Study the Communist Manifesto!

GHAC has circulated International Publishers' edition of Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto to working class youth.

Gus Hall, stellar past Marxist-Leninist warrior with the Communist Party of the United States and a founder of the United Steelworkers union, frequently hailed one of the Manifesto's crucial lessons: "of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class." (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848, Int'l Publishers)



(Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: 'Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of its future.')

William Z. Foster of the CPUSA once wrote that: "the Communist Manifesto was the first revolutionary program of the world’s workers. It laid down the solid foundations of proletarian thought and action for the workers thenceforth on their road to socialism. It showed them how to protect themselves under capitalism, how to abolish the capitalist system, and how to build the structure of the new socialist society. Marx, Engels, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and others were to write many books on Marxism in the ensuing decades, and their writings served to elaborate and to buttress the basic propositions of the Manifesto. Today, (more than 160) years after the great document was written, the Communist Manifesto stands as firm as a rock, a clear guide for the international working class, justified by generations of revolutionary experience, and altogether impervious to the attacks of capitalist enemies." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

Lenin, the great successor of Marx and Engels, summed up the significance of the Communist Manifesto:

"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new world-conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat--the creator of a new, communist society." (Lenin, Karl Marx, 1914)

And Lenin could add, with every justification: "This little booklet is worth whole volumes." (Lenin, Frederick Engels, 1895)

Read Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' epic classic online at this link:

Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Order the Manifesto in print from International Publishers.

Long Live Victory Day День Победы May 9!

Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist fighter extraordinaire, hailed the Soviet Union's lead role in the war against "Hitler fascism, the most brutal and bloodiest capitalist dictatorship!" This post is dedicated to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation КПРФ.

May 9 is Victory Day День Победы, a holiday marking the USSR's heroism in smashing imperialist Hitler Germany in WWII!

Henry Winston, stellar late CPUSA chair, put it squarely: "the Soviet Union played the decisive role in saving the world from the racist, genocidal consequences of anti-Sovietism and anti-Communism." William Z. Foster wrote that "had Hitler been able to demolish the Red Army that would have been the end of democracy for an indefinite period. The US, though not falling an immediate victim, could not have long withstood the tremendous power Hitler would then have had at his disposal." (Winston, Race, Class and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers; Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, I.P.)

"The Soviet people won their historic victory in the Great Patriotic War because of the socialist social and state system." (B. Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers, Moscow)

The Communist Party, the party of Lenin, was "the great organizer and inspirer of the national resistance". It "set an example in both battle and labor and greatly strengthened morale. The Party transformed the country into a vast military camp. Hundreds of thousands of Communists went to the front, and their selfless valor and devotion to their socialist homeland, their implacable hatred for the fascist invaders, served as an inspiring example for millions of Soviet soldiers." (Liberation, Progress Publishers, 1974)



(William Z. Foster: "the epic offensive of the Soviet people and their Red Army against the Nazi hordes was guided daily by Generalissimo Stalin")

Stalin roused the Red Army and the guerrilla detachments: "May you be inspired by the victorious banner of Lenin!" (1941)

The American Marxist-Leninist William Z. Foster chronicles the past: "When Hitler’s armies swept across the Soviet border in June 1941, the bourgeois military experts of the West were unanimous in prophesying that it would only be a few weeks until Hitler would crush the USSR completely. In fact, Hitler’s ’blitz’ did carry him fast and far, to the very gates of Leningrad by September, a city he was never to capture. On October 3, the vainglorious Hitler blared out to the world that the Soviet Union was crushed and would never rise again.

"But he counted his chickens before they were hatched. Hitler vastly underestimated the fighting power of the Soviet people, their Red Army and socialist system. The Wehrmacht had been made to pay a terrible price in its drive across Russia. It was battered again in its fruitless attempt to take either Moscow or Leningrad.

"And in January 1943, the fascist’s back was broken at Stalingrad, the most decisive battle in the history of the world. Then began, for the Nazis, their terrible 1, 500 mile retreat, with the Red Army slashing them to pieces all the way, while the United States and Britain kept their enormous armies idling in Britain." Foster declared: "The Communists were wonderful people while they were saving the world from the criminal follies of the capitalist system." The Allies launched the western front "after the European war was basically decided and Hitler licked." (Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

"The Red Army carried out Stalin’s order: the flag of victory was hoisted over Berlin!" (Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Joseph Stalin, 1949)

"The memory of the undying exploits of the peoples of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War will live through the ages." (Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers)

This is the superb anthem Victory Day День Победы.

