Commentary on the Programme of the American Communist Party

27 November 2024.

Note: to reduce the amount of line breaks and general clutter, I will be deviating and diverting from the TOAC Party Line on paragraphs (line breaks), using this symbol ￠ at the beginning of a new paragraph instead. I had much to commentate on, and there were already eighteen sections to this Programme, so hopefully this makes for easier reading. Because there is so much more I wrote for this Programme than for the Document, I am going to include the name of the section, not just the corresponding number.

The Programme of the American Communist Party may be found here.

Table of Sections:

(Minor Prolegomena on the Method and Meaning of this Commentary)

S1. Cancellation of All Debts

S3. Economic Bill of Rights

S4. Land, Agriculture, and Housing Reform

S5. National Industrial Policy

S6. Energy and Infrastructure Policy

S7. Healthcare and Education Reform

—S7:P4-5. 'Education Reform'

S8. Social Media Reform

S9. Standardisation of Weights and Measures

S10. Abolition of Intellectual Property

S11. Accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution

S13. Establishment of a People's Militia

S14. Dismantling of US Imperialism

S15. Ending Mass Immigration and Modern Slavery

S16. Abolition of the Drug Trade and Criminal Enterprises

S17. Promotion of American Civilisation

S18. Reconstitution of the United States of America Into One United Republic

(Concluding Thoughts and Remarks)

-I. Minor Prolegomena

on the Method and Meaning of this Commentary

Those who have read my previous analyses on the Party of Communists and its splinter, the American Council of Bolsheviks, will know two things of import:

I. Those were actually analyses of my friend's (negative) experiences within the party.

II. I am not particularly supportive of vanguardism.

Most of the opinions I hold were stacked against the American Communist Party, which bodes unwell for a fair review, does it not?

￠It is true that some may read this commentary as ceaselessly and unduly critical, but that should betray a want of knowledge for what I am intending to do. Being that I am not, as my friend so impetuously is, a vanguardist in any immediate manner, I have naught to prove yet naught to give that the ACP can readily use (besides my subscription to its journal, Red America, here).

￠If I have nothing to prove nor give, then what may my articulate contribution work for? Thus was I struck by an analogy: just as I am currently reading and learning from materials of Glasnost and Perestroika only in the distant, by-gone time of to-day, perhaps my contribution could serve as a like standing-stone for future generations of communists.

￠With the New Framing in mind did I write this commentary. The resulting work is not in the usual sense critical, rather it is an interrogative exploration of what the ACP's policies might have as their consequences. That said, I do not address points of agreement often, for agreement is in natural opposition to interrogative exploration, not least because agreement clouds right(eous) judgement.

￠Further influencing the style of this commentary, I have a notion that the ACP is attempting to transition the communist movement to the new stage that is post-liberalism. I have immense respect for them taking the initiative to organise such a quickly developing party as this. By Marx, there are some old and large ,,communist'' parties that still do not possess a print organ of their party. That the ACP has a print journal (monthly nay less!) within a few months of its creation is impressive and commendable. This is to delineate that I am aware of the general difficulties which the Party is facing, despite my criticism.

￠The transition to post-liberalism will be fraught not only with difficulties, but as well with questions, and inevitably then disputes. We must engage the disputes in discourse now, or we shall be made to later with death in purges. Let it however be made clear, that the majority of the Left's present strategy of collectively enforced ignorance and the arrogant delusion which they foster, shall end in the dissolution or the liquidation of the Left, at best or at worst.

￠I will at the end here also acknowledge that some might question my more critical interrogative explorations, considering that they are directed towards a short, relatively simple, and semi-immediate Programme. Whilst it is quite true that this is not some established doctrinal document of the Party's theory, neither were many of the platforms and policies being responded to in the material documentation of the Andropov-Gorbachev years: yet that is what we have, and I at least am much better for it. The New Framing necessitates the ignoring of the form of a document, that useful discourse might be gleaned after the event has passed.

￠It is a fine line which one must walk betwixt Gladsnost (Cordialness), and Politstroika (Political Upstanding); I hope that both policies my commentary has adhered to and wholly utilised in its construction. Have pity on the meagre and isolated Thoughts of a Comrades.

I. Cancellation of All Debts

On the surface, this cancellation of debts may excite comrades and seem a sensible, empowering immediate policy, but I implore some caution. Though not a perfect comparison, the French Revolutionaries' assignat policy, tied to the commodity of all the nationalised church land, has a warning to grant. Not all instances of debt are 'manufactured', and the smaller types of debt could pose a serious danger if it were waived all-together.

￠Credit card debt, exempli gratia, is of two kinds: one we might call 'commodity interest' debt, relating to more expencive commodities such as insurances, utilities, services, vehicles, homes, essentially any non-material or price-inflated commodities; the other kind of debt may be called 'material value commodities' debt. These commodities include those considered goods, 'smaller' electric machines like appliances, phones, and air conditioners, consumables, and means of production, including land up to a point. If it is something one may purchase at a store, does not exceed a mannish size, and does not exceed five-hundred to one-thousand dollars (depending on item, cost, so on) then it is likely in the material value commodities debt category.

￠If the debts accrued for material value commodities are annulled all at once, it will displace the value of these commodities, which will have a knock-on effect, with some sort of original value drawing a negative loss to its bearer. In the case of the assignat, they were being sold so quickly in gross quantity at such low interest that it caused an inflation to the price of common goods— bread most importantly. The resources and labour engrained in these material value debt commodities must be remunerated soon or late.

