The Communist Party USA? It ceased having anything to do with communism back around 1920, when it, like most parties around the world with "communist" in their name, became a front for the new Soviet state, and acted from then on as nothing more than a transmission belt for the foreign policy of this state, which imprisoned and even executed any actual communists in the USSR.
There's a pretty amazing story of how the CPUSA had prepared a rally on 6/22/41 at Madison Square Garden in New York to oppose US possible entry into WWII, as the Soviet Union was operating on the basis of the August 1939 Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact. Well, that morning, the German army launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. The party's leaders and the rally's attendees, to their horror, found a Garden full of banners opposing the war. So on the spot they concocted a story that infiltrators snicked in and placed up the banners so as to sabotage the rally, which was turned into a gathering demanding immediate US entry into the war. This apparently was one of the events which motivated Orwell's theme in Nineteen Eighty Four of sudden shifts in alliances and pretenses that the previous alliances had never existed.
DSA never had anything to do with "socialism." It was founded by Michael Harrington, who was never anything more than a lukewarm social democrat. That's an ideology which proposes capitalism with a human face via lots of state intervention. It has been a totally mainstream political grouping in much of the world, and quite compatible with grossly repressive pro capitalist policies. The first such party to hold state power was in Germany starting two days before the end of WWI. The party, under the premiership of Rudolf Noske, bloodily repressed massive insurrections by workers and the military ranks, including the summary execution of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, former party members in the parliament.
None of the above. I do draw from Bakunin and Kropotkin, as well as libertarian/council communists such as E.P. Thompson, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Sylvia Pankhurst, Paul Mattick and the German/Dutch ultra-left, Rosa Luxemburg, Andre Breton and the Surrealists, The Situationists,...
The Communist Party USA? It ceased having anything to do with communism back around 1920, when it, like most parties around the world with "communist" in their name, became a front for the new Soviet state, and acted from then on as nothing more than a transmission belt for the foreign policy of this state, which imprisoned and even executed any actual communists in the USSR.
There's a pretty amazing story of how the CPUSA had prepared a rally on 6/22/41 at Madison Square Garden in New York to oppose US possible entry into WWII, as the Soviet Union was operating on the basis of the August 1939 Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact. Well, that morning, the German army launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. The party's leaders and the rally's attendees, to their horror, found a Garden full of banners opposing the war. So on the spot they concocted a story that infiltrators snicked in and placed up the banners so as to sabotage the rally, which was turned into a gathering demanding immediate US entry into the war. This apparently was one of the events which motivated Orwell's theme in Nineteen Eighty Four of sudden shifts in alliances and pretenses that the previous alliances had never existed.
DSA never had anything to do with "socialism." It was founded by Michael Harrington, who was never anything more than a lukewarm social democrat. That's an ideology which proposes capitalism with a human face via lots of state intervention. It has been a totally mainstream political grouping in much of the world, and quite compatible with grossly repressive pro capitalist policies. The first such party to hold state power was in Germany starting two days before the end of WWI. The party, under the premiership of Rudolf Noske, bloodily repressed massive insurrections by workers and the military ranks, including the summary execution of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, former party members in the parliament.
Fourth International, Bakuninite, Kropotkinite, or Johnson-Forest? I’d love to see a deeper critique of the CPUSA.
None of the above. I do draw from Bakunin and Kropotkin, as well as libertarian/council communists such as E.P. Thompson, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Sylvia Pankhurst, Paul Mattick and the German/Dutch ultra-left, Rosa Luxemburg, Andre Breton and the Surrealists, The Situationists,...