Enjoy this stunning video with a beautiful song by Joseph Kobzon Иосиф Кобзон:

Bow to Those Great Years

The КПРФ hails A. Harchikov's spectacular Victory.

A legendary piece performed by Eduard Khil Эдуард Хиль:

We'll Stand and Pay the Price!

Fight for Jobs or Income Now!

"The forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner."--Karl Marx, "Wage-Labor and Capital"

The United States is in a jobs crisis. The AFL-CIO Now blog reports (Dec. 2010) that the unemployment rate is near ten percent. 15.1 million proletarians are 'officially' jobless and 27 million more seek work. Black and Latino working class people are hit the hardest. Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, spreads mass pauperization. The army of the unemployed grows. Economic insecurity and poverty, Gus Hall boldly said, is part of the bourgeois pattern "exposed and laid out by Marx, Engels and Lenin."

"The capitalist class," the Communist economist Victor Perlo noted, "has always needed a reserve army of unemployed." V.I. Lenin was right on the mark: "An industrial reserve army of labor is an indispensable attribute of the capitalist economy." Unemployment is a weapon against labor to drive down wages. In times of economic crisis, capitalists lay off workers and impose speed up on workers with jobs. The Soviet Union abolished unemployment. "Not only was there no joblessness in the U.S.S.R.," Hall wrote, "but there was full employment without racism or discriminatory practices."

The working class needs to stand up, speak out and fight back! We require class struggle picketlines, protests and mass people's lobbies that demand Jobs or Income NOW! We must battle for a federal law against layoffs. For a public works program which can provide jobs. Money should be spent to create jobs and rebuild America, not wage imperialist war and occupation. End racism in hiring. Unemployment insurance and food stamps also need to be extended--with no exclusion of workers on strike.



(V.I. Lenin: 'Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.')

Gus Hall, the Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, put it squarely: "It's time to demand that People Come Before Profits!"

In order to turn the economy around and prevent layoffs, the working class must fight to nationalize basic industries--let the proletariat call the shots. Tax the rich. We need to raise our voices for the passage of Employee Free Choice Act, a law which would make it easier to form and join a union in order to bargain for better wages, benefits and conditions. Slash the work week with no cut in pay. Put Labor up front!

Only socialism will finally end unemployment forever. The day approaches when American workers will turn to socialism and completely eliminate joblessness. Socialism will be, William Z. Foster of the Communist Party of the USA of yesteryear eloquently declared, the "climax" of "the everyday struggles of the workers." And Foster is right that "the time will come when the victorious toilers will build a monument to Lenin in New York." But in order to win this society without exploitation, Marxist theory must, as V.I. Lenin taught in What Is To Be Done?, be brought to the working class. We need a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party and a proletarian revolution!

A Pro-Soviet View of Stalin

Lenin put it squarely: "there can be no 'impartial' social science in a society based on class struggle."

J.V. Stalin, a Marxist political figure of the Lenin type, saved the Revolution. Objective conditions in his era were complex. The Soviet Union was a "besieged fortress" facing a hostile capitalist encirclement. Economically backward, it's "advance towards socialism was attended by a sharpening of the class struggle in the country and within the Party." 1941 brought the Nazi "war of plunder and aggrandizement against the USSR." Stalin made grave errors but Marx would have proclaimed that the CPSU and the Soviet people in his epoch "stormed heaven!" J.V. Stalin industrialized the Land of Lenin and built socialism: "the first phase of Communist society." He guided the Great Patriotic War "which ended in the utter defeat of Hitler Germany." The world famous Marxist led the battle against "trends hostile to Leninism within the Party" and popularized ML theory. The memory of Stalin, proletarian fighter extraordinaire, will live through the ages. (Quoted: Lenin, Letter to American Workers, 1918; Stalin and the Central Committee of the CPSU, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1939, International Publishers; Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Joseph Stalin, 1949, International Publishers; Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875; MELI, ibid; Malinin, Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, 1974, Progress Publishers)

