Discussions on Building the Party

The National Convention is the highest decision making body in the Communist Party. It has both the important tasks of setting policy and electing a new National Committee (NC). These are interrelated parts of the same democratic process.

At the beginning of our work, the Committee was not given any guidelines, or charged with any particular mission, other than to review the Constitution and to recommend changes, if any. We struggled with one another about emphasis, formulation, or finding the right word, but early on we found ourselves in general agreement as to the direction in which we wanted to go. I think this points to the correctness of some of the changes the Party has made in the recent period toward openness and a mass style.

The Party Program is not a legislative program or an immediate projection for what we're doing this year. It is a longer range document, and should be more of an overview - addressing the stage of struggle at present, yet linked to more advanced stages including Bill of Rights socialism.

Throughout the weekend, in many different reports, the word and subject of cadre has come up. The ability or inability to head key areas of work or build key collectives for the Party has a material impact on the role of the Party as well as our collective ability to make the contribution that history is calling upon us to make.

Our general approach to pre-convention discussion fits with the needs of the Party and the movements: 1) the need for galvanizing the left, and left center unity, 2) the goal of deepening political ties with others, and 3) the need to emphasize the dialectical relationship between ideological struggle and organizing both the Party and the movements.

The Oak Park Club reaffirms the Leninist
definition of Party membership, embodied in the following Sections of Article III of our Party's Constitution...

For now all of us should bear in mind the following: our party has always adjusted its concepts of struggle - strategic and tactical - to the shifting contours of political and economic developments. We in this room are not pioneers in this sense.

So this 27th must be a turning point Convention. It must be a Convention of the transition, not just in terms of centuries, not just in terms of the generation of comrades who are leading it, but in terms of fully transforming ourselves into a relevant, connected, democratic, 21st century Communist Party.

If you have been to 235 W. 23rd Street on any given day, you may have noticed old desks and file cabinets being hauled out, or teams of architects, engineers and real estate agents pouring over the property. What's going on?

We have to look at everything, including questions of structure, organization, style and method of work and leadership qualities, from the point of view of the main political proposition of the NC, of the "transition," of the new leadership, and that is: our task is to transform the Party into a 21st century organization, and to make the necessary adjustments so that we relate to and are part of the tremendous developments in our country's political life and in the class struggle today.