The presidential election show, which the ruling regime of Iran was eagerly hoping to turn into a grand endorsement of the theocratic regime, ended with the majority of the nation boycotting it. Even according to the official statistics, in several major cities, including the capital Tehran, voter turnout barely exceeded 30%. According to ISNA, the head of the election office in Tehran province said: “The number of eligible voters for the fourteenth presidential election was 10,199,742, and in this election, on June 25^th, 3,366,264 ballots were used in the capital.”

It was clear that the continued stark economic and social crisis, which could bring the society to the brink of another widespread nation-wide protest like the “Woman, Life, Freedom” popular uprising or other successive protests like the ones in the past two years, could seriously challenge the regime’s survival. That’s why the leaders of the regime were deeply worried about the fate of their rule and the serious difficulties they face in maintaining their power. The ongoing regional developments, including the risk of direct and disastrous conflict with the racist and criminal state of Israel and the US imperialism, must be added to the rulers’ concerns to highlight the depth of the crisis the regime is facing with, which is caused by its own irrational and adventurous policies.

With the unexpected and ambiguous death of Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the death commission responsible for the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, the regime saw an opportunity to rearrange its guards and divert the popular movement towards the illusion of “reformability” of the regime. They intended to create a safety valve to calm the society and quell the growing anger of the masses.

The qualification of Masoud Pezeshkian (who had been disqualified in two previous presidential elections and the most recent parliamentary election) was organized and directly ordered by the Supreme Leader. This move was intended to bring state-affiliated reformists into the scene to create illusions about Masoud Pezeshkian and generate false hope for a “window” of change, similar to what was tested during Hassan Rouhani’s election campaign. Additionally, extensive propaganda and fear-mongering about the possibility of Jalili’s “election” and worsening the situation in the country was part of a precise and organized campaign to encourage the people to vote and to create a made-up “heroic” act and portray it as an endorsement for the regime’s popularity, approval, and the illusion of freedom in the tyranny-ridden country.

Mr. Khatami, who understanding the deep anger and hatred of the people towards the opportunistic regime had refrained from participating in the parliamentary election show months earlier, returned to the scene this time to repeat and promote the illusion of the “election window.” Of course, people have not forgotten that Mr. Khatami once said: “If the reformists or some of them are to be sidelined, public and global opinion won’t matter. What is important is that those who they don’t want should not come in, and I am sure they don’t want us to come in. Even if we pass this stage, we are not allowed to win more votes than they want.” And ironically, Masoud Pezeshkian, who in his previous speeches emphasized being a “servant of the Supreme Leadership” and having no authority to make fundamental changes in many areas, in his first speech after the election, confirming Khatami’s assessment of the “election” process in the Islamic Republic, said: “I thank the Leader, because without him, our names would have not easily come out of these ballot boxes.” Ali Khamenei also reminded Pezeshkian, after the election results were announced, that he must continue Raisi’s course.

Creating Illusions about Pezeshkian’s Government to Calm the Situation, and the Tasks of the Popular Movement

The government of Masoud Pezeshkian, whose key members will be vetted by Ali Khamenei, and whose major economic policies will be dictated by the Supreme Leader’s office to his government and other legislative and executive structures, will have two key missions. First, to calm the severely crisis-ridden country and create the illusion that the regime has chosen the course of reform. Hence, preventing another social explosion, which this time could involve the powerful presence of the labour and working-class movement and could create insurmountable difficulties for the regime. Second, to resume secret negotiations with the US and the European Union, who all implicitly expressed hope for his election to improve mutual relations with Iran.

The experience of Hassan Rouhani’s two terms in power, supported by the state-affiliated reformists, followed a similar pattern. Contrary to Rouhani’s campaign promises, the house arrest of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi did not end, prisoners of conscience and political prisoners were not freed, the brutal suppression of women’s rights was not prevented, and the demands of the workers and the working class were ignored. The economic crisis continued, the gap between poverty and wealth widened, widespread government corruption persisted and increased, and the bloody and brutal suppression of any mass protest, including in 2017 and 2019, continued. At the end of his term, Rouhani admitted that he had little authority and was merely an executor of the orders of the Supreme Leader, IRGC, and the security forces.

The Tudeh Party of Iran believes that aside from a small minority who participated in this “election” and voted for Jalili, the overwhelming majority of the nation, including those who voted for Masoud Pezeshkian with the hope of a “window” for change, strive for fundamental changes in the catastrophic current state of the country and moving towards establishing the people’s will over the affairs. The overwhelming majority of the nation, especially workers and the working class, who have been increasingly pushed below the line of poverty, want a relief from crushing economic pressures, suitable wages compatible with the inflation, an end to the extensive neoliberal privatization policies and workforce downsizing, the restoration of the country’s productive infrastructure, an end to the brutal and inhuman assault on women by the regime’s thugs, freedom of political-ideological prisoners, and an opening of the political atmosphere in the country. It is clear that none of these demands can be achieved within the theocratic regime and the current despotic and anti-people political system. The developments of recent decades have shown that only through massive and organized social struggle can the regime be forced to retreat. The recent historical development in France, where a broad spectrum of progressive forces from communists and socialists to greens united to prevent the victory of right-wing fascist-leaning forces, is a clear and proven sign of the power of organized and united action of progressive and freedom-loving forces, which can be noted for Iran.

Once again, we call on all patriotic and freedom-loving forces in the country to collaborate and prepare for a national dialogue to organize the frustrated masses and seriously challenge the anti-people ruling regime. Without joint efforts and organized struggle to bring about fundamental and lasting changes, the Islamic Republic, as it has shown in recent years, will continue its dreadful life, harming our country through various manoeuvres and changes in its guards.

The Tudeh Party of Iran

The post The Manoeuvres of the Theocratic Regime in Iran and the Changes in the Guards to Save the Dictatorship appeared first on The Communist.

Three years have passed since the Emergency National Convention. Looking back on that Convention from the vantage point of 1948, the entire Party can more easily grasp the full historic significance of its decisions. The Emergency Convention rejected Browder’s non-existent “progressive imperialism” and utopia of “class peace”; restored to the Party its Marxist-Leninist science, the priceless heritage of working-class theory and practice; and armed it for the struggles of the real postwar world.

The fight for the reconstitution of the Party as the Marxist vanguard of the American working class was carried through under the most difficult conditions.

The most ferocious attacks against our Party have spearheaded Wall Street’s offensive against the economic and political rights of labor and the people and its drive toward war and fascism. Here as everywhere anti-Communism is the hallmark of reaction and fascism. In our country, as formerly in Hitler-Germany, anti-Communism seeks to screen the imperialist and pro-fascist aims of reaction from the people.

In these past three years the Party has been forced to defend itself on many fronts. It has been threatened by a multitude of repressive measures, in the state legislatures and city councils, as well as in Congress. Communist leaders have been subjected to persecution, court prosecution, threats of imprisonment, and imprisonment.

Truman’s “loyalty order” bars Communists from Federal employment—and this infamous blacklist is being extended to private industry, the schools and colleges.

The anti-Communist provisions of the Taft-Hartley Law handicap not only the work of Communist trade unionists but that of all progressive unionists, thereby weakening all organized labor.

Foreign-born workers, Communist and non-Communist, have been harassed, denied the right to citizenship, arrested, and threatened with deportation. Already five members of our outgoing National Committee are faced with the threat of deportation, Comrades Williamson, Stachel, Bittelman, Jones and Potash.

The House Un-American Committee, which has fomented the most vicious anti-Communist hysteria, has become one of the major instrumentalities in the attempt of reaction to impose a fascist, militarist state upon our country.

The monopoly-controlled press, radio, and movies constantly bombard the American people with anti-Communist venom. Day in and day out, they lie and slander, deliberately, when they label Communists as “red-fascists, Communazis, spies, saboteurs, and foreign agents.” They deliberately lie and slander when they charge that Communists are “advocates of force and violence to overthrow the government of the United States.”

Our Party has confronted many obstacles in its efforts to counteract these Hitlerite lies with the truth. The commercial channels of communication are being denied our Party. Storm-troop violence is increasingly being unleashed against our members, our public meetings and the canvassers of our press.

We do not minimize the extent to which anti-Communist prejudices have penetrated sections of the labor movement and the American people. But we also see that the American working class and people are resisting the unprecedented effort to stampede them into the surrender of their gains and rights in this atmosphere of anti-Communist hysteria. Our Party can take pride in the tireless work of our membership and leadership to arouse the working people in the fight to block these plans of reaction.

The appearance of Comrade Dennis before the House Un-American Committee in March, 1947, despite the Committee’s refusal to hear his testimony, did much to inspire the Party and arouse the people for action against the Sheppard-Rankin Bill.

The earlier testimony of Comrades William Z. Foster and Ben Davis before the Un-American Committee transformed the hearing into a counter-attack against the un-Americans. Comrade Davis appeared before the Committee again in February, 1948, to expose the trickery of the “registration” proposals through which the Thomas-Rankin group is seeking to outlaw the Party and nullify the Bill of Rights.

The Fight Against the Outlawing of Our Party

A high point of Party activity was reached in the Spring of 1947, at the time when the late Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach, proposed the outlawing of the Party. In answer to this attack our Party raised a fighting fund of $250,000 in less than 25 days. In fact, more than $1,000,000 was actually raised by the Districts. In the months of March and April the Party reached 10,000,000 Americans through numerous advertisements in national newspapers, including trade-union, Negro and national group papers, as well as the big metropolitan press and liberal weeklies.

At the same time, despite many refusals, the Party reached the radio audience through no broadcasts—most of them organized locally. Comrades Foster and Dennis spoke on national hook-ups, and recordings of their speeches were made available for re-broadcast in the Districts. Literally millions of leaflets were issued by clubs, sections, counties, and districts. As a result of this activity, broad sections of the people rallied to the Party’s defense, and numerous individuals and organizations issued public statements. The popular response to the Party’s call in defense of the Bill of Rights killed the Schwellenbach proposal and upset reaction’s time-table.

The Mundt-Nixon Bill, sponsored by the House un-Americans in 1948, had wider support in Congress, in Administration circles, and in various organizations. This offered a more serious threat to the democratic rights of our Party, to the labor movement, and other progressive organizations.

There were some people in trade-union and liberal circles who, overwhelmed with a sense of defeatism, felt that the fight was over and that “nothing could be done.” But the sounding of the alarm by our Party and its appeal to labor and to all democratic-minded Americans, irrespective of their stand on Communism, to enlist in an all-out fight to defeat the Mundt-Nixon Bill, evoked a wide response. This appeal, issued by Comrades Foster and Dennis, was sent to every international union and national people’s organization and was circulated locally to civic, fraternal, political, and religious groups. Despite the denial of press and radio to our Party’s statements, we were able to rally popular opposition which assumed wide proportions.

The appearance of Comrades Foster and Gates at the Senate Committee hearing resulted in the exposure of the true nature of the Bill through a brilliant defense of the position of our Party. The fight for radio time resulted in the Foster-Mundt debate which reached millions.

Our Party again appealed for a $500,000 fund to fight the Mundt Bill, and the membership responded, even though it had just carried through the Party-Press Fighting Fund Drive. This activity broke through the attempted conspiracy of silence. Local after local, as well as central trades councils, in the A. F. of L.; city C.I.O. bodies; Railroad Brotherhood unions; and many international unions, both A. F. of L. and C.I.O., came out in opposition to the Bill. Even William Green and Philip Murray sent private letters to the Committee protesting the unconstitutionality of the Bill. Church groups, such as Northern and Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists, and even isolated Catholic voices, joined the anti-Mundt Bill fight. And Washington saw an inspiring demonstration of more than 6,000 representative men and women converge upon it to defend the Bill of Rights. The call of our clubs—“Every man at his post”—witnessed the greatest activity of our membership in many a year. As is known, at the regular session of Congress, the Mundt-Nixon Bill was buried in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Reaction’s time-table was again upset.

During this entire period, locally and nationally, the Party has been involved in numerous court cases requiring legal defense of the Party leaders and members. The case of Comrade Dennis, whose conviction for contempt of the Un-American Committee and one year jail sentence is now being appealed, presents a basic challenge to the constitutionality of the House Un-American Committee. The Party takes pride in the fact that Comrade Dennis, in defending his personal liberty and the democratic rights of the Party, also converted his case into a weapon for striking a blow against the national oppression of the Negro people. His firm stand that John Rankin sits in Congress in violation of the 14^th Amendment has won wide support among all sections of the Negro people.

A significant victory was won in the fight for release on bail of the five hunger strikers, held in Tom Clark’s Ellis Island concentration camp. The Party expresses special pride in the political initiative of Comrades John Williamson and Irving Potash, members of the outgoing National Board, and of the staunch German Communist leader, Gerhart Eisler.

The attacks on our Party have not ceased. Having failed so far, the enemy now resorts to new plots in its frenzy to outlaw the Communist Party. The “Special Grand Jury” which labored nearly a year and a half to prove a non-existent “foreign agent conspiracy” gave birth to the present monstrous frame-up indictments of the twelve members of the outgoing National Board. This is the most serious attempt yet to outlaw the Communist Party. Should the enemy succeed in this frame-up, it will mean more than the imprisonment of the members of the National Board. For, involved in this indictment is the democratic right to membership in, and the legal existence of, the Communist Party. With every ounce of energy we must guarantee that the monopolists shall not have their way.

Our Party has shown a capacity to fight relentlessly and has proved that it can defend the rights of the American workers and people. However, we should note and correct certain shortcomings in our defense work up to now.

It was correct to guard against submerging the Party in defense work. It was not correct to neglect, as was the case at times, the defense of the Party and to fail to give this defense a mass character. Thus, for example, the successful mass struggle around the hunger strike must be contrasted to the failure of the Party to develop a sustained mass campaign in the Dennis and ’Josephson cases, or around the deportation cases involving numerous other members.

It was correct to call for the defense of the democratic rights of Communists on the broad issue of civil liberties; but it was not correct to gloss over, as was sometimes done, the vanguard role of the Party and to fail to explain to the masses why our Party is a special target for reaction in its drive toward war and fascism. We must convince the American people that it is precisely the Communists who must be defended—because the Communists are the best fighters for the immediate interests of the workers and all the common people, precisely because we are the Party of socialism.

It is correct to put up the best legal defense of the Party and its leadership. But it is also necessary to combat legalistic illusions which still exist. We must never allow legal defense to become a substitute for mass activity.

The Need of a Policy of Industrial Concentration

In spite of many hardships and difficulties since the Emergency Convention, we were able to make some important advances in the strengthening and building of our Party.

Under Browder the entire Party was organized primarily in 800 community clubs. Now we have approximately 3,000 clubs. In addition to 1,700 community clubs we have 309 shop, 425 industrial clubs as well as 200 professional and 200 student and youth clubs.

Our Party has 300 sections organized in 32 districts, 8 of which are new. The Party is organized in 600 cities, towns, and rural communities. During the three-year period since the Emergency Convention, our Party has grown from a membership of 52,824 to over 60,000. We now have a Party in seven Southern states. Of all the Party Districts, New York, California and Connecticut have shown the most consistent growth.

We all realize that this growth is inadequate. Not only inadequate in general, but above all in the light of the big tasks and responsibilities that our Party faces. This is why we have to examine critically all our work, determine what are the weaknesses and how to overcome them. Central to this task is the thorough examination of the results of our industrial concentration policy in order to draw the necessary lessons from this phase of our work. In this connection we can make the following section of the Main Resolution the starting point for this analysis.

For the American working class to advance to leadership of the developing people’s democratic coalition, and for the coalition itself to become a power for victory, there must be a growing and influential Communist Party.

Only a Communist Party of mass strength and influence, and functioning as an organized and inseparable part of the people’s coalition, can effectively promote the struggle for working-class leadership in the nation. Without such a Communist Party, this struggle cannot be won. In the course of daily and resolute struggle for working-class leadership in the progressive movements of the American people for peace and progress, for the defense of their vital interests, a mass Communist Party of great strength and influence must and will become a reality in the United States.

We must build our Party along these lines—politically, ideologically, and organizationally. It must be built daily in the realization of the Party’s vanguard role in the working class and among the people as a whole. It must be built, in the first place, among the basic industrial workers by a consistent, unflagging policy of concentration. The Party must be built in the struggle for its Marxist-Leninist principles and policies.

