Guest Author - Linda Sue Grimes

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was founded in 1919. The first irony that strikes the reader perusing this party’s constitution is the claim that the party “fights for jobs and economic security, a decent and rising standard of living,” but they claim “living standards of workers and the natural environment on which life depends are under constant attack due to the drive for maximum profits inherent in capitalism.” This contradiction, of course, is nowhere explained throughout the party’s literature.

Failure to Abolish Slavery
The next glaring inconsistency as well as historical error is the claim made in the following:

Our country’s founding Revolution exalted the ideals of equality, justice, and democracy, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. Marxists have long hailed its progressive significance, while recognizing its historical limitations, chief of which was the failure to abolish slavery.

Although slavery was not abolished until some seventy years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, it was, in fact, abolished well before the founding of the CPUSA. Then they claim, “We advocate an expanded Bill of Rights to guarantee religious, political, and individual freedoms, but also freedom from poverty, hunger, joblessness, and racism.” It is at this point that the reader realizes the lack of enthusiasm for a party whose constitution is primarily based on fantasy as well as historical error.

Democracy
The following claim sends one running the dictionary to recheck the definitions of “communism” and “democracy”:

. . . the Communist Party of the United States has an outstanding history in the struggles for peace, democratic rights, racial and gender equality, economic justice, union organization, and international solidarity. Our Party is organized on the principle of democratic centralism, combining maximum democratic discussion . . . .

Democracy in the United States means a representative (republican) government, a free-market economy, and a free press. The United State is essentially a classless society, but all citizens already enjoy the privilege of upward mobility, or even downward, if they choose.

The countries, where “communism” has been tried by “revolutionary” strugglers, have experienced pogroms, followed by mass poverty of the populations under a dictatorship; for example, Lenin, Stalin, and Castro serve as the most noted examples of attempted communist government. But this being the United States, it is not altogether surprising that this party would employ use of the term “democracy,” claiming to uphold “democratic rights,” despite its lack of accuracy.

Idealism
On their FAQ page, under a discussion of “socialism,” we find the following interesting admission:

While there have been and are countries where Communist Parties play the leading role in government, there has never yet been a communist society, because such a society will rely on further developments in technology, production, education, and culture.

It might be that the “communist society” that has never been is actually the society they are now living in. What they claim will foster such as society is what only a capitalist economy will engender, especially in technology and production. It is unimaginable that a communist government or any government would be efficient enough to develop technology and production at the level we now experience in the United States. And one of the major problems with our educational system is that it is government run.

Most of the ideals of the Communist Party have, in fact, already been attained by our democratic government and capitalist economic system. And the rest of what they have to say is jargon left over from Marxism, a proven failure.

Reference:
The Communist Party Official Web Site