Nikita Khrushchev’s vicious denunciation of J.V. Stalin at a "secret" session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU was a shock to the world’s Communist and Workers’ Parties. It influenced their view for decades. Khrushchev’s "exaggerated, one-sided and incomplete" distortions "wrote Stalin out of Soviet history and discussion of his role more or less stopped." Friends of the socialist homeland "gave up the effort of an overall assessment" in "a critical but balanced way." The "enemies of the USSR readily filled this vacuum with shelves of books portraying Stalin as a monster or madman." (Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union, International Publishers, 2004)

Don Currie spoke out eloquently: "The anti-Soviet historical revisionists of our day really don’t care a nit about Stalin or his alleged victims. What they care about is the re-writing of the historical record." (Currie,'Open Letter to Heather Mallick on the Distortions of the Role of Stalin in the Defeat of Hitler Germany', Focus On Socialism)



(Workers raise high the banner of Stalin at a protest led by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation КПРФ)

Yesterday’s genuine Marxist-Leninist movement, partisan towards the USSR, had dual lines. B. Ponomarev’s Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, authored in Moscow’s Brezhnev era, was more rounded than Khrushchev’s ravings: "the CPSU sees two aspects in Stalin’s work: a positive one, which the Party values and a negative side, which it criticizes and denounces.

"During the years Stalin was General Secretary of the CC (he was elected to this post in 1922), the Soviet people, led by the Communist Party and its Central Committee, carried out a task that was colossal for its importance and the difficulties it involved: they built the world’s first socialist society and turned an economically backward country into a leading industrial power.

"During the Great Patriotic War, under the leadership of the Party, the Soviet masses accomplished an immortal feat: they defeated Nazi Germany and her allies, upheld the superb gains of socialism and saved mankind from the threat of enslavement by fascism. After the war, led by the Party, they quickly restored the country’s economy and started the building of communism.

"Along with other leaders of the Party and government, Stalin, as a prominent organizer and theoretician, worked to carry through socialist reforms in the USSR, headed the battle against enemies of Leninism (Trotskyites, Right opportunists and bourgeois nationalists), exposed the intrigues of the capitalist encirclement and did much to enhance the Soviet Union’s defense capability. Moreover, he promoted the world communist and entire liberation movement. All this earned him considerable prestige and popularity.

"But with time all the achievements of the Soviet people, led by the Party, began to be ascribed to him. The personality cult gradually took shape. Stalin overestimated his own contribution to the successes of the party and the whole populace, believed he was infallible and began to abuse the power placed in his hands.

"This was furthered by some negative features of his character. Stalin began to depart from the Leninist principles of collective leadership and the norms of Party life. He committed particularly grave errors in the last years of his life. There were unjustified limitations on democracy, flagrant violations of socialist legality and unfounded repressions."

But Stalin’s errors "neither changed nor could change the nature of socialist society, the genuinely people’s nature of the Soviet system, and they could not shake or weaken the theoretical, political and organizational foundations of the CPSU’s activity. The policy pursued by the Party expressed the basic interests of the Soviet citizens, always enjoyed their support and ensured the successful building of socialism and communism in the USSR." (B. Ponomarev, Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1970, Progress Publishers, Moscow)



(Henry Winston: 'Communists refuse to lend monopoly our assistance in its anti-Soviet perversions of history!')

Here’s the past Marxist stalwart and author of History of the Communist Party of the United States, William Z. Foster, assessing Stalin before the CPSU's 20th Congress:

"On March 5, 1953, in his 74th year, Joseph V. Stalin died as the result of a stroke suffered during his sleep a few days before. This ended over half a century of revolutionary struggle on the part of one of the greatest fighters ever produced by the world’s working class. His death was a tremendous loss to the Soviet people and to the international movement for peace and freedom.

"Stalin was a major theoretician. Perhaps his greatest theoretical work was on the national question, on which he was the world’s leading expert. His epic ideological battle with the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin wreckers also constitutes a Marxist classic. And just on the eve of his death he gave a last example of his profound capacity as an economist by working out the basic economic laws of capitalism and socialism, in his last work, ’Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.’

"Stalin was a magnificent organizer. His building of the Communist Party, the Soviets, and other immense mass organizations of the Soviet people was a real masterwork. His leadership of the party in the mobilization of the people for the driving through of the successive five-year plans, with their building of industry and collectivization of farming, was organizational work beyond compare.

