Expanding on a theme I touched on the other day, let me break this to you, after more than a century of efforts the myriad and eternally splintering array of communist parties in the United States have never produced and will never produce anything of use to working people and poor people.
Their use has been entirely to the benefit of the enemies of workers and the poor, as an all too willing weapon against progress. I say "all too willing" because much if not most of the material turning them into weapons against progress have been provided by the communists, themselves.
Other than that the one and only thing that the communists have achieved is their own victimhood during the red scares of the past century. Yes, they were the victims of a violation of their civil liberties by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Red Channels, the American Legion, the Hollywood Black list and many others who targeted communists and anyone they could tar with an association with communism. I grew up on stories of that victim hood, deplored the members of the HUAC and Judge Kaufman and Irving Saypol and, especially David Greenglass. And I still do, though I also deplore the role that Julius Rosenberg had in nuclear proliferation, as well.
That victimization is certainly wrong but it is certainly not on the same order as that of racial, ethnic and other minority groups. And a lot of it was the results of provocation. Their idiotic, futile, counterproductive agitprop handed their enemies a gold mine of quotations to use. And that junk always was obviously futile and stupid. It was and is designed mostly to get attention for one tiny faction of communists or a single communist from other members of tiny cults of communism. Looking at a lot of the websites of various communist parties, I see the same old absurdly overblown wind that is more likely to elicit rolled eyes than progress that has marked communist rhetoric since Marx wrote his failed manifesto in 1848. For example:
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA has taken on the responsibility to lead revolution in the U.S., the belly of the imperialist beast, as its principal share of the world revolution and the ultimate aim of communism. This Party is built on and takes as its foundation the new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward through the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian. Its members are united in their profound desire for a radically different and better world, and their understanding of the need for revolution to get to that world. They have dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to revolution, and on the basis of that they channel their individual abilities and passions to the cause and needs of this revolution.
Let it be asked, aren't you reassured that they've taken on that responsibility? If you want to go to their website for even more absurd, empty and futile rhetoric, they're easy enough to find. I'd especially recommend looking at the link to Bob Avakian "The Vision, The Works, The Leadership for a New Stage of Communist Revolution", and then comparing it to the rhetoric of the LaRouche cult, remembering that Lyndon LaRouche began as a Trot and a member of the SWP.
You could look on just about any other communist party site in the United States and other English speaking countries and reproduce the tedious experience of reading the absurd blather dozens of times over. I have not found any record of success in even those parties that have either been in existence for decades not to mention in those tiny cells that viciously and vituperatively split from them to assert their higher correctness and right to lead the revolution. Some come with long atheological arguments based in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, etc. etc. etc. proving their case with admirable and excruciating citation and explanation. I'm unaware of any medieval theology that quite matches some of those in absurdly detailed assertion.
Other than the litanies of the historical victimhood, the other thing that the communists have consciously achieved was gulling the left into feeling sorry for them and championing their rights in all of their anti-democratic, dictator promoting, divisive futility. In one of my earliest pieces I said I won't be fair to fascists, I won't be nice to Nazis. You can add that I won't cooperate with communists, I won't be co-opted by them. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a Maoist party, Mao was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and the enslavement of hundreds of millions. His incompetence in dictating agricultural practices on the basis of his theories was a total disaster. Others among the communists are Leninists or Stalinists or Trotskyites, all men who either had oceans of blood on their hands or would have if they'd not been shoved aside, in the case of Trotsky. There is no reason to ignore that, there is every reason that acknowledging it is as much a moral requirement as acknowledging the crimes of the Nazis and fascists.
And for all of that liberals of the past and today are stupid to give them a single second more or our efforts. Just as I hold that we owe Nazis nothing and they should assert their free speech rights to advocate murder and slavery and war without our time and resources, I hold we owe communists nothing more as they advocate the same, exact things. I don't think we owe them so much as the bucket of spit that so many an amicus brief to the Supreme Court has been.
I am a socialist, I believe that the workers, those who produce wealth, should be the sole owners of the means of production. I hold that is a fundamental human right and the privileges of capital are nothing but a form of legalized theft. It is as a socialist that I particularly resent the position of the communists in the history of the past two centuries. They've done more to discredit socialism than all of the capitalists put together.
A Note About The Last Stalinist
During the Senate campaign of Ned Lamont against the putrid and thankfully gone Joe Lieberman, Lieberman's supporters and the official Republicans went after him due to him being the unfortunate nephew of the late Corliss Lamont. I read on several blogs the assertion that Corliss Lamont was not a Stalinist, presumably because the people bringing that up weren't credible. Unfortunately, there was no honest debate to be had on that. Corliss Lamont was probably the last Stalinist in the United States, active in denying the atrocities committed under Stalin right up till he died and the Kremlin started denouncing his crimes. As late as 1952 Corliss Lamont was publishing The Myth of Soviet Aggression, no doubt for the fertile grounds he imagined existed in the U.S. Of course Ned Lamont had no responsibility for his foolish uncle, the trust fund baby Stalinist. But any leftist who misrepresents Corliss Lamont is responsible for lying about history. It also requires asking if there isn't a corrupt motive in pretending his record isn't what it so obviously is.
Corliss Lamont's hands are all over all kinds of groups which he more or less bought or bought influence in with his money, Including the ACLU and the Humanists for a good part of their history. Any group that had a major association with a supporter of a fascist dictator would rightly be seen as needing to distance themselves and explain themselves. On the basis of the moral imperative that someone who is responsible for a genocidal mass murder is a genocidal mass murderer and those who support them are supporting genocide, those institutions that had a major association with Corliss Lamont really need to clarify things.
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