￠Seeing that nay other specific is given but a 'debt jubilee' programme, I will grant instead a modest proposal. Let all forms of personal and credit debt be collected into one depersonalised and nationalised sum. This sum should be paid by nine per cent every ten to twenty years, the nine per cent may be split into three methods of finance: three per cent to be funded by state coffers (from any surplus, or the central bank), three per cent by a special national tax, and three per cent by an industrial assignat. The industrial assignats (bonds) must be issued at a stable, set value, and if possible at the minimal interest rate to upkeep with inflation. It is to be hoped that these industrial assignats may assist in the reindustrialisation of the United States during an 'emergency period of economic organisation', before we are able to transition to a normalised, competent market-socialist system (or whatever system it may be aimed toward).

￠I must affirm most sincerely that I am not knowledgeable in economic affairs, but I yet think my concerns would be well-heeded. We must learn from the French Revolution, in listening to the economists, not the kommissars, lest with spun illusion we become dizzy with the success—of self-delusion. From such conditions are crises born, and crises are a condition for yezhovshchina (fatal political purges). Do not under any circumstance purge the economists, for that would seal us in maximum foolishness.

III. Economic Bill of Rights

The Economic Bill of Rights, named Bill of Rights Socialism in its prior CPUSA form, is an interesting concept. Much of the opposition to this idea stems, I fear, from its connotation with the undergrave years of the Communist Party USA, certainly the finale of the rather respectable Gus Hall æra. That is not fair to the policy or the Programme, and the Democrats would never consider the barest stripping of a socialist economic bill of rights!

￠Without having an idea of what this Programme might look like, it is difficult to say much more. I will say on the utility of the concept that it could do one of two things: it will either hold the Party accountable to the masses by giving them a legal core to organise around, or it will, as the United States Bill of Rights does, lull the masses into the illusion of legal protection, allowing the Party bureaucracy to isolate and contain those who actually try to have said rights respected. But I suppose the latter will happen anywise, and some of the stereotypical woke repressions striking against European proletarians, exempli gratia the 1984 in United Kingdom schools controversy, does represent a real protection by the Bill of Rights, and which will likely cause an outrage if the liberal state nay longer cares to shew some deference to it.

￠To begin addressing particulars, I must enquire how the nature of 'productive industry' is to be reckoned? Will a Zamyatin, a Mendelstam, or a Pasternak be given any compensation for their literary industry? How much will censorship impact this process? Will my Ode to Carlos the Unhingable make me black-listed from all, or but most occupations?

How our Macho Comrade is like a hard-swung door,

His fingers as thick as the blood-stains he makes;

Smashing the revolution's fiends into piles of gore,

All counter-ACPolary friends by the throat he takes;

Where else might his criminal verdicts he store?

From the land of cigars cometh he, from the land of smoke he go'th.

(In case I was accused of making this up— what kind of ,,journalist'' would that make me!)

{If the People's Kommissar of Incriminating Appropriation sees this, it's just a honey-pot!}

May I leave the glorious socialist fatherland, or at least reapply my case? Must I confess my heinous crimes and recant my heretical works to Kommissar of Incriminating Appropriation Hinkle? Where stand I? For I can do naught else (have not you read the sub-title of this Netlog?)!

￠How would this system allocate occupations, and will these be occupations, or merely short-term labours, 'jobs'? If, it is to be hoped, the former, what of both occupation assurance and wage security? Bluntly: what of literature and publishing?

￠'Child care' is a contentious problem, and for the immediate term, will not endear the ACP to the wider Left, adding substantiation to the accusation of Right-Wing/fascist natalism. This policy ought not to have been put into this document, for it is something which must be voted upon in a universal republican legislative institution. As it is, this policy has been dictated to and enforced upon, in a sense, the entire Left by the executive institution of the ACP. Anti-natalist comrades will be alienated, and they tend to be the most ethically-sensitive, socially responsible comrades, the ones needed in the most potentially tyrannical or corrupt positions of state and party. Further, society ought not to be over-burdened by the bad choices of careless or egotistical liberal burghers at this stage.

￠Education, oh dear; I saw something about it later on in the Programme, and it was something alarming. For the moment, let us focus on this section alone. What is meant by a 'quality education'? Will the mode of education be forcefully standardised, or will there be an allowance for heterodox projects, id est non-party and non-state educations? Will the masses be free to reject traditional education? If not, then how much education will be made compulsory? How will education be safe-guarded against stupid teachers and party propagandists?

IV. Land, Agriculture, and Housing Reform

The first clause seems fine to me, nothing in it sticks out as a problem. All I should ask, I suppose, is whether 'corporation' here is meant exclusively in the economic sense, or if it entails also the wider definition of corporation? Exempli gratia, does this Programme intend the preclusion of such social/civil corporations, such as a reading club, an independent union, or an intellectual association from holding property of, say, offices and other spaces of activity or organising? If this is so, then it is an error which will lend to bureaucratic corruption and complacency.

￠Moving to the next paragraph in this section, what exactly is meant by 'protection of the rights of farmers (peasants)'? Does this entail the peasantry's rights to sell their goods at market? How will this be managed for necessities, will a maximum be placed on bread, or will the state have a reserve to purchase for free distribution, and how will any of this be made to coincide with market access?

