To
paraphrase de Maistre, every political party has the leadership it
deserves. It is confidence in the wisdom of this maxim that keeps me
from commenting extensively on the continuing effort to retreat from
Marxism-Leninism on the part of Chairman Sam Webb and the rest of the
Communist Party USA top leadership. As the membership continues to
shrink-- discounting internet “friends” and “likes”-- one can
only marvel at the dogged loyalty of most of the remaining
membership, a loyalty perhaps leftover from times when the Party was
under attack from all sides. But the Party is under attack from no
one today, especially since the Party's entire body of work coincides
with working selflessly for Democratic Party election victories while
slavishly following (off-electoral season) the leadership of the
AFL-CIO.
Apparently
changes are afoot in the CPUSA as it approaches its June National
Convention. There will be leadership change. Unfortunately, it does
not promise to be accompanied by a shift in ideological perspective.
Nonetheless, some will entertain an unfounded “hope” in a new
direction, a hope that will immobilize dissent.
There
is also talk of dropping references to “Communism,” the final
barrier, if the Webbites are to be believed, to the CPUSA becoming a
party with mass support.
For
an honest, critical discussion of the latest musings of Sam Webb, go
here: Houston
Communist Party.
Apart
from its continual decline, the CPUSA counts as a small voice, but an
authoritative voice, to the US left on matters pertaining to the
World Communist Movement. Recently, Sue Webb, who represented the
CPUSA at the International meeting of Communist and Workers Parties
held in Lisbon in November of last year, gave a report of that
meeting, highlighting the CPUSA’s and other parties' assessments
and views on the current situation and the way forward.
Much
of Sue Webb's commentary is a thinly-veiled attack upon the Greek
Communist Party (KKE) under the guise of supporting diversity and
independence in the world movement. At the same time, she exploits
differences between Parties to justify the CPUSA's exodus from
Marxism-Leninism.
Now
the KKE needs no one to defend its honor or its positions; it is
supremely capable of supporting both. However, it is important for
all Communists and friends of Communism to examine carefully and
critically the views represented in Lisbon. Sue Webb's commentary
fails to reach those standards.
She
disparagingly suggests that the KKE obstinately and unreasonably
thwarted a final, unifying statement: “The Greek party's
criticisms were so strong that it rejected and blocked issuance of
any consensual final statement summarizing the thinking of the
conference. In doing so, the Greek party and its supporters from a
few other countries clearly went up against the thinking and policies
of the overwhelming majority of parties represented at the meeting.”
At
the same time, she heralds the diverse roads taken by various Parties
and their relative autonomy from a single path, citing Lenin
copiously as well as her Party's reliance upon "our own
experiences and conditions of struggle.” In other words, she faults
the KKE for not acceding to the will of others by drawing upon its
“own experiences and conditions of struggle.” Apparently, she
finds no inconsistency in touting the old Euro-Communist line of
national Communism while chiding the KKE for its principled,
independent stance in the Lisbon meeting.
The
charge of instigating disunity is particularly spurious when the
KKE's big role in revitalizing the international meetings, conferences,
and exchanges is recognized.
Lost
in Sue Webb's simplistic account is the singular contribution that
the KKE brings to any discussion of the path to socialism. Without
judging the merits of its every conclusion, one must respect the deep
analysis that the KKE has made of the collapse of mass European
Communist Parties since the Second World War. While most Parties
have wrestled with the lessons of the loss of the Soviet Union and the
Eastern European socialist community, few explore the theoretical
consequences of the near-complete self-destruction of powerful mass
Communist Parties in Italy, France, and Spain as thoroughly as does
the KKE. The process of evisceration of Marxism-Leninism in
non-ruling Communist and Workers Parties began well before the fall
of Soviet power. It is the KKE that draws the most profound lessons
from this experience. Webb ignores it entirely.
Failure
to grapple with the lessons of the collapse of Eastern European
socialism and the failure of Euro-Communism leads to a one-sided,
distorted map of the road ahead.
It
is in this context that the KKE challenges the position that there
are “stages” between capitalism and socialism. After World War
Two, many Parties projected an anti-monopoly stage in the transition
to socialism. Still others sought to construct a stage built on a
“democracy of a new type,” a system of rule that was neither
bourgeois nor socialist. These strategies entailed a focus upon
parliamentary struggle and collaboration with all non-monopoly
capitalist forces. The Italian “Historic Compromise” was the
symbolic culmination of this perspective, engaging a strategy that
opened the door to the bourgeoisification of the Italian Communist
Party (PCI) and consequently its inevitable demise.