In examining the composition of our Party, the following factors must be noted: In the last three years, the industrial composition of our Party has increased only slightly. At present 51 percent of our members are industrial workers, and of these, 11 percent are at present unemployed.

At the same time, our trade-union membership in the last three years shows a decline from 46 percent to 44 percent; 28 percent belong to various C.I.O. unions; 13 1/2 percent are in the A.F. of L. and 24 percent in independent unions. Approximately 7 percent of our industrial workers are not members of any unions.

We get the following picture insofar as the basic industries are concerned: Of our employed membership, 18 1/2 percent are to be found in basic industry. Over the past three years the numerical growth of our Party in basic industry has shown no fundamental change. In the main our Party membership has remained static in such industries as steel, auto, rubber, and maritime. In some industries we have shown a slight growth, even though in some case it is unstable, as in electrical, coal mining, packing, longshore, and the building trades. In certain industries we have suffered a serious loss. In some cases this was due to a decline in production, as in shipbuilding. However, this was not the reason for the decline in the railroad and textile industries.

We must take note at this Convention that in the main industrial concentration states, with the exception of Ohio, we show a decline in membership. This is true of Illinois, Michigan, and Western Pennsylvania.

The mere presentation of this brief picture poses two questions: What is the cause of this situation, and how shall we proceed quickly to overcome it? To avoid repetition, we shall try to answer both questions simultaneously.

The central task before the Party is the fight for shifting the main base of our Party to the working class. This cannot be done unless we turn the face of the entire Party to the workers in the factories. There is already a new awareness in our entire Party of this urgent task. Every single state convention, and scores of comrades in the pre-Convention discussion, have given major attention to this question. We must transform this new awareness into deeds.

How to Apply the Concentration Policy

What is the essence of a concentration policy?

First of all, it requires a fundamental understanding of the role of the workers in the basic industries, in relation to the working class and the life of the country as a whole. It is precisely these workers employed in the huge plants by the tens of thousands who, as Lenin pointed out, become educated to understand the need for unity, collective action and solidarity by the very process of large-scale production itself. One cannot conceive of successfully building the Progressive Party, of organizing an effective fight against the Draft, or in defense of civil liberties, a successful fight against war and fascism, unless this section of the working class is fully mobilized. And, of course, one cannot speak of winning the American workers for Socialism without winning the majority of this section of the working class. It is necessary to permeate the entire Party with this consciousness.

Secondly, such a policy requires the selection of the points of concentration where a base must be secured, if we are to set in motion the entire labor movement. This means knowing which districts must be given major national attention, which industries are key and what plants are decisive. Concretely, while we must strengthen our base in all industrial states, we must above all shift our main emphasis to such states as Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan and to Western Pennsylvania. While we must strengthen the Party in all basic industries, we must particularly select for major concentration such industries as steel, auto, mining, maritime, electrical and railroad. Within these industries we must pursue a policy of concentration in key industrial towns and key plants and departments—with special consideration to the most underpaid sections of the workers, the unskilled and semiskilled. In some districts additional industries may be selected, as for instance textile in the South and New England; in Ohio rubber, in addition to steel and mining, etc.

Thirdly, the full mobilization of the Party is required to achieve the objectives of our concentration policy. Concretely, this means that all Party clubs must have a share in the responsibility for work at the concentration points. Communists in the mass organizations, trade unions, etc., should try to convince these organizations similarly to pursue a concentration policy.

Fourthly, beginning with the national and state leaderships, the entire Party must be involved in planning, guiding, and assuming systematic control and check-up of concentration objectives. All political and organizational problems must be discussed and reviewed from the standpoint of how to realize them in concentration industries. Systematic discussion of the problems in concentration industries must be organized in the top political bodies of the Party. Our leadership must be unsparing in the allocation of capable forces, finances, literature, and other material assistance.

Have we said some of these things before? We have. In fact, at our Emergency Convention three years ago the need for applying a consistent concentration policy was placed as a central objective. Why is it that we did not realize all of the objectives set for ourselves nationally and in the states?

It is not due to the fact that we did not select the key states, industries, shops and towns. In fact, some of our most capable comrades were assigned to these key districts, national coordinators were assigned to key industries, and many leading returned veterans were sent into a number of industrial towns.

We must frankly say that the failure to secure adequate results in our concentration work in the last three years is due, in the main, to an underestimation in practice of the vanguard role of the Party. In practice we concerned ourselves much more with specific policy and tactical questions of the unions, of relationship to top bodies, rather than to questions of building a base below to insure correct policies and tactics. What was incorrect? The separation of the building of the Party from the solution of questions of policy! What must not be forgotten is that it is not enough to have a correct policy in the industries, but in addition the organized strength of the Party must be thrown into the key points of concentration. From now on a drastic change must be made. Questions of policy and tactical line must always be related to the forces required to carry out the policy. This will demand a systematic and constant political check-up of our strength in the concentration areas: first, by the political bodies of the Party; and, secondly, through greater coordination of all departments and, most important, a fusion of the work of trade-union and organizational personnel.

The realization of the objectives of our concentration policy demands:

1. Developing and testing in life a correct policy for each industry.

2. Developing the united front from below to insure the carrying through of such a policy.

3. Drawing constant lessons from the experiences of the workers in the course of their struggles, thus helping to develop their class consciousness.

4. Systematically building the Party, by bringing into its ranks the most militant and advanced workers.

In the period immediately after this Convention the national and state leadership of our Party must work out the specific tasks of concentration which are to be carried out between now and the end of the year, and which should be checked at regular intervals by leading political bodies—a procedure which must be regularized and made a permanent feature of our work. Among these tasks, in addition to those mentioned, should be the following:

1. To review and allocate additional forces to provide leadership to work in the concentration industries.

2. To convince a selected number of comrades now employed in light industries, and from among white-collar and professional workers, veterans, and students—men and women—to secure work in basic industry.

3. To seek to influence key national groups, whose members are employed in concentration points, to direct their main emphasis to these industries.

4. To ensure the more effective utilization of the Daily Worker and the Worker in the concentration industries. In this connection, we must guarantee that the Daily Worker and the Worker secure and print material reflecting problems in these industries, and that the most consistent effort be made to .increase their circulation.

5. To improve the mass propaganda work of the Party in these industries through the medium of leaflets, pamphlets, and shop gate meetings. Especially important is the use of our numerous pamphlets for mass sale and distribution.

6. To institute a consistent policy of training and developing forces at the concentration points through political discussions, lectures, study groups, and schools.

The Party Club and Concentration

If we are to achieve these objectives, our attention has to be turned first of all to the Party clubs, and particularly to the shop and industrial clubs.

These clubs constitute the link between the Party and the basic industrial workers. It is through them that we shall be able to mobilize the workers to resist the drive of monopoly capitalism against their living standards and their trade unions, to resist the drive toward war and fascism. This means that a correct policy of concentration requires that the entire leadership concern itself with the problem of improving qualitatively the work of the shop and industrial clubs in general, and of the individual members in particular.

If these clubs are to be able to play their rightful role, the entire level of our theoretical and political work has to be raised. If these clubs are to reflect in the shops and industries the vanguard role of the Party, we must assist them to become the policy-making bodies within the shops and industries, firmly grounded in the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. It is only in the struggle to realize such an objective that the clubs and individual members will be able to play the leading role in the development of the united front on a de­partmental, shop and industry level. Through such methods these clubs will be able to work with, and give leadership to, broad sections o£ the workers in the struggle for the defense of their economic needs and to spur the workers to independent political action and class consciousness. More and more workers will thus come to realize the class nature and role of the state, the crisis in the two-party system, the harmful role of Social-Democracy and the reformist trade-union bureaucrats, the need for becoming fully involved in the development of the Progressive Party, etc.

Our Party must take full advantage of every opportunity in the day-to-day struggles to champion and advance the fundamental interests of our class, thus demonstrating that:

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”[1]

Current developments in the labor movement indicate the readiness of the workers for political as well as economic struggle. For example, there is the recent gathering of 500 activists, including presidents and members of Executive Boards of UA.W. locals, which endorsed Wallace and the Progressive Party. Despite the position of the John L. Lewis leadership, important groups of the miners are rallying to Wallace. In the steel industry significant changes are already taking place as the steel workers help to put the new party on the ballot. In Gary, thousands of steel workers turned out to hear Wallace.

Our Party must help to develop further this new initiative, and boldly promote united struggles to speed all positive developments which can bring about a new relationship of forces among the workers; we must build our Party as a force that can help bring about this change in the shortest time.

While we must struggle for this Marxist-Leninist concept of the role of the Party shop club, unfortunately only 25 percent of our industrial members are in shop and industrial clubs. While we have successfully established shop clubs in many of the large plants, there are still too many decisive plants where we have no shop clubs. Even in some of the large plants where we have established shop clubs, we find that in some of the key departments we are still isolated from the workers. The industrial clubs, which were established in most places to serve as a form of organization transitional to the establishment of shop clubs, have instead become a frozen form of organization. There is a reluctance in too many places to release comrades who are now attached to community clubs, but who rightfully belong in shop branches, the argument being given that this would weaken the community club. While we appreci­ate the needs of, and the problems faced by, our community clubs, once our basic concentration policy becomes clear; we should overcome all hesitations to shifting every comrade who should be in it to a shop club. At the same time, we must find the methods whereby the comrades in the shop clubs can play an important role in the struggles of the communities in which they live.

Unfortunately, due to unclarity on the role of the shop clubs and inadequate attention to them, we find that many have a tendency to concern themselves almost exclusively with trade union questions—and this, on a trade-union level—failing to grasp their role of vanguard political organization. Under such conditions, harmful tendencies develop; expressed in a reliance on the spontaneity of the workers, a failure to promote the class consciousness of the workers, and an inadequate building of our press. All this results in a situation in which our Party in many instances tail-ends behind the workers.

An Example of Correct Work

Let me give an example of the correct work of an individual Communist and his club, whose very fruitful experiences are worthy of study by this Convention:

I want to relate the experiences of Nick Migas, a steel worker from Indiana Harbor, a member of the National Committee of our Party.

Nick works in a plant employing 10,000 workers. Because of his role and leadership in the fight for the defense of the workers’ needs in his department, he was elected as the Department Grievance Committeeman, in spite of the most vicious Red-baiting threats, and intimidation by the leadership of this Right-wing union.

Comrade Nick accepted the challenge in true Communist fashion. He attends his Party club meetings, he discusses his problems at the club meetings, and the entire club works out collectively how he and other members can conduct a more effective struggle in the interests of the workers. Through his effort, together with that of other progressives in his local union, and despite many obstacles and difficulties, thirteen out of fifteen progressives, including Nick, were elected to the local’s Executive Committee. Nick and other progressives while defending the economic interests of the workers, helped also to create a Wallace Committee which hundreds of workers from the plant joined.

During the recent round of wage struggles the international leadership of the steelworkers’ union said that it was impossible to obtain wage increases in 1948. But Nick Migas, by applying a correct policy of the united front from below, raised this issue in his local and was elected with other progressives to his international union convention. You all know what happened at that convention and of the brave and honorable role that Nick played. After the convention, the workers in basic steel were granted wage increases. In all modesty we can say that Nick and his colleagues played no small role in winning an increase in wages of $450,000 a day for the workers in basic steel. This means an annual increase of $135,000,000. No wonder that the big trusts hate the Communists! Just imagine what it would mean for the American working class and our Party if in one hundred key plants in the country, we could train our shop clubs and individual members to become Nick Migases. This can be done! It must be done! Therefore, we must undertake in all seriousness to strengthen existing shop clubs and build new ones in the light of this example. There are undoubtedly other examples, and I hope that the comrades will relate them in the discussion.

The Community Club

I am sure that our entire Party will greet this emphasis on developing a concentration policy for the building up of our shop and industrial clubs. This in no way detracts from the urgent need to strengthen and build our community clubs. The objectives we set in concentration can be realized only if we successfully assist the community clubs in orienting their work toward the shops. The vital role of the community clubs is not lessened but becomes of even greater importance in the light of the industrial concentration approach we are attempting to establish.

We have innumerable examples of the splendid mass work of our clubs in developing struggles around such issues as high prices and rents, Negro discrimination, in defense of Israel, to repeal the draft, and a score of other local and national issues. These clubs in the main have been the builders of our press and distributors of our literature. These types of activity must be strengthened in every way. But now it must be pointed in the first place to the big shops and working-class communities. The example of these clubs could be multiplied manifold. Other comrades will give other examples. But what is missing is the fact that such splendid activity is not directed toward united action with workers in the plants and shops. The fight to solve this problem is the fight for a policy of working-class leadership of the entire people.

From the point of view of improving the content and quality of our concentration work, the group system deserves major attention. The groups must become a basic link in our work among the masses. The groups provide a medium which not only gives us greater mobility but a form through which we can give greater attention to the individual problems of our members—their education and personal development, their adjustment to Party life, so that they may grow as Communists and enhance their contribution. Sometimes we overlook the shy and retiring members and take little interest in their personal problems—and the result is that many become inactive. The group, in addition to its educational and political mass work, must become the creator of warmth, understanding, and comradeship among our members. Such an approach will help increase attendance and establish closer ties with our members, increase dues payments, increase the circulation of the Daily Worker and the Worker, bring higher sales of our literature, and involve more of our members in Party activities.

What Kind of Party are we Building?

In the coming days we shall witness an increase in the enemy attacks against our Party, but we shall also witness an ascending wave of mass struggles. Our Party must take all the necessary steps to strengthen itself speedily in order to be able to help lead these struggles. We should therefore, while taking a realistic view of the situation, act with the firm conviction that we can win this fight.

Some comrades conclude that under conditions of monopoly’s offensive and the defensive battles of the working class “we must retrench” and “wait for more favorable times” for Party building, or that “we need to limit the Party membership to the most militant activists within the vanguard Party.” In the light of the tasks facing us as Communists, can we accept this “theory”? Obviously not! Those who advance this “theory” fail to see that the “more favorable times” of tomorrow are being determined, and can be determined only by what we do in today’s struggles. In a period of reactionary offensive, favorable opportunities cannot be created by a “wait and see” policy, by “retrenchment” or by “limiting the Party membership to the most militant activists.”

The concept of “retrenchment” is not a line of struggle; it is a retreat. This concept flows from a one-sided estimate of the situation in the country. Comrades who defend such concepts fail to see the emerging struggles and the militant cadres they will bring to the fore. The place of many of these cadres should be in the Communist Party. Our day-to-day struggles must be designed to reach and win them and the Leftward moving masses.

Their one-sided estimate of the situation leads these comrades to overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the fighting moods of the masses, as well as the ability of our Party to influence the course of the developing struggles. This “theory” denies the vanguard role of our Party and is in essence a form of liquidationism. The present offensive of monopoly is not an argument against, but an argument for building the Communist Party. We must reject all counsels of retreat and retrenchment.

Other comrades conclude that the best way to meet reaction’s offensive is by submerging the Party in the mass movement. In practice this concept would lead to a state of affairs in which the Party becomes identical with the trade union or mass organization. These comrades see the need for work among the masses, but they do not clearly see the need for the vanguard Party of the working class. In reverse form they express a certain timidity and a fear of the masses. Moreover, their conception tends to create a tailist policy, and not a policy of leadership which aims to instill class consciousness, pride in, and direction to, the working-class and people’s movement. Instead of following a conscious and consistent policy of leadership, these comrades tend to rely on spontaneity. Here again we have an overestimation of the strength of the enemy and an underestimation of the ability of the masses to fight back effectively under the leadership of the Party. This conception likewise denies the vanguard role of the Party.

Nor is the problem resolved by establishing two types of Communists—one doing “mass” work and submerging the Party among the masses, and the other doing “Communist” work and moving independently of the masses. This division is fundamentally wrong and solves nothing. This combination of Leftist-sectarianism and Right opportunism stands in opposition to the Marxist-Leninist principle of Party organization. Comrades given to such thinking fail to see that the starting point of all Communist work is mass work that the Party can be built only through such activity.

