The Communist Party USA holds your future in its hands.
Hot off the press from the Peoples Weekly World.
NEW YORK — Members of the Communist Party USA national committee meeting here Nov. 10heard Sam Webb, the party’s chairman, say that “in the struggle against the ultra-right we are at the cusp of a political conjuncture which could shift things in favor of the working class.” After “a quarter century of domination,” he said, the right is finally losing momentum.
In his report to the meeting, Webb noted the erosion of Bush administration control over Congress and of the administration’s ability to dominate politics at home and abroad. But, he warned, the right wing “is not a spent force. The threats against Iran and the continuing push for authoritarian rule here at home need to be taken seriously.”
The report described how “the broadly based labor-led movement has resisted Bush” from the beginning and how, as a result, “new forces came into play including antiwar and immigrant rights groups,” culminating, in 2006, “with an election victory that gave control of Congress to the Democratic Party.”
While that shift was not a “revolutionary change,” Webb noted, it helped propel critical debates along positive lines, adding impetus to the drive for diplomacy rather than military force and for government curbs on corporations that run wild, and to the drive for economic democracy and against racism.
Webb defined the 2008 elections as “a squaring off between the growing movement of labor and other democratic forces” and the far right. “At stake is our country’s future,” he said, calling for a “decisive defeat” of Republicans and increasing the Democratic majorities in Congress, especially the number of progressives.
Warning that it would be a mistake to equate the Democratic and Republican parties at this time, Webb said, “Defeating the far right is to the advantage of and critical to the survival and growth of the people’s movements.” Such an electoral sweep will “give people’s forces more leverage and independence,” he said.
He called for a strong emphasis on the fight to reverse the deteriorating economic conditions of working people.
The jobs, mortgage and housing crises and the entire economic struggle of working people must be brought into the electoral arena, Webb said. This includes the fight for manufacturing jobs, for union organizing rights and for universal health care, he said.
Joelle Fishman, chair of the CPUSA’s political action commission, also addressed the national committee members with a PowerPoint presentation on the stakes in the 2008 elections, which is available for public forums.
Fishman said the defeat of the Republican Party “could change the political map in our country,” and urged an all-out grassroots mobilization to turn out the vote and protect it from GOP dirty tricks.
Someone’s got to pay for the polioticians claptrap antifreedom policies. But what is hard to understand is the alliance between big business and socialism. I would have thought there were more votes in being nice to small business but the left consider them to be the scum of the earth. Probably because they are hard to control whereas big business, quangos, NGOs and charities toe the party line nicely as long as their making money.
Yes, because the NZ Labour Party is SO anti capitalism…
Most communist parties have gone well beyond that stage Kevin.
Most, especially those descended from the old pro-Soviet tradition have been working with and infltrating social democratic parties for decades.
The CPUSA began infiltrating the democrats in the 1930s at the latest.
Communists began infiltrating New Zealand Labour in the same period.
Where do you think Labour’s leftist policies come from?
Unusual. Its not the usual strategy of the communists to support a party because they are all just “instruments of capitalist oppression”. They would usually work actively to make conditions worse for workers in the hope of “uniting” them in revolution. Could it be that they realise a domcratic government will be worse for workers in the long run? Why are these archaic political ideologies and parties still around?