This May Day comes at an incredible time for the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA). Earlier this month, we successfully held our 3rd Congress at Arrow Park in Monroe NY, celebrating 10 years since we formed from our pre-party formation, the National Council of Communists USA (NCCUSA).

What the PCUSA has accomplished in 10 years cannot be downplayed. The Party has attracted new members from almost all 50 states and has active cells in every region of the country. In the last few years, we even became a majority cadre party, meaning most our members have
attained rank of cadre in our party rather than candidates and associates. We’ve been active in the labor movement, civil rights movement and anti-war movement since our founding and we’ve consistently shown our solidarity with the working-class of this country and all oppressed
peoples. So what have we done? Why join the Party of Communists USA?

The Party of Communists USA strives to be the vanguard party of the proletariat, building off of the examples set by the Bolsheviks from the time of the October Revolution, as well as that of the old Communist Party USA before 2000. We are dedicated to continuing the legacy of the old Communist Party by embracing our Marxist-Leninist, pro-Soviet roots and rebuilding what the revisionists burned after the death of General Secretary of the CPUSA, Gus Hall.

In that vein, we’ve brought back famous publications we lost like The Worker and New Masses, digitized and archived old party publications to the American Archive of Marxism Leninism at leninists.org, established real brick-and-mortar party centers again in Seattle and Vermont, and are actively developing our connections with the international Communist movement. Many of our members came directly from the old CPUSA, like former General Secretary of the PCUSA, Angelo D’Angelo, who spent over 40 years in that party. He remained with the CPUSA until, as he says, “we didn’t leave them, they left us.” He and others then formed the NCCUSA , which became the PCUSA in 2014. Their experience is
priceless and they have carefully guided our party on the ideological tightrope of Marxism-Leninism.

Not only do we claim the legacy of the old party and the American communist movement, but we have been internationally recognized by countless communist parties, including ruling parties, such as Cuba, Laos, China etc. In the short time we’ve been around, we have forged international ties around the world and have shown our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, India, Eastern Ukraine and more. We’ve sent international delegations abroad to Latin America, Europe, East Asia and Africa. We’ve received hundreds of international greetings to our Party Congresses and our work has been recognized and praised by the parties internationally. We have played a key role in the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, which his drawn a line in the sand of the international communist movement in many international issues and made clear our stance on the current geopolitical realities. No other so-called communist or socialist party in the United States has the level of international relations as we do, nor do any put in the international work that we do.

We are also a party dedicated to fighting for all working-class people, and thus we are supportive of and try our best to be involved in the women’s struggles, the black struggles, the indigenous struggles, the Latino struggles, the LGBT+ struggles and many other struggles for the
civil rights/civil liberties of all people in the United States. It is stated in our party pledge, which every member is required to recite and stand by in their party work:

“I solemnly pledge to take my place in the forefront of the struggle for the rights of all nationally oppressed people; against anti-Soviet sentiments and behavior, anti-Communism, racism, misogyny, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, trans-phobia, police brutality, discrimination against the disabled, and to struggle against the chauvinist lies of the capitalist class.”

We have commissions established for many of these different oppressed groups and we are building mass organizations to fight on these issues as well. We also firmly defend the bourgeois-democratic civil liberties we are guaranteed in the US Constitution and stand with all government whistleblowers, political prisoners and anti-imperialist journalists that have been brutalized and repressed by the US government.

We expressly stand with the Uhuru movement against the FBI raids and charges they’ve received and call on all other progressive organizations to do the same. We reject all repressive legislation in the US and reiterate the 1st Amendment rights of every American to freedom of
speech, expression, religion, protest and petition.

We also are committed to building our connections within the labor movement, and pursuing a policy of industrial concentration to build our forces in the shops and build the proletariat character of our party. Beyond this, we stand side by side with the trade union movement in the United States and we have many union members in our party that have been excelling at this work.

Furthermore, in the PCUSA labor plan of action in our party program, we unite to oppose all anti-worker, anti-union trade deals, support for low wage workers and the fight for $15 and a union campaign, build movement to repeal Taft-Hartley section 14 (b), campaign against right to work laws, support effort to overturn the CWA vs. Beck decision, build support for the anti-imperialist, principled trade union positions of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), and actively support and build the WFTU in North America. This working-class orientation sets us apart from petty-bourgeois radicals and right-wing opportunist forces that rely on the intelligentsia, lumpenproletariat or even sections of the bourgeois for change. There is no other party in the US more dedicated to the working-class than the PCUSA, and this positions our party well to become a vanguard of the working-class for a socialist revolution.