Nor will the “go it alone” “theory,” which draws sectarian conclusions from the independent role of the Party, solve anything. Clearly, strengthening the Party to play its vanguard role in the working-class and people’s movement requires a clear understanding of what we mean by its vanguard role. The vanguard Party is not separated, from the masses. It is integrally linked with them, leading and helping them to move forward. We ourselves have the task of making clear to the masses our Party’s oneness with them. We must show them that the Party is the most advanced section of the most progressive and advanced class. We cannot convince the people of our vanguard role just by talking about it. We can convince them only by helping to increase the fighting capacity of the people at all levels of struggle. This we can do only by increasing our own fighting capacity, and by improving the quality of leadership we give to the mass movement on the basis of our scientific understanding. Our task is to grasp all opportunities to help build the united front of struggle in the shops, in the working-class neighborhoods, to build the Progressive Party and every democratic movement, and thus to fight to build our Party as the indispensable instrument for beating back the offensive of reaction, fascism and war.

In the further building of our Party, we must also pay considerable attention to the need of substantially lowering the age level of the Party by recruiting large numbers of young people. Here it is worth noting that in the past several years we have made some progress in this direction. We have more than doubled our membership among World War II veterans. We have established a foothold among students on 95 campuses. We have recruited young people generally through the existing youth clubs. But we cannot be satisfied with these results. In fact, we must state that we are seriously lagging on this front.

There is a great stirring among the youth, who are the first to be hit by Wall Street’s drive toward war and fascism. Reaction is leaving no stone unturned to win the youth for its reactionary program. There are numerous instances indicating that reactionary forces have been able to misdirect the youth (as, for instance, in some unions, in inspiring hoodlum acts, etc.), because of the absence of decisive leadership in the fight for the youth. Hence, our Party must not only considerably intensify its activity among the youth, particularly among the young workers in industry and among the youth in the Negro communities, but we must place as a central task the recruiting of substantial numbers of young Americans into our ranks in the coming months.

Our Party in the Struggle for Negro Rights

In challenging monopoly oppression, the working class finds a powerful ally in the Negro people who, by the very nature of their position in American life, are rallying to the banners of the struggle against Wall Street. Success in the struggle against monopoly requires the forging of the alliance of labor and the Negro people, the building of the Negro people’s unity and the building of our Party, the consistent champion of the Negro people’s struggle. For without our Party such an alliance cannot grow and permanently exist. In this connection, we should take note of the following passage from the Draft Resolution:

“The intensified attacks upon the Negro people demonstrate clearly the growth of imperialist reaction and national oppression in the United States. The Negro people are experiencing the most extreme, the most brutal manifestations of the growing fascist danger, especially in the South.”

It would be a most fatal error on the part of labor if it failed to see that this attack is an attempt to tear asunder the growing alliance of the workers and the Negro people, and thus to destroy the labor movement itself. Participation in the fight for the equal rights of the Negro people is an indispensable duty for the American working class, and essential to the maintenance and extension of democracy. Hence the necessity for unfolding an energetic struggle for the equal rights of the Negro people; for the outlawing of Jim Crow and the passage of the anti-lynching and anti-poll tax legislation for the abolition of all forms of discrimination against the Negro people in army and civilian life; for democratic agrarian reforms in the South, satisfying the needs of the Negro people for land, freedom, and equality; for the right to self-determination of the Negro people in the Black Belt.

The Draft Resolution calls upon the Party to make the demand for full economic, political and social equality, a demand which corresponds to the class interests of the workers, a demand which should become the battle cry of the entire labor movement.

Thus, our Party must keep in view the aim of making a radical turn in the direction of unleashing the full potential of the Negro liberation movement and building our Party as the proven leader of the Negro workers and the Negro people. This is an undertaking that we accept with honor.

Our Party since the Emergency Convention has conducted many significant struggles for Negro rights: anti-lynch, anti-poll tax, for F.E.P.C. legislation, against restrictive covenants, against discrimination in the armed services, in defense of the Ingrams, etc. Nevertheless, these struggles have developed unevenly, and in many cases sporadically.

The basic weakness in the fight for the rights of the Negro people is the failure to tackle the basic problem of which the other issues are but a reflection. I have in mind the fight on the job against discriminatory firings and layoffs of Negro workers, against the refusal of many companies, including many in the basic industries, to hire Negro workers; and against the refusal of many plants to upgrade Negro workers, and of unions to promote them as shop stewards, committeemen and leaders. Only here and there can we record notable exceptions.

While we re-established our Party in the South, we do not yet have an operative policy of attacking the very basis of Negro oppression on the land. What does this mean? It means that while we must continue to strengthen and further develop in every way the struggles already begun, we must likewise direct our attention to the solution of the fundamental economic and social problems which will give basic substance to the fight of our class, and real equality to the Negro people.

The failure of the labor movement to conduct a consistent struggle for the vital interests of the Negro people is due to the fact that it still lacks an understanding of the Negro question. This means at the same time that, in failing to forge an effective labor-Negro alliance, the working class is failing to defend its own class interests. In such a situation, enormous obligations are placed upon the working-class vanguard.

The Negro workers in the trade-union movement are in revolt against the Social-Democratic do-nothing policy on the issue of job inequality. But the majority of the white workers, due to the influence of bourgeois ideology in the labor movement, have not yet come forward in solidarity with the Negro workers on this vital issue. In many cases, even among progressives in the trade unions, there is a negative approach to this burning issue of Negro job inequality. The result is that the white workers are not helped to understand what this revolt means to labor as a whole. Neither are the Negro workers helped to appreciate more fully the need for class solidarity.

Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie asserts itself as never before, trying to head off class solidarity and win the Negro workers to its banners. The monopolists make full use of Social-Democratic labor leaders, as well as of some Negro leaders who spread the slogan: “Neither Jim Crow nor Communism.” Left-progressive unionists will unwittingly help those who seek to weaken and undermine the unions, unless they overcome existing weaknesses in their fight for full equality.

It is important for us to understand that, as the offensive of the monopolists increases against labor, the class-collaborationist moves away from the defense of labor’s interests in general and those of the Negro workers in particular.

The problem of discrimination against Negro people in the basic industries is not limited to Negro industrial workers. One of the worst forms of discrimination is to be found in the general offices. The general offices of the steel, auto, mining, maritime, electrical, railroad, public utilities and a host of other trusts, refuse to hire Negro men and women. These offices remain “lily white.” Clearly, we cannot ignore this situation any longer. It is another example of the attempt to split the working class from the Negro people and create divisions also within the Negro people themselves.

We must recognize the fact that weaknesses on this front of struggle are due to the existence of white chauvinism, expressed in policy and practice. The phrase, “We’re all equal,” equates formalistically the problems of Negro workers with those of all exploited and oppressed. Supporting F.E.P.C. by resolution alone is a means of avoiding the concrete fight against inequality in the departments, shops and plants. This we all know. The failure effectively to combat this kind of hidden white chauvinism, expresses a lack of faith in the white workers. The white workers will rally, if convinced that their own interests are at stake in the fight for Negro rights.

The Party must unfold an energetic struggle against white chauvinism, not only in the realm of ideology, but also in a practical fight for equality on every level. The result will be that greater numbers of white workers will enlist in the fight and Negro workers will become more active participants and builders of the union. In addition, they will become a leading force in the Negro communities, and our Party will grow more rapidly among Negro and white workers.

I do not propose to deal with the problems of the South, since they will be dealt with in a special report before this Convention. I want, however, to deal briefly with several problems of the Negro community itself.

The Negro communities are highly organized and progressive and have, in the last decade or so, always been found in their majority in the progressive column on all the basic issues. However, one of the major weaknesses from which the Negro communities still suffer is to be found in the totally inadequate position of leadership that the Negro workers have won and assumed within the Negro community. Until basic progress is made in this respect, the Negro community cannot play its full role in the struggle for the interests of the Negro people and within the general people’s coalition for peace, democracy, and progress. But progress in the solution of this question is to a large degree dependent on the unfolding of the struggle for full and equal rights of the Negro workers in each factory, in each industry, and in each trade union. Thus, the fight by our Party forces, and by the progressive forces in general within the labor movement, for equality for the Negro workers is the key to the solution of almost all questions within the Negro community.

Undoubtedly, our Party generally enjoys greater influence and support among the Negro people than among any other group. This has been shown on innumerable occasions when the Negro workers rallied to the support, not only of Negro Communist leaders but of our Party as a whole. But it is also true that there exists a very wide gap between this general support and influence and the numerical growth and stability of our Party in the Negro community. Why is this so? To answer this question we must take note of some of the basic weaknesses in the work of our Party, which contribute to this situation.

In the first place, we quite often raise slogans and develop movements on such issues as the fight against high prices, for rent control, more adequate recreational, health and hospital facilities, against police brutality, and against discrimination and inequality in whatever forms they are expressed. The Negro people readily join with us in this fight. But it is also true that we do not always carry on a consistent and sustained fight on these issues and that we allow various reformist and Social-Democratic groups to take advantage of this inconsistency and thus take over leadership of such movements. Such a situation is also made possible by the fact that we do not always expose those petty-bourgeois and reformist leaders who are out to mislead and behead the Negro people’s movement and because we do not give sufficient attention to showing the Negro people in practice, through struggle and through consistent education, the difference between a reformist class-collaboration policy and a policy of struggle. In a certain sense it might almost be said that, because of the readiness of the Negro people to struggle and the ease with which they can be led into struggle, we often, instead of utilizing these very positive factors, tend to rely on spontaneity and thus tend to lag behind the masses. Here again, the assumption by the Negro workers of leadership in the Negro community is essential to overcome this weakness and to guarantee a consistent and persistent development of the struggle.

Finally, we must say that any weakening of the fight against white-chauvinist tendencies within the ranks of the Party, whether manifested in the Negro community, in the Party as a whole, or in the labor and people’s movement generally, is one of the greatest obstacles to the steady, advancement and consolidation of the Negro people’s movement within the Negro community and to the building of our Party into a mass Party in the Negro community. The very influence and respect that the Party has won among the Negro people makes them most sensitive to any failures on our part. They rightly demand of us more than of anyone else. They use a different yardstick in measuring us than in measuring anyone else.

By fighting for equal rights for the Negro workers within the labor movement, by a consistent policy of struggle for the rights of the Negro people in the community, by advancing resolutely the leadership of the Negro workers in the Negro community, by an effective exposure of the reformist and Social-Democratic misleaders, by an uncompromising struggle against every manifestation of white chauvinism, our Party can quickly overcome the gap between its general influence and its organizational weaknesses and establish itself as a major force among the Negro people.

For a Consistent Cadre Policy

We Communists are fully conscious of our tasks; and, in all modesty recognize that on us devolves the political leadership to the working class for shaping the future of our country. Our Party needs men and women from the ranks of the working class capable of accomplishing great tasks. For, as Stalin says: “Once the political line has been established, cadres decide everything.” To reach our objectives, we need to develop a consistent cadre policy. This means, not only the training and development of cadres as full-time functionaries, but, in the first place, a wide corps of non-full time activists with daily ties among the masses in the shops and working-class communities. Such a Communist cadre policy should strive to develop workers with indigenous ties, whether in the shop, plant, community, or mass organizations. This guide applies to clubs, sections and counties, as well as to the districts. In the present political situation, the qualities of our cadres will in great part decide the issue of the struggle. An undertaking of such importance cannot be solved by any particular department. It must become the task of the entire Party.

The essence of a correct cadre policy is the training and development of men and women who have faith and confidence in their class, have love for, and pride in, their class; are militant fighters, enjoying the confidence of the workers and our membership, and unreservedly accept the policies and principles of our Marxist-Leninist program.

They must be men and women who are not only known inside the Party but who have live contact with non-Party masses. They must be men and women who, having fullest confidence in our Party’s policies, fight for their realization among the masses in general and the workers in particular.

What kind of cadres does the vanguard party need and how should we select cadres? Comrade Dimitrov gives the answer in his celebrated report to the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International, in 1935:

“First, absolute devotion to the cause of the working class, loyalty to the Party, tested in face of the enemy—in battle, in prison, in court.

“Second, the closest possible contact with the masses. The comrades concerned must be wholly absorbed in the interests of the masses, feel the life pulse of the masses, know their sentiments and requirements. The prestige of the leaders of our Party organization should be based, first of all, on the fact that the masses regard them as their leaders and are convinced through their own experience of their ability as leaders, and of their determination and self-sacrifice in struggle.

“Third, ability independently to find one’s bearings and not to be afraid of assuming responsibility in making decisions. He who fears to take responsibility is not a leader. He who is unable to display initiative, who says: ‘I will do only what I am told,’ is not a Bolshevik. Only he is a real Bolshevik leader who does not lose his head at moments of defeat, who does not get a swelled head at moments of success, who displays indomitable firmness in carrying out decisions. Cadres develop and grow best when they are placed in the position of having to solve concrete problems of the struggle independently and are aware that they are fully responsible for their decisions.

“Fourth, discipline and Bolshevik hardening in the struggle against the class enemy as well as in their irreconcilable opposition to all deviations from the Bolshevik line.”[2]

As can be seen, the ability to speak well and write well, while important elements in the struggle, are not the main criteria for the selection and bold promotion of working-class cadres in the Communist Party.

In fighting for such a cadre policy, our Party, in working out the solution to this decisive question, must take into account the fact that our cadres entered the Party at different periods—some, during the unemployed struggles; others, during the period of the democratic front; many, during the revisionist period; while many are joining today. In many cases the imprint of the period in which they joined remains with them. What does this mean? This means that our cadre policy must be designed to educate and re-educate our membership to understand the policies of our Party in the past, its history, but really to master our present-day policies and tactics.

On the other hand, the fight for a correct cadre policy also means that we take into account the fact that a few comrades who were outstanding Party leaders in the past now feel that the intensity of the struggle is too great, that they can take a back seat. There are a few who strive to move away from their proletarian base and origin and seek satisfaction in business outlets. There are some who balk at leaving the “comfort” of the big metropolitan cities for work among the masses in other industrial towns. There are some who have lost perspective under conditions of monopoly’s offensive, lack faith in the working class and consequently in the ability of the Party to rally the masses for a successful struggle. There are a few comrades in this category who also sit on the side lines. They are waiting for the leadership to make mistakes. They do not contribute to the struggle. But in all such cases history passes such comrades by. Is it not clear that such comrades cannot inspire confidence among the masses? Is it not clear that these comrades must either change their outlook or become sympathizers of the working-class struggles? It is equally clear that what the working class needs is more than sympathizers in those to whom it has a right to look for leadership. To the extent that our Party tackles this question, to that extent will it more rapidly embrace in its ranks such militant Communist leaders. This approach will enable us to put up an effective fight for the political line of our Party.

We must know our people, their qualities, difficulties and weaknesses, attitudes and tastes. Such knowledge will come from the course of the struggle itself; for struggles form and mold cadres. Schools and classes, which are also a form of struggle for cadres, constitute a basic auxiliary to the realization of the full potential of every individual. I repeat, we must pursue a bold policy of promotion of leading and active workers in every phase of activity.

We must be ever vigilant to the attempts of the class enemy to penetrate our ranks. This requires opening up a constant and consistent struggle against enemy influences and practices. In one district a stoolpigeon was a member of the District Committee for several years and was discovered only by accident. Is it not worth pondering over the question that too few of the enemy elements have been exposed in recent years?

Our Party has made the beginnings since the Emergency Convention in raising the theoretical level of the membership—through schools and classes, lectures and study circles, and an increase in the publication of the classics of our movement. Comrade Foster is leading the fight on this front. But what has been done is far from adequate in the light of the tasks we face. Thus, the all-around improvement of all our theoretical work is indispensable in the training and development of cadres. The importance of this entire question can be fully appreciated if we look at the composition of our leadership in the districts, counties and sections. The weaknesses that exist in terms of boldly promoting workers to operative leadership are due in the main to the fact that we are not fully conscious in our everyday work of the imperative need of tackling this problem. There exists in too many places a certain lack of patience in developing workers who are not so articulate. We promote them only when they are the full-fledged, finished product. This is obviously wrong. Our Party, to realize its aims, needs forces for basic industrial towns. America is a big country—and between Chicago and California there exists practically virgin territory for our Party’s work. We must build our Party here.

