Millions of Americans, especially young ones, prefer socialism to capitalism. The capitol domes in state after state ring with the voices of tens of thousands of labor activists and their allies. The need for study and popular explanation of tactics of unity is urgent. Who could NOT want a much larger Communist Party – one with the capacity to engage with millions?

I agree with Tony Pecinovsky’s recent article, "Organizational Rubric, Power and Relevance: A Close Look At a Proud Organization," that the Communist Party needs to get in fighting trim. Tony gets right to the point: We should not spend our resources on activities that do not build that capacity.

The Communist Party needs to change and it needs to change fast. We’re not open enough to volunteers. Not open enough to member initiatives. There’s too much waiting for the go-ahead from on high. Too much worry about doing things exactly right rather than not doing them at all. Too much feeling that this is OUR party and not that of the whole class and especially that of the younger generation.

We need a quicker response time – we literally need to get back to new members within 24 hours, not 24 days. We need to be open to other forms of organization and points of engagement in addition to clubs. We need to be willing to experiment to provide every form of participation and connection possible. And we need to build our organization corresponding to how people and this generation live, open to different levels of participation. Just because we always did something some way doesn’t mean it is still right. And yes, we do need to meet deadlines and carry out tasks.

I share Tony’s frustration with organizational practices that are too often big on talk but slow on action.

But the distinction Tony proposes between ideology and getting results leads in a wrong direction and I don’t think will get us results.

Perhaps to emphasize the urgency of the need for quick and effective change, Tony also minimizes the history and impact of our organization. I think that’s historically inaccurate.

We all agree on the goals, but will we achieve them if we remove ideology from the discussion of organization and focus instead on a rubric based on stakeholder accountability, deliverables, rating performance, timelines, mutually agreed upon contracts for success, stakeholder buy–in, investor base, leveraging, and new definitions of power and self-interest? I don’t think so.

Let’s look at the question of growth of the Communist Party from a wider lens, that of history. The size and organizational level of the Communist Party is first and foremost a result of material conditions of the working class and the class struggle. Like the labor movement, the party’s size and very existence are linked to the conditions of the class struggle.

The Party experienced its biggest growth in the years of the 30s and 40s – the time of the Great Depression and the organization of the industrial unions. The cause of this growth can be traced not to the adoption of better organizing techniques but to a mass uprising of the people. The primary driving force was objective conditions. Having said that, the subjective factors – the factors that we CAN control - can be decisive. And we saw that in that period of the 30s and 40s, our movement responded heart and soul to the crises enveloping our nation’s people. No doubt they were moved by the dynamic input of the new members. The Communist Party then, along with the whole peoples movement, adopted new mass approaches including vibrant culture and militant action. The Party’s bold ideology was a key element in that growth – the fight against racism, industrial unionism, free speech.

I agree with the urgency of making changes but to imply, as "Organizational Rubric, Power and Relevance" does, that the Communist Party has not been relevant for a long, long time is to look at history shallowly. 

Today as we’re riding the current of an upsurge, we should temper our pride in our accomplishments with some working class modesty. The comrades who preceded us somehow preserved our organization through arrests, mass firings, seizures of assets and unrelenting ideological assault.

In fact, the bulk of our organization’s 90+ year history has not been riding the crest of a mass upsurge, such as the 15 year period spanning the 30’s and 40’s or the student upsurge of the early 70s. Rather it was the tough slog of breaking through the isolation of the 20s, the McCarthy attack of the 50s, the domination of the labor movement by the right wing business unionists of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

When we talk about the “labor led peoples coalition” today it’s out there on the streets to see. But in those days, it was a theoretical concept that took a lot of explaining and a stretch of faith. Yet it was the Communist Party that noted the fresh winds in the labor movement, participated in the building of rank and file caucuses, black caucuses and women's caucuses, worked with every small opening available, working on the ground, below ground, finding the possibilities in the most difficult situations. That’s a tough row to hoe.

The Party’s impact in those challenging times couldn’t be measured in the elections influenced or the folks who were willing to openly embrace it or its members. Nevertheless, not a decade nor a generation has passed in which the Communist Party has not impacted the class struggle in a positive way. Through thick and thin the Communist Party has linked labor with the African American struggle and the immigrant rights movement, stood up for affirmative action, peace and international solidarity. We have always been practitioners of the science of working class unity.

Now that we see the floodgates open to participating in the big stream, it’s not necessary to denigrate the work that we’ve done and in another period might also return to.

Here’s an example that comes to my mind: communist organizers Claude Lightfoot and Jack Kling were two leaders, black and white, in Chicago’s unemployed movement in the 30’s. They spoke at street corner rallies to tens of thousands. They led delegations that put peoples’ furniture back in their house. They led a Communist party in Chicago of thousands. When I met them in the 70s they still led the party in Chicago, with the same skills and organizing methods. But in between had been a period of severe reaction and a labor movement that allied itself with the bosses. Membership stagnated; growth almost stopped. However, the lack of growth could not be attributed to bad organizational methods. And despite difficulties, many important things were still accomplished under their leadership.