￠'The large-scale construction of public agricultural infrastructure backed by state credit' is not unsurprising, but it does raise questions, rooted in historical practise, about how the ACP intends to maintain and balance these two contrasting modes of production. If the ACP privileges one or the other mode, then I must caution that this divergence has historically not ended well. I suggest splitting the four or five geographico-historical regions of the US into their own administrative units, whereby these modes may be applied fairly and in the places they will prove most useful.

￠The moratorium on the use of Genetically Modified Organisms is a well-necessary yet politically/socially dangerous move for the ACP. Due to the recent swing towards liberal support for GMOs, now viewing opposition to them as some ,,Alt-Right Malthusian conspiracy'', instituting the moratorium risks sundering science into burgher and proletarian sciences (id est proactionary and progressive/,,retarded'' sciences). The 'People's Health Commission': a People's Kommissariat for Health will only separate the two sciences more irrevocably, which the ACP will have to redress at some point if the breach is caused, lest we are 'to remain separate from Rome, for ever'.

￠To briefly comment on the end of this paragraph, I hope that 'severe penalties' is not a cryptic allusion to previous penalties applied to 'fiends of the Folk'. If it is, then this might discourage any experimentation, therefore advancement, in the space of agriculture. Communists must refrain from suspecting and persecuting experts based solely on profession and status. Protecting the Folk is a fine line, and must be based on a clear, accessible legality— New Socialist Constitutional Law (socialist legality).

￠This last paragraph of section four pronounces the nationalisation of large-scale commercial industry, which is fine so long as it does not include the large commercial industry on all the real estate. The ACP ought to allow some private, probably foreign industry, but have the Party grant fifty per cent of the stocks to various party members and Leftist organisations, in small quantities and excluding any kind of leadership positions. Small businesses must not be permitted, only individuals as artisans, peasants, and perhaps, alas, market speculators and middle-merchants or any other type of NEP-man.

￠The very last line about real estate and such being turned into state-owned enterprises seems to preclude experimentation with co-operative, communes, and monasticism. Whilst I consider co-operatives to be generators of small-burgher capitalistic class interest or ideology, but I am not so confident as to deny and prohibit these novel modes of production from being explored. I think such a prohibition to be a mistake.

V. National Industrial Policy

I agree that 'strategic industries', so long as defence industry and some emergency and necessary ones are kept strictly so defined. There is a negative tendency in state ownersdhip to continually expand its parametres, adding more industries under the necessity to have nationalised for the state and society. Even within state ownership may this expansion be witnessed: the NKVD was granted charge of industries and duties almost wholly unrelated to internal affairs or state security, and with that also came bureaucratic squabbling due to overlaps of authority. Markets have a useful place, but a supervised place. So too with private industry, until a higher stage or mode is reached.

￠Advancing technology is good, but if artificial intelligence has corners cut like the Lenin Power Plant, it could be both more catastrophic and harder to fix. Computing, whilst not without its perils, is much safer and easier to de-integrate in case of defective hardware and software. The computing industry ought to be proved competent before integrating artificial intelligence into the economy, planning, and other important or sensitive spheres.

VI. Energy and Infrastructure Policy

The construction of cities as a presupposed good raises contention to the claim itself, and to the specifics of what this actually means. For my opinion, I think US cities to be poisonous slum-towers of exploitation , with a pervasive liberal ideology propounded by the city intelligentsia (namely the studentry and technocrats), filling the role of a priesthood in a messianic/salvation use, to lull those stuck in the city slums. European cities, those organised either naturally over time or based on communal occupation (calling/behrop/Beruf) are much better, and indeed ought to be cultivated. High-speed rail is obviously requisite for accelerating the growth and even beginning of such cities.

￠I figured that the ACP would be pro-nuclear power. Besides my concern about preventing another Communist-led nuclear disaster, I have nay strong feelings on

uranium— energised or weaponised. Only it is odd that the ACP mentions nuclear energy in the Programme, but not ecological and climate change policies.

VII. Healthcare and Education Reform

As I agree with most of this, I must pause at the promotion of holistic care, to caution that many of these holistic remedies can be pointless, or do more harm than good. In relation to the medical profession, I think that political loyalty ought not be factored except for political leaders, where personnel should be selected from a list of ideologically reliable staff and specialists.

￠I must strongly warn here that physical exercise campaigns should under nay circumstance be made mandatory, specially for children. Physical education teachers tend to be the least aware of their students statuses, and many times just disregard (out of spite?) their students' known complications. And then there is the frequency of these teachers to be bullies or molesters. These things will (rightly) turn the studentry against the ACP, if it should enforce such campaigns. If this were to occur, the Bolshevik-Leninists (Trotskyists) would certainly organise the studentry to oppose the ACP, and they should be correct to do so. Then the situation could only end unfortunately in my view.

￠It is very good to see that the ACP recognises the right to death, but the process must be openly laid out, that the Party may not be blamed for murdering its opposition or 'undesirables'.

VII:4-5. 'Education Reform'

This subject is extremely important to me, so I am splitting paragraphs four and five of section seven into a separate category. This may be rather critical because education itself is critical, capable of befreeing or beslaving everyone involved.

￠It is quite surprising, and perhaps rather a bit upsetting for one so invested in saving the enlightenment of the Great Books Canon from the ,,education'' of economic maintenance. Clearly the ACP has already become the slave to techne (technique and technologism) Practical knowledge is that most befitting slaves, ergo Communism is the ultimate expression of enslavement! Good gods, howcanit this ACP?