What also makes us significant is our firm, principled, Marxist-Leninist ideology. We trace our ideological roots to Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. We defend and learn from the great Soviet experience to this day, as well as the legacy of socialist states that have also suffered counter-revolutions such as the German Democratic Republic, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. This is our history, and unlike the New Left and many ultraleft currents like Maoism, Trotskyism and Anarchism, we don’t toss it away for what flaws there are. We see the world correctly through the lens of dialectical and historical materialism, and our analyses of the world are objective and can be proven/disproven by science and the fundamental laws of nature. We don’t delude ourselves with political daydreaming and outlandish, idealist perspectives. This is a great strength of ours, as it allows us to work with the material conditions of the working class and actually build a steady movement towards the establishment of scientific socialism.

We constantly study this theory and history both in the public, online Peoples School for Marxist-Leninist Studies 51 weeks a year every Tuesday, and in the private Jones Foster School for Party Education, our Party school aimed at building cadre in the party and informing our
party work and ethic. You can check out the work of the PSMLS at peoplesschool.us and can join a class of ours to dip your toes in party-sponsored collective education before you decide whether or not to join the PCUSA. It’s a great place to start and we absolutely love getting new comrades at the school.

Our party sees fascism as the most grave threat to mankind, and it is visibly on the rise again in Ukraine, Israel, Italy, etc. In our very own country we’ve seen the rise of the far-right movement of American fascists who are largely connected by their christian-nationalism, white
supremacy and American exceptionalism and who have marched with torch-lights in Charlottesville, Virginia, clashed with people on the streets of Portland, Oregon and stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC in 2021. We recall the 7th Congress of the Communist
International in 1935 and the United Front policy as laid out by comrade Dimitrov. There, Dimitrov explained,

“Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

This is the definition we follow and we uphold the United Front policy of Dimitrov, as well as the Popular Front policy of the old CP during the late 1930s and 1940s, where we united with all anti-fascist, pro-democratic forces in a united and well-coordinated effort against war and fascism, and we made whatever necessary compromises at the time to achieve this goal. The imperialists have long kept the embers of fascism burning, and now the flames of fascism are rising again and the PCUSA is dedicated to helping extinguish it again, hopefully for good. We are dedicated to building a popular front against war and fascism in the present day, and so far we’ve had great success.

Our youth league, the League of Young Communists is also powerful and growing and dedicated to the education of its members and the immersing of our young comrades in the theory and praxis of our revolutionary movement. We believe the task of a young communist is not to
try to change the party or lead it right off the bat, but rather to learn and familiarize themselves with the communist movement and our party. We have begun leading LYC Summer Camps to build camaraderie and skills within the league and we have quarterly campaigns that task our
members with real in-person actions, as opposed to other organizations that just let in youth and then direct them to do nothing.

So why join the Party of Communists USA? In short, because we are serious about the tasks that lie before us, we are growing and building real legitimacy both internationally and domestically, we are bringing back that which was destroyed by imperialists and revisionists and lastly because we need YOU. If you are a working-class American, you belong in the Party of Communists USA. We aren’t a book club or a discord server. We are a communist party that will put you to work and make you into a disciplined, successful Bolshevik, and we pray that you will
carry on the torch of our movement and bring about the fall of imperialism and fascism and the rise of socialism. So what are you waiting for? Join us today at https://partyofcommunistsusa.net/contact-join/ and we will reach out to you for an interview to join us! As Marx said “you have nothing to lose but your chains!”

Happy May Day 2024!

The post The Rising American Communists – Why You Should Join the PCUSA This May Day! appeared first on The Worker.

So declares the front cover of Michael Hanusiak’s 1976 book Lest We Forget. Hanusiak uses extensive historical evidence to show the close link between Ukrainian nationalism and Nazism during the Great Patriotic War (World War II), a connection which persists to the present day, as exemplified by the fascist regime in Kiev.

As Victory Day approaches, we remember the immense sacrifices which the progressive people of the world, led by the Soviet Union, made to defeat the menace of fascism. Works such as Lest We Forget preserve this memory, and they provide an important warning to not underestimate the crimes of which present-day fascism is capable.

Lest We Forget is now available to read on the American Archive of Marxism-Leninism: https://leninists.org/index.php/Lest_We_Forget

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Comrade General Secretary Emeritus Angelo D’Angelo spoke at the Third Congress of the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA). Comrade Angelo is a founding member of the PCUSA, and he was the General Secretary of the Party for the first ten years of its existence.

The transcript of his speech is given below:

Pete Seeger’s father was in the Party, the Party that I was in for 42 years, the old Party which I still love. Your first love comrades, you don’t forget your first love. [laughter]

Apparently the current leadership [of the Communist Party USA] is not Communist; I have nothing to do with the current leadership.

But we own this place [Arrow Park, site of the Third Congress] through our organization the IWO – International Workers Order. You see the banners that they got from the IWO? That big red banner. The American Russian Organization of Workers section here got it from the IWO.