Recently there was an experiment within the labor movement to institute some what were described at the time as transformational changes in organizing practices. Although some of the changes were positive (others weren’t) the radical growth predicted by the proponents failed to materialize. In the labor movement, good organizing methods are very important, but they don’t make up for underlying objective factors.

So at this moment, when members are again streaming into our party, it is important to accurately gauge the reason for past difficulties so as not to incorrectly attribute them to subjective conditions.

Now I’d like to register a friendly disagreement with some new concepts of “power” and “self-interest” put forward in Tony’s article in relation to the question of building the Communist Party.

First we have to make clear that despite its name the Communist Party USA is not a political party in the way most Americans understand that term – that is, our main activity is not to raise money to run or oppose candidates for elected office.  Nor, however, are we a charity or a social service or even social justice group. We are fighting for the welfare of the working class – present and future, understanding that this is the path to peace and justice and survival for humanity and our planet.

So while it’s appropriate to talk about “building power,” our focus can’t be on building power for our organization. Instead, it should be about building power for our class. This is a meaningful distinction, not just a play on words. Our task is ambitious – to see the labor movement stronger, other working class and peoples’ movements stronger and the class consciousness of the whole class stronger. The definition of power cited in Tony’s article “the ability to control, prevent or cause change” does not quite fit the bill. We need a class-based definition. Our organization has no power it exercises by itself. As Karl and Fred told us “we have no interests apart from the class.”

Tony calls on us to organize based on “self interest” and he’s right. But self interest is very connected to ideology. Everyone operates out of self interest; the challenge is how they see their self interest. Why contrast those who would join for “altruistic” reasons (altruistic = concern for the welfare of others) with those who want to be in an an organization that’s effective and relevant to their immediate needs? I think it’s a false dichotomy. The point of class consciousness is one can and must be both to be effective in either. The magic appeal of class consciousness is that being for others is the most effective way I can be for myself.

I understand that a lot of the concepts mentioned in Tony’s article come to us from the not-for-profit movement. The not for profit is the dominant organizational form of today’s social justice movement. The not for profit movement is also a place where we meet with some of our most valued allies. Many of the new and valuable organizational tools and methods have been developed there.

However, we must also keep in mind that the main source of funding for not for profits is corporate foundations (subsidized by substantial tax breaks). Therefore not-for-profits by and large are forced into an organizational form, and, dare I say, rubric that corresponds to the requirements of their funders. They impose a corporate model of organization: with boards whose dual responsibilities a) are to make policy; and b) to appeal to the funders. Paid staff carry out the day to day work. The rubrics they use to evaluate and make grants in the first place comes from schools of business, Thus, the demand for deliverables, results based methods, etc. Corporations pretend to use "objective" measures for evaluation but there is no proof that these measurement criteria are valid.

“Results oriented” sounds good; the concept was developed in opposition to process oriented. However, in the “business” of building class consciousness, process IS important. For example, in union organizing, do we judge our work only by how many members sign up (results oriented) or also by achievement of an organizing committee (process)? In our line of work – building class consciousness – I would say that we care a lot about the process as well as the measurable results. Building unity, class consciousness, leadership and experience in struggle are hard to quantify.

We can’t treat our members, whether they are on the payroll or volunteers as employees and measure them by corporate standards. Our motivator is ideology – a high level understanding of self-interest. I don’t think production goals are suited to peoples organizations.

There are, of course, some very important social justice organizations that are NOT dependent on corporate funding: unions. And thus unions are among the most democratic, grass roots-based organizations in American life. They follow a working class model of organization – a place with elected leadership and an opportunity for working class people to develop in leadership: as shop steward, local committee member (civil rights, health and safety, solidarity) local union officer, central labor council member and so on.

Another notable exception is that the Communist Party was born in working class struggles and is funded through contributions of its members and supporters. This is not a small achievement over almost 100 years of persecution. Consistency and stability on questions like the importance of the fight against racism, anti imperialism, class-struggle trade unionism, union democracy and coalition building tactics have made an incalculable contribution to the peoples movement in this country.

The successes and sustainability of the Communist Party deserve to be studied and given credence every bit as much as the organizational principles proclaimed which do not have a proven success record.
 
There are many lessons to learn from every generation of fighters.

I still agree with Tony’s main point. We need more discussion about what works and what doesn’t. And we need to draw our new and young members into the discussion.

Thanks to Tony for getting the ball rolling.

Photo: Map showing locations of hundreds of new members since 2010. (PA photo services)