￠Without a liberal intellectual education, we shall have equipped base superstition with the 'practical knowledge, technical skill' to wield nuclear weapons. This is what happened, but in part to be sure, in the USSR: Comrade Stalin and Comrade Trotsky were so fixated on industrialisation and 'vulguar/skeleton socialism' in the economic and political/state spheres that they discounted the anti-liberal, indeed anti-intellectual nature of uneducated classes, only compounded when they are allotted the might of the state and asked to employ it in statecraft. Problems are vulgarised into ,,dæmonic pagan kulaks!'' and ,,heretical Heathen oppositionists!''; and solutions abound ,,burn them for our father, lord, and saviour!'' or ,,uproot the society, for the saboteurs we must root up!''. Cults of personality, party factionalism, and total deconstruction all arise from slaves exercising leadership without first understanding it, nay matter their intention, or who gave them the right.

￠All the damage caused of superstition and slave-leadership we have just spoke about, is then praised by the ACP with its addition of 'and core social values'. If the hand of generosity be extended, as I think it should, then the ACP has meant to teach 'comradely social[ist] values', not any of the superstitious values that may currently plague the folk-classes; very well, in that case it has merely committed a contradiction betwixt solution and problem. Taking this comradely view, the ACP has misunderstood the nature of various educations. It is liberal enlightenment, as practised since Plato and Aristotle and as detailed by Allan Bloom and Patrick Deneen, which imparts new and mostly positive social values to those who are (truly) involved of it.

￠It has long been known, by the intelligentsias in history and by the communists in modernity that the Wharton School of Business and the London School of Economic, with all the connected trade schools of their class, are capable of imparting only a certain type of learning, the knowledge practical and specialised derived of techne or 'trade profession(alisation)'. As any learned intellectual knows, and every Marxist ought to well know, this kind of knowledge is that which erects the mode of production and reproduces its ideological foundation in the labour force appropriate to said mode of production. Such knowledge can not advance class relations, nor can it begin establishing the next mode of production, once this has been achieved.

￠What is required for such qualitative socio-political advancements is a kind of learning called many things, but most broadly and generically named wisdom, or 'the liberal arts', formally. At the basis of this learning is an insignificant waste of time deemed the 'love of wisdom'— philosophy.

￠Whereas trade schools and technical knowledge all serve as methods of enhancing values, philosophy and the institution of the university (till late o alas) serve but one glorious endeavour, that being the cultivation of all manners of virtue, be it critical, clerical, characteristic, or, most importantly for communists, constructive. Politicians are traded in techne; statesmen bith versed in virtue. Certainly, the movement needs a practitioner as Engels and Stalin, but where would they be without a Marx and Lenin? A Red intelligentsia I think vital both to the planning of revolution, and then even more so to the building of socialism itself.

￠I will say two more things before moving on to the next paragraph. Firstly, the Socialist Workers Party USA made the same mistake of privileging techne-education, eventually privileging manual forms of labour as a whole. This error cost it many cadres, and the cadres it managed to maintain were tired and demoralised. Mao made these same two mistakes as well: the rural party branches were therefore insufficiently staffed with intellectually educated cadres capable of properly understanding and contextualisation party directives, and the intellectuals, humiliated, beaten, and murdered by 'the poor, ignorant, superstitious, illiterate people', nearly turned wholesale against the Communist Party of China, lest Zhou and Deng had stepped in as they rightly did. Anti-intellectualism to any degree has always failed as a policy. So why is the ACP advocating it now, and in the land of paranoid anti-intellectualism nay less?

￠Perhaps I have accidentally hinted at more than I thought to reveal. We all know of the controversial views charged as belonging to the ACP, namely Infrared's notorious 'MAGA Communism', the claim of 'patriotic socialism' as chauvinism, and the mockery of Mid-Western Marx's and Garrido's 'American Marxism'. Now, nationalism helped me launch the Ruback Revolution in middle school, and in myriad ways my world-view and context have been shaped by the national movements of England, Deutschland, and Bonapartism. I have decided as well that I will try to avoid deep discourse on nationalism and the nation-state, until I have managed to read The Case for Left-Wing Nationalism, The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, works on loyalism, unionism, federalism, immigration, and the rest of the corpus of Colin Woodard outside his American Nations.

￠However, being at the fore-front as this subject is now, I will say of the ACP's national policies and its ideology in this, that it is concerning joined relationally to the ACP's (mis)understanding of education. If I were to dispence with comradery, I could say that the ACP designs an aggressive centralised serf state. The accusation of populism overgrowing the ideology or the party-line of the ACP may well hold merit. I see this as the inevitable outcome of the ,,swol''[len] drug and gang sociality which has hijacked the Internetwork and is continuously poisoning the Left. This sociality, mirroring its sub-urban progenitors, is hyper-liberal (in the Deneenian sense), therefore anti-collectivist and anti-socialist. Liberal forms of populism are fundamentally the only road open to this ideological groundrising. The ACP, like much of the Left sadly, has not heeded the study of Deneen, which is ultimately the lessons known from ancient history, and philosophy.

￠This last paragraph demonstrates indeed a redneck liberal populism at play in the Party, one which will damage the very ability for men to become socialist, for which philosophy, the 'liberal arts', is nearly a prerequisite for even raising the type of questions, the very type of thinking, which socialism employs and is derived of.

