You envision a party as a massive coalition akin to the Bolshevisks in 1915.
You do realize that it started decades before then with a handful of people meeting in someone’s basement, local library, or a park, and discussing ways as to how they could support their local community while building socialist awareness and class consciousness, right? In a country so hopeless that Lenin himself stated that he never even considered a revolution being possible.
Get your hands out from under your butt and do something, anything, instead of whining about how horrible and pointless doing anything is.
I’m sure the homeless man you give a bowl of food to won’t think the actions you take with a local party were useless. I’m sure the poor tenet who you showed up to defend from eviction wouldn’t think the same as you now.
Join the PSL preferably, but if they don’t exist near you, join literally any group near you dedicated to bringing positive social change from a Marxist perspective.
If not, then start your own branch of a party, or set up a club to do community projects with. Even if the only people who bothered to show up were you, an old man, and two skater anarchists. Because I promise you that if you keep building, and avoiding doomer mindsets. Then your group won’t stay that small for long.
Every little bit helps.
PSL and FRSO are good parties to look for or start in your area.
The Party will not emerge fully formed from some Great Man’s mind on day one. The Party must be built, and by all of us.
No. You should join a party even if they are imperfect.
How “imperfect” does a party have to be before that becomes a waste of time though? My local org disagreed with me on every important issue last time I spoke to them, and joining them would do nothing but have me get into pointless arguments with “Weekend Communists”
I’m not saying I’m holding out for a “perfect” party here, but I feel like the line should be drawn with this: “Can I do more good work within this organisation than I can outside of it?” Having access to a properly organised group, even an imperfect one, enables an individual to do a lot more good in the world than if they were acting alone, but spending time in a party that does nothing of value will only waste your own time.
spending time in a party that does nothing of value will only waste your own time
Of course. I assumed we were talking about a real party that does real work, not some do-nothing larp and debate group. The question that was originally asked was whether it’s worth joining a communist party in the US, and my impression is that there are at least one or two out there that are not completely useless.
Yeah, just wanted to throw that out there that joining an org, any org, isn’t always a good use of time. Though for a charismatic or knowledgeable enough individual, they could probably turn a LARPing group around into a decent org. Unfortunately I am not that person.
There are a couple persistent internal problems that communist parties face in the US.
One is that people are in the habit of fragmenting over minor differences in ideology; meanwhile, the two main capitalist parties are giant tents, not tethered to any specific political position, evolving but always drawing support from capitalists and effortlessly maintaining a funding base and a dominance in democratic organs.
Another is that after a century of existing alongside state intelligence, it’s fairly clear that the intelligence services have been running wide circles around the communist parties, and at this point the communist parties have settled in to a form of being that is benign to the American system. This may be through ranks being infiltrated and leadership being compromised, or through hegemonic liberal ideology that partisans accept to the point where their main activities are peacefulTM protests and electoral campaigns.
Without any desire to sound particularly sectarian, I would say that there is a strong cult vibe to American communist parties. They are largely opaque and insular, and tend to sound dogmatic more often than not.
It could be that all of these problems are closely linked. In any case, for any successful proletarian movement in this country, there needs to be a deep change in strategy that is able to compose diverse political forces, maintain a strong working-class appeal by embedding itself into relevant and winnable struggles, and frustrate all attempts by state and reactionary forces to decapitate or pacify it.
Do you have any ideas of what sort of change in strategy would be necessary within the current communist American parties? In my pre-branch, we have disrupted anti-LGBT bills from being passed (for example). We have educated many people and have grown a lot in our area within a small timeframe. We also have to be viligant and careful with which new members we recruit given the history of the feds infiltrating communist parties in America.
I’ve heard local branches have some sketchy history, but mine has been kicking ass and avoiding those mistakes. I do have some disagreements in our party and believe we need to work on our organization, but with all of the recent events and the work we have been doing, I am willing to forgive our shortcomings.
If you have one person who is The Big Leader, there’s a huge target placed on them. It becomes clear that there’s only 1 person who needs to be bribed or blackmailed or (less likely) accident-ed. Plus, you have the whole burden of deciding all the things under one person, and this can burn people out, stratify the organization, and make cadres feel less capable of action.
Someone posted an infobox yesterday on the Party of Bulgarian Communists, and while everyone was smiling at the vidya game logo, I was smiling at how they had a collective for top leadership.
Another thing that is important is making sure that there is a near horizon as well as a far one. Trying to build up a movement around “agitating and educating specifically for some time generations in the future when material conditions reach a breaking point” is a losing prospect; this is asking for people to put their whole lives aside for a revolution they won’t have any experience of. If you can find a way to enrich people’s lives in a way that is clearly moving toward a more equal society, that would be part of a winning strategy.