The IWO was very important during the Popular Front period. I’ll never forget Comrade Gus Hall – he said, you throw a pebble into the water in a lake. The pebble falls to the bottom of the lake, but the ripples keep going until they reach the middle of the lake. The Ripple Effect – Gus Hall told us that. And that’s what our mass organizations are – the IWO and all our mass organizations.

You all know that the history of this organization came out of US Friends of the Soviet People. Very important. We are working on the precious Soviet Films there, which we received through the work of comrade Dan. I met Dan at a Left Forum meeting from US Friends. He got us the Soviet films, which we have now going to our center in Vermont. You can’t get these films anymore. They’re all made in the Soviet Union.

The statues outside. They were given to Arrow Park by the Soviet government. Not the Russian government – the Soviet government.

Right now, the Communist world unfortunately is divided again. It is divided again as it was during the period of Mao Zedong and the Sino-Soviet split, which affected every Communist party in the world. It put us back. Two things happened right after each other – Khrushchev’s speech attacking Stalin, and right after that Maoism. They came hand in hand. One came from the right of the center, the other came from the left of the center. But the result was the same. It weakened us tremendously.

In the 1950s, the Capitalists tried to decapitate all of our organizations. They put Browder in prison. They put the leaders of the Communist Party, including Comrade Gus Hall and Comrade Henry Winston, in prison. The theory was that if you cut off the head of a snake, the snake dies. That’s what the FBI said, and that’s why they did that. They come after the leaders. Remember that.

But the leaders also can cause a problem. Don’t forget Gorbachev. Michael Lucas, one of my heroes in Canada who passed away, Northstar Compass Magazine. I met Joti’s [Brar] father in Canada – two or three meetings there. He did excellent books on perestroika, by the way.

You have to understand what that did to us. It’s called destroika, not perestroika. Destroika! [applause] Everybody was saying how great Gorbachev is. Reagan and Thatcher loved him, and so did the Communist leadership in many parties of the world. They thought this guy was the best thing since sliced bread. You young people don’t know what that means. [laughter]

They all thought this guy was great. I heard him speak at the UN in 1985. In 1985 Gorbachev came to the UN, and he talked about “universal human values”. That’s when I knew something was not right. The head of a Communist country, a worker’s state, talks about universal human values, what we all have in common. We have nothing in common, comrades, with the Capitalists. Zero. Your boss and you have nothing in common. Don’t ever forget that. So when this guy Gorbachev was saying that, I knew something was wrong. And that’s when I started to contact other people in the Party against Gorbachev. And I was sent down to 23rd Street [the headquarters of the Communist Party USA], put in a seat with a light in a ceiling. I felt like I was in the FBI, being interrogated. The leaders of the Communist Party were there – Jarvis Tyner, Esther Moroze. They said, “You cannot do this. You cannot go around and attack perestroika. We all agree with perestroika.” I said, “Well we never talked about it at a Congress. Nobody ever agreed with perestroika, comrades.” There was no Congress decision on it. It was all done by the leadership on their own outside of the Central Committee.

So be careful. How did someone like Gorbachev get to the top of the heap? Ask yourself that question. There had to be something wrong. Now, of course, he only got in by one vote. It was Kosygin. And where does Kosygin come from? He originally came from Nikita Khrushchev. By one vote, he [Gorbachev] got to be the General Secretary, and he destroyed everything.

He went to East Germany, the great German Democratic Republic. Many of us love the German Democratic Republic. The first time an anti-fascist German state on German soil. He went and he kissed Honecker at the 40th anniversary celebration. Gorbachev kissed him on both sides. Well, if you’re an Italian like I am, you know what that means. [laughter] When you get kissed on both sides of the cheek, it’s the kiss of death. That means the mafia is going to get you. [laughter]

And that’s what Gorbachev did. He sold Nicaragua down the road. He sold Ethiopia down the road. He sold out the Afghanistan socialist government. He sold the German Democratic Republic, every single country down the road. In fact, Comrade Fidel said there’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust Gorbachev. He’s a plant. And he [Castro] stopped all Soviet periodicals talking about perestroika from coming into Cuba. It’s interesting. So what Fidel saw, many of us others did not see.

