Leninism In The Peace Movement

quick question: what's the Stalinism in the peace movement referring to?- Dwight


To Dwight and All,


It is no secret that the Party for Liberation and Socialism which controls International ANSWER; the Worker's World Party which controls the International Action Center and the Troops Out Now Coalition; and the Revolutionary Communist Party which controls the World Can't Wait coalition are flat out Stalinist groupings. They all see North Korea as a model of how to build Socialism. They make common cause with Jihadists who want to destroy all of Western culture most particularly our democratic elective process. The Jihadists see the United States and her people as the enemy.

It has been the traditional position of Democratic Socialists in the West to celebrate Western democracy's electoral institutions--while opposing the multinational corporations that pervert the process with their money. It is possible to oppose the war in Iraq without joining the "Death To America" crowd. There is a long pacifist tradition in and around the Socialist Party which opposes war, poverty, and oppression and does not make common cause with totalitarians and their apologists.

The problem comes with a group like United for Peace and Justice which is not Stalinist. UFPJ has as affiliates many democratic left organizations. The leadership of UFPJ comes from the Communist Party tradition. UFPJ's leader and spokesperson Leslie Cagan passed on graduate school to cut sugar cane for Fidel Castro's revolution. The Committees of Correspondence for Democratic Socialism of which Cagan is a co-chair, split from the Communist Party, USA to follow a more Euro-Communist perspective. CCDS has contact with many of the reformed Communist parties of Eastern Europe. So the question becomes do we work with UFPJ and hence with CCDS and the CP,USA. My simple answer is NO! That perspective was confirmed by an email from here in PA and a call from North Carolina, which both came today.

For many of our local contacts any association with any Communist grouping (regardless of how reformed that group might be) is the kiss of death. Many of our new members found us based on the SD,USA and the SP before its anti-Communism. A member in Oregon discovered that his local peace group was sponsoring a speech by a pro-Castro speaker and he asked for a leaflet that pointed out that Cuba was not a "Socialist country" or on its way to Socialism. Cuba is a military dictatorship which brutally crushes all dissent. The fact that their economy is liberalizing means very little when it remains a command economy.

Being the small organization that we currently are, we need to differentiate ourselves from both the Staliniod Left and reformed Communist Left quickly. Over a series of weeks we developed a strategy. We decided first to develop a flier that asked Americans to boycott the large corporate sponsors of the Olympic Games. e.g. McDonalds , Wal Mart etc. This seems like a wonderful teachable moment. We can point out the ills of both the state capitalism of China and the multinational capitalism which is distorting the values of the of the United States. Then we suggested that our Oregon comrade send his letter to the newspaper. We also asked him to forward it to all members so that we can rework it for our locality and send it to many newspapers. We can make clear that there is an organization keeping the legacy of Norman Thomas' Socialist Party alive. We abhor all extremism and oppression whether the violence occurs in name of Monopoly Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, or Theocracy. We should be forming an anti-totalitarian peace movement based in churches, unions, and community groups. The attitude of the old SD leadership must be dispense with as well. We see totalitarians as such no matter what their attitude toward the US.

In Solidarity and Friendship,
Gabe
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"If you want to do something really radical, don't burn the flag, cleanse it" Norman Thomas