￠'Abolition of the University-Industrial Complex' I could have supported, but the ACP immediately follows this policy point with replacing this complex with redneck Confederate trade schools and sub-urban ,,community'' colleges. This implicitly changes the meaning of the original point to be the abolishment of universities: not just elite institutions, but liberal arts/Great Books Canon intellectual ones, like Shimer! And why should the ACP see fit to stop here? Why not abolish gentleman's clubs, philosophical societies, educational seminars, and discussion conferences— all the institutions of the intelligentsia and the intellectual stratum? Idiocy! Tyranny and idiocy.

￠The ACP ends this section with 'STEM-slumming', a disappointment to be sure, but an expected one all the same. STEM-bro technocrats are whelmingly idealist in out-look, and seem to lean towards individualism, but express it in the shape of social-liberalism, perhaps of social-democracy. The ACP seems intent on building a horrid super-structure to super-impose any socialist base. Populism, particularly intellectually-led populist movements, is still not and can not without some effort become socialism.

VIII. Social Media Reform

'Nationalisation of social media monopolies'... Now we are getting into more perilous, immanently dangerous policy. Of course the ACP would say right after this that it will respect the Freedom of Speech, which is in the First Amendment, which is why I am highly doubtful of this assurance. Any communist party that actually comes to might will have to chuse one of these four stances: it will ignore the US Constitution in favour of the Party Constitution, treat it like a holy book for propaganda, heavily modify it into a new document, or abolish it entirely to create a new constitution. The basis upon which the ACP has sworn this premise will be in some fashion outmoded.

￠Let us address this question itself, ought the state to own or 'operate' media, specially social media? I should answer 'not exclusively', even 'not by majority'. State media is equally useful for spreading propaganda and dispelling propaganda. Yet socialism can not be constructed from propaganda alone, and propaganda which self-deludes is subverted into opposing propaganda. I have already discussed the important role that independent (non-party and non-state) comrades fill in socialism last post (here). One might say that 'type-writers, presses, copiers, and printers are means of production, which belong to the state in the socialist mode of production'. Very well!, then let social media remain free, or are lines of code to be considered means of production also? If this is to be so, then that means all electronic devices must be surrendered for the glory of the Party; hand over yours first, comrade! This is your policy, is it not? Comrade Stakhanov led by example, and Comrade Morozov was willing to pay the ultimate price to uphold the Party Line; anything less would be an insult to the Party.

￠I realise that I did not write about my concept of diskommizdat in the initial draft of this article, so allow me to briefly add it here. Obviously, what the ACP is proposing will make it even harder to produce and circulate diskommizdat, dissident kommunist publishing. I believe that every communist has a duty to preserve information, and to leak it if the Party seems about to commit a grave and grievous error. The (Ryutin) Platform of the Union of Marxist-Leninists was an important piece of diskommizdat, and which, nay matter one's personal opinion of the document, has led to the problem posed by it being raised in Gladsnost and Politstroika. Even if we should disregard this particular document as inappropriate, or its criticisms improper, there must be some provision, as a routine matter of preventing mass-corruption, to provide for the publication of diskommizdat.

￠The Woke-Liberal intelligentsia attempted to institute such a policy, albeit in a capitalist formulation; and Cancellationism has just drawn the ire, the disrespecting/impetuous hatred of the masses, absolutely rightfully so. I am not a democrat, but neither am I a tyrant. I am a liberal aristocratic/conservative communist precisely because it is necessary to preserve in tandem Cordialness and Political Standing (Gladsnost and Politstroika). We need elites*; we do not need rulers.

*See T S Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture.

￠Dear gods 'the right of individuals to monitor, correct, and erase data'. What do you mean Carlos Garrido did something wrong? It clearly says on ACPædia 'Comrade Carlos is the best ruler ever, and has never made any mistakes (which was a revisionist lie spread by the CIA)'. What kind of distopian precedent is being established here? The longer I stay on the Left, the truer do I see how uncomradely are others' motivations, and that is immensely disappointing of all things to me. Public, or at least leadership individuals should absolutely not be able to do any of these listed tamperings with information. If the ACP had only stated 'private members of society', this proposition would have been eminently agreeable, but as it is rendered, it sounds like a parody of 'The Stalin School of Falsification'.

￠Adding to the distinctly distopian atmosphere of the last few sections, the ACP requires 'the promotion of healthy, positive, and "family-oriented" trends', the last one being most nebulous. Recall whatever time Google has introduced another policy of censorship or promotionalism to YouTube or its search engine, and think about how popular such policies were. The same sort of policies will ensure the free masses' hatred of the ACP regime. It is not liberalism or individualism to prevent the calcification of ideas, views, factions, tendencies, even ideologies; if a better comrade, like Brezhnev-Kosygin, Andropov, or Ligachev had headed the reforms instead of naiive Comrade Gorbachev, matters should have been much improved. Reforms were necessary; openness and restructuring were necessary; Glasnost and Perestroika were not necessary, and were rather foolish.

￠The Internetwork is a big problem which remains a question: it is thus not for the Politbüro/Central Committee of the ACP (or any one party) to decide alone, but for the whole Union Council of Communist Parties of the Union of Folk-State Republics to debate and answer. One party is a dictatorship of the party (necessary for revolution and crises), two parties is a dictatorship of the powerful, and the Union Council of Communist Parties is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

￠To recapitulate my serious concerns with these sections, I fear that the result will be tyranny and turmoil, death and decay. My various projects, Gladsnost and Politstroika, and Union Council of Communist Parties and Court of Socialist Hearing, the Constitution-Compositum, and New Socialist Constitutional Law (socialist legalism), the Estate of the Whole Folk and Folk-State Republic(anism)— all these policies and theories aim to revitalise prior reform efforts, or poneer novel ones. Orthodoxy and dogmatism are the two grossest threats which these experimental efforts could possibly face, outside of an outright fascist take-over of the state.