But in the quest for forces to solve this problem, the answer is often given that we have no forces. To this I give the reply of Lenin who in a similar situation replied:

“There are plenty of people, and yet we are short of people—this contradictory formula has long defined the contradictions in the organizational life and organizational requirements of Social-Democracy. And now this contradiction stands out with particular force; from all sides we often hear passionate appeals for new forces, complaints of the shortage of people in the organizations, and equally often and everywhere we have enormous offers of service, a growth of young forces, particularly in the working class. The practical organizer who complains of a shortage of people under such circumstances becomes the victim of the illusion from which Madame Roland suffered, during the period of the highest stage of development of the Great French Revolution, when she said in 1793: there are no men in France, we are surrounded by pigmies. Those who talk like this fail to see the wood for the trees; they confess that they are blinded by events; that it is not they, the revolutionaries, who control events in mind and activity, but that events control them and have overwhelmed them. Such organizers had better retire and leave the field clear for younger forces whose zeal may often compensate for lack of experience.”

There is no doubt that we will tackle this problem in the spirit that is required. Our Party is capable of accomplishing great things. We can do this because our Party’s policies are based on the science of Marxism-Leninism. Our Party will accomplish its objectives because in the fight to realize its line among the masses it will develop as a system in its work the Bolshevik weapon of criticism and self-criticism. And if we are able to lay bare our major weaknesses for discussion, it is due to the fact that we have every confidence that we can overcome them and strengthen every positive aspect in our Party’s work. The weapon of criticism and self-criticism is the sign of strength of a growing and maturing Communist Party under conditions of the sharpening monopoly offensive. We can look back with pride to our Emergency Convention’s action in rejecting Browder’s revisionism, which action restored to the Party at the same time the Leninist concept of democratic centralism. This Leninist principle of democratic centralism combines two concepts, which enables us to verify our policies and tactics among the masses and to strengthen the authority of Party leadership which resolutely defends the interests of the working class.

It was the application of this principle which enabled our Party to cleanse itself of such anti-Party and anti-working class elements as Browder, Darcy, Harrison George, Dunne, Vern Smith, and Franklin. The continued and energetic application of the principle is indispensable to a Communist Party fighting resolutely against bourgeois influences and practices which are alien to the spirit of working-class struggles. But to achieve this means to root out all petty-bourgeois concepts regarding Party democracy. We should once again return to the classics and refresh our understanding of democratic centralism, its need in the creation of a unified, monolithic Party which is so vital to our class today.

I should like to conclude with the closing section of the Draft Resolution:

“We live in stirring times, fraught with the most terrible dangers, but pregnant with unprecedented opportunities to advance toward the realization of mankind’s highest aspirations.

“As the vanguard Party of the American working class, we Communists have a heavy responsibility to our own people and to all the peace-loving peoples of the world.

“Only if our Party fulfills its vanguard obligations will the American working class succeed in leading the American people’s struggle to repel the dangers of war and fascism, and realize the objectives of peace, democracy, and social progress.

“We have confidence that our Communist Party will build itself, bigger and stronger, to measure up to the needs of our class and our country. We have confidence that the very fury of the coming storms will convince the best of the American workers to struggle with us, in our ranks.

“We will fight unflinchingly for the legality and constitutional rights of our Party. We do not shrink from the hammer blows of reaction. Under them we will steel our Party in Communist discipline, loyalty, and unity, develop its Marxist-Leninist understanding, and temper our cadres and leadership. Sharing the hardships and struggles of America’s working people; we will root our Party ever deeper in the American working-class soil from which it sprang. “As the vanguard Party of the American working class we take our place in the front line of battle, conscious of our responsibility to all Americans who struggle for peace, democracy, economic security, and social progress. We hold aloft the banner of our conviction that the American working people have the capacity, means, and allies to curb and defeat the fascists and warmongers, and, eventually, to advance toward the Socialist reorganization of society, which will forever end the dangers of fascism, crises, and war—the misery of exploitation and oppression. We face the oncoming struggles with confidence in our people, our class, and our Party.”

[1] Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manifesto; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, p. 53.

[2] Dimitrov, Georgi, The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2023, pp. 134-135.

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History of Opportunism in the Second International “Defense of the Fatherland”

Owing to the history of the development of the labor movement and revolution before both WWI and WWII there is a defining characteristic of parties in revolutionary periods. Contradictions between opportunist trends and Bolshevism are intensified, lines are clarified, and opportunist forces which had grown during peace time now try to smother revolution. The entire movement becomes engulfed in bitter conflict over the path forward for the class. Today we see nothing different. Thus, there is a direct connection between the at-present fractured Communist movement and the victory gained by opportunism in the west. As a consequence this requires revolutionaries to educate the working class on the importance of the conflict, its causes, and finish the split started by opportunists who will try by hook or crook to ally with the bourgeoisie.

But why, one might ask, do these opportunists who speak in Communist ways try to fight against revolution? Do they not speak of revolution themselves? Do they not follow Lenin and organize themselves into Communist parties? So how can there be “opportunist” Communist parties? How can opportunism have captured so many? And how are we sure who the real opportunists are today?

Remember that the parties of the Second International right up to the start of WWI had considered the looming war to be one of imperialist plunder. They understood that there was no progressive or just characteristic to the war at all, and the war was purely to divide markets. In 1912 the Ninth Congress of the Second International passed the Basle Manifesto which in words took a revolutionary stand against the coming imperialist war. Many socialists in Europe at the time could not see through the phrase mongering of the Second International leadership. After its passage Lenin remarked, “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how they will meet it.”

The Basle Manifesto only passed because of the general anti-war atmosphere among the workers who had put pressure on their opportunist leaderships to adopt an anti-war position. The founder and most influential party of the Second International, the German Social-Democratic party, had shortly after passing the Basle Manifesto held a party congress in 1913 where it upheld Germany’s colonies. This clearly indicates that while the parties of the Second International were forced to adopt an anti-war position on the outside, they had every intention to support the war. The words of the Second International in the Basle Manifesto would not translate into deeds.

On July 28, 1914, Austria attacked Serbia. On August 3^rd the German Social-Democratic party voted 78 to 14 in the Reichstag in support of joining the war saying that Russia was soon to invade Germany and then declaring “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.” The other European parties adopted the same justification and carried out the same line in their respective countries. The opportunists in the Second International had carried out the greatest betrayal to the working class in history at that time. They disguised their betrayal in a thin veil of “Marxism” saying that the German nation-state was threatened, that they must defend their workers against the invaders, and that Germany was the country with the most advanced Social-Democracy in Europe and necessitated defense. Of course, the parties in the Entente countries had their own social-chauvinism and raised the defense of their own countries to be paramount. Thus, these parties all fell into collaboration with the imperialists to wage an unjust war.

The German Social-Democratic party as the most influential party in the Second International played a large role in influencing other parties to follow suit in this greatest betrayal. It signified the ideological and political collapse of the Second International. The war had nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It was an unjust and reactionary war to loot and plunder.

The opportunists in the Second International cited the writings of Marx and Engels who had supported the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 where Germany was liberated from the oppression of Napoleon III who had kept Germany in a state of feudal decentralization. This act made the war a progressive one on Prussia’s part by allowing the growth of the bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat, in Germany. Yet nothing about the conditions of WWI would lend itself to being compared to a struggle for national liberation. The leaders of the German Social-Democratic party grasped at straws trying to justify the involvement of the German proletariat in a war of plunder.

Karl Kautsky, who was the most prominent Marxist of the time and member of the German Social-Democratic party, said: “The Situation is different with the great solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly not threatened but apparently their integrity is not threatened either.” This may appear to be an argument against supporting the war, but he then follows this with, “But from this follows also the further duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment”. Thus in order to consider the war “just” Kautsky considered it “defensive” and the duty of German socialists to “defend the fatherland”.

The Basis of Opportunism

In Lenin’s work “The Collapse of the Second International” he says in chapter I,

“If we would formulate the question in a scientific fashion, i.e., from the standpoint of class relations in modern society, we will have to state that most of the Social Democratic parties, and at their head the German Party first and foremost—the biggest and most influential party in the Second International—have taken sides with their General Staffs, their governments, and their bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. This is an event of historic importance, one that calls for a most comprehensive analysis.”[1]

This comprehensive analysis Lenin mentions is that the betrayal of the socialist parties in the Second International stems from the economic basis, and significance, of the ideologically and materially influenced labor movement within Europe by the bourgeoisie. This is possible through super-profit derived bribes given to parts of the working class who are outside of industrial production and primarily engaged in what the English economist J. A. Hobson—in 1902 reflecting on the emergence of imperialism—saw as the inevitable predominance of “personal or minor industrial services” and the “final stages of production” within imperialist countries.

But the roots of opportunism in the labor movement were first expressed in the colonial and industrial monopoly maintained by Great Britain from 1848 to 1892. The analysis of this period comes best from Frederick Engels who remarked that the skilled tradesmen of his time had become “an aristocracy among the working-class.” Conditions in Great Britain as a result of its industrial monopoly had produced a stratum of the working class who had become “comfortable” and in good relations with the capitalist class. So much so that Engels considered this section of the working class to have become “bourgeois” in its outlook. In other words, this bought off section of the working class had become perverted and itself perverted the labor movement and turned it social-chauvinist.

This perversion of the labor movement is substantiated economically by the conditions of imperialism. Here we do not speak of chance mistakes in tactics. Opportunism is adapting the labor movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is an economic basis to this corruption of the labor movement which introduces bourgeois ideology. And there are two main forms in which this corruption presents itself. Firstly it manifests as those who enjoy a privileged position among the working class and seek to maintain that position, i.e., the AFL-CIO “Higher Strategy of Labor”. Secondly, those in the privileged stratum who as a result of pressure from monopoly have been cast down into the ranks of the lower stratum of the working class but bring with them the interests of the bourgeoisie in left-disguise regardless of intentions.

This privileged stratum of the working class both ideologically and materially influenced by the bourgeoisie did not remain a solely English phenomenon. The loss of Great Britain’s industrial monopoly and the emergence of imperialism among several European countries meant that this privileged stratum of the working class had become a condition of all countries with monopoly capital. The establishment of this privileged strata of workers in all the advanced capitalist countries is why in nearly all socialist parties within the Second International following the most influential and whose leadership was populated primarily by these “comfortable workers” went to the defense of their respective “Fatherlands” when the division of the world market could no longer proceed under peaceful politics and threatened the “comfortable” conditions of the social-chauvinists.

Certainly, today it is a fact of life that manufacturing in the advanced capitalist countries is no longer what it once was. Services are the predominant industries in all imperialist countries. Hobson was quite correct in that regard. A large portion of workers in the imperialist countries only facilitate the realization of commodities. This means that merchant capital has become predominant in the circulation of commodities. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries have become parasites on the oppressed countries of the world, which they have forced to surrender a greater share of the surplus-value of commodities produced to create super-profits for the imperialists.

In the rest of the labor movement, the domination of opportunism over the most advanced sections of the working class is a result of the industrial restructuring of the advanced capitalist countries. The party’s loss of a firm footing in the industrial centers is why the Central Committee of the PCUSA stated in its Industrial Concentration Strategy and Plan that, “the restructuring of the basic industries in the United States [as well as Europe] meant the decline and deterioration of the old industrial sector of the working class.” The decline of what we might call “blue collar” factory work today has had a corresponding decline in the proportion of party members who came from the lower strata of the working class and the domination of the privileged upper strata – what we call petty-bourgeois radicals today.

This is not unique to the conditions of the US, but one that affects all Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries. The incessant, seemingly overwhelming problem of opportunism, left or right, is simply part and parcel of the conditions of building a Communist party in the belly of the beast. Meaning this restructuring, i.e., decimation of the organized industrial sectors of the economy, reflected itself in the party. 

It is an important question to ask why the Communist Party of Germany failed to utilize the revolutionary situation. The Comintern considered the failure due to the lack of connection with workers in the factories, but why was this the case? Lenin’s answer to this question in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder calls attention to a few factors in the German CP. For one, the German party adopted very childish notions of purity, going as far as to refuse to do any party work in “reactionary unions.” Thus the party had willingly cut itself off from sections of the workers leaving these workers under the influence of traitors and the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, Lenin says,

“In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of ‘leaders’ at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to pass quickly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the ‘inconvenient’ and ‘undemocratic’ methods of singling out, or forming, or preserving “groups of leaders”—people lost their heads and began to think up some supernatural nonsense. Probably, the Dutch Tribunists who had the misfortune to be born in a small country where traditions and conditions of legality were particularly privileged and particularly stable, and who had never witnessed the changeover from legality to illegality, became confused, lost their heads, and helped to create these absurd inventions.”[2]

Since the German Communist Party had in part separated itself from the labor movement and did not have the experience to navigate the revolutionary situation, it failed to become a leader of the workers. How could it be that a Communist party is separated from the workers? Because the German Communist Party, like most Communist Parties of the west, were organized outside of the labor movement. Being outside of the daily struggle of workers was not the case for the Bolsheviks where out of the labor movement grew the Russian Social Democratic Party and then finally the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Some Reflections On The Issue Of Industrial Structuring

The history of how Communist Parties were developed in the advanced capitalist countries offers potential insight into why the CPUSA had such an issue dealing with the decline of organized industrial sectors. In 1931 the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted several factors which retarded the growth of Communist parties in the imperialist countries. I will quote the pertinent observations,

“The illegal condition of the Bolshevik Party prompted it to establish Party groups in the factories, where it was easier and more convenient to work. The Party structure of the Bolsheviks thus began with the factories, and this yielded excellent results both during the years of the reaction, after the February revolution, and particularly during the October Revolution of 1917, the civil war and the great construction of Socialism. During the reaction following upon 1908, when in places the local party committees and the party leadership (the C.C.) were broken up, there still remained in the factories and mills a certain base, small party cells which continued the work. After the February Revolution, when the elections to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were held, the factories and mills also served as the basis for the elections. It is noteworthy that the elections to the municipal and district councils and the Constituent Assembly, which were based not upon occupational but upon territorial principles, were also carried out by the Bolshevik Party very successfully after the February and October Revolutions, despite the fact that the party had no territorial organizations [emphasis mine – ed.], and its agitation was concentrated in the factories and barracks. The cells and the district and city committees conducted the election campaign without creating special territorial organizations for the purpose. During all periods the lower party organizations of the Bolsheviks existed at the place of work rather than at the place of residence.

Abroad the situation was entirely different. There elections were not held in the factories but in the election districts, in the places where the voters lived. The main task pursued by the Socialist Parties was to gain electoral victories, to fight by means of the ballot, and the Party organization was therefore built along residential lines, which made it easier to organize the Party members for the election campaign in the respective election districts.

[T]he organizations of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries were built without permanent organizational connections with the factories. […]

That the absence of Party organizations in the factories strongly affects the work of the Communist Parties is shown by such an example, for instance, as that of Germany, in 1923, when the Party failed to utilize the revolutionary situation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this being due not only to the absence of a truly revolutionary leadership, but also to the absence of extensive and firm connections with the workers in the factories.”[3]

Most Communist Parties in the west were born from Socialist Parties who had no connection to the labor movement. Their primary source of membership came from cells that followed the same geographical-political party structure as bourgeois parties, i.e., city, county, state lines. As a result, the proportional share of cells within the party that are based in the factories are numerically outnumbered by geo-political cells which unify workers who are disconnected from large-scale production within the party. In other words, geo-political organization can be a boon to the white-collar city-petty bourgeoisie and corrupted workers within the party. 

As the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted above, in the illegal period of the Bolshevik Party they were a closed party and only admitted small numbers of candidates. Primarily due to oppression by the Tsar, trustworthiness was one of the main factors used to evaluate candidates. The core cadre of the party became steeled in experience and capable of teaching. When the party became legal after the 1905 Revolution it became a mass party and accepted many new members. Lenin remarked in Party Organization and Party Literature in 1905 that “We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements.”

