there are no communist parties in the US, except in embyronic or party-building formation, to my understanding (unless you count the CPUSA). if anyone is working to 'overthrow' anything, they certainly won't succeed anyways. the choices are 'America' (the US) or 'America' (social-democratic US) for the time being
I'll be real, I'm not really sure it's appropriate to be asking people if their parties are "working to overthrow the government". A newbie could theoretically come along, start giving out a bunch of specific information about their political party and then go on about how they have bombs stashed in their basements. I'm sure it doesn't take much thinking to see why that would be a problem.
Look at what they have achieved in the last 30 years and that will answer your question
Lets just say that american communist parties would be contempt with cheap healthcare.
Is improving the living standards of the working class not the main goal of Marxists? I don’t see how wanting conditions to be better is some great sin. It’s not like you can’t both work toward revolution and uplift the working class at the same time.
The main goal of marxists is overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a DotP, not concesions, especially in the imperial core since these come at the expense of the rest of the world and the imperial core working class has proven to be irrelevant so far.
I said nothing about concessions. Also the overthrow of the capitalist system is not the main focus of marxists. It is a primary goal, but only in service of creating a societal formation for the betterment of the working class through a DotP how you mentioned.
Without the focus on the working class, any revolutionary movement is soulless at best, and opportunists thirsting for power at worst.
Declaring a working class irrelevant and therefore fit to suffer is genuinely disgusting. Those are people too, equally as valuable as the working class of any nation. The third world is getting exploited whether a poor family of four in Missouri has healthcare or not, it’s just those profits are sequestered and hoarded by imperial entities.
Yes, focusing on concessions is a death keel for any Marxist movement and not good, but that doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water is the way to go. How else do you plan to create popular support for a movement or galvanize your movements members if the messaging is, “Fuck you guys, we don’t care about you. We only care about the overthrowing the government… wait why won’t you guys support us?!”
i'm not sure if we can apply this logic - we tried working within the confines of regimes such as the United States, Nazi Germany, West Germany, and Israel for many years, if not decades.
even when these movements were Marxist, they failed or denigrated into American chauvinism/nationalism, Strasserism and National Bolshevism, petit-bourgeois idealism, and Labor Zionism - respective to the list, in that order.
that's not to say we don't care, but previous orgs had material basis for their success.
The Black Panthers (+ BLA), Brown Berets, Young Lords, American Indian Movement were leading the struggle - it was through their collective struggle that they were able to assist the Young Patriots and the student groups to form the correct line and analysis
I, for one, am not interested in treating Donald Trump like some political outsider, as if I can take the 'America' and leave the Trump; take the 'Nazi Germany' and leave the Hitler; take the 'Israel' and leave the Netanyahu
this isn't just about 'overthrowing the government' - the program of the Communist party is not coupist - and we aren't populists, either
I'm honestly not sure what you're looking for with a question phrased like this. If the answer was yes, what would the conclusion be? Who would have evidence strong enough to support such a notion anyway? It's a bit of a contradictory thing in the first place; if a party is controlled opposition, how is it a communist party at that point? You could go by which parties call themselves communist in the name, but not all with communist intentions will do so. PSL, for example, being called Party for Socialism and Liberation, not Party for Communism and Liberation. DSA also calls itself Socialist, but unlike PSL, I'm not confident of its positions being communist. Dem socs seem to be aligned more with reform, historically, and underestimate the state's monopoly on violence (if anyone thinks I'm being too harsh on DSA, feel free to say, I'm just using it as an example as a contrast to PSL to make a point). You could go by which parties have a communist program, but if they have a communist program and are actually doing it, how can they be controlled opposition at that point?
It is probably safe to assume every well known anti-imperialist or communist effort in the US has some monitoring or infiltration going on, or at least attempts to do so. But to entertain the idea they are compromised on the whole is sort of silly. Even if one were to demonstrate a particular party's leadership is some form of controlled opposition, it wouldn't necessarily mean every group organizing under that party's name is subject to the same problems. This line of thinking could quickly lead to a kind of paranoia and defeatism if not grounded in step by step analysis. The US is powerful, but it is not all-powerful.
controlled opposition is done with money and the communists don't have any, so it's the democrats since they get money from the billionaire oligarchs like the republicans do.
Other than the CPUSA, DSA, and ACP you can't really say for sure controlled opposition, but suspiciously funded infantile orgs that do more harm than good run rampant. Something's definitely up with the RCP and their cult leader bob avikan and the millionaire founders of PSL are sus... these trotskyist/marcyite orgs may not be intentionally controlled opposition but they haven't done much past newspapers and podcasts as per the tradition. The vanguard party sure hasn't shown up yet at the very least and the prison system, drug trade, and surveillance state has done a phenomenal job putting potential revolutionaries trying to set one up behind bars.
Other than the CPUSA, DSA, and ACP you can't really say for sure controlled opposition
Do you mean that the CPUSA, DSA, and ACP are controlled opposition?
CPUSA and DSA have consistently been used to funnel leftists into the democrat party. There have been efforts to radicalize these orgs from the ground up but because of routine liquidations and undemocratic election of leadership they have failed and any attempt at using their resources for good fall flat. The general makeup of these orgs are also very liberal, with the occasional exception to the rule. I recall CPUSA liquidating a chapter through accusations of "black nationalism" and following the black panther playbook, the continual normalization of zionism within the DSA and gutting of anti-zionist resolutions, and the clockwork endorsement and aiding of the democratic party for both (as well as the pool of up and coming democrat "leftists" that DSA serves as). The way these orgs are setup, their connection to the state and the democratic party, it all reads as controlled opposition to me.
ACP is a bit of a different beast, but they have such a strange amount of money and Jackson Hinkle showing up on Chinese television, giving Maduro a brief interview on Venezualan TV, the speech he gave to the houthis, the day 1 ACP meeting with the CPRF, it's all incredibly sus. I can't help but see it as an attempt to make sure communist curious white men become fanatic yankee chauvinists, building this "anti-woke" communism that will be used to give communism a horrible face that plays into the stereotypes it already has and to bash actually existing attempts at building socialism. I could very well also see that they're being used by the state as a means to communicate with anti-US forces as the CPUSA was back in the day. It feels like an updated version of the CPUSA, with our current day's version of US nationalism and a (scary) youthful energy to the thing. They are the ultimate settler communist org, and I really, really hope they never become influential in any meaningful way.