One
of the ideological salesmen of this approach, Giorgio Napolitano,
demonstrates, with the trajectory of his life, the cruel tragedy of
the PCI's failure: once a member of a university fascist youth group,
Napolitano engaged with the resistance, joined the PCI, assumed a
leading role in its new direction, and today reigns as the President
of the Italian bourgeois Republic. With measured civility and
dignity, he legitimized the government of the buffo-fascist, Silvio
Berlusconi. His many honors, decorations, and prizes testify to his
service to capitalism.
In
an interview in 1975, Napolitano, then the economic spokesperson for
the PCI, deftly danced around hard questions posed by Eric Hobsbawn:
“I believe that in any country the process of socialist
transformation as well as socialist regimes have to be founded on a
broad basis of consensus and democratic participation... My argument
about the principles and forms of democratic life to be upheld in the
context of an advance to socialism and the construction of socialist
society refers more concretely to the countries of Western Europe in
which bourgeois democracy was born, where representative institutions
have a more or less strong tradition and diverse
democratic,ideological, cultural and political currents have operated
more or less freely... [and] which are characterized in varying
degrees... by the presence of sizable intermediate groups between the
proletariat and a big bourgeoisie controlling the basic means of
production.” Only a mere thirty years after Communists played a
key role in the fall of anti-democratic European despotism,
Napolitano vigorously celebrates the dubious Euro-tradition of
bourgeois democracy while catering opportunistically to the interests
of the middle strata. Unfortunately, these illusions still linger
with many Communist Parties. It is this failed perspective that is
vigorously opposed by the KKE.
Similarly,
the mass Spanish Party, under the leadership of Santiago Carillo,
collapsed into near irrelevancy thanks to the fetish of bourgeois
democracy and the pandering to non-proletarian strata. Carillo argued
that ”... the Communist Party should be the party of freedom and
democracy...We must bring into our programme as an integral part, not
only the demands of the workers, but also those of all sections of
society which are under privileged.” These vacuous, shallow
slogans serve the bourgeoisie well, as they do when inscribed in the
platforms of modern bourgeois congressional or parliamentary parties.
No wonder workers fled the PCE in droves; they understood Marxism far
better than did the Party leaders.
Reflections
on these tragic miscalculations should lead one to heed the warnings
against opportunism issued by the KKE:
It
leaves them defenseless against the corrosive work of the bourgeois
and opportunist forces which are trying to assimilate the CPs into
parliamentarianism, to castrate them and make them a part of the
bourgeois political system, with unprincipled collaborations, with
participation in governments of bourgeois management which have a
“left”-“progressive” label, with entrapment in the logic of
class collaboration, with support for imperialist centres, as is
happening e.g. with the CPs of the so-called European Left Party, as
well as other CPs that are following the same path. (G.
Marinos, Member of the PB of the CC
, KKE)
In
the wake of the deepest global economic crisis since the Great
Depression, the idea that Communist and Workers Parties should
struggle to lead capitalism out of the weeds-- to better “manage”
capitalism-- is an absurd strategy guaranteed to further marginalize
the prospects for socialism. If only the Communists (or Communists in
alliance with others) can rescue capitalism, why would they do so?
Sue
Webb fails to frame the KKE positions in the context of class
partisanship, an error that guarantees confusion and
misunderstanding. She fails to find a difference between fighting for
reforms in the framework of capitalism and refusing to take the side
of a bourgeois class, a distinction that the KKE sharply makes. Where
reforms benefit working people-- increases and improvements in public
education, social welfare, public health, etc,-- Communists fight
harder than anyone and accept allies unconditionally. But where
workers are asked to stand with the bourgeoisie-- in sacrificing
wages and benefits to make their employer more competitive, in
boycotting products produced by foreign workers-- Communists urge
that workers stand aside.
Sue
Webb charges the KKE with discounting emerging economies as rivals to
Western imperialism:
“the concept of the BRICs countries... or others, such as in Latin
America, emerging as challenges to Western imperialism is rejected.”