I am all for having a multi-person collective leadership instead of a single celebrity dominated party. I am really tired of major revolutionary leaders becoming co-opted, and I hope in the near future the American communist parties can overcome this flaw.
I would say that there is a strong cult vibe to American communist parties. They are largely opaque and insular, and tend to sound dogmatic more often than not.
I can confirm that this is the case in most of Europe as well, with very few exceptions.
In any case, for any successful proletarian movement in this country, there needs to be a deep change in strategy that is able to compose diverse political forces, maintain a strong working-class appeal by embedding itself into relevant and winnable struggles, and frustrate all attempts by state and reactionary forces to decapitate or pacify it.
You have hit the nail on the head here. I could not have said it better myself! Even here on this platform i sometimes see a kind of reflexive rejection of the idea of appealing to diverse political forces, and i see the occasional tendency to support sectarian strategies that would reject large parts of the working class. And i include myself in that criticism. We can all do better in this regard.
A lot of it is paraphrasing another Imaginary Partisan, but I put my own direction on it by emphasizing how the push for “strong leadership” (rather than just strong systems of coordination) in these movements can lead to serious vulnerabilities.
I would say that strong leadership doesn’t have to be synonymous with a celebrity cult or an over-reliance on a small number of individuals.
But still, a party is not a social club, nor is it a mere association of individuals with vaguely similar beliefs. A vanguard party in the Leninist sense has to be a disciplined and well structured political organization. After all, we are not anarchists.
And of course a political party is not the same thing as “a movement”. A party can and should have a broader movement that coalesces around it, these would be the numerous sympathizers and supporters (some of which will be more committed to the cause than others) but the party itself should be the disciplined core of the most competent, class conscious and dedicated revolutionaries.
And while the most important decisions should be made collectively, having a form of “leadership” (such as an executive council) to handle the day to day affairs and be able to respond quickly and decisively to a sudden crisis (or a time sensitive opportunity) without wasting time is still necessary. You need to put in place some well-established procedures and structures so that when the time comes there is no confusion or a big debate every time about how to make decisions and how to implement them.
This is at least the broad outline of what seems to me to have proven to be a successful model for revolutionary parties in the past. In practice we should always be willing to adapt this general framework as needed to the material conditions and the specific political and cultural environment of each country. What works in one part of the world won’t necessarily work in another.
Crises and snap actions do need specialized point people, but I don’t think those specialized point people need to be the same ones that keep the meetings running smoothly or that set the standard for partisan self-education. That’s the beauty of it, the diversity of humans makes it possible for everyone to contribute more of what they’re best at.
Frankly I think this describes the situation in my country fairly accurately as well, and it’s in Europe.
P.S. I still think supporting a party is important, because parties can play a key role in bringing about change.
Just join the PSL
Does PSL have a yearly membership fee?
I’m done pretending the local Dem club is ever going to not be fash lite. Our DSA chapter has resolved and I was gonna join the CPUSA but the whole thing with Sims espousing lesser if two evil rhetoroc made that decision easier. I’ve been leaning a bit towards PSL but don’t really know much about them yet.
Yes, once you become a member you are expected to contribute to the annual fund drive.
Gotcha. I figured there was just didn’t see it on the member application page.
No(except for the National Fund Drive, but it’s not necessarily a membership fee, and if you are unemployed and can’t afford it, that is okay), when you become a member of PSL, there are monthly dues, but it’s according to what you are able to afford. You decide how much you are able to sacrifice, and even if it is small, you are still doing enough for the party by attending and helping with rallies, protests, events, etc.I can probably pay some but I’m unemployed and my partner makes a teacher’s salary and we have 2 kids so it won’t be a whole lot. We are in a conservative stronghold of a town and I want to get something going since our DSA chapter fell apart but not sure if I wanna do something regarding a political party or actually establish a charity focused on neurodivergent employment since the only thing we got now is a place that abuses autistic kids with ABA therapy. I guess both is feasible but it depends on what my attempt at freelance web dev looks like in the next couple of months. If I can get it up and running I think I’ll have some time to devote to activism of some sort.
Sorry for the ramble lol.
The amount you would theoretically be asked to pay in monthly dues would be according to your own circumstances. You know your own family situation best, but just be frank with the recruiter in the event you wish to follow through :). Best of luck!
No. This amounts to throwing your hands in the air and giving up. Work needs to be put in to build something of value. And not all of them are revisionist or whatever. PSL and FRSO are both good options.
No. Join a party wherever you can, as long as they are communists or have large-ish socialist caucuses on them. Connect with communists even if they are not your type for the sake of making connections and seeing the status of the movement for yourself.
Build your own party or reclaim the CPUSA.
The CPUSA are revionist garbage. The entire policy position is just “vote blue”, and it has historically been a party with more feds in it then members.
