Before beginning, I will say that I attempted to remain neutral and objective to the best of my abilities, and that, whilst I do agree with many of the specific charges made by the ACP, I am much more sceptical about the basic nature of the split, specially in contrast to the alternative of simply starting a new party. Most, but not all, sections have been commented upon.
The Declaration of the American Communist Party may be found here.
I. I tire of this Hegelian determinism being used as a justification, as much as I tire of the criticism of ,,being undialectical''. The American Council of Bolsheviks, though having legitimate and insurmountable grievances and criticisms, made the exact claim above about a new, dialectical progression of history (that they, of course, were the one true vanguard of), only for their formation to dissipate into thin air, without so much as a notice of hiatus! That Council of [Black-leg] Bolsheviks at least did not immediately presume to call themselves the one true vanguard party of the United States, rather acknowledging their pre-party status.
There have existed many good communist and Leftist parties just in the US alone. To claim, based upon gnostic/Hegelian arrogance, that only the Communist Party USA is worthy of this title, and therefore this American Communist Party, is bold, so early in the life of this unproved party. For all of the disdain held towards him and the parties around him, Sam Marcy was not a bad comrade, thus the WWP and PSL are not made bad on his account. After Gus Hall, the CPUSA had ceased to be a good party. The October Revolution and ensuing Civil War were multi-party affairs, and Comrade Bukharin, a life-long Bolshevik, was in favour of multiple (at least two) parties partaking in the Soviet state. I do verily bow before one monarch, but before all crowns nobly held; I refuse to recognise but one party, if to one I may call 'ruling'. I say this to exemplify that which I think equally unseemly and untruthful in the proclamation of the CPUSA, then the ACP, as the sole vanguard party fit to rule.
II. This ACP is not the CPUSA, so to grant the laurels of the latter to the former as pretender, should be to devalue the titles won to that party by past comrades. Nay matter how much we may defer to the fiction of a consecutive party, this Leftist school of falsification can say only things ceremonial. Whilst such a reason for indulging this fancy of historical revisionism is perfectly justifiable for the ceremonial and unifying benefit, we ought not to be under any illusion about the factual data, that the accomplishment, skill, and prestige of the CPUSA is not that of the ACP until it has proved so. Anything less should be burgherly and uncomradely.
IV. The contents of this section appear to be agreeable enough, though I am made to ask myself what the well and clear meaning is supposed to be. Specially relating to the last part of Section IV: if indeed the ACP means to avoid sectarianism based upon disagreements and differences in theory and 'ideology' (tendency), then surely I may substitute Bukharin, Stalin, Deng, and Brezhnev where the Declaration has seen fit to appoint Stalin and Mao? Should this constitute a party infraction, then the ACP is just another Yezhovite party, unfit to hold the gross noble title of Communist. I will say, to their benefit, that it is good to see the ACP's recognition of the divisive individualism, or the 'purity fetish', as they may term it, which wounds the landscape of American politic, ideology, and religion with trenches and craters. Yet only the doings of time will givew us a vision of actual ACP rule, of communist unity, Folk's discourse, and justice, or just another corpse-strewn path to Yezhovshchina picketed along by hollow slogans.
V. This claim of stagnant 'formalism of convention' is certainly true about the CPUSA, and I may agree that this was also a big problem within the CPSU, perhaps chief cause of the undergrave of the socialist bloc. However, that is the inevitable result of terror and 'closedness'. The fact remains that the CPUSA is the ruling party of American socialism. Let the ACP challenge the old CP for the office of ruling party, and it is likely to win, if it proves honest and worthy. But pretending that the ACP is merely some explicitly internal faction which may usurp the office of the CPUSA is simply and sternly begrendellike. It is matters as these which ever demonstrate the dire use called of the Constitution-Compositum (the 'new socialist constitutional law/framework'), to determine a fair legal framework for a communist party to be recognised as the (to-be) ruling party of a land. Until such a framework is established and acknowledged by most (or at least both) parties, it will be rightly unclear which party is acting legally, id est justly- within the confines of generally agreed upon socialist (legal) procedure. 'A Communist Party which yields results' is not a properly measurable or objective unit; so we return to a question of legal framework, of recognised, formal structure.
VI. Now this section possesses the legal material that may justify a contestation of the office of ruling party. The violation of procedure formulated in a 'legal' document of a party, namely its constitution, is a grievous legal charge, specially to be considered against such an important, serious office. Later in the Declaration, particular charges will be laid out.
VII. This section seems unnecessary, and worse, unnecessarily uncomradely. Every party has good and bad stents. The polarisation and decay of the US Federal Empire I think it unfair to accuse the CPUSA for. All that may be stated truthfully is that the CPUSA has not observed optimal diligence in policy and organising, and has squandered many recent opportunities to advance or at least spread word about the Party. I may have removed or merged this section, personally.
