatic situations or the violence of living as an oppressed person under capitalism. Life is difficult for all of us in different ways and to different degrees; it is best to be mindful and sensitive rather than overly frank or matter-of-fact when discussing difficult topics. 

Check-in before going too deep on difficult matters. It is a good idea to ask “is it okay if I talk about…” rather than risk triggering or activating group participants, especially if you intend on discussing something activating in graphic or frank detail. It also needs to be okay with you if the answer from your discussion partners is “no.” Consent is critical in all interpersonal relationships  and we need to work together to create environments where everyone feels comfortable contributing. 

It is generally better to summarize or paraphrase harmful and violent viewpoints rather than to quote or “parrot” them directly, even if your intention is to disprove them. Quoting right-wing thinkers still exposes your comrades to violent and possibly triggering rhetoric, even if you are making fun of it or tearing it down. This is unnecessary and can be avoided (or at least lessened) by generally summarizing conversations or ideas. 

Be open-minded to criticism. If a group member expresses discomfort, calls you in on a point, or critiques an idea or point you’ve made, take it as a call to reflect and grow. Though it can be difficult to internalize, criticism is not a personal attack, nor is it an invitation to become aggressive or defensive.

Take breaks if needed. Your mental health and well-being are more important than continuous participation in the conversation. You are not weak or a bad comrade for needing to take a break from an uncomfortable or intense discussion.

Share the mic. If any one person speaks for too long, power imbalances can start to take shape within a group. If you have not spoken much during a discussion and want to share, do so if you are able. If you have been doing a lot of speaking, give others a turn in order to facilitate healthy group dynamics. No one person needs to speak on every piece of a discussion. 

Don’t play “devil’s advocate” to prove a point. If your argument is strong enough to share, it is strong enough to stand on its own without introducing a potentially harmful invisible critic. 

For Facilitators:

Address the possible sensitive nature of the discussion upfront when tackling difficult topics. This helps keep the discussion space courteous and discourages overly callous or matter-of-fact conversation.

Return to the original intention of the question if the conversation gets too heated or too uncomfortable. This will aid participants in remembering their intentions for the discussion space and anchor them in the space’s purpose if they begin to drift from discomfort or anxiety.

Consider establishing a word or phrase that halts discussion on the present topic entirely. If the conversation is going to be especially difficult, consider establishing a “safe word” like “halt” that will trigger a break in the conversation, no questions asked. Being able to claim this power in potentially harmful or triggering situations can make a huge difference in comfort and safety to participants living with trauma. 

Encourage and de-stigmatize taking breaks. Remind participants of the critical importance of their mental health and reassure them that taking breaks does not mean they are less valued or less powerful in the discussion space. Creating intentional break time framed by a facilitator acknowledging that they need a break can also help break down this potential stigma. It also does not necessarily indicate conflict or wrongdoing on the part of other discussion participants; sometimes the group just needs a break!

Diffuse moments of high tension by acknowledging them. Saying something along the lines of “this conversation feels tense, let’s step back for a moment” can improve the health of the discussion space by acknowledging what some participants may not feel brave enough to say aloud themselves. 

Create an environment where it is safe to speak up if a participant feels uncomfortable. Regularly asking something like “how are we all feeling about this conversation” or otherwise soliciting feedback and/or commentary can go a long way towards this point. Let participants know that you can provide them with resources or further support where applicable. 

Shut down overly inflammatory remarks. This may seem obvious, but sometimes a speaker can get carried away and it can be difficult to interrupt them. Doing so, especially if you notice other participants reacting adversely, is one of the most critical responsibilities of a facilitator. 

Try not to let any one participant monopolize the conversation. This can also be difficult, but phrases such as “I’d love to hear from folks who haven’t answered questions as much yet” can go a long way in maintaining the health of the discussion space.  

Be open-minded to criticism. Just as you would as a participant, take any critiques of your facilitation style or skills as a reminder that we all have room to grow as facilitators, comrades, and human beings. Try to listen carefully to criticism and not be too hard on yourself when it arises. 

¹ Benjet, C., et al. “The Epidemiology of Traumatic Event Exposure Worldwide: Results from the World Mental Health Survey Consortium.” Psychological Medicine, vol. 46, no. 2, 2016, pp. 327–343., doi:10.1017/S0033291715001981.

“I don’t want to look,” and “I don’t want to think about it,” are two selfish manifestations of this self-care craze. We can’t afford to look away.

The children of Palestine, buried under rubble, shot through the head, heart, legs, taken off their ventilators, mutilated by blade-bombs and blown to bloody chunks by the zionist occupiers don’t get to look away. The brave resistance and the thousands of martyrs can’t close their eyes and make the war disappear. The ability to switch off the screen, change the channel, browse some other timeline, is a privilege. In the imperial heartlands, which benefit from the rape, massacre, and annihilation of Palestinian populations, of course you can choose to ignore that your lifestyle is steeped in gore. The powers that be, the ruling classes, don’t want you to remember every instant of your day that your cheap cell phones and gas come from the bloody hands of coltan miners, are pried from the dead fingers of Palestinians.

There are those of us who truly do need to take time apart. The freedom to isolate and protect our mental health is one that we should make use of — but only when it leads to an increased ability to fight the monstrous machine that is committing these atrocities. We need self-care so we can fight on, but it is maintaining the capability to fight that is important — not the care itself. 

While these wounds are still open, they can’t heal. Looking away doesn’t solve anything. It is, at best, a temporary reprieve. At worst, it is willful blindness to the suffering of others.

Those in the centers of empire — in the corrupt and slime-founded West — have to become uncomfortable. It is only through discomfort that we can make change. The current, unjust, murderous order will never come to an end so long as people are comfortable. And to produce discomfort, we must ourselves be uncomfortable.

So give as much as you can. Give more, if you can. Push yourself through the discomfort. Don’t look away.

Fight.

Scrolling on twitter can produce mental trauma, but it pales in comparison with being the target of U.S. made munitions. Our heroic brothers and sisters in Palestine are bleeding and dying.

Let us fight for them with whatever weapons we have at hand, rather than bury ourselves in distraction.

Stand up.

Be counted.

This is the time.