I am a card carrying member of the Communist Party of the United States. I will always be until the party is no longer capable of holding the mantle of the Marxist-Leninist movement in the country. Do I believe that every member, especially higher leadership, are exactly what is needed right now in regards to ideological standards? No, of course not. Many of you here who are likely also party members share this stance, but understand that the existence of the organization is far more important as it relates to international cooperation and development of the worldwide movement.
I would like to interject just for a moment to say this is not a jab at any of those in minor communist parties or those even just sympathetic to the movement, rather just my own personal endorsement of the Communist Party.
I've spent many years studying the science of Marxism-Leninism. I do not believe to be some perfect communist or anything like that, but believe that I am capable of applying the science to my own observations of the history of our country and our world today.
In many instances of this website and previously on /r/GenZedong, and before that MoreTankieChapo, there is a prevalence of negative energy within our community. This idea culminates among the most 'fundamental' Marxist-Leninists that the revolution cannot come to the US... or that our populace is simply to placated to ever care. While I believe it's understandable to come to the conclusion.. I think it is fundamentally wrong. I think that it misses the forest for its trees. Look at the labor movement of our country: The ebbs and flows of the power of organized labor.
They are scared of us.
At it's peak, it is estimated that the Black Panther Party had about 5,000 members nationally. Yet, it is considered one of the most dangerous communist organizations to have existed within our country. Their ability to recruit and bring about support with the most damaged by our society was profound. They had to be squashed. The full might of the mightiest imperialist power's national security apparatus on Earth, dedicated to preserving it's existence by any means necessary. Even today, the national security apparatus and by extension the rest of the US government is committed to disarming it's ideas, through revision, through force.
Our Communist Party is currently estimated to be at 15,000 members. 3 times the greatest numbers of one of the 'strongest internal threats to US security'. Gloria La Riva, a COMMUNIST. Received almost 100,000 votes in the 2020 election. Almost a quarter of the country is receptive or supportive of socialist principles in one existence or another.
Yet the idea that the country is functionally incapable of evolution is simply unscientific. Does one country have greater potential for class consciousness and development of the revolutionary party? Absolutely. That does not put us at absolute 0 on the scale of potential. I think that is a scourge, the idea that we cannot do it. It placates us at best, or it can disillusion us at worst.
It is okay to feel sometimes that the task we face is insurmountable. It is the natural reaction to want to avoid the path of hardest resistance. We must look at the steepest mountain ahead of us and not think that it is not something we can overcome, rather the greatest task that MUST be overcome for us. Our devotion and commitment is the only thing that can get us there, not nihilistic contempt and surrender to US capitalist power.
Imagine our comrades internationally held this same standard. What would the point of being a communist even be? Why should any communist party exist if capitalism cannot be destroyed in the US? It will still have it's choke-hold forever, and will react violently to any attempts to stop it, even ending the world in it's own ego-driven mania.
We are now at a precipice. I do not mean now as in this year, this month, or this day. I mean in the historical development of our country. The ebbs and flow of capitalism remain.. it is our job to harness that understanding in the development of the new world and create the organized power to bring us there.
It will not be one strike which blows down the US, or capitalism. It will be many precise blows. Carefully coordinated and purposeful. None with the 'bite' that we may want to see but the damage is visible, and eventually even the greatest tree can fall with persistence.
I may not know any of you personally, but hope one day that even if we never meet, we can feel some connection in our combined power. It is our deep, embedded commitment and passion to the improvement of our world that even brings us here.. and it will be that same deep, intense passion that will bring us to our victories in real life.
The population may not have read Capital, but as Bill Haywood says ".. I've got the marks of capital all over my body".
Sadly the cpusa mention overshadowed what you were trying to say, but I agree it's something that needs to be constantly reiterated which is that third worldism is a fallacious ideology and needs to be combatted. One thing in particular is that American comrades really need to read more communist American history if they want to understand the condition of the American working class beyond "labor aristocracy" epithets. Every single gain the working class in the imperial core has made has been the result of both external AND internal movement and the over emphasis on the external leads to a disregard of emphasis on the internal.
Even for instance the civil war, which yes was fought on the part of the northern industrial capitalists to overcome the South's political and state dominance, was also actually fought for with the blood of northern communists and leftists who understood the horrors of slavery and the need for solidarity against it. Bill Haywood as you mentioned consistently fought against backwards elements in the union movement against integrated unions up until his death. CPUSA or not there's a long history of communism's struggle here in the US and to deny our predecessor's efforts is to say that all they have fought and died for is all for nothing.