As well, Lenin in 1916 in his article “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” very clearly outlines the importance of where the party focuses and draws its strength,

“Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”[4]

If we have a broader reflection on the experience of the Bolsheviks we find that at very few points in their history did they ever accept a mass of new membership into their ranks and that they had from the beginning been based chiefly on the factories. The issue of petty-bourgeois radicalism had scarcely been a problem within their ranks until periods of the intensification of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Later in 1920 in Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin remarks that the Bolsheviks at this point were now very apprehensive in allowing the party to grow too quickly during the October Revolution because of the fact that “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably strive to attach themselves to the ruling party.”[5] This development signified a greater danger of the penetration of corrupting elements at that point in time.

The dangerous combination of petty bourgeois radicalism with a mass party structure is why the consequence of the policies adopted and implemented by the 7^th Congress of the Comintern in the pursuit of the Popular Front, which sought to bring together the broad masses and all progressive people against fascism, resulted in western parties which were ill-equipped to defend themselves from the sudden and large influence of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Western parties had not chiefly based themselves upon the factories, i.e., upon the lowest paid and unbribed sections of the working class. History has proven that all the western parties were unable to digest the “inconsistent elements” as they transitioned into mass parties. It is historical fact that only in the eastern European countries did the Popular Front result in the formation of Socialist Republics since this is where the parties were chiefly situated in the factories rather than along geo-political lines . Thus these parties could withstand allowing a certain portion of the higher stratum of the working class and petty bourgeois to enter the party.

In the 2021 issue of The Communist the General Secretary Angelo D’Angelo and I wrote that,

“What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international Communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.”[6]

It is evident from the experiences of the Bolsheviks and our own parties in the advanced capitalist countries that the predominance of cells organized along geo-political lines is a carryover from the Socialist Party, and that it can be self-defeating by allowing petty-bourgeois radicals to suffocate Bolshevism within the party. It is inevitable then that issues of daily conflict and splits occur over matters immaterial to the long-term goals of the Communist Party. This also means a greater chance for individuals (careerists and charlatans) who do not come from the lower-strata of the working class to rise to leadership positions within the party since the work of the party (i.e. its cells) is detached from struggle within large enterprises.

Marx was a thousand times correct to say that socialism is birth marked with characteristics of capitalism. It is also true to say that western Communist parties are birth marked with the characteristics of their former socialist parties. However, addressing the predominance of the geo-political method of organizing is only a small part of the struggle against opportunism within our party. It is through the geo-political organization of cells that renegades and opportunists are able to more easily gain leadership positions only to corrupt entire sections of the party. Primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workers connected to shops with thousands of other workers and because the work of the geo-political cells are not focused on the immediate needs of any one workplace. The work of these cells mainly revolves around periodical agitation in public places; in other words, no leading role in the labor movement or direct connection to it.

Yet, the struggle against opportunism does not end with fixing the method of cell organization. The struggle against opportunism within the CPSU is evidence that even in parties where shop cells are predominant that opportunism finds other ways to sap at the strength of the party. It is evident though that in today’s world all Communist parties have been affected by industrial restructuring. The industrial basis of western Communist parties has become weakened, and the opportunity for petty-bourgeois radicals to steal leadership of the parties has grown. It is not a coincidence then that like never before Communist parties have reached an impasse over very basic questions of socialist construction or the history and legacy of the Comintern.

Industrial Concentration is the foremost task of any Communist Party, but it is obvious that this policy has not been carried out by the parties of the world who refuse to see the truth of what the war in Ukraine represents. There is no central world leadership to teach its importance. In the vacuum left by the CPSU, many parties have become aimless and have decayed into complacency over the years of industrial restructuring.

The CPUSA in 1949 as a matter of its party education instilled upon all party members that:

“The policy of concentration is not a policy for a special group of comrades, nor a special sphere of work which is carried alongside of other tasks. There must be no counterposing of industrial concentration as ‘one specific activity’ to other mass activities. Winning the workers in the big shops and working class communities is a political task (the struggle for the political policies of the party – which embrace both economic and political issues). Industrial concentration must be the heart and core of the work of all party organizations and all party leaders.”[7]

By regaining a foothold in the big shops the party will secure the social composition of the party as decidedly working class and offer an advantage to the party in its struggle against opportunism within the Communist movement.

The Ultra-Left and Ukraine

Grave issues within the international Communist movement have meant a major difference of perspective about support and non-support for the current Russian military offensive. To understand the current situation it is important to understand the class character of war in the modern age. The historical features of war have changed owing to the development of society and capitalism to its highest stage. By contrast during the period starting from around 1776 with the American Revolution and ending with the Paris Commune in 1871, the major wars and civil wars at this time were bourgeois-progressive and often had a national-liberation characteristic.

All honest socialists participated in the overthrow of feudalism. Most notable among them was Karl Marx who constantly gave guidance and clarity to the character of the US Civil War through the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx saw clearly that it was a progressive war which could overthrow the feudal Bourbon-Landlords of the South and end chattel slavery. By overthrowing the slave masters in the South the conditions for socialism, which was impossible beforehand, now existed.

Such a war to overthrow the backwards aristocracy was instrumental in allowing capitalism to develop, which was a progressive step, but capitalism most of all concentrates capital and industry. Today, US capitalism has reached its highest stage—imperialism. All the major industries are concentrated into the hands of billionaire associations, and all the major capitalist nations have divided the world amongst themselves. When “peaceful” diplomacy fails to satisfy its re-division, war and violence is waged. Making war in the age of imperialism is the result of fierce competition over markets. This means peace between capitalist countries can only be transitory, and peaceful diplomacy among them only stalls the impending outbreak of war which represents the continuation of capitalist diplomacy in a violent form. As well, the war will bring many changes to Russia which will develop further as a capitalist nation should it defeat NATO and Ukraine.

As analyzed in the PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference, the US is in a fierce competition with Russia and China for markets to export the highly industrialized commodities produced in the US. When Trump tried to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, it was explicitly done in order to offer Europe “Freedom” gas and oil, but at a higher cost than the EU was able to secure from Russia.

Immediately upon Russia committing to conflict in Ukraine, Germany indefinitely suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the EU and US ceased importing Russian oil and natural gas. As much as 40% of EU energy was imported from Russia. The US had tried to capture this market by attempts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia under Trump “peacefully”. Such a market is extremely important, which is why the US since 2014 had cultivated fascism and knowingly egged on NATO membership in Ukraine in order to get control over the energy markets of the EU and force Russia into a military response and subsequently isolate them from energy markets.

However, this maneuvering by the US has heavy costs. The PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference analyzed the situation in Europe and noted that a divide between the EU and US was growing. This still remains largely true, even with Germany forgoing trade with Russia to its detriment. As the crisis of capitalism deepens it strains the ability of the US to maintain its alliances in NATO, meaning there is a weakening unity among members given the heavy handedness of the US forcing the EU into subpar deals. Shortly before the conference last year, China had signed the “largest trade deal in history” with the EU to the exclusion of the US.

Forcing EU NATO members to accept greater costs, and have less of a share of global profits in order to pad the pockets of US imperialists will result in worsening diplomacy between the US and EU. Even as Germany once more does the bidding of the US, Germany has signed a historic military spending bill, as much as 10x its previous military spending after being forced to suspend Nord Stream 2 bringing their total spending to an astounding €100 billion[8]. Germany and the EU have begun to lose confidence in the ability of the US to protect their profits, with the US under Trump even outright trying to strong-arm the EU into paying more for NATO[9]. In order for the EU to finally shake off US control, it will require a historic build-up of military forces.

However, there is also a more serious implication of a growing schism in global capitalism trending toward the build-up of these military forces around the world for an impending global conflict which can bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. This time is far more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis since Russia is no longer socialist and therefore is not guided by the same Communist morality.

As in 1914, all the American and European capitalists paint this war as one for the “freedom of nations.” In actuality, the capitalists egg on and cultivate this war for the oppression of nations, to fortify existing colonies, and to prolong capitalist rule. Though at the same time, as during WWII, the scourge of fascism walks the earth (cultivated by the US and NATO) giving an impetus to the growth of the grossest reaction the world over, and renders social revolution under such conditions as existing in Ukraine impossible. There can be no socialist revolution while the working class is kept under the thumb of fascism. Thus the defeat of fascism in the Ukraine is both essential and progressive.

This is why the PCUSA affirms its position that, because Russia has made it clear that its ambitions for the war serve to resolve the mounting crisis in Russia itself, that the ousting of the Bandera fascists and defense of the DPR and LPR can be used as a justification for a war of conquest, i.e. reclaiming the “common motherland” of the Tsarist Empire. Until the point when the actions of Russian capital move toward conquest, the PCUSA stands with all anti-fascist people in support of the Donbass and support the war against the Bandera fascists in Kiev. In our own country, we must remember that the American workers have no interest in waging a war for plunder, that it is forced upon them. The American workers are mentally ruined and physically worn out not only as a result of the growing intensification of their exploitation under US capitalism, but from decades of predatory wars, epidemics, and the acute suppression of their organization by a mass of labor misleaders. It is the  duty of all communists in the US during these times to build resistance against our country’s engagement in the cultivation of punitive fascist wars to re-divide the world market.

[1] Lenin, V.I., “The Collapse of the Second International” in Collected Works, Vol. 21; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 207-208.

[2] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 32-33.

[3] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties By Eradicating The Social-Democratic Traditions; Workers Library Publishers: New York, 1932,  p. 15-17.

[4] Lenin, V.I., “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” in Collected Works, Vol. 23; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974a, p. 120.

[5] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 42.

[6] Dirte, Timothy, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Third International” in The Communist, Vol. 1, 2021, p. 52.

[7] Study Course on The Communist Party, The Working Class, and Industrial Concentration: Outline and Guide for Schools, Classes, Study Groups; The National Education Depart of the Communist Party USA: New York, 1949, p. 18.

[8] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/

[9] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nato-trump/trump-says-nato-countries-burden-sharing-improving-wants-more-idUSKCN1RE23P

The post Imperialism and the Split Among “Communists” appeared first on The Communist.

The term “Cultural Marxism” is frequently used in political discussions, but its meaning is obscure. Those on the Right claim that it signifies the infiltration of Western academia by Jewish Marxists from the Frankfurt School. They argue that their goal is to undermine the United States and Europe by utilizing Critical Theory to advocate for feminism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ identities, anti-white racism, and other perceived societal problems. Conversely, the mainstream Left regards this as a baseless far-right conspiracy theory and draws a parallel to the term “Cultural Bolshevism” employed in fascist propaganda. While both sides offer some valid points about Cultural Marxism, neither provides a complete picture.

Critical Theory vs Marxism

“Critical Theory” refers to a social theory practiced by intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, associated with the Institute for Social Research in Weimar Germany.[1] These theorists expressed dissatisfaction with both capitalism and communism, leading them to develop a new ideology aimed at societal development. Max Horkheimer, in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” first defined Critical Theory as a social theory that goes beyond explaining society as it is and instead seeks to critique and transform it. Horkheimer outlined the fundamental principles of Critical Theory, which include the criticism of societal flaws, identification of agents capable of effecting change, and the provision of goals for social transformation.

According to Critical Theory, ideology serves as the primary driver of oppression,[2] and the objective is to analyze and overcome these ideas that hinder human freedom. In contrast, Marxism utilizes dialectical materialism to understand that these ideas merely reflect reality rather than determine it. In pursuit of the goal to liberate humanity from all forms of oppression, additional critical theories have emerged alongside various social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminism, and the gay and lesbian movement. However, a question arises: Do these critical theories genuinely aim to emancipate the oppressed masses, or do they in fact work to fragment the working class and divert revolutionary momentum?

Every successful socialist revolution has resulted in better material conditions for the entire working class, including women and ethnic minorities. However, a contrasting situation has unfolded in the United States, where critical theories have thrived within academia while capitalism remains the prevailing mode of production. Instead of progress, the majority of Americans have experienced a decline in their living standards, coupled with an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Despite its pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, Critical Theory has consistently served the interests of those who perpetuate human enslavement, while suppressing the achievements of Communist movements that have genuinely established societies oriented towards meeting the needs of the working class.

First, they came for the Communists …

Initially, when the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Institute for Social Research chose to refrain from openly criticizing the government. Theodor Adorno believed that the regime would primarily target “the orthodox pro-Soviet Bolshevists and communists who had drawn attention to themselves politically”.[3] This observation was indeed accurate at that time, as the Communists were the first group to be sent to concentration camps. However, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to extend their persecution to the Jewish population. In the late 1930s, several Frankfurt intellectuals, including Horkheimer, Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, relocated to the United States to escape persecution due to their Jewish heritage. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, did not join them. Benjamin relied solely on the Institute for his income, and one might expect that his colleagues would have taken his financial situation into consideration and made efforts to help him escape Nazi terror. However, evidence suggests that his fellow scholars had ideological motivations behind their decision to relocate to the US without him.[4]

Benjamin maintained a close friendship with Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright who openly criticized the Frankfurt theorists. Adorno harbored resentment towards Brecht due to his ideological influence on Benjamin. In a letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, Adorno referred to Brecht as a “savage” and expressed his belief that Benjamin needed to be freed from his influence.[5] Two years later, Horkheimer informed Benjamin that he should anticipate a loss of funding from the Institute. Furthermore, Horkheimer claimed, shortly after transferring $50,000 to one of his own accounts, that he regretfully couldn’t provide financial assistance for Benjamin’s steamship ticket to escape to the United States and seek safety from encroaching fascist forces. In 1940, Benjamin tragically took his own life at the border between France and Spain, facing almost certain capture by Nazi forces. The leading Frankfurt intellectuals depicted his suicide as a tragic and incomprehensible personal decision, and claimed that they had tried to help him escape.

If Horkheimer were to rewrite Martin Niemoller’s famous poem, it would read something like this:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I hated Communists.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I fled to the United States,
leaving my more Marxist-aligned Jewish colleague to die.

It is possible that the Frankfurt intellectuals harbored animosity towards Brecht because he recognized their compromising stance, as summarized by Stuart Jeffries, as “prostitutes in their quest for foundation support during their American exile, selling their skills and opinions as commodities in order to support the dominant ideology of oppressive U.S. society”.[6] When Horkheimer became director of the Institute in 1930, the Frankfurt School shifted its research focus away from comprehensive analyses of class struggle towards abstract investigations of culture and authority.[7] This approach aimed to appease future donors by refraining from suggesting alternatives to capitalism or an end to imperialism. Upon Adorno’s initial emigration to the US, he worked for the Princeton Radio Project, which received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the impact of mass media on society.[8] Marcuse, meanwhile, served in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, during which he authored critical works on the Soviet Union,[9] which were later published in his 1958 book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis.

Supported by generous funding from the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Frankfurt scholars were able to sustain their work throughout the early Cold War, eventually relocating the Institute back to West Germany in the late 1940s. The funds for this move were administered by John McCloy, who served as the US High Commissioner of Germany. In his earlier career as a Wall Street lawyer, McCloy had worked with various corporations operating in Nazi Germany, including IG Farben, the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas. Following the conclusion of World War II, McCloy granted clemency to several Nazi war criminals,[10] enabling them to retain a significant portion of their former wealth and influence. With the transition from a fascist regime to a US-supported anti-Communist government, West Germany provided a favorable environment for the Frankfurt School to continue its work and engage in new anti-Communist endeavors, as will be explored next in this series on Cultural Pseudo-Marxism.

*    *    *

After the Institute for Social Research relocated to Germany, its significance persisted just as it had in the United States. Fortunately for the Frankfurt intellectuals, they chose not to settle in East Germany. This decision stemmed not only from the government’s intolerance towards their counter-revolutionary activities but also from their desire to avoid encountering Bertolt Brecht, a close friend of the late Walter Benjamin, who had moved to the German Democratic Republic to contribute to socialist endeavors. Brecht continued his pointed critiques of the Frankfurt School in his play “Turandot” (The Whitewashers’ Congress), a satirical take on academics who compromise their intellectual integrity to manipulate reality in favor of the ruling class—referred to as “Tuis” by Brecht.[12]

Many assert that the Frankfurt Tuis were Marxists, driven by either ignorance or anti-Communist sentiment. If this were true, why were they embraced in West Germany while shunned in the GDR?