￠Do not allow my higher proportion of criticism to be mistook for a higher proportion of disagreement, nor for a measure of any hostility towards the ACP. Many of these criticisms expressed are pointed to potentialities in stated policy, and are therefore not 'activated' criticisms of the actions or intentions of the ACP. I have simply come to hold that critique of the kind made here is more useful than my previous method of explaining my agreements. Much of the material in the Programme that I have skipped over is simply because I agree with the ACP, so there is nothing to contribute.

IX. Standardisation of Weights and Measures

I agree with the standardisation of weights and measures, but there is nay suggestion of instruction here. At first, I think that both the old and the new standard systems will have to be used together, that chaos may be avoided. The state, newspapers, and publishing houses ought to be the initial sites of the complete transition, with food and medical being the last to completely institute the standard, for reasons of safety. We will have to wait, largely, for the education system to stamp the standard onto society.

￠I should go even further with standardisation than that herein proposed by the APC. I am sure that under 'metrication' the Party includes the temperature system Celsius? There is a question about the clock/time system as well, whether to institute the twenty-four hour full-cycle over the twelve hour Ante-/Post-Meridiem clock. Last in consideration, and perhaps most controversial (a real contrauvicy!), I support a minor spelling reform (for now, and hopefully a pronounced reform later) to align English with the spellings preferred in the United Kingdom— the Fatherland of the English Speech, and of the Anglo-American Sociality (Yankee and Canadian). It is patently in both lands' best interest to strengthen the bonds betwixt us, thereby keeping the Anglosphere strong. For does not 'the union make(s) us strong' in the face of violent nationalism and Reb'-Republican terror?

X. Abolition of Intellectual Property*

Everything seems agreeable in this section, specially something which is not: it appears the ACP has not fallen into the ultra-Left position of calling for the abolition of intellectual property (*naywhere in this section does it call for the abolishment of intellectual property as such in toto), which prior to the creation of such a concept were writers and artists woefully impoverished.

￠The ACP has clearly segmented software property from intellectual property, which is most well. Organising code does not produce a material (finite), qualitatively unique commodity. In this regard, the organisation of code is more akin to inventing a higher form of mathematical equation, or mixing elements into new chemical compounds. To lock these kinds of things behind copyright protection is silly and destructive. However, software, unlike the above fields, could retain trademark protection, hopefully forcing the trademarks to continuously improve whither all the trademarks values should thereupon compete (superior quality, not specific construction).

￠As I said, intellectuals in all occupations: writers, scholars, artists, musicians, theologians, monks, scientists, et cetera, rely mostly or completely on copyright for their finance. There are still choices to be made in this area. Of course, copyright terms ought to be vastly curtailed. I suggest a term of five years, with two five-year extensions if new creative actions are taken in it, meaning book and film trilogies can have a copyright exclusivity of fifteen years, but absolutely nay more. New entries in a series would henceforth only carry copyright for the new entry itself, making that 'continuity', or 'canon', told in the entry copyright-protected, not the series/world. Copyright terms must expire immediately upon the death of the author.

￠Alternatively, if the ACP should prefer it, the state could pay a stipend for five years, adding money to the stipend if whatever intellectual property in question sells well and becomes popular. This alternative method would, perhaps, rid any need for copyright protection, but then there is the problem again that the party basically controls all forms of media, specially publishing, relying upon the good-will of the ACP leadership in every æra. It should be ironic, then; for in this section the ACP calls for the prosecution of 'the corrupt and criminal practises of the entertainment and music industries' and their 'major heads', which would be the leadership of the party if they should institute the alternative model.

￠As I agree with 'the universal and free access to all published scientific, cultural, and academic materials', I wonder what reimbursement to the intellectuals who write these will look like. Old Norse specialist Doctor Jackson Crawford offers a good point that the value expended is not merely the resulting of any one paper or project, but the long-term value expended in attaining the knowledge for such a proficiency in a subject or discipline. Currently, the authors of these papers are seldom given anything outside of the antiquated educational guild system's prestige ranking (and many times even that they are cheaten out of). The whole process seems a waste of energy and resources in need of dire update. What this looks like, I am quite unsure, but I strongly request that some monetary compensation be provided for the publishing of academic articles and like papers. Finally, I think that access to these documents ought to be channelled and distributed through libraries, schools, trade unions, and if the ACP utilises them, local soviets and town-halls, all to preserve freedom and prevent internal corruption.

XI. Accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution

I do not know what the first paragraph of this section entails, except that the 'socially-governed information economy' is here set as a substitution opposed to the 'profit economy' which reign at present. There is too little prescription, too little detail to actually contribute discourse that is substantive, thus I will move on to the second paragraph.

￠Cybernetic economic planning I am sure all communists can agree to, the point, however, is to institute it, which will probably have to happen after a ravaging civil war and multi-power foreign invasion. If it is not instituted at once, the bureaucrats will entrench themselves, and will oppose even the minutest cybernetic reform, as we saw happen in the USSR. Also, is 'over the whole economy' meant to be literal?