I’ll end it with this. It’s easy to be a Communist for one day. “I’m a Communist!” You know. [laughter] It’s harder to be a Communist for a week. It’s harder still to be a Communist for a month. And those of us know what I’m talking about in our Party. It’s even harder to be a Communist for three months. Many people can’t do it. It’s just too much. So to be a Communist for 60 years, to me is miraculous. It’s so important. Bertolt Brecht, you know who he is, German communist put in a concentration camp by Adolf Hitler, he said very clearly: “To struggle for one day is good. To struggle for a week is better. Even a month. But to struggle your whole life for the Communist movement, that is indispensable.” That is indispensable. Those are the people. The Brar people is a perfect example of that in England. Those are the people that kept our red flag flying. So I just want to mention that everybody here, like my friend Dan from way back. He had hard times in the old CP, they gave him hard times. But he’s still here. Kamryn is here. Everyone here. When I first met Alex, I told him “You’re a diamond in the raw”. [applause] And anyone should be grateful to have you. And so I grabbed him right away. [laughter]

Just looking around – Jake. When I first met Jake, he had been living in Japan. He had been from a background of one parent was Jewish and one parent was not. So he was not brought up with any Jewish history or traditions the way I was brought up, an Italian. A “goy” as we say in Yiddish. A goy! I was brought up with this. Everybody in the Party where I grew up in New York was Jewish. I found maybe one or two Italians. Ernest DeMaio and Pete Cacchione were Italian. But everybody else – I was brought up with these Jewish traditions, foods, everything like that. So I came across this guy, and I said he needs to get back to his roots, and I’m glad to say he has gotten back to his roots. [applause] And he said that it’s great that I have found my roots as a Jew in the Communist movement. [applause]

I want to add to that. I found the Party because of my Christian background. That’s how I found the Party, and that’s why in Nicaragua there’s a connection between the religion and the government. Because what the Communists did during the Vietnam war, the old Jewish communists in the streets with the rain coming down, singing Yiddish songs against the war in Vietnam. They were in their 80s, and all the 80 year old Christians that I knew went to Church on Sunday, and I never heard from them again. Everything you heard from them was “Black this, Jew this.” Remember, I come from a background where Italian-Americans were anti-Jewish. They said that the Jews killed Christ. This is what I was brought up with. And remember the Pope during World War II was called the Fascist Pope. He had the bells ringing in Austria when they had the Anschluss and Austria joined Germany. He told the Catholic Church to ring the bells in joy. So that’s the background I had come across. And I see these people marching for peace, fighting against racism, and for labor unions. These are the real Christians.

I’ll end it with this. Thirteen years old, I read a book that changed my life. You’ll never believe the book. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, [laughter] wrote a book called “Masters of Deceit” in which he said the Communists are in everything. They’re in the peace movement. They’re in your churches. They’re under every bed. [laughter] I said, wait a minute, you’re talking about people involved with peace and churches, working men, labor unions? How can these be bad people? They’re fighting for good causes, so they must be good people. That is the reason why I’m a Communist and I’ve been a Communist for 64 years, the best years of my life. [applause]

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The first day of the encampment featured a Passover ceremony, as well as speeches from various student organizations.

As of April 24th 2024 (the third day), the UC has not released a statement yet on the encampment, nor have the police been called.

Party of Communists USA (PCUSA) and League of Young Communists USA (LYCUSA) members from Northern California have participated in the encampment since the first day, and continue to stay there in solidarity with the students.

The American Student Union (ASU) will also be participating in encampments along the East Coast for the same cause.

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To our Soviet Ukrainian comrades who fought Fascism in 1945 and continue to fight Fascism in 2024 against the current usurpers who have taken over the Ukrainian government. May the flames of friendship continue between the former Soviet peoples and the American people!

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There is a widespread tendency to blame this dangerous situation on science and technology. However, the real source of the problem can be found elsewhere. It lies in the very nature of the profit oriented capitalist system under which we are forced to live.

The U.S. military has the largest carbon footprint of any single organization on the planet, and higher than that of over 140 countries. In addition to the U.S. military’s extreme greenhouse gas emissions, it has an ongoing track record of supplying foreign regimes with cluster bombs and depleted uranium. This depleted uranium can make areas where they are dropped hazardous for decades. The budget of the U.S.
military could be reduced by 70% and the U.S. would still be spending more on its military than any other country.

The main impulse of our social system is the quest for profit. The result is unplanned, anarchic production, which allows the pollution and indiscriminate plunder of our natural resources. The ones responsible are the monopolies, the corporations, who have made enormous profits while they pollute and destroy our environment. It is estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed just to remedy the pollution and destruction wrought by the monopolies and their predecessors.

The major victims are the working people, who suffer from the effects of pollution every minute of their lives.

The irony of the situation is that the only remedies now being proposed by the corporations will bring additional profits to the corporations. Working people, however, always seem to foot the bill for the new technology.

Ultimately, the only solution, of course, is the creation of a planned economy in which the quest for profits has been denigrated and the results of science and technology are prioritized for the benefit of the people.

Party of Communists USA League of Young Communists USA
Environmental Commission

League of Young Communists USA Environmental Commission Political Bureau of the Central Committee

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Party of Communists USA: partyofcommunistsusa.net
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