This misconception may have arisen from the fallacy that liberal democracies are in fact free and inclusive societies where individuals of all ideological stripes can freely express their convictions. In reality, the case of West Germany reveals that these principles of liberal democracy were, at best, selectively-employed. One could for example openly advocate for pedophilia,[13] but any praise for Stalin was met with contempt. The anti-Communist puppet government in the U.S.-occupied western region of Germany outlawed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) distanced itself from Marxism, and U.S. intelligence decided to use the Institute for their next big operation.

The “Compatible Left”: A CIA Creation

In June 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was established in West Berlin.[14] Its members were mainly anti-Soviet leftists[15], but there were conservative participants too, like Irving Kristol[16], later known as the “godfather of neoconservatism”. With CIA backing, the CCF employed varied methods to spread anti-Communist propaganda: hosting conferences globally (primarily in Western Europe), publishing political and artistic journals, and awarding artists and musicians aligned with their goals. The CCF, guided by CIA agent Thomas Braden, cultivated what he called the “compatible”[17] Left—a faction rejecting Marxist analysis and criticizing actually-existing socialist countries.

As evidenced in Theodor Adorno’s correspondence, he worked closely with Melvin Lasky, the founder and chief editor of the CIA-backed publication Der Monat, and an original member of the CCF steering committee. Lasky offered to work with the Institute in any way possible, telling Adorno that he would quickly publish any works or statements from the Institute. Adorno took him up on this offer, going on to publish in Der Monat as well as Encounter and Tempo Presente. Given the backdrop of their prior collaboration, Lasky and the CIA were fully aware that the Frankfurt scholars were eminently suited for this role. Setting aside Herbert Marcuse’s career in US intelligence, the very ideology of the Frankfurt School was effective in neutralizing leftist sentiments while preserving somewhat of a revolutionary veneer.

Starting in 1930, when Max Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Institute, the Frankfurt School shifted away from class analysis and instead delved into discussions on authority and culture.[18] Neglecting the crucial inquiry into which class holds authority, the CCF employed liberalism to narrow the focus exclusively onto individual freedom. Socialist realism in the Soviet Union was presented as “totalitarian” because it mandated artists to propagate constructive conduct within the working class. Conversely, in the US, an artist possessed the liberty to fling paint onto a canvas and deem it “art.” This contrast disregarded the reality that an artist’s success within capitalism rests entirely on the unpredictability of the market.

From 1944 to 1945, the Institute conducted a study titled “Anti-Semitism in American Labor”, concluding that the most anti-Semitic groups were Communist-led trade unions in the United States.[19] While Nazis received backing from capitalists for their genocidal acts, the Frankfurt scholars deemed certain American workers’ anti-Semitic views as a more urgent concern. The study served as an egregious example how identity politics can be employed to target Communists, a strategy still utilized by the Compatible Left. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School’s criticism of the notion of “authority” effectively discredited Communist parties and organized labor movements. The absence of authority renders revolutionary forces chaotic and vulnerable to counter-revolutionary assaults, aligning with capitalists’ desires to undermine the Left and uphold the bourgeois dictatorship of capital.

Critical Theory perhaps has some merit in scrutinizing ideology as a tool of domination. But the Frankfurt School deliberately obfuscates the role of class in analysis and portrays Critical Theory as immune to ideology. The capitalist class crafted Compatible Leftism as an ideological weapon to safeguard their control over the working class, neutralizing the Communist threat and upholding capitalism. It’s our duty as Communists to uphold the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism and consign the regressive ideology of the Compatible Left to its proper place in the dustbin of history.

*    *    *

Some may be quick to believe that the New Left is entirely to blame on the Frankfurt School, with its identitarianism and “Anything But Class” analysis. There is a point to be made here, but the Frankfurt theoreticians had differing views on the New Left which emerged in the 1960s. Theodor Adorno believed that the progressive student movements at the time could lead to “left fascism,” going as far as to call the cops on students who protested at the Institute for Social Research, including one of his own students.[20] Herbert Marcuse, however, was much more openly sympathetic to the social movements of the ‘60s and had influenced various noteworthy left-wing activists of that time period.

Many supporters of Marcuse willfully overlook his involvement in United States intelligence, focusing instead on his supposedly revolutionary advocacy. An article published in CounterPunch titled “What’s Behind the Recent Attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” described Marcuse as “a staunch advocate of movements for revolutionary change, a Marxist critic of capitalism, and firm supporter of African American liberation and feminism,” going on to praise him for being “[h]ated by both Soviet Communists and the Vatican, [and] adored by revolutionaries around the world”.[21]

Following the logic of Marcuse and his fans leads to some particularly reactionary conclusions. It’s ironic that For Marcuse to work for the precursor to the CIA—the US Office of Strategic Services—and trash the greatest threat to US imperialism at the time – the Soviet Union – is “revolutionary.” But for the USSR to ensure the full participation of women in society, to call on the international community to condemn the horrendous acts of racism against Black Americans, and to participate in the African decolonization struggles are all acts of “totalitarianism.” It is no surprise that capital and its faithful servants continue to push such propaganda.

Marcuse and Petty Bourgeois Radicalism

After the Black Panther Party split into factions, one headed by Huey P. Newton and the other by Eldridge Cleaver, Henry Winston (CPUSA national chair and an African-American) wrote “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” as a criticism of the ultra-left ideological trends within the Party and their destructive effects.[22] Winston pointed out that the capitalist media had “popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse … and others,” and that many New Left radicals had adopted characteristics of this exaggerated image of what a “revolutionary” should be.

Published in 1971, Winston’s description of the ultra-leftists in the Black Panther Party is still quite relevant to the western Left in 2023:

“These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from [Dr. Martin Luther] King [Jr.] (who promoted working class solidarity, as well as a popular front with the Church and with progressive elements of the middle class), they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.”[23] (Our emphasis—Ed.)

CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall wrote “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in 1970, highlighting many of the same issues which Winston describes.[24]

This article explained how as class conflicts intensify and the masses become more revolutionary, petty-bourgeois radicalism redirects this energy into futile, short-term endeavors, leading to frustration and demoralization. While not explicitly naming Marcuse, Hall implies that many prominent activists who were influenced by Marcuse introduced his “radical” ideas into revolutionary groups.

Angela Davis: We Remember When You Were A Marxist

Angela Davis, renowned for her feminist and anti-racist activism, studied under Marcuse before joining the Communist Party USA. Both right-wing critics and left-wing Marcuse supporters emphasize this fact to assert Marcuse’s radical Marxism. However, both sides often overlook crucial nuances in Davis’s activist career.

In contrast to many petty-bourgeois radicals, Davis did not overtly reject Communism, but her anti-communism had a subtler, more insidious character. During the era of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Davis, following Marcuse’s lead, championed the pro-Gorbachev faction within the CPUSA. However, her motivations may have leaned more toward personal gain than Marcuse’s specific grievances against Soviet “totalitarianism”. Gorbachev’s policies were simply more financially appealing than those of Stalin which Marcuse vehemently criticized, and the activism of Davis in following decades has mainly centered around her career in academia. From selling her books and speaking at liberal college campuses, Davis has amassed a net worth of approximately $800,000 as of 2023.[25]

The Committees of Correspondence, formed during the 1991 CPUSA Convention, represented this faction but ultimately failed to steer the CPUSA away from Marxism-Leninism, eventually splitting from the party.[26] They emerged in opposition to Gus Hall and Henry Winston’s “conservative” stance of supporting efforts to preserve the Soviet Union against Gorbachev’s counter-revolution. This group attracted various liberal and “democratic socialist” elements within the CPUSA,[27] prioritizing surface-level identity politics over meaningful class analysis. Supporters of the Committees of Correspondence often point out their leadership’s greater diversity,[28] as if meeting arbitrary diversity quotas automatically translated into tangible benefits for their “represented” demographics.

Angela Davis’s alignment with the left wing of capital is evident in her history, ranging from supporting market liberalization during the Soviet Union’s final days to urging leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.[29] She further demonstrates this alignment through her ongoing advocacy for ultra-left ideas, which may be less appealing to the working class but find favor with those who have trust funds and see the hammer and sickle as nothing but a trendy accessory. An example of this is advocating for prison abolition[30] without giving genuine thought to the victims of violent crimes.

Conclusion

Despite the Right’s belief in a radical Marxist takeover of academia, the concept of “Cultural Marxism” fundamentally contradicts Marxism itself. Critical Theory seeks to shift the discourse from class analysis to discussions of authority and culture. Key figures in the Frankfurt School played roles in producing and spreading anticommunist propaganda. And Marcuse’s influence on the Western Left has perpetuated the misconception that communists are elitist and disconnected from the working class. Today, we face a critical juncture in history. Western living standards are declining, multipolarity challenges US hegemony, and capitalists hope to confine communism to academic and niche social media circles. It is imperative for Communists to avoid repeating the New Left and modern CPUSA’s mistake of embracing a carefully crafted “revolutionary” ideal propagated by the ruling class and academia.

[1] Critical Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). ( March 8, 2005).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

[2] Geuss, Raymond, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1981.

[3] Müller-Doohm, Stefan, Adorno: A Biography; Polity: Cambridge, 2005, p. 181.

[4] Fries, U. (2021). “Ende der Legende Hintergründe zu Walter Benjamins Tod” in Germanic Review, 96(4), 409–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2021.1986802

[5] Adorno’s letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 110.

[6] Jeffries, Stuart, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School; Verso: London. 2016, p. 136.

[7] Solty, I. (February 15, 2020). “Max Horkheimer, a teacher without a class.” Jacobin.

https://jacobin.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism

[8] Cavin, S. Adorno. Lazarsfeld & The Princeton Radio Project, 1938-1941.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/151660755/Adorno-Lazarsfeld-The-Princeton-Radio-Project-1938-1941#

[9] Herbert Marcuse official website. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

[10] John J. McCloy. (August 25, 2023). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McCloy#US_High_Commissioner_for_Germany

[11]Saunders, F. (October 22, 1995). “How the CIA used modern art during the cultural Cold War”, Sott.net.

https://www.sott.net/article/413324-How-the-CIA-used-modern-art-during-the-cultural-Cold-War

[12] Script for Turandot by Bertolt Brecht. https://www.scribd.com/document/389599206/Turandot-Bertolt-Brecht-pdf#

[13] Gebhardt, W. (June 17, 2020). “The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany”, dw.com.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291

[14]Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-1950 – CIA.

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/origins-of-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1949-1950/

[15] Saunders, Francis Stoner, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; The New Press: New York, 2013, Chapter 3.

[16]Ibid., p. 148.

[17] Braden, Thomas W. “I’m Glad the CIA is ‘Immoral’.” The Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, pp. 10, 12, 14.

[18] Rose, Gillian, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno; Columbia University Press: New York, 1979, p. 2.

[19]Collomp, Catherine, “Anti-Semitism among American Labor: a study by the refugee scholars of the Frankfurt School of Sociology at the end of World War II”, Labor History, 52(4), 2011, pp. 417–439.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2011.632513

[20] Romano, Carlin,  “The Agitation of Adorno”, The Chronicle., June 20, 2008.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-agitation-of-adorno/

[21] Katsiaficas, George, “What’s behind the recent attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” CounterPunch.org, December 15, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/17/whats-behind-the-recent-attacks-on-herbert-marcuse/

[22] Winston, H. (1971, August). “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” in The Communist, Vol 2, 2022 pp. 17-37.

[23] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[24] Hall, Gus, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in The Communist, Vol 2., 2022, pp. 43.-51.

[25] https://pennbookcenter.com/angela-davis-net-worth/

[26] Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. (February 1, 1992). CPUSA breaks apart (P. Saba, Ed.). Marxists Internet Archive.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-cpusa-split.htm

[27] Struggle for Democratic Socialism. (July 23, 1994). [Video]. C-SPAN.org.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?59374-1/struggle-democratic-socialism

[28] Marquit, E., & Marquit, D. G. (1992, February 19). Party survives, but as a shell.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311011756/http://www.mndaily.com/daily/gopher-archives/1992/02/19/Party_survives%2C_but_as_a_shell.txt

[29] Telusma, B. (July 14, 2020). Angela Davis backs Biden because he ‘can be most effectively pressured’ by the left. TheGrio.

https://thegrio.com/2020/07/14/angela-davis-backs-biden/

[30]            Kelly, K. (2019, December 26). What the Prison-Abolition movement wants. Teen Vogue.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-prison-abolition-movement

The post On The Frankfurt School appeared first on The Communist.

The lack of class-oriented trade unionists stems from the capitalist led McCarthyite purge of Communists and class-oriented unionists within our unions after WWII. The vacuum left by the purges was filled with a terrible swarm of charlatans,  mobsters, and reactionary elements who descended on our unions and did everything they could to make sure that American labor would not regain the strength it once had. With no strong Communist guidance our unions floundered and decayed, culminating in their absolutely pitiful representation of just 10.8% of American workers. A figure which is nearly the same as in the period of American labor history before the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This low figure is not from a lack of interest in union representation (in a recent Gallup poll, 67% of Americans supported unions), but from an inability to achieve it. That means that the momentous achievement of union representation backed by federal legislation and recognized as a constitutionally protected right has been all but neutered.

Federal recognition meant increasingly stronger federal oversight and interference in unions. The bosses were forced to recognize our unions but since they still control the government, they knew that in the long run they would take control of the unions away from class-oriented workers and render them toothless.

Once unions were federally recognized and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed,  the State Department began to support right-wing candidates for union leadership, ultimately resulting in the expulsion of class-oriented trade unionists from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO right after WWII. The State Department did this so that it could use the unions as tools of US Foreign Policy, and prevent the unions from being influenced by foreign unions. This change in the leadership of the unions prevented US labor from affiliating with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), of which the CIO was a founding organization. This change in leadership was accomplished through the passage of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, more commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other anti-union statutes, forced union leadership to sign anti-Communist affidavits effectively banning Communists from union leadership. Unions who refused to honor this stipulation were expelled from the CIO. In the case of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the CIO in conjunction with the State Department, General Electric and Westinghouse corporations led a dual-unionist campaign to replace UE as the union representative in their factories.

Today, with such close connections among  the AFL-CIO, US State Department and the Department of Labor, many “leaders” of labor were quick to announce support for the fascist government of Ukraine. The US State Department is using our unions to give a veneer of union backing to those thugs, who have led a massive anti-union campaign in the Ukraine, including the notorious House of Trade Unions massacre that took place in Odessa in 2014.[1]  We believe that the rank-and-file see through all those maneuvers. US involvement in Ukraine is an imperialist attempt to privatize Ukraine and balkanize Russia.

Many groups in the labor movement today claim to be trying to win back our unions from the entrenched and corrupt leadership that is primarily supported by the US State Department. Tragically they parrot the same language as the State Department. As reactionaries took leadership of the unions, the government cultivated “left” groups who they knew would promote instability and confusion in the labor movement through operation COINTELPRO.[2]

The effect of COINTELPRO is still felt today. Many of these “leftists”  are just reactionaries turned inside out. They are two sides of the same coin. They promote sectarianism, a holier than thou attitude and a general disdain for discipline, organization, and the working-class generally. They end up being useful tools for the bosses. Take for example the “Reform Caucus” in the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), who sued their own union with frivolous accusations. This caused Amazon to file against ALU in order to invalidate the election at Amazon warehouse JFK8, using the Reform Caucus’ lawsuit as evidence. The difference between the right-wing shills working with the State Department and the “left-wing radicals” is that the right-wing shills are getting paid for their treachery. The “left-wing” fools are wrecking the labor movement without pay.

It is up to all honest hard working people to approach the current situation with class-oriented trade unionism. Don’t let the “left-wing” sectarians gossip and weaken our unions, and don’t let the right-wing stifle democracy either. Now is a time of reflection, of learning, and growth for all of us to find the pathway to bringing a class-orientation back to our unions. It all starts with getting back to the basics, to the fundamentals of why we have unions in the first place, and then fighting for the burning issues of labor today.