"Stalin, too, was a militant fighting leader of the masses. His whole life was one relentless battle against the enemies of socialism, both within and outside the party. He was a tower of strength as a military commander in the civil war of 1918-1920, and in leading the Soviet people to victory over the Hitler barbarians in 1941-1945, he displayed a peerless fighting spirit and outstanding military genius. During the Cold War, the arrogant capitalist imperialists also came to dread the indomitable spirit and brilliant diplomacy of Stalin. He was indeed a man of steel, as his name signified.

"At Stalin’s funeral, Malenkov said of this brilliant and courageous leader: ’Comrade Stalin, the great thinker of our epoch, creatively developed the teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the new historical conditions. The name of Stalin rightly stands alongside the names of the greatest men in human history--Marx, Engels, Lenin.’" (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955, International Publishers)

Peruse the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute’s biography: Stalin.

Read J.V Stalin's Foundations of Leninism.

The book History of the CPSU (B) is an excellent source.

A. Harchikov's song Stalin - Our Flag! is stellar.

Enjoy You Tubes by Communist Party of the Russian Federation (КПРФ) cadre Vladlena1917.

Celebrate Victory Day День Победы May 9!

This post has been updated:

Long Live Victory Day День Победы May 9!

For a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Party!

Gus Hall Action Club dedicates this blog post to African-American steel worker, Communist fighter and proletarian hero Frank Lumpkin (1916-March 1, 2010). We call on the working class to read his story in 'Always Bring a Crowd!' by Beatrice Lumpkin.

The Gus Hall Action Club appreciates the submission from the Myspace group Gus Hall Discussion Forum to the 29th National pre-Convention period of the Communist Party USA. GHDF, declaring that V.I. Lenin's What Is To Be Done? is the quintessential text on the Party, aimed for a concise, fraternal and ideological piece to inspire study of Marxism-Leninism and CP history.

For a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Party!

The Gus Hall Discussion Forum, a Myspace group bringing the Communist plus to the online arena, extends revolutionary fraternal greetings on the occasion of your 29th National Convention of the Communist Party USA.

Our country requires a Communist Party which is the vanguard of the proletariat: the advanced, class conscious section with the capacity to lead the fight to overthrow bourgeois exploitation and construct socialism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in the Communist Manifesto, theoretically substantiated the Marxist party’s vanguard role.



(Lenin: ’We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations’)

The pages of Otto Kuusinen’s Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism explain that:

"Of all the organizations created by the working class, only a political party can give proper expression to the proletariat’s basic interests and lead it to victory. With the aid of trade unions, mutual aid societies and other similar organizations, workers will never be able to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society.

"For this the working class needs an organization of a higher type that does not confine itself to the struggle for the satisfaction of the current needs of working people but aims at bringing the proletariat to power in order to effect a revolutionary transformation of society. Such is a Communist Party." (Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

The Marxist-Leninist party is the organizer and leader of the workers’ class struggle. The advanced, conscious and organized detachment of the working class, it is the vanguard of the proletariat because it wields the weapon of Marxist-Leninist theory and applies it to the world.

The highest type of proletarian class organization, the Party gives leadership to the working class’ battles and combines all of its' forms into an assault on capitalism. Without the commanding vanguard role of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, socialism cannot be won.

As V.I. Lenin once eloquently put it:

"We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations." (A Militant Agreement for the Uprising)

"By educating a workers’ party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, directing and organizing the new order, being the teacher, guide and leader of all the toilers and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie." (State and Revolution)

In the United States, Gus Hall remarked, "the Communist Party is a working class party of Marxism-Leninism. It is the main fountainhead for the introduction and development of this science in our land." ("The Party of Marxism-Leninism", Political Affairs, Sept-Oct. 1969)

Proletarian fighters must read, study and circulate the classic Marxist books.

The Gus Hall Discussion Forum wishes your 29th National Convention success in the battle to forge "a mass vanguard Communist Party in the heartland of world capitalism." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States)

GHDF: http://groups.myspace.com/GusHall

The Online Battle for Marxism-Leninism and Communist Education

American Communists have hyped "the world of online possibilities" which are presented by sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The United States’ Communist newspaper, the People’s Weekly World, has even given notice that it will cease hard copy production on January 1, 2010 in favor of going electronic!

(Note: In truth, the Communist Party has been on the Internet since the 1990s.)
Lenin spoke as a militant in What Is To Be Done?: “a (Communist) newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer." And the newsprint paper of the Communist Party USA was conceived and used as an organizational instrument - a spark for activism, socialist consciousness and Party recruitment– to be distributed at mill gates, shop floors, picket lines and mass meetings.