But
this is absurd; Communists see these countries as imperialist rivals
to Western imperialism. That is, they have their own designs upon the
global economy, their own expansionist interests. At the same time,
Communists oppose aggression and war on the part of imperialist
powers in every case and of every stripe. For example, Communists
fervently oppose US intervention in Venezuela; they oppose EU and US
meddling in Ukraine. However, they do not support the respective
national bourgeoisies. This is in contrast to some “Marxist”
organizations that vacillated on or capitulated to regime changes or
“democratic” missionary work in countries such as Iraq or Libya.
Sue
Webb scoffs at the KKE rejection of the term “financialization.”
“Identifying
financialization as a particular feature of today's capitalism is a
hoax, a diversion. Capitalism is capitalism.” One
might well ask her: if capitalism is not capitalism, then what is it?
I'm sure it’s lost on her that the notion that there is good
capitalism and there is bad capitalism is alien to Marxism. Social
Democracy and its genetic relatives all attempt to find a good
capitalism to ride toward socialism. Of course in every case they
have failed-- capitalism doesn't go in that direction.
Profit
is the driving force of capitalism; it is impossible to imagine
capitalism without profit. And profit-seeking shapes the trajectory
of capitalism. Like a rabid predator, capitalists seek profits
everywhere-- in the capital goods sector, in the consumer goods
sector, in the service sector, and in the financial sector. The fact
that the financial sector played a bigger role in profit-seeking in
recent times sheds little light on capitalism's fundamental
operation. Rather, anointing financial activity as a unique species of
capitalism only obfuscates the basic mechanisms of capitalist
accumulation. It adds nothing.
That
the global crisis first broke out in capitalist financial centers is
undeniable. But the fact that the initial eruptions were the result
of processes long set in motion is equally undeniable. Social
democrats would have us believe that the crisis was caused by
aberrant behavior, a feverish fixation on financial maneuvers easily
repaired by regulation and reform. This is nonsense. This is not
Marxism.
Thus,
the term “financialization” is a kind of hoax. A term favored by
those too lazy or too afraid to examine the inner workings of a
rapacious system.
One
does not have to agree with every perspective, every formulation of
the KKE to recognize that they are taking the lead on issues facing
the World Communist Movement; they are asking the hard questions that
challenge old habits, easy assumptions, and unexamined positions.
Yes, they challenge convenient beliefs that make for easy interaction
with other left forces, but they do so from fidelity to the Communist
tradition. Yes, they do not put consensus-for-the-sake-of-consensus
ahead of principle. But those of us who want to restore vitality to
the Communist movement must show a deep appreciation-- and not
contempt-- for their selfless commitment to resurrecting a militant
Communism based upon the foundations laid by Marx and Lenin.
For
all its self-congratulatory bluster about escaping from dogmatism,
sectarianism, and “alien” ideas, Sue Webb's Party is about to
sink into oblivion. As with a sinking ship, the CPUSA 's leadership
is jettisoning its deck chairs and cabin furniture as fast as the
water rises. Gone are the Party archives, the Party newspaper, Party
bookstores, Party organizations, education, and even Party meetings.
Gone are the Party symbols, the organizational principles, the
ideology, and even the greetings of comradeship. In their place are
Facebook and Twitter communications, telephone and video conferences,
and common cause with liberal groups between the mandatory efforts in
support of Democratic Party election campaigns.
Sue
Webb says: “The
outlook and policies of our party fit well into the mainstream of the
world communist movement as expressed at the Lisbon meeting last
November.”
Would
that it were so! The current CPUSA leadership rejects audacious
approaches to reaching socialism while waiting passively for the
second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The New Deal. They
draw their strategic line from the desperate, defensive measures
necessitated by the rise of fascism eighty years ago, a temporary
front with non-working class forces that quickly betrayed that
alliance after World War II and the fall of fascism. Sam Webb and his
leadership coterie remain locked in the thinking of another time.
“Well
into the mainstream”? I think not. The World Communist Movement is
growing again thanks, in part, to lively, frank conversations about
the way forward, as occurred in Lisbon. While consensus remains
illusive, the process of discussion is, nevertheless, clarifying and
unifying. But for those captured in the web of opportunism, the
future is bleak.
Zoltan
Zigedy