VIII. Whilst this section does correct the accusation made in the previous one, it is yet generally incorrect. The corruption, or decay, of the CPUSA predates the crisis of the faltering US Empire by nearly one-hundred years. I consider some of these problems to have lineages going all the way back to the first merger(s) which would come to constitute the Communist Party USA. Although the Comintern mended this problem, their job caused another, equally serious, problem to spring, in an over-reliance on Moscow, which in turn led to these 'current' problems of late. Then the accusation of liquidationism is again made, and figuratively, I am inclined to agree with the ACP about this. Angela Davis, Sam Webb, and Joe Sims have, through their actions, proved a support for de facto 'tail-liquidation' of the party. These final claims of the section also seem fair and honest (and in my opinion correct). Now we move to the list of specific charges.
IX. I have heard about this in relation to some 'conflict' during the CPUSA Convention, from multiple places, including some that seem opposed to the ACP, so I find this charge likely to be true.
XI. A replacement of official written or published reports with informal meetings might be justified on the grounds of internal security. I understand, conceptually, why such institutions as the Central Control Commission, the Politburo, or the Kommissariat for State Verification and Defence may need to retain things off of the official or public record. Despite my new appreciation of and campaign for Respectful Mutual Comradery, and for strict and comprehensive accountability to a clear and reasonable socialist law/legality, I am not blind to the needs of our comrades in the Cheka.
Do not take me for a Soviet bureaucrat: I am not trying to say substantively nothing upon nothing substantially! We must be balanced and realistic in our policy, and such matters are an unfortunate evil fact. In regard to the CPUSA, we are naywhere near a stage of the struggle when internal security may be emphasised over internal discourse, videre licet openness, public information, and debate. I have indeed heard from multiple sources that the leadership of the CPUSA is exhibiting the 'Chekist's paranoia', causing party discourse to be unrightfully curtailed.
I only hope that the leadership of the American Communist Party does not respond in kind with an exaggerated 'anti-bureaucrat scenario', a dangerous phenomenon which plagues Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists alike.
XII. I have up to this point attempted to exercise restraint in my opinion, but for this particular charge, I am going to be slightly harsher towards the CPUSA, as I think that the Left needs a thrashing critique on this matter dear to my heart, but informative of strategy. Before I do, however, let me say to the CPUSA's credit, that even the last issues of Political Affairs which I managed to acquire (from the 80s and 90s), I thoroughly enjoyed, despite my disagreements with the line of the CPUSA at that time.
That the CPUSA ceased physical publication of, then outright liquidated Political Affairs, is a sheer crime that I can not easily forgive, specially since I rely on print publications exclusively.
We techcels are consistently dæmonised as 1950s-æra anarcho-primitivists or Right-virtuosi: but it comes down to reading on a glowing screen hurting my heavily prescripted eyes, computers causing me to lose my train of focus, and the Internetwork being an alterable, censorable, and perishable medium, unlike physical, existent matter. There is also the social/communal and propagandical benefit. Gathering together to read a print or to read a physical, unifying object tends to make everyone elicit a bit more effort and energy, whereas a web-site could be detrimental to one's organising impetus.
As propaganda, a newspaper, journal, or book left out in real-space, is inherently more accessible, more visible, than a random fringe political web-site located somewhere deep within the morass that is cyber-space. Imagine if all of the Soviet archives were just on a web-site: as soon as the USSR had collapsed, the site domain should have likely dissolved with the Union, the FSB Internet Archive only preserving a select number of documents of interest to them. What a preventable loss to Soviet and socialist historical studies that might have been. I fear that many socialist netlogs have fallen into disrepair, or have been pulled down for want of money or of space, being lost for ever (it is a fate much better for something to be preserved in the archives as a Nachlass).
XIII. Now that I have issued my harsh critique, I must say, in returning to fairness, that this charge about the CPUSA not promoting, or actively discouraging Marxist education, seems a rather unkind, extreme interpretation of the CPUSA's educational agenda and activities. Certainly, from many communist perspectives, this charge would seem well-founded. However, I should plead with comrades to judge not exclusively by majority perspective, for which terror is a usual result, but to base their verdict on a just, reasoned majority examination. Socialist law must be the measure by which we weigh charges against fellow comrades, and we must condemn them only after the specified crime is ascertained and scrutinised through whatever spirit of socialist law is presiding.
XIV. The forbidding of principled disagreement and alternative views is a serious charge indeed. This is why the Left requires a Constitution-Compositum, a Union Council of Communist Parties, and a Court of Socialist Hearing- in essence, the development of a socialist legality, a legal framework. Such was the real contribution of import made by the Comintern, except that hearings were unfairly and haphazardly ruled on by the whim of the judge of Moscow. Until socialist law becomes remotely accepted by the various parties, the truth of the ACP's charges remains immaterial but for public opinion. The Left will never repair the damage caused by the want of a generally recognised non-partisan body of accountability, for the members of all Leftist parties to petition for justice. Just as the Cheka necessitates the Checkoncheka, so too does the party necessitate the anti-corruption commission.