The newspaper of the CPUSA in Gus Hall’s day was "Marxist-Leninist, Communist" and it "(fought) for reforms" as "a revolutionary newspaper." The importance of a Communist newsprint and press has not diminished in any way, shape or form since Lenin’s era. Hall pronounced boldly: "to do away with the People’s Daily World would be the first step in liquidating the Party." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA; Power of Ideology)

We peruse the online edition of PWW (or the People’s World) when not at the industrial plant gates. We call on Communists to distribute Marxist leaflets with your blog address and contact info at protests and in proletarian neighborhoods or workplaces!

On the other hand, we need to, as the titanic Black American Communist Henry Winston put it, "struggle in every arena." This includes on the Internet!
V. I. Lenin said in What Is To Be Done? that Communist consciousness must be brought to the working class. Quite honestly, though, there isn’t an abundance of electronic sites providing solid Marxist-Leninist ideological education - especially on Facebook (which can’t be read by workers without FB accounts).

William Z. Foster taught future generations that a low Marxist-Leninist ideological level in the Communist Party can pave the way for revisionism and Party liquidation! (William Z. Foster, April 1948, Political Affairs)
But the Gus Hall Action Club is impressed by the statement of the Myspace group: Gus Hall Discussion Forum. We share it below the picture of Lenin. This declaration, rich in book extracts and Marxist-Leninist content, is especially distinguished by it’s defense of the concept of a fighting Communist Party, the Communist policy of industrial concentration and it’s lashing out against revisionism. We are pleased that selections from the outstanding 1970 New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A. are woven throughout, too.

Michael, Gus Hall Action Club

(V.I. Lenin: 'without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement')
from the Gus Hall Discussion Forum:
People Before Profits!
For Peace, Jobs and Equality! For Health Care for All! For a People's Front Against Reaction, War and Racism! For a Coalition Against Monopoly Capital!
"Study Marxism and you will understand that there's no way out under capitalism"--Frank Lumpkin (from 'Always Bring a Crowd')
(Note: This forum's statement below might be challenging for those who are new to Marxism. No one was born with a Karl Marx book in one hand and a Lenin book in the other. Topics on this group will explain the ideas of socialism and the what the Reds say and do today. The basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism are the science of our class--the working class. With study and effort, one can master the fundamentals. Marxist-Leninist books and writings can, as Betty Gannet once put it in a Communist pamphlet, "be grasped by the ordinary man or woman who works for a living. It was written for you--you can understand it." We, as workers, are dedicated to educating one another in the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Just ask!)
Our group respects the Communist Party USA as a Party. "The Communist Party," Gus Hall, the great American Communist and former leader of the CPUSA, explained, "can be proud of its decades of contributions. It has been a major factor in the building of our trade unions. It was the main force in the organization of the mass production unions. It was the spark plug in the struggles for Social Security, for unemployment insurance. It has an uninterrupted record of struggle against racism since its founding. It has been a leading force in the struggle for equality of women. It has continued to provide the anti-imperialist content to all struggles for world peace. It has an honorable record in the struggles of family farmers. It has provided leadership in the struggle for democratic rights and against the ultra-Right and fascism. It survived the years of McCarthyite, anti-Communist hysteria." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

We uphold the principle of a vanguard Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. A Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class, i.e., its advanced, class-conscious part, capable of leading the masses in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism. Otto Kuusinen, a friend of Lenin’s and principle author of Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, was correct: "of all the organizations created by the working class, only a political party can give proper expression to the basic interests of the working class and lead it to victory. With the aid of trade unions, mutual aid societies and other similar organizations alone the workers will never be able to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society. For this the workers need an organization of a higher type, an organization that does not confine itself to the struggle for the satisfaction of the current needs of the working people but aims at bringing the working class to power in order to effect a revolutionary transformation of society. Such an organization is the Communist Party." (Otto Kuusinen, et al., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

We need a fighting Communist Party in our day! A CPUSA Party Program from yesteryear made no bones about it: The working class requires a "Marxist-Leninist, working class political party--a revolutionary party dedicated to the fundamental transformation of society...A party that applies Marxism-Leninism to the struggles of the workers and their allies, a party that seeks to guide that class to power!" (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

"By educating the workers’ party," V.I. Lenin, leader of Russia's proletarian revolution, wrote, "Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the toilers and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

After the victory of socialism, as the eminent Communist William Z. Foster pointed out, "the leader and organizer of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist Party."

