By K. A. Tyusha
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 ultra-left 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!