￠The use of artificial intelligence in the planning of the economy is a difficult matter to attempt to mentally foresee, that I am hesitant to say something more than the Party ought to have traditional planning model running in the background as a back-up, so that a disaster may be averted if necessary. There is also a question about whether an artificial intelligence model might cut off a source of democratic civil impact. The masses, except we may say the engineers, programmers, and technocrats, will not be able to pressure an artificial intelligence. The majority will likely know absolutely nothing about this techno-structures, and that again increases the power of the Party, at the expence of public/societal supervision and interaction. And once more, there is too little information.

￠A small nit-pick, but the section name 'Accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution', sounds like a case of dizzy with success.

XIII. Establishment of a People's Militia

I do not have much to say about this section itself, having only much to say of details, and implementation, which are essentially absent here. I will say that, from a rhetorical criticism, this section ought to have read somewhere 'as authorised and prescribed by the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution and the Founding Fathers', remaining shrouded enough whilst still leveraging legal standing, or at least prestige. Not that certain three-letter combinations will care, the state has proved many times that the Constitution, most specially the Bill of RIghts, is just revered fancy toilet-paper.

￠What is the nature of the(se) 'People's Militia(s)'? Is it a state-operated or party militia? Are others allowed to form militias? Will the New English Militia or the Yankee Volunteer Force be made to decommission their armaments? Basically— will the ACP uphold the Second Amendment (allowing independent militias)?

￠A final rhetorical criticism: this 'People's Militia' concept might have been named the 'Public Watch' and the 'Public's Officers', to avoid the obvious weak-link for drawing state repression to the ACP.

XIV. Dismantling of US Imperialism

I have little to say here as this section appears very good to me. I am also very glad to find reference to the publication of secrets treaties, and hopefully the ACP means to do the same with the labyrinthine leviathan of the Deep Intel State archives (JFK Files, anyone?).

￠The sentiment I am receiving from this section is a Chinese style geo-political distancing. Whilst this will indeed be necessary initially, a new foreign policy ought to be

implemented— even if it does not go beyond Cuban-style 'humanitarian aid'. Yet the People's Republic of China is already beginning to expand its foreign out-reach to mutual economic aid.

￠The ACP may find that it must transition rapidly to some kind of sphere of influence model, if it is to negate the potential for foreign invasion. I suggest, as a minimal stop-gap, replacing the Monroe Doctrine sphere with a North American Defence sphere. Even if the US has to pay and maintain such defences in a suspicious Mexico and an ambivalent Canada, in time they will see it is an honest, good-faith precaution of the new, non-imperialist United Provincial Republic.

￠If 'joint development initiative' means mutual economic aid, then that is well. The 'right to the self-determination of nations is wrong; communists must drop this line in favour of supporting the right to the self-determination of Folks, which covers both the national and the ideological question.

XV. Ending Mass Immigration and Modern Slavery

Speaking of national Folks, it is good to see that the ACP in some manner understands the debilitating effects of constant mass-immigration. Immigration, I believe, has changed in nature since the early Twentieth Century. Then, the capitalists were looking exclusively for cheap labour, and that coupled with the age of ideology only just arising led to the capitalists of the US importing unbeknownst a good few Leftist radicals, many of later serious renown. I think that whilst immigration may still at certain times and for certain industries be used primarily to produce cheap labour, it has taken on a novel use as an ideological and political defencive manœuvre. In times of crisis, the capitalists can import some Rightists, even fascists. The Democrats are deluding themselves by thinking immigration helps them.

￠The 'rational and planned basis' for immigration is actually very important, specially as global climate catastrophe intensifies. It is a childish and idealistic myth that Europe and North America can withstand a transfer to them of the inconsiderately procreative populaces of Africa, Asia, and South America. Over-population is a very real phenomenon with serious implications for social organisation. Just because we are not yet living in boxes, because there are rural oases on the globe, does not for a metric mean that we ought to ignore the combustion of the masses for the transfer of whole population polities. Eventually, we shall discover what the resource capacity of North America and Europe are, and it shall ignite a brutal war of survival.

XVI. Abolition of the Drug Trade and Criminal Enterprise

I have two gross disagreements with this section: one strategic, one of principle. Banning pornography (prostitution too, really) will cause the ever lonelier masses to rebel against the ACP. If females continue to become more deeply radical-liberal, where males are becoming conservative and populists Left and Right, then pornography may be the last thing for us to come together on. The ACP does not need to increase the amount of opposition which will be facing it, certainly not by getting embroiled in enforcing Right-Wing religious policy. There is also the disturbing problem of how far the ACP would be willing to go in ensuring this policy is followed? Will the Comeinpolizei bust on down the windows and doors to authenticate there's a real nude woman in bed?! A stupid, impracticable policy.

￠On policy, the last paragraph I find to be a most dangerous one. Is this to be the ACP's article fifty-eight, that they might 'liquidate' 'deviationists and diversionists'? We come to the aged and inevitable quandary of what is 'terror', and how is it to be justified? It is my unshakeable opinion and affirmation that socialist legalism must be upheld against the insanity of the alternative. The New Socialist Constitutional Law must be made a primary solution to the question of law, with the full participation of lawyers, legal scholars, and all other forms of legalican— not merely party leaders, bureaucrats, and internal affairs chekists. Swift and merciless tyranny shall undo itself for the death of the merciful. This prophecy of Bukharin the ACP must learn.

