I voted the CPUSA ticket, led by Gus Hall back in 1976, along with the SWP candidate for governor of the state of Michigan in 76 or 78. The party I was a member of - Communist Labor Party, tended to not instruct members of who they should or should not vote for, if they were not running a candidate for that office. I knew many comrades who would never vote for Gus Hall, but these comrades generally did not vote along with the overwhelming majority of the American working class. Actually, one would find it virtually impossible to place a discussion of who to vote for on their party organization agenda as such. The party supported and opposed no one in 1976 for president. Hall was a warrior cutting his teeth in the same basic time frame as William Z. Foster. Both men had impeccable "street credentials" and given the culture today, both men would be held in high regard (hero) having served prison time at the request and authority of our degenerate bourgeoisie. Both were most certainly organizers of men and stand out as amongst the best of industrial organizers of union and non union activity. One hundred years from now history, as written history, will in all probability speak of these leaders, with their short comings stated as "short comings." "Socialism in America will come through the ballot box." - (Hall) in an interview with the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (1996) It's is hard to make heads or tails of the above statement, much less its meaning. First it is virtually impossible to determine what Hall means by "socialism." Everyone argues over the meaning of a socialist regime in America. Some advocate the continued existence of the stock market and the future markets as institutions of planning. The right wing of communism demands jobs for everyone because their is some intrinsic value to having a job. Some advocate all kinds of romantic notions of workers collectives, "running industry." The use of the term "ballot box" rather than electoral arena is even more confusing. Overall the CPUSA has never had a coherent vision of the path to power and generally reject Lenin's conception of insurrection, and the party as an insurrectionary force. Apparently insurrection means violence to the bourgeoisie and the CPUSA. Consequently, the ideological struggle tended to pivot on an electoral path to state power or the uprising as the basis of armed insurrection. At the extreme is the idea of forming a "Peoples Army," which is absurd, given the organization of power in the big cities and the absence of an opposing army - foreign or domestic, as the primary social prop of the bourgeois order. If an army is not the primary social and military proper of American bourgeois political rule, then why would one entertain a vision of forming an army? On the right wing of communism is the peaceful transition to state power, which is not a conception of violence vs non-violence, but rather a vision of the role of the electoral arena, or more precisely an evaluation of the parliamentary form. This vision is a vision, rather than a strategic conception of the revolutionary process, because there is no historical precedent for a transition of state power (the commanding heights of power) from one class to another class, as the basis for reorganization of society's social relations and suppression of the power of individually owned capital. The issue of state power appears to our bourgeoisie in the land of legalese as asking the communists "if they advocate the violent overthrow of the government," knowing fully well that governments cannot be overthrown violently or non-violently as such. As if the aspiration of the communists is to overthrown the Social Security administration or HUD or the House of representatives. Governments can and do collapse. The state does in fact polarize and turn in on itself as the essence of the revolutionary crisis. And then a section of the state as state, passes over to the revolution. The insurrection is the act of seizing the commanding heights of power and all insurrection involved arms by definition of the state being an armed body of "men." When a decisive section of the state passes over to the revolution, these folks do not give up their arms and go vote. At any rate the vision of a ballot box path to power can only means voting or confirming that the leaders of the proletariat are in fact their leaders. Anything else is laughable. This does not mean one opposes work in the electoral arena.
WL. In a message dated 1/12/2009 10:59:47 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, __charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us_ (mailto:_charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us) _ (_mailto:charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us_ (mailto:charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us) ) writes: _http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/gushall.html_ (_http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/gushall.html_ (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/gushall.html) ) Gus Hall (1910-2000) Long-time American Communist Party leader. Hall was born Arvo Gus Halberg on October 8, 1910, in the Mesabi Iron Range of Minnesota. His parents were Finnish immigrants who were involved in the IWW and would later be charter members of the Communist Party in 1919. His father, Matt Halberg, recruited him into the Young Communist League (YCL) when he was 17. Working for the YCL, young Arvo traveled to mining towns in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1931, he spent two years at the Lenin Institute in Moscow, learning the political ideology of Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders of that period. In the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike (led by Trotskyist Farrell Dobbs), Hall was one of the young activists involved. During this period, he became blacklisted and could not find a job, forcing him to change his name to Gus Hall. The YCL moved Hall to Ohio where he led the 1937 "Little Steel" strike of Warren-Youngstown. He became a staff member of the Steel Workers of America, and ran for mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, on the Communist Party ticket. He volunteered for the US Navy during World War II and was elected to the Communist Party's National Committee while in the Pacific in 1944. He became a close aide to Eugene Dennis and was consequently elected to the National Executive Board in 1946. Under the anti-communist Smith Act, Hall was indicted in 1948 and convicted one year later to a five-year prison term. He fled to Mexico and was elected the Communist Party's National Secretary in 1950. In Mexico City, US authorities apprehended Hall in 1951 and was given three additional years of prison time. Upon his release in the 1960's, he became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and worked to rebuild the party after years of devestating decline. He ran for President in 1968 with Charlene Mitchell, but received only 1,075 votes. **************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://news.aol.com?ncid=emlcntusnews00000002) _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