History has shown that the only way to achieve these goals is to organize and educate a vanguard of the working-class movement. Willam Z. Foster explains this clearly in “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League”:

“One of the latest and greatest achievements of working-class thinking … is a clear understanding of the fundamental proposition that the fate of all labor organization in every country depends primarily upon the activities of a minute minority of clear-sighted, enthusiastic militants scattered throughout the great organized masses of sluggish workers. These live spirits are the natural head of the working-class, the driving force of the labor movement. They are the only ones who really understand what the labor struggle means and who have practical plans for its prosecution. Touched by the divine fire of proletarian revolt, they are the ones who furnish inspiration and guidance to the growing masses. They do the bulk of the thinking, working and fighting of the labor struggle. They run the dangers of death and the capitalist jails. Not only are they the burden bearers of the labor movement, but also its brains and heart and soul. In every country where these vital militants function effectively among the organized masses the labor movement flourishes and prospers. But wherever, for any reason, the militants fail to so function, just as inevitably the whole labor organization withers and stagnates. The activities of the militants are the “key” to the labor movement, the source of all its real life and progress.”[3]

[1] see “Ukrainian workers living standards have declined under Fascism,” also in this issue.

[2] COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was an illegal secret FBI operation to infiltrate and disrupt American political organizations, e.g., the CPUSA, labor organizations, the civil rights movement, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the New Left and others.

[3] Foster, William Z, “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League” in The Labor Herald, Vol 1, Issue 1, March 1922, p. 5.

The post Present Day Leadership Bankrupts the American Trade Union Movement appeared first on The Communist.

Furthermore, the Zelensky regime’s Law 5371, passed in 2022, will drive workers’ living standards down even further: it destroys workers’ rights. The International Labor Organization charged that the new legislation “weakens labor protection, narrows the scope of labor rights and social guarantees of employees, in comparison with the current legislation,” in contravention of Ukraine’s obligations to Brussels under the terms of its EU Association Agreement.[2] Andrey Reva, Ukraine’s former minister of social policy, has leveled similar charges: “Employees will no longer have any protection against arbitrary dismissal. Upon hiring, the employee will be asked to sign an employment agreement, which will allow the employer to obtain unilateral advantages during its conclusion and deprive the employee of any legal opportunities for his defense.”

[1] World Bank data. For more discussion of this statistic, cf. Gallagher, Robert L., Aristotle’s Critique of Political Economy; Routledge: London, 2018, chapters 13 and 14.

[2] https://www.sott.net/article/471638-Hidden-Western-hand-behind-new-British-style-Ukraine-anti-worker-laws-exposed-in-leaked-documents?fbclid=IwAR0nA6OmFlojh7yHAQrikUgjafMpL0BkW7AOWaMvukhTvVrDyOiovJQmfKw

The post Ukrainian Workers Living Standards Have Declined Under Fascism appeared first on The Communist.

If the factory construction boom is real and not just hype, it may explain the surprising development that US inflation has receded in the past year though the Federal Reserve Board (hereafter, “the Fed”) has not raised its interest rates above the rate of inflation, the usual requirement for taming inflation and the one employed by Fed chief Paul Volcker in bringing down the rampant inflation of the 1980s. Inflation that was as high as 9.1% last year has declined to 3.2% though the Fed raised rates only as high as 5.25%. In this period, the factory construction boom, already taking off, was injecting real value into the economy; moreover, the anticipation of increased manufacturing output may also have contributed to calming inflation.

As of August 2023, the Fed’s program of increasing interest rates—now holding at the highest rates in 23 years (5.25%)—has strangled annual price inflation down from last year’s high of 9.1% to 3.2% as of July 2023.[2] Happily, the strangulation of credit has not had much effect on jobs, except to slow job growth, especially in manufacturing[3] (though that may turn around with the factory construction boom). At the same time, wages are going up, though not enough to make up for inflation. In July, actual average hourly earnings by “production and non-supervisory employees” rose at an annual rate of 5.5%,[4] after workers were starved by last year’s 9.1% inflation. Nonetheless, Fed chair Jerome Powell says that with inflation coming down, “real wage growth has been increasing.”[5] With interest rates higher, home sales have plunged. In July 2023 actual home sales were down 18% versus a year ago, and mortgage applications also fell which mean sales will fall further next month.[6]

With inflation down near 3% at no cost to jobs, it would seem the crisis of 2021-2022 is over. Why hasn’t the Fed lowered interest rates?

First of all, inflation is expected to accelerate later this year. ^[7] July’s 3.2% increase in the consumer price index (CPI) was the first acceleration in CPI inflation rates since June 2022. The reason for this is that “core CPI” is now increasing faster than the CPI overall. “Core CPI” increased 4.7% in July, higher than the 3.2% increase in CPI overall, and Powell expects it to accelerate more.[8] Core CPI is a measure of underlying inflation that excludes the prices of food and energy products, which gyrate wildly in both directions, says Wolf Richter. “Core CPI” reveals the actual state of affairs: more inflation to come. In addition, energy prices which had been falling, are now on the rise again. Their decline since June 2022 had masked CPI increases. Now that energy prices are on the rise again, they are driving up the CPI.[9] So, Powell is considering another interest rate hike.

We showed in the last issue of The Communist how prices in the USA are lower than they should be due to (imperialist) exploitation of raw materials and labor from other countries.[10] For example, the US Army has been stealing oil from the Syrian Arab Republic since at least 2019, 14.5 million barrels in the first half of 2022, approximately 83% of Syrian output.[11] “We’re keeping the oil, remember that. We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month,” said President Trump in 2019.[12] The Army is also stealing wheat. These commodities enter the US market, whether directly or through the Army, and lower US prices for comparable goods as a result. So, from 2009 to 2020 annual inflation remained below 2.5% per year. In fact, from 1992 to 2020 inflation didn’t go above 3.8% per year.

The US is also looting Europe. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić told Tucker Carlson “that the war in Ukraine, the NATO-led war against Russia, has destroyed the economy of Europe, that the Biden administration’s destruction of Nord Stream is directly or indirectly destroying the German economy, Europe’s largest economy. The consequences of one NATO country effectively attacking another are being felt across Europe,” Carlson paraphrased Vučić’s remarks.[13] As a result, over the first half of the year [2023], 50.6 thousand German companies have already gone bankrupt, Zeit Online reported.[14] A preliminary survey showed that in August 2023 German business activity contracted at the fastest pace for more than three years. The HCOB German Flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, compiled by S&P Global, fell to 44.7 from July’s 48.5, hitting its lowest since May 2020 and confounding analysts’ expectations. A reading below 50 means recession.[15] In the European Union, sanctions against Russia have “killed European competitiveness,” shrinking the EU’s share of global GDP to just 17% – five points down from where it was in 2010, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto at the Bled Strategy Forum in Slovenia in August 2023.[16]

All this looting of foreign economies causes problems. One result of wrecking the German economy, the former economic powerhouse of Europe, is that Russia’s economy has surpassed Germany’s in size (see Table 1). The simultaneous reemergence of Russia as a world power threatens to cut off US access to raw materials around the world (e.g., Africa, Middle East): the expectation of that happening will raise prices in the USA. This does not mean inter-imperialist rivalry as some have claimed is the nature of the US-Russia relationship. Rather, Russia is simply defending itself and its allies, such as Syria and Ethiopia.

[1]  https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-the-boom-in-us-construction-of-manufacturing-facilities/; and also https://wolfstreet.com/2023/09/03/construction-spending-for-factories-soars-after-decades-in-the-doldrums/#comment-540375/

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi; https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/10/end-of-disinflation-honeymoon-cpi-accelerates-yoy-core-services-cpi-accelerates-mom-durable-goods-prices-normalize-at-nosebleed-levels/

[3] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/07/07/long-view-of-job-growth-by-industry-some-gained-jobs-at-others-jobs-got-crushed/

[4] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/21/powells-inflation-nightmare-job-seekers-incl-the-employed-suddenly-expect-massively-higher-wages-in-job-offers/

[5] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/25/powell-smacks-down-calls-to-raise-2-inflation-target-2-is-and-will-remain-our-inflation-target/

[6] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/22/home-sales-plunge-further-as-demand-vanished-at-these-prices-even-cash-buyers-pull-back-supply-keeps-rising/

[7] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/10/end-of-disinflation-honeymoon-cpi-accelerates-yoy-core-services-cpi-accelerates-mom-durable-goods-prices-normalize-at-nosebleed-levels/

[8] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/25/powell-smacks-down-calls-to-raise-2-inflation-target-2-is-and-will-remain-our-inflation-target/

[9] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/09/05/gasoline-prices-rise-year-over-year-for-first-time-since-feb-2022-cpi-inflation-to-feel-the-heat-this-year/

[10] Daly, Dr. Robert, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire” in The Communist Vol. 2, 2022, pp. 62-63.

[11] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-occupying-forces-steal-more-80-cent-syrias-oil-ministry-says/; https://english.news.cn/20220817/437cb1bd33ea40999cda96c521f31d21/c.html/

[12] https://www.bbc.com/news/50464561/

[13] https://t.me/Slavyangrad/59622

[14] That’s 12% higher than the same period last year.

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/2023-08/statistisches-bundesamt-betriebe-gewerbe-aufgegeben/

[15] https://t.me/rtnews/46647/

[16] https://www.rt.com/news/582058-eu-bad-shape-hungary-ukraine/

The post Factory Construction Boom May Pull US Economy Out of Crisis appeared first on The Communist.

We, the participants in the International Anti-Fascist Forum from the countries of Asia, America and Europe, have gathered in Minsk to say a firm “No!” to war and reaction, neo-Fascism and oppression.

We have met in the land of Belarus, every inch of which has been washed in the blood of millions of the victims of Hitlerism. It is here that in June 1941 began the sacred war of the whole Soviet people against the Black Plague. One in every three citizens of the Byelorussian SSR was killed or tortured to death as a result of the German Fascist aggression.

Nazism was the direct result of the crisis of capitalism. It grew out of the lust of Big Capital to preserve its power over the working people at any cost. To further their selfish ends the imperialists have embarked on the road of supporting the darkest forces.  They brought to power Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and their ideological accomplices. The Nazis turned from a political fringe into makers of destinies of millions of people.

The peoples of the world have no right to forget the experience of the struggle against Fascism. In 1936, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a civil war broke out in Spain. The people’s power was supported by the USSR and many progressive forces. But at the time Fascism turned out to be stronger. This paved the way for the most horrible war in human history. The final decisive steps were taken towards the furnaces and gas chambers of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, Dachau and Sobibor, Majdanek and Oswiecim. 

The tragic lessons of the past should be well known and always remembered! The world has paid a huge price to rid itself of Nazism. The heroes of that struggle have covered themselves with undying glory: soldiers and officers of the Red Army, Allied warriors, fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of China, member of the French and Italian Resistance, participants in the German anti-Fascist underground, Yugoslav and Korean partisans, Polish and Czechoslovak patriots.

The Red flag over the Reichstag in May 1945 is not only a special fact of the past. The meaning of the Great Victory over Fascism reaches out to the future. It sounds like a tocsin appealing to the hearts of new generations.

Today, like in the 1930s, the black smoke of fascism is spreading over the planet. It overcasts the horizon more and more. People of goodwill must show unity and courage in their decisive struggle.

The situation is extremely alarming. Neo-colonialism is rearing its head in Africa and America. The imperialists are whipping up tensions in Asia. Blood is being shed to the roar of cannon in Europe and other corners of the planet. The misery and suffering of people are multiplying. Once again the moaning of the wounded and croaking of the dying are heard. Sorrowful tears of mothers are flowing. Before our eyes the world is about to fall into a gaping abyss in which the sinister outlines of the swastika are emerging.

The treacherous destruction of the USSR, the country which vanquished Fascism, has stirred the world predators. Global capital sensed total impunity. It is imposing its dictatorship by hideous means. The deadly threat of a Fascist revenge is growing every day. The Nazi beast has licked up its old wounds and is fast gathering strength. Emboldened, it is creeping out of its den in search of new victims.

The world evil came back in a neo-liberal guise. It has created a global system of plundering entire countries and peoples. It has stained itself with aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Attempts have been made to overthrow the legitimate governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Byelorussia. Sanction pressure has been unleashed against the peoples of Russia and China, Cuba and the DPRK. Military threats and political blackmail are resorted to.

On the eve of World War II Hitler’s storm troopers were directed by financial capital. In the 21^st century it is guided by the latter-day Nazis. Fascism, which was vanquished 78 years ago, has not disappeared from the face of the earth because the world oligarchy badly needs its services. That is why Nazi riff-raff march in Vilnius and Tallinn. Books are being burned in Kiev. Monuments to Soviet liberator warriors are pulled down in Warsaw. Euro deputies in expensive suits initiate wicked resolutions trying to equate Hitler’s Nazism to Soviet socialism. The Fascist scum is set to take a historical revenge. Direct support of the USA and its NATO allies has elevated Nazi ideology to government level in Ukraine. For many years, Bandera ghouls have been having a bloody ball in Kiev, tormenting the popular masses. They have: turned Ukraine into a concentration camp for dissenters, have shut down media outlets they do not like, banned opposition activities and launched persecution of communists. Reprisals target all those who have preserved the ideal of the brotherhood of peoples and loyalty to the Great Victory over Fascism. The Nazis burned people alive in Odessa, blew up and shot people from behind the corner. Year in and year out the Azov thugs with a wolf hook on their chevrons terrorized Donbas. Its courageous citizens rose up in a liberation struggle against militarism and neo-Nazism.

Western governments are pumping Bandera Ukraine full of weapons. Zelensky already says he wants to have the nuclear weapon. But NATO has failed to slap him on the wrist. On the contrary, it says it is prepared to transform the Ukrainian army according to its standards. And the imbecile people in London are themselves ready to put shells with depleted uranium in the hands of the neo-Nazi regime.

NATO countries are not only spreading deadly weapons. They have deployed their military bases throughout the world. Four hundred biolaboratories in the USA and other countries are conducting experiments with deadly viruses and bacteria. The consequences of these actions may upset peaceful development of entire states. Moreover, they threaten the whole mankind as a biological species.

The communists have always warned that “Fascism is war.” The course of events confirms this. The answer of the peoples can only be one: the Fascist monster must be destroyed. The bacilli of the brown plague are too dangerous. They should be neutralized confidently and swiftly. The price of unconcern may turn out to be extremely high. The atrocities, condemned in Nuremberg, must not be repeated. We have no right to allow the world reaction to perpetrate new bloody crimes.

The acts and intentions of the imperialist West are soaked in vicious hatred of everything progressive, sovereign and free. Biden and Scholz, von der Leyen and Borrel, Duda and Morawiecki and their ilk are but auxiliary personnel in the system of global dictatorship. Their career prospects are directly determined by their readiness to serve the interests of the world financial oligarchy.

The globalists cover up their actions by pseudo-intellectual studies. They pluck the most reactionary ideas from the theories of Nietzsche, Chamberlain and Gobineau about the “superman” and “race superiority.” They brew their grim cocktail from neo-Malthusianism and post-humanism. They put forward man-hating nonsense about the “priority of technological progress over social development.” They pass off for humanism praise of vices and perversions. Klaus Schwab and his ilk pack the old ideas that inspired Hitler and his accomplices in pseudo-scientific “bioengineering” wrapping.

All this sham “innovation” is hostile to the peoples. It is promoted by those who are afflicted with ethnic and race prejudices, those who desire to take revenge on peoples for the victory over Fascism and colonialism. These circles are possessed by the idea of total control over humankind. Declaring that they cancel the Great Russian culture, they seek to destroy the humanistic culture of the whole world and to throw us back to the times of untold savagery and an electronic concentration camp.

Neoliberalism is a vicious enemy of any independent development and democratic norms. The political forces in the West have degenerated into absolute autocracies. The bourgeois elites have lost touch with the values of freedom and humanism. Their behavior is opening ever wider the doors for neo-Fascism.

Writhing in agony, capitalism is clinging to life at all costs. It is not afraid of a reincarnation of Fascism. The world reaction merely encourages the heirs of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, Antonescu and Mannerheim, Pilsudski and Quisling. They are furiously destroying the memory of the Second World War and falsifying historical facts.

The plans of “a new world order” end up in aggression and conflicts, neo-Fascism and neocolonialism, and the threat of a new world war. The whole world is becoming a battlefield. It is our duty to win this battle in the name of all the best that has been created by world culture, in the name of a worthy future for humankind!