XVII. Promotion of American Civilisation

What is 'American Civili[s]ation' if neither Anglo-Saxon civilisation nor the false civilisation characterising the Imperial Federal State. There is nay 'national-continental ,,American culture''', only the socialities of the nations comprising this prison-house ,,union''. The union of the United Kingdom is not a prison-house because it recognises the nations and their particular socialities, so much that the groups fighting against it are nationalist, fascist, or anarcho-/libertarian-capitalist in rhetoric if ostensibly not in ideology. And what does 'ethnic make-up' mean? Outside of Mexicans and Slavs, who are generally not progressive (along with fanatically religious Muslims and Judaists, or Arabs and Jews) whose ethnicity is so important, so removed that it may influence the US sociality?

￠The 'promotion of language [speech], autonomy', et cetera, ought not to be promised for anyone or anything, that the US Left, or at least the ACP, might avoid the back-pedalling which the Bolsheviks had to commence post-1920.

￠What are 'American tribes'? If the ACP means native/indigenous tribes by this, then that is what should have been written. Otherwise, do Alaskans count as a tribe? What about Jews? Do Mexican tribes or Mestizo Mexicans count as American (Texas) tribes? Are tribes eligible for special treatment, and what are the qualifications?

￠I wish that I could support this final paragraph, but as a New English Yankee nationalist and Commonwealth Loyal Unionist who has seen too much of the Dixiehead Middle-Western savagery to accept anything less than an autonomous regional governance unit for New England, with all the autonomy necessary to join the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations— as socialist Grenada had (the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR for the UN). If this will not be done by the ACP, then socialism can not begin construction in all Yankeedom, and worse, it will not let the ACP know peace until it is free of such Mid-Western tyranny. All this said, if the ACP accedes to these demands, then the rest of this paragraph on 'racial and social antagonisms' is quite good.

XVIII. Reconstitution of the United States of American Into One United Republic

A gross change as a unicameral 'Continental People's Congress' must first be discussed in the Constitution-Compositum. Legal and political scholars and experts need to be heeded in any kind of deeper change in government. I should personally suggest that someone launch a Socialist Party for State, Law, and Constitution to try to hopefully steer the renegade red-guard line of the ACP back towards reason and thoughtful collection.

￠Further for a problem, I propose that the (Autonomous) Maritime Socialist Republic of New England introduce a novel form of tricameral legislature: an upper House of Guilds (will explain in a moment), a regional/provincial House of Counties, and the predominant House of Folk. Do not be deceived, 'Guilds' will refer to a kind of work-place soviet, that House being representatives of these institutions, rather than individual statesmen as themselves. The House of Counties, aside from being another republican layer, will ensure that economic policy is fair and balanced, that none of the five (at first) counties can become a new Federal Imperial over-lord. In this way the MSRNE shall remain united, socialist, republican, and free.

￠Of course, I understand why the ACP, preceded by Mid-Western Marx, should call for a far more centralised, dare I say iron-fisted system: that nation is, after all, crawling with rednecks and NSDAP paper-clips. New England does not need this crude supervision, it is ready to build socialism and its new society.

￠The 'subjugation of the judiciary by the legislature' is likely a sensible and necessary decision, specially in the US, where the Supreme Court has become authority-hungry and obstructionist, abetted by the unstructured peculiarity of common law. Howbeit and again, New England is not so retarded in development: thus the Court of Socialist Hearing, operating with a limited form of common law, ought to be instituted in the MSRNE forthwith. The Court of Socialist Hearing must not become a puppet to the legislature, for in lieu of an executor, it is the only inspector to the legislature's good (or evil) account. Socialist Legalism over ideology.

￠I do not think that I have seen a single point about the executure in this whole Programme. Will the ACP leadership body solely form the executive branch? That sounds like an awful idea! Anyone who does not support the ACP is going to have a very bad time indeed; might even be purged, now that the courts are the puppets of the ACP's lapdogslature. And who will control the Chekist Internal Agency?... let me guess!

￠Ah, and here it is, another piece of the alarming puzzle, 'the adoption of a standardised and universal American Civil Code'. And here too, nay indication of discussion or analysis, just the dictatorship of the Party— disappointing. Common law, that ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of freedom, may perish by the party who gripped too tightly, and strangled socialism.

￠'Co-operative authorities', ha! Those will be the only ones left with you.

-II. Concluding Thoughts and Remarks

The American Communist Party— what a strange, though I will grant, novel formation. I should be a hypocrite not to acknowledge that the ACP is experimenting and examining, the very spirit I have called for the Left to adopt. And I do think I can finally determine that the ACP was not a covert Party of ,,Communists'' plot to overthrow or weaken the old CPUSA. Certainly as well, the ACP is advancing far beyond anything the American Council of ,,Bolsheviks'' ever did. The Party should be good, yet I find that I simply can not muster the stomach to board this locomotive.

￠Maybe it is that I have been too damaged by my experiences, specially the betrayal of friends and comrades whom I thought better, to be of any further use to the Left? Perhaps I lack the hope sufficient to see the vitality of vanguardism, what the essence of the communist party truly is? I am so isolated that I will not deny this may be so.

￠If the American Communist Party succeeds in the revolution, I will formally and publicly recant my counter-revolutionary pessimism. But I fundamentally believe in the beneficence of my projects for the construction of socialism.

￠The final thing I will say is that, whilst I may have appeared antagonistic to the ACP's Programme, I do not actually find that which is explicitly written to be all that disagreeable. I do think more of this document conceptually than I do of the infighting-spawned Declaration of the ACP. I very much hope that some day the ACP publishes a more refined edition of this Programme, or another document which gives more explication unto it.