Post-Scriptorial preface:
This article has been in the works for two months at this point, (my physical notebook copy is dated 7 December 2021) and many of the trends detailed within have come to paß. According to Nameleß05 on the Reddit page r/ Gen Zedong (here), the 'PCUSA is collapsing, there's currently a pretty major [factional] split going on at the moment'. He went on to say:
'Yes a line which wasn’t discussed by the party whatsoever, Joe who is basically the general secretary’s personal writer decided to write up his thoughts on patriotism and make it the official party line, there was no room for discussion.'
'When the executive of the Florida club tried bringing up these violations they were suppressed and removed from the party with no due process. Since then they [the National Office Faction] have dissolved most of the FL, MD, and VA clubs leadership. Most members from these clubs have since resigned from the party.'.
The first statement demonstrates that our fears about the Leader(s) of the Party being misled by some corrupt members of the Politburo have been verified by an outside source. The second shows that, indeed, the National Office Faction is attempting to usurp control over the Party, primarily by utilising their authority on all matters membership related, exempli gratia bullying and dißolving parts of the Regional and Dißident Faction. Furthermore, it appears that we were also correct about the organisational fragility of the People's School Faction's leadership, who have seemingly decided to drop their faction in the dirt at the very onset of the open Party split. Only time will tell which faction emerges with hold over the broken sinking corpse of the burning PCUSA. Clearly, sailing the seas depends not only on the helmsman, but the faithfulneß of the oarsmen as well.
We believe that what we have written will spell out many future consequences for the PCUSA, and perhaps for all Marxists in the United States. Whether those consequences are positive or negative is basically the leadership's prerogative, but it is certainly not looking good from this present view. Let this article serve as our warning to any comrades that vigilance is ever the neceßity...
Comrades, I have had something on my mind for a while, contemplating the ethics of sharing it on the internet. I have friends and contacts in a few Communist and socialist parties and organisations, a very good friend in the Party of Communists USA. And that is the specific question: my friend was kicked out of the PCUSA for many of the same reasons that Dankey Kang was (but to a leßer, and far leß public extent), and has since been imploring me to release an article telling his grievances. There is a precedent here, for which we must briefly visit a past post on Thoughts of a Comrade. The article 'Response to Dankey Kang's anti-PCUSA Infantile Video' (here) was not neceßarily mine in that my friend provided the arguments, and I merely put them into sentences and paragraphs for an article after our discußion. It was my wording, but entirely his ideas, thoughts, so on. I myself considered the criticisms harsh, and thought (well, think actually) that some of Comrade Dankey Kang's concerns might be (well, are actually) valid. This being as, I have finally decided to take upon the new, opposite plea of my friend.
When addreßing internal political strife in any given organisation, it is natural for the motives of the speaker to be conversed on, and members of the particular organisation are wont to see the worst of said motives. Let me say that I had up to now heard promising things about the PCUSA, though even so have never been in contact whatsoever with the Party or its membership outside of my friend. I relay this to ensure the reader that I personally do not have any agenda, that I am simply recording the new thoughts of my friend. Being as all of this is, please forgive whatever roughneß may be present from my minor truncation.
The Party of Communists USA; on the basic visual level, a standard Marxist-Leninist vanguard party based on the organisational and theoretical experience of V I Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. Perhaps this is more deeply true than one at first glance would think it seems. The PCUSA is, as the Bolshevik Party once had, going through an internal factional civil war. There are four factions vying for further control over the Party's various levers of power.
The primary faction is of course the Party central leadership, or what might be called the 'Party-proper'. The head of this faction is the PCUSA Leader(s). This faction represents the status-quo: how the Party is (or should) run on paper. It is currently the most powerful faction, yet is also the one growing weaker, and potentially smaller, the fastest.
The next faction is the 'National Office Faction'. The theoretical aims of this faction are still basically ambiguous, but the hypothesis is that it hopes to more intensely centralise the proceßes and structures of the Party around the national office to the detriment of the Party districts. The National Faction is poßibly the numerically smallest, but due to its position is the second most powerful, or arguably equal to or greater in power to the Central Leadership Faction. Note that in particular the faction exercises power over every single thing relating to members and membership, an extremely potent tool for a civil war, no doubt.
The third faction and tied with the fourth faction for the title of most democratic is the People's School Faction, under a nominal leadership. they seem to be good comrades, but it feels like they do not know how to handle a factional struggle, or simply do not have enough time and/or energy to dedicate to such an enormous event. This faction seems to be comprised of many lower Party functionaries, which is why their head is only nominally the leader. The faction appears to be focused on restoring peace within and then going back to building the Party, all without crushing the opposition via purges and other such underhanded tactic. Though the People's School Faction has the most Party functionaries, their lack of prescription (beyond 'back to normality') and their unwillingneß to play connivingly may prove their undoing. It is to be wondered if these lower functionaries have the desire, the commitment to remain in a battle for the Party. They are not nearly approaching the top echelons of leadership, so the members of the faction may just abandon the PCUSA for another party altogether.
None of the previous factions utilise the general membership directly, nor have an open, democratic ethos. The much larger, wider, and leaderleß Regional and Dißident Faction is the fourth and final one. Perhaps calling the combined groups a coalition would be more accurate, but from a party-political perspective the groups nigh always support each other (even but implicitly), and hold the same basic ideals and designs. This faction, although the largest by virtue of being the most democratic in membership, is also largely lacking in cohesion as a concrete factional entity. Most of its members are not conscious enough to see the totality of the factional civil war taking place, and the most vocal 'spokesmen' of this faction do not have a unified platform in the slightest, nor a true pool of resources to draw upon, often choosing to portray themselves as mere individual Party cadres talking about concerns unofficially, to hopefully be addreßed by the Party apparatus, ignoring the very visible material reality that the Party apparatus is split up and embroiled in the factional struggle.