We are Communists who uphold the science of Marxism-Leninism. A CPUSA Party Program expounded Marxism-Leninism: "Our world outlook, is scientific socialism, or Marxism-Leninism as it is commonly called after Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin, its foremost originators and exponents." Marxism-Leninism, it continued, is the science of social change. Without Marxism-Leninism, the proletariat can not smash capitalism. "Marxism-Leninism is the world outlook of the working class, the theoretical instrument for achievement of working class power. Nowhere has the working class been victorious without its use." (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

"Thorough mastery of Marxism-Leninism gives one a profound conviction not only of the correctness of the workers’ cause, but of the historical inevitability of the coming triumph of socialism throughout the world. Marxism-Leninism is a source of strength, even to the weak; a source of steadfast political principle. It instills the unshakable ideological conviction that enables one to withstand all trials and ordeals." (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

We partisans of the proletariat have confidence that the working class is, has been and will be in the future, the most progressive force in society. Marx and Engels said, in the Communist Manifesto, that: "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class." The American working class is multiracial, multinational, male-female, young and old. We work at all sorts of jobs or are unemployed. The working class owns no means of production and is compelled to sell their labor power in order to live. On the other side of the class barricade, the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, owns the means of social production and employs wage-labor. "As long as classes exist," Lenin declared, "the class struggle is inevitable." And for Communists, "class struggle is the frame of reference." (Gus Hall)

Henry Winston, an deceased African-American militant with the Communist Party USA, spelled out that while all working class folks have a common interest in fighting against state-monopoly capitalism, they "do not all have a common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight." In our era, economic restructuring has forced steelworkers, autoworkers, miners, electrical workers and other mass production workers to lose their jobs as capital chases profit around the globe. But industrial workers (workers in basic industry) are still what Winston called them: "front rankers in the class struggle." Marxist-Leninists focuses on and recruits from proletarians in the industrial sector. "The Communist Party places its industrial concentration policy at the center of its strategy." (Henry Winston, Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers)

In line with the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, we uphold the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat." (Lenin) The working class must command state power. This is a fundamental question. The dictatorship of the proletariat produces proletarian democracy. "Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

Socialism is "a crowning achievement of the democratic struggle for a better life!" (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

And V.I. Lenin hit the nail on the head: "only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)

Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the Steelworkers union (USWA), voiced the Marxist-Leninist position in an 1974 essay, Marxism-Leninism is Creativity: "Not to recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be with the class struggle right up to the moment of economic and political power, only to desert it at that most critical juncture."

Our group stands four square against the revisionist and liquidationist trend in the Communist movement. A Soviet work, Right-Wing Revisionism Today, notes that "By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas." One of it's classical features, Hall commented, was that revisionism gets rid of the concept of proletarian dictatorship. But revisionism, a falsification of Marxism-Leninism, also attacks the concept of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. Otto Kuusinen set down that revisionism aims to liquidate the Party or transform it into a reformist organization. Revisionists "have invariably chosen Lenin’s teaching on the Party as one of their chief targets." They deny the leading vanguard role of the Party and reject real democratic centralism. (Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism)

We are working class activists in the class and mass struggles of today. "Communists," Marx and Engels penned in the Communist Manifesto, "fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement."

A CPUSA Party Program from bygone days still breathes meaning: "We Communists strive for the improvement of the conditions of existence for the working class here and now." A working class, it goes on, which did not battle for day-to-day improvements would, as Karl Marx put it, "be degraded to one level mass of broken down wretches past salvation." The Program links work for reform to practice for revolution. "The struggles for day-to-day improvement are basic training for the fight to take complete political power." (CPUSA, New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., 1970, New Outlook Publishers)

In the present movement, to paraphrase Marx and Engels, Communists represent it's future--Socialism! Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion. Another world is necessary--Socialism!
In our age, if you want to work for an end to racial and class injustice: JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTY USA!

If you are tired of our government's imperialist war and aggression and want peace: JOIN THE CPUSA!

If you are for an end to poverty, unemployment, homelessness and hunger: JOIN!
Workers of the World, Unite!!