Unfortunately, it’s the Communist Worker’s Party 
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Yessiree! Seems that on November 25th, 2012, Erwin Marquit, Organizational Secretary of the CPUSA1, Minnesota/Dakotas District, member of International Department of the CPUSA, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy, and “active in the AFL-CIO retirees“, spoke at the 14th International Meeting of CWP2. While his speech, hosted by the Lebanese Communist Party, was fairly longwinded and apparently a bit unorganized, it did contain some important highlights worth noting – especially if you embrace the principles of individual rights and freedoms through a Constitutional Republic whose elected representatives work to ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of America’s legal citizens. |
Here are some highlights of Mr. Marquit’s November 25th speech (click here for the full transcript):
“The Communist Party USA not only welcomes the reelection of President Barack Obama, but actively engaged in the electoral campaign for [Barack Obama's] reelection and for the election of many Democratic Party congressional candidates.
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Why did the Communist Party not run a candidate in the 2012 presidential elections?…in 1984, Gus Hall, the [last] Communist candidate for president… received only 0.03% of the vote. In small measure, this was partly due to the fact that the United States had, and still has, the most undemocratic electoral system among all bourgeois democracies, with no proportional representation except in a handful of local city elections. In our electoral system, when there are more than two candidates, the candidate with largest number of votes wins without the possibility, in most cases, of a supplementary vote for the two leading candidates. Most voters regard a vote for a minority party as a wasted vote, since it cannot elect any candidates except under unusual local conditions.
…the Communist Party viewed a victory of the far-right Republican Party as an extreme disaster. In this situation, we saw the necessity of a policy of center-left alliances in order not to separate ourselves from the people’s struggles for dealing with the far right onslaught. The basis of such an alliance now includes the labor movement, organizations of African Americans and Latinos, the women’s movement, gay and lesbian civil rights groups, and organizations of the elderly and retirees.
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Our present strategy is build alliances both inside and outside the Democratic Party to curtail the dominance of big capital over the lives of our people.
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In our electoral policy, we seek to cooperate and strengthen our relationship with the more progressive elements in Democratic Party, such as the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. Congress (website), a group co-chaired by…a Latino…and…an African American Muslim…. We also will strengthen our relationship to the Congressional Black Caucus (website), …and with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (website).
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In this year’s [2012] elections, the labor unions made vigorous efforts to involve their members and their retirees in phoning and door-to-door visits to campaign for Obama and the Democratic Party candidates for the Congress and state legislatures. In my state [Minnesota], our Party members preferentially participated in the election campaign through these labor-union channels.
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As a result of our online activities, we have been forming Party clubs in states in which we previously had very few or even no members. This influx of new members led us to have a national Party school earlier this year to acquaint new members with the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the Party.
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We still have the task of strengthening the center-left alliance and enriching its anti-imperialist character. While the victory of Obama is a welcome aid for us in our domestic struggles, we still face the challenge of mobilizing mass pressure on his administration to reverse the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy.”
As 2012 ends they’ll be plenty of people going to plenty of parties to celebrate the new year. However, this is one “Party” I’ll not be going to willingly at any time. After all, history’s shown us that countries all-too-willing to embrace or succumb to Communism (or it’s slightly lesser sibling, Socialism) during the past 94 years — Russia, China, East Germany, Poland, almost all of Eastern Europe, India, and now even Cuba — have moved or are moving towards a Capitalist, free-market system…even as the United States is being moved away from it.
Thanks for reading! (and, Happy New Year!)
1…that’s, “Communist Party of the United States of America”.
2…and that’s “Communist Worker’s Party”, for all you pro-Democracy people reading this.