XV. Again, whilst I am personally inclined to agree with this section, such a charge as 'dismissing alternative interpretations as "fascist"' is by its nature too partisan and contentious to receive an honest judgement until socialist legality is in some form instituted. In place of socialist law have we sectarian prejudice, a motivator of mistrust, hostility, and suspicion, ever slighter division derived of insulated echo-chambers.
XVI. Of 'interfering in the autonomy of both districts and clubs', and employing what are essentially secret party-police Chekists to meddle and oft-times engage in mini-purges, I cannot speak about in relation to the CPUSA. But I should consider it a dereliction of comrade's duty not to warn comrades that, from what my friend has discussed with me, it sounds like the Party of Communists (another splinter from the CPUSA) is notorious for this kind of Yezhovite paranoia-policy. One need only point out the fact that the CPUSA has not chosen to sue the ACP over the split, as the Party of Communists had elected to sue the American Council of Bolsheviks, nor has the CPUSA doxxed anyone, like the PCUSA did.
XVII. The ACP is completely correct on this charge: giving away the party archives to any institution not explicitly communist, is a crime against the party. The archives ought to be made continuously accessible, as documents become older and lose any potential for disrupting the party (but there ought to be an impassible limit to how long archive materials may be kept closed, lest corruption be given good way to fester). I will add as well that documents ought never to be destroyed except in external emergency conditions, such as a fascist or junta assumption of the state. Comrade Molotov's possible destruction of his letters to Comrade Stalin in their correspondence was justified if he suspected that Beria or Khrushchev might be trying to fabricate a murder sentence against him. I think it would have been preferable, still, to execute some 'discommizdat'* in sending the letters to some independent communist group, or a Western university. This may not have been possible, either, so Molotov's decision can not rightly be judged against him.
*Dissident communist publishing
XX. Unless the People's Republic of China is financially assisting the party, in which case discretion is a demand of internal party security, then the ACP is correct about the need for transparent finances. Of course, I would not know if the CPUSA does or does not observe this practise, so I am made to abstain in neutrality on this charge.
XXI. Charges of initiating splits and coups are hopelessly contentious and partisan. I do not think it a decisive verdict one way or the other, the two groups have split and maintain different ways. Both history and popular opinion will tell us which side was 'correct', anywise.
XXIII. I do believe, if I recall, the petition movement being considered an Infrared entryist co-optation. It is annoying when other movements target yours for infiltration. That being said, there is an argument to be made that such infiltrations have an anti-corruption by-effect, and that good organisations ought to be able to handle intrusions of the like. Obviously, new and therefore smaller, specially local, organisations are not as capable of staying such targeted operations. I have once seen a group of Trotskyists attempt to overtake a small general activism Leftist group, which even now seems silly in its controlling pointlessness to me. We must yet acknowledge, that the above descriptions for small groups, may not be applied to the old CPUSA, which as ruling party of the United States, still maintains a relatively large membership.
This charge is impracticable to rule on, being too mired in suspicion, basically unprovable accusation, and debate over the nature of the party leadership's powers in relation to justice. Such a charge would be excellent to analyse and debate in the pages of the Constitution-Compositum for socialist legal theory.
XXV-XXVII. Legally, these sections seem to me rhetorically well-crafted, but their veracity is not something that I can determine.
XXVIII. 'Thus, the United Executive Committiet of the Majoritive Communist Party of the United Provinces of Great New England, now assembled in Leninfield, Massachusetts Capital Province, ultimately proclaims the reconstitution of the American Communist Party (Minoritive factionalists) as the Majoritive Communist Party, to be renamed during its rule as the Communist Party UPGNE (Majoritive). We request that the Union Council of Communist Parties freeze the seats of the Minoritive ACP, pending trial in the Court of Socialist Hearing. We also request the expulsion of the Federal redneck wrecker front designated "Midwestern Marx", which we are reconstituting as well to be Great New England West Marx.'.
Jesting aside, and speaking from a meta-view, this wholly expected victory proclamation reads nay less arrogantly for it. To tell what is now in effect another party that they are hereby reconstituted, on an authority which most of them do not recognise, is uncomradely and will not serve the new ACP well; yet the goal of the ACP in going through all of this trouble is admittedly somewhat of a noble one. How many comrades both here and abroad have wished to see a day when the CPUSA is again energised to fight for its very named ideology, instead of tailing a tendency within capitalism?
Judging by the lifespan of the American Council of Bolsheviks, we will see in a year whether the American Communist Party has shewn this split to be a worthy and long overdue endeavour, or whether it will flounder as the aforementioned slinter has. The only minor criticism I will offer here is more of a request: I sincerely hope that the ACP does not continuously attack the CPUSA, or its leaders, almost as an engrained core tenet of the party line- a horrible disease in the Party of Communists, as it is. The split has occured, now is the time for the ACP to take positive action, to build a better vehicle for the masses. I wish the ACP luck; I have nay ill-sentiment towards the CPUSA or Joe Sims, but where disagreements in policy and theory are present, it is the comrade's duty to critique.
Comments