The key to success is the unity and cohesion of the peace-loving forces of the planet. A victorious resistance to world reaction can only succeed if it is worldwide. We are deeply convinced that our international solidarity can safeguard humankind against the Fascist threat and the slide into the abyss of a world war. We declare it firmly here in Byelorussia. On this sacred land the sense of inseparable link between the past, present and future is particularly acute.

Dear friends, in the flaming days of the Second World War a great militant alliance was formed against Fascist barbarism – a union of communists and patriots, fighters against tyranny and democrats. It was created in spite of social and ideological differences, and different political and religious views. This is the bidding of the time. The new era of trials calls for unity of actions of all the people of goodwill.

Let us then unite in the struggle against neo-Nazism, reaction and militarism!

Long live the united front of progressive forces!

Long live the solidarity of the working peoples and nations in the struggle against Fascism!

Do not allow the world to be blown up!¡No pasarán! They shall not pass!

The post Safeguard Humankind Against Fascism appeared first on The Communist.

Careening down narrow mountain roads, you are a passenger in a vehicle driven by a madman whose every move brings you closer to disaster. That’s the West’s economy and its stewards in a nutshell. Maybe collapse will be avoided by the time this article appears, but it’s not guaranteed.

The US Federal Reserve (hereafter, “the Fed”) has been increasing the money supply at a fantastic rate since the year 2000 to fund banks and investment houses to buy stocks, bonds and other financial assets and real estate for themselves and their wealthy clients under the Fed’s outrageous “Wealth effect” policy.^[1] In October 2019 this game produced yet another crisis in the “Repo” financial market, like the one that brought down the economy in 2008. The Fed tried to bailout the Repo market but the market kept exploding (see Figure 1). Finally, in March 2020 the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) together with the lockdowns calmed markets as the Fed flooded the world with still more trillions, rapidly, in the biggest bank bailout ever. The flood of money has brought inflation to the US and the rest of the Western world, measured in July 2022 as 8.3% in the USA,^[2] 10.9% in Germany,^[3] the sort of inflation normally restricted to developing countries. This inflation is the smoke from the raging fire of a severe economic crisis still in progress. Let’s review the background.

The top curve of Figure 2 shows the fantastic growth in wealth of the households of the top 0.1% of USA millionaires and billionaires since the year 2000. This expansion in their wealth caused the crisis. Wolf Richter writes:

“What kind of outrageous gift they got from the Fed’s money printing and interest rate repression…It was also the greatest economic injustice committed in recent US history over such a short period of time. These monetary policies are largely responsible for the worst inflation in 4 decades that is mauling the “Bottom 50%” of households because they have so little, and spend all their money on necessities…”^[4]

The top 0.1% rode the huge balloon in the US money supply from 4 trillion in 2000 to 22 trillion now (see Figure 3). Karl Marx warned in Capital:

“If the quantity of paper money represents twice the amount of gold available, then in practice £1 would be the money-name not of 1/4 of an ounce of gold, but of 1/8 of an ounce…The values previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.”^[5]

The reason for the doubling of the price is that there is twice as much money demanding the same quantity of use values, that is, useful goods or services that people are interested in purchasing. For as Marx says, “Use values…are the material bearers of exchange value,”^[6] or price. Between 2000 and 2022, the US money supply increased four and half times. Based on Marx’s reasoning, which is shared by many other economists, prices would be expected to increase 4 and a half times or 450% during such a period (2000—2022), all things being equal. But the consumer price index (CPI) increased only 75 percent from 169 in January 2000 to 296 in August 2022.^[7] The index didn’t even double. If somehow during such increase of the money supply additional use values entered the market and became available, the inflation would be less, since there would be additional real goods to correspond to the increase in demand for goods in the form of the increase in the money supply. Did US industrial production increase during this period to produce the needed use values? Table I says No: It shows that industrial production declined in several core areas. No, sufficient use values did not enter the US market from internal production, but rather from abroad. Under the regime of imperialism, use value is brought into the US economy from abroad at very low cost and this use value supports the American currency and retards or prevents inflation. One clear mechanism for this moderation of inflation is the ‘importation’ of raw materials from developing sector economies, such as the oil that the US Army has looted from Syria during its ongoing occupation of the eastern part of the country, or the lithium that Elon Musk’s companies are removing from south America for electric car batteries. These free or cheap raw materials ‘imports’ reduce production costs for American companies and reduce prices, as follows: As Marx has shown,^[8] the price of a manufactured article is broken down into the constant capital (C) and variable capital (V) that went into its production together with surplus value (S) or profit. Constant capital (C) is the cost of replacing raw materials and manufacturing plant and equipment; variable capital (V) is the cost of sustaining and reproducing labor. Look at Marx’s representation of the price of an ell of linen in Figure 4, example I. The price is 2 shillings. With imperialist raw materials imports from the developing sector, the constant capital component of the cost could be reduced from 80 Pounds, for example, to, say, 20 Pounds, and then the price of the ell of linen would be cut in half to 1 shilling. This constantly in-effect mechanism reduces price inflation in imperialist economies. Importing finished goods, e.g., clothing, from cheap labor markets also retards inflation, because then both constant capital and variable capital costs are lower. Americans should not worry about the 8% inflation that they are experiencing. Based on the expansion of the money supply, they should expect approximately 20% inflation per year since the year 2000.^[9]

Another peculiarity in the inflation data is that Germany’s inflation exceeds that of the US: Germany is a highly industrialized country with a strong basic industry producing steel, machine tools, agricultural equipment and automobiles. Why is their publicly announced rate of inflation of 10.9% higher than that of the US? There are two primary reasons. First, Germany does not benefit from imperialist hegemony over the vast regions of the world from which the US extracts value. Second, the US also dominates Germany and forces it to buy its expensive products, e.g., Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).

All this is very troubling, but why, out of the blue, have we got inflation now since Spring 2021? First, the money supply went through the roof in 2020. That’s the last big jump in Figure 3. That’s the effect of the CARES Act. The US had to do it because of the pandemic, right? Wrong. As Marx wrote in his Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, the reasons people give for doing something are ideological and usually not the reasons they actually do them, which are economic.

Marx wrote:

“It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production…and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.”^[10]

The economic reason for the hyperinflationary CARES Act was the crisis in financial markets from Fall 2019 to March 2020, as shown in Figure 1. What especially aggravated the financial system was the government’s response to the crisis in the Repurchase (Repo) Market in 2019. The Repo Market is where giant financial institutions borrow trillions of dollars from each other and from central banks every day, often just for overnight. The Repo Market was what brought down the economy in 2008. From 2010 to 2019 it was relatively calm: Banks and corporations traded Repos with no seeming problem. Then in Fall 2019 lenders began to distrust the collateral that their Repo borrowers were putting up to secure their loans. They refused to extend credit. The Fed stepped in as in 2008 and bought up the outstanding Repos that lenders refused to buy. Again, the Fed bailed out the investment banks that had gotten themselves into trouble as in 2008. The amount of Repos purchased by the Fed per day grew from zero on September 4, 2019, to 200 Billion in October and exploded to 450 Billion in March 2020. The government then had two responses: First, the lockdowns. Because they shut down the economy, they eliminated pressures on financial markets, and the Repo market began to settle down. Then the CARES Act provided the biggest bailout to NY banks in the history of the country—at first $2 Trillion (including $290 Billion in payments to taxpayers who had to hand it back to the banks again in Covid-19 Lockdown emergency spending). In 2020 and 2021 the money supply increased by $4.8 trillion. Inflation exploded in 2021 and jumped from 1.7% per year in February to 5% in May, and now up to 8%.^[11] So, the cause of the inflation is the government’s attempt to stabilize financial markets. Why did the Repo market get jittery? It all comes down to real value, or rather the absence of it in the US economy. In the last few years, the world economy’s big actors outside the West—the BRICS countries, China, Russia, India, etc.—have been moving away from using the US dollar as their reserve currency, as the currency in which all international trade takes place.[12] The US has bullied the world with the hegemony of the dollar, and the world got tired of it. Now the world is trading in Rubles and other currencies. Instead of the Petrodollar, we have the Petroruble. The dominance of the dollar was the dollar’s only support. With the decline of the Petrodollar comes the decline of the US economy, first signaled by the highest rate of inflation in over 40 years. The US is on the way down.

The Federal Reserve piggy bank has been pumping out money for its friends in investment banking like mad. They all got rich; we got inflation and economic crisis. This is the way it works, according to 18^th century Irish political economist Richard Cantillon: The people who are closest to where the new money enters the economy—investment bankers—can benefit from the new money before prices rise. They buy new homes, land, gold, stocks and other investments. But the people who are farthest away from where the new money enters the economy—that’s wage earners—suffer from the inflation it causes. Cantillon explains:

In general, an increase of hard money in a state will cause a corresponding increase in consumption and this will gradually produce increased prices…Those who will suffer from these higher prices and increased consumption will be…all the workmen or fixed wage earners who support their families on a salary. They all must diminish their expenditures in proportion to the new consumption [by the rich].^[13]

That’s the Cantillon effect. So, Wall Street grabs up all the value in the economy with the new money pumped out by its friends at the Federal Reserve. What’s left for us is the inflation they caused by expanding the money supply without expanding the real economy of manufacturing, construction, transportation and energy production. Look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on inflation and you will see that wage earners suffer the highest rate of inflation in the country, a 9.1% annual rate in July 2020, while the average rate for everybody, bankers and wage workers included, was 8.5%. Under the Cantillon Effect wage earners suffer higher inflation that anyone else. This is one of the processes that drives inequality. The working poor suffer the highest inflation. Figure 5 from a Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows price increases by social group since 2003. The top curve shows the highest inflation rate suffered by the lowest income quartile, the 25% of Americans with the lowest income share in the country. The bottom curve shows the lowest inflation enjoyed by the highest income quartile, the richest 25% of the population.^[14] The average annual rates of inflation by social group are given in Table 2. That brings us back to square 1, the economic injustice we referred to at the top. The growth in speculative investment that has been going on for decades, has driven up US “gross domestic product” (GDP) per capita from $20,000 in 1968 to $46,000 in 2014 in fixed 2005 dollars at a nearly constant rate of $565 per year. That increase does not represent an increase in real goods and services but rather the paper wealth of the Wall Street millionaires averaged over the whole population, for US industrial production has collapsed. This same process has driven down the relative incomes of everyone else since 1968, for as Figure 6 shows, the ratio of the income share of the lower 80% to the income share of the highest quintile has fallen from 135% in 1968 to 95% in 2014. For more than 50 years, finance capital—the Federal Reserve banks, the big commercial banks, the investment banks—have been sucking wealth out of the US population and the world at a fantastic rate. Like Cantillon, many ‘conservatives’ oppose the Fed’s monetary and ‘wealth’ policies. These conservatives represent industrial capital, not finance capital.

[1] https://wolfstreet.com/wealth-effect/

[2] Reported by Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[3] https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/30/eurozone-inflation-spikes-to-10-in-germany-10-9-without-energy-6-4-from-temporary-inflation-mid-2021-to-runaway-inflation/

[4] https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/26/my-wealth-disparity-monitor-september-update-qt-rate-hikes-dropping-stocks-bonds-reduce-outrageous-us-wealth-disparity/

[5] Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. 1; Penguin: London, 1976, Chapter on Money, section on “Coin and symbols of value,” p. 225.

[6] Ibid., p. 126.

[7] Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[8] Marx, Op. Cit., p. 962.

[9] If the money supply increases 450% over 22 years (from 4 trillion to 22 trillion), then so do prices, which inflation would average to 20% per year.

[10] K. Marx, “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859; translation from edition of Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977

[11] Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[12] On ruble-rupee trade, cf. https://www.rt.com/business/562727-russia-india-trade-doubles/ and https://www.iasparliament.com/current-affairs/rupee-rouble-trade-arrangement

[13] Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, Paris, 1755, Pt. 2, Ch. 6; translated as An Essay on Economic Theory by C. Saucier, published by Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010.

[14] J. Klick and A. Stockburger, “Experimental CPI for lower and higher income households,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper 537 March 8, 2021

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While Taiwan and the mainland have been separated for 70 years, efforts to reduce tension and increase communication and cooperation have never ceased. Cross-Strait relations have witnessed one breakthrough after another over the years, from the open letters to Taiwan compatriots to the development of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy and the basic strategy for national reunification; from the 1992 Consensus to the first-ever historic meeting between leaders from the two sides; from total separation to direct two-way links in postal mail, transportation, and trade; and from the early years, when Taiwan was expelled from the UN, to efforts to defeat attempts at Taiwan independence. 

As we now look upon cross-Strait relations from a new starting point, we can see an overwhelming and unstoppable historical trend for national reunification. In his speech at a conference commemorating the publication of the “Letter to Taiwan Compatriots” issued by the Standing Committee of the NPC 40 years ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping elaborated on China’s policies and positions in the new era for peaceful reunification, demonstrating political wisdom and historical responsibility for a solution to the question of Taiwan. Listening to his convincing words, we realize even more that national renewal and reunification represent a historical trend, a cause to fight for, and a goal that we all want to achieve. 

Peaceful reunification depends on national rejuvenation. The fact that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait remain separated is a wound left over from history. It is said that “the Taiwan question was created at a time when China was a weak and chaotic country, but it will end with the rejuvenation of the nation.” As the Chinese nation moves forward with its renewal, we will see a much stronger force for national reunification under more favorable economic, political, and cultural conditions. People in Taiwan will, of course, be a part of this great journey, joining hands with the people on the mainland in the drive to achieve their dream for national renewal. 

Integrated development is a sure path to peaceful reunification. In times of great changes, the mainland and Taiwan must work together through thick and thin as we move forward with a shared future and intertwined interests. To realize national reunification, it is essential for people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to have the same goals, which are in turn enabled by more communication and connectivity. As requested by General Secretary Xi Jinping, connections with Taiwan should be improved to the greatest extent possible. In particular, as soon as possible, we need to ensure water, electricity, and gas supplies to Kinmen and Matsu from the coastal areas of Fujian and build bridges wherever possible so that people in Taiwan may benefit from development in the mainland. We must also make sure that Taiwanese residents and businesses in the mainland enjoy equal treatment and access to equal, inclusive, and convenient public services.

Countercurrents against peaceful reunification must be curbed. General Secretary Xi Jinping stated categorically that nothing can change the fact that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese with the same national identity, and nothing can stop the trend toward reunification of the Chinese nation. Taiwan independence goes against this unstoppable trend and will eventually be crushed by the wheels of history. Chinese must not fight against Chinese, and for this purpose we have made the greatest efforts for peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity. However, we do not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures to prepare for possible interference by external forces and separatist activities by a handful of “Taiwan independence” separatists. Such measures would certainly not be targeted at the people of Taiwan.

The residence permit for Taiwan residents is a permit available to Taiwan residents who come to work, study, live, and travel in the mainland, with protection provided for the legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan residents on the mainland. On August 6, 2018, the General Office of the State Council published the procedures for the application and issuance of residence permits for Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Residents, and the permit system took effect on September 1, 2018.

The Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) is a public organization established in Beijing on December 16, 1991, for the purpose of promoting peaceful reunification. Entrusted by the mainland authorities, it handles communications with its counterpart in Taiwan on issues regarding cross-Strait exchanges and is authorized to conclude relevant agreements. The Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) was established in Taiwan on November 21, 1990. It is a non-governmental organization authorized by the Taiwanese authorities to handle cross-Strait affairs. Since the beginning of the 1990s, ARATS and SEF, under authorization from the authorities on both sides, have been holding talks and dialogues for the purpose of promoting economic, trade, scientific, technological, and cultural exchanges between the two sides. Pictured here are ARATS and SEF representatives signing official documents.  We may not be able to decide on what has happened in the past, but we can certainly seize the moment and choose our future. Seventy years have passed, and that is long enough to let bygones be bygones and leave bitterness, hate, and separation behind us. Looking to the future, we have every reason to believe that we can build the mutual trust that allays misgivings, that we can increase communication and clear up misunderstanding, and that we can let peace prevail over conflict. People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, working together, will usher in a bright future for the country as we realize the reunification of the Chinese nation and achieve the goal of national rejuvenation.

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