The division and individualism of this faction serves as the catalyst for the many ißues it has. This tirade about trans-genders being harraßed in the Party fly in direct contrast to a critique of the Party raised by one of its former founders. This former founder, Comrade Peter Korman, has said that trans-gender Party membership and leadership are in fact the ones who commit the harraßment, including sexual, of base-gender Party members:
'It was found that the entire treasury which again amounted to $8000 of everyone’s collective dues and money had been emptied out for sex orgies, w[h]ere straight party members were attempted to be pressured into unwanted sexual acts [by trans-gender individuals]... From Maoist Rebel News here.
This makes perfect sense; the Texas Party Club Chairman, was removed by someone in leadership for sexually harraßing non-trans-gender Party members, as according to Comrade Peter Korman's testimony. Last, and likely the most contemporarally notorious, there was the public critique levelled by the Dankey-S4A front, headed by the YouTube commentators Dankey Kang and Socialism For All. Their criticisms are public, and are clearer summarisations of the feelings and notions harboured by the rest of the Regional and Dißident Faction, more democracy and leß corruption, with more specific demands and evidence for both. It must be recognised however that, obviously, all of the aforementioned fronts were ad-hoc creations, and were defeated.
That is the present state of affairs in the Party of Communists USA. What is to be Done, or which faction would it be best for to win? The way I see it, the Party Central Leadership Faction cannot win, it is destined to naturally wither away during the course of the factional civil war. The National Office Faction will destroy the Party, of that I am certain: it resorts automatically to manipulating the Party machine, deceiving Party leadership, toying with the membership, and action in an extremely anti-democratic, needleßly authoritarian fashion. That leaves the People's School Faction and the Regional and Dißident Faction. To begin with the latter, unleß some of the fronts which compose this 'faction' unite together, this collection of concerned individual Party members simply shall poßeß neither the cohesion to withstand the strains of internal civil war, nor be able to present a common goal and create propaganda dißeminating their shared ideas. However, that is not the biggest complication. If this faction were to actually succeed, then owing to its fractural nature, would not the fronts become factions and immediately start the civil war, carving up the Party anew? Besides, most of the potential leaders (videlicet Dankey Kang and Socialism For All) seem far more content to take their followers with them out of the Party to construct what are eßentially fan-clubs around their YouTube channels. Thus, the only option I see as positive and at the same time poßible is the People's School. I believe that they will try to do what is right, with my only real fear being that their heart might not be fully into it (factional civil war), which is a twice as dangerous attitude during cataclysmic struggle like this. I am not sure whether he is ready or willing to aßume the responsibilities incumbent with practically being leader(s). Whatever happens, I wish all comrades in the PCUSA luck.
Now I would like to briefly say some of my own thoughts. These thoughts are focused on the state of the Left in the United States more generally, since, unlike my friend, I have decided to stay away from non-local (videlicet party) organisations until the Left underways a severe clean-up in activity. There are some who will deride me for creating a netlog as opposed to joining a Marxist party as my friend has/had. I cannot see how, when measured with the quality of content present on Thoughts of a Comrade and The Philosopher's Interior, one can proclaim so boldly that my friend's work in the Party of Communists is of greater value. Understand one thing; my friend's such worthy work- is gone. It's all gone. The party he laboured for is bursting into flames as it drifts asunder. How is that more valuable than the discourse that continues to be maintained and is every day expanded here? My advice to comrades is to stay away from national groups until the politic of the Left calms down a bit. That is not to say that one ought not to join a Marxist-Leninist organisation, or even a party, really, so long as it is local in scope. Preferably, local means within ten to twenty miles of your home, with those who you will be able to meet with sufficiently to conduct real action, to achieve something in determination. National parties and organisations have led us nowhere so far, and that is why I am merely suggesting an alternate path of political development, and only for the time being, anyway.
I have grown suspicious of parties like the RCP, PCUSA, and APL, that call for the iron step of an underground, absolute vanguardist party in the West. A party can very well be prepared AND adopt a more effective model of organisation for the conditions at hand, absolute vanguardism is not an eßential trait right now, partially vanguardist or even minimally vanguardist parties might just be the thing the Left requires, yet we will never know this since the over-vanguard parties are unwilling to experiment, which I have begun to find more and more suspicious! We do not need to remove our Marxist-Leninist doctrine from the parties we are in, we are speaking about changing the structure and organisational methods of the party AROUND the doctrine, not the doctrine itself.
Then again, perhaps the decay of the modern Left has naught to do the style of organisation prevailing. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere and I am just frustratedly looking for an answer. Here is the fact; I do not have the answer, I am very must frustrated, and I am exhausted from search for an adequate answer. My friend has now been kicked out the very party he tried so hard to get me to join for over two years, thus proving my point and strengthening my sense of bitter cynicism. My friend is demoralised, and I disgusted, at the Left in the United States, and if I may venture on his behalf, with the Western Left as a whole, maybe even the world Left (granted, both of us likely poßeß a superficial opinion on the global political front). Well, I suppose it would not be a claß struggle without an accompaniment of hardship and loß of vision. But I truly think that this is one of the largest problems of the modern Left; there is no desire to produce a vision. Everyone on the Left is either smashing and burning the film reels of proletarian history (anarchists and social-democrats, namely), or are watching these greatest hits on repeat, fearing to deviate even minutely from them (Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, and Maoists, of course). So, with everyone aiming to interpret history, everyone has abdicated the moment, scoffing at the idea of filming a new reel. Marxism-Leninism is an ever-evolving, ever-increasing science, and therefore, there are no Marxist-Leninist parties in the West (I am intentionally excluding Greece from 'The West' here). That is my piece.
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