Constitution Committee Report

Report to the National Committee

I thank the members of the Committee for their work over the past three months, especially Arnold and Emil who submitted full-length drafts for our consideration, and Elaine and Debbie, who together with Arnold, Emil and myself, were there for nearly every conference call, and for the other comrades who weren't able to be there every time, but who contributed their ideas and their support.

Over the past several months we have racked up some significant phone bills on conference calls, and my email archives show more than three hundred (300) email messages, both incoming and outgoing, that passed through my computer during the work of the committee up to this point.

Discussion of the Party's Constitution has already been extensive and lively throughout the Party. In January, I retyped the existing Constitution into electronic format and sent it the National Board, chairs of Convention committees, the Constitution Committee, and other comrades who had contacted our Committee with ideas. In late January, this electronic version of our Constitution was posted on our Party's website, which made it available for discussion by the membership and the world. The internet pre-convention discussion list features a large number of posted comments, suggestions, and debated points on various aspects of the Constitution, beginning shortly therafter. The Constitution Committee took into consideration the internet discussion, received other input from various members, and held numerous meetings by telephone conference. We completed our initial draft on April 30, and sent to members of the National Committee in advance of the NC meeting. It was the goal of our Committee to make our initial draft available to the Party organization at least two months before voting takes place at the National Convention. We are pleased that this goal was met.

On May 3rd, following discussion in the National Board, a slightly revised draft was prepared. This draft was posted on the Party's web site and distributed to a large number of comrades by email. Following a discussion in the NC, in which 25 comrades spoke, some additional revisions were made by the Committee. It is that revised draft, dated May 17, 2001, which accompanies this introduction.

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.

This is a genuinely collective draft. The spirit in the meetings was good, disagreements were resolved in a comradely fashion, and it was even fun at times. While the Committee members all feel good about this draft, and we recommend it to the membership, we are certainly not resistant to the idea that further discussion can improve on it.

The Committee's view is that our Constitution needs to do basically two things: (1) It needs to set down the basic organizational structure and rules by which we operate. This is the "meat" of the Constitution, set forth in the various articles. (2) It needs to state succinctly what we are about. This is set forth in the Preamble, which is more a work of literature. We felt that, while the Articles should clearly define rules and structure, they must allow for a certain amount of flexibility in how we implement them. And while the Preamble should define our goals, it should not substitute for a Party Program or other programmatic or theoretical literature, where there can be a much fuller and longer discussion of our science, strategy and tactics in the current period.

The last time our Constitution was updated was in 1987. A lot has happened since then. In reviewing the document, we felt that it was basically a good document that had served us well, but that it needed updating to reflect changes in the world, current struggles and current terminology, and to further our efforts to build a mass party.

Article II (Principles of Organization): We took a look at the style, and have proposed some changes in language to set forth our basic organizational principles, such as democratic centralism, in what we hope to be more working-class, familiar language, without changing the essence of those principles.

Article III (Membership): We took in consideration the discussion over the basic requirements of membership, and the process by which someone joins the Party. We have attempted to have a more consistent national approach on this question, confirming Leninist standards of what it means to be a Communist, while at the same time removing unnecessary obstacles to becoming one. The Draft clarifies that one need not to be a U.S. citizen to be a member of the Party, and does not require applicants to be supported by two members in good standing, or to be subject to a vote of the club in the applicant's area. There are many ways to drop someone from the Party if they don't work out. The real struggle is to open our ranks to new members and then promptly to help them become fully integrated into action, and developed in education. Our new language in Article III attempts to set the stage for that.

We have finally written into our basic document our commitment to full civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Articles IV and V (Club, District and National Organization): We have proposed some changes to conform with the needs and possibilities of today. There are some large geographically-spread districts in which it has been difficult to hold at least four district committee meetings per year, and frankly some districts have not met that goal. Our draft provides that district committees must meet at least four times per year, but that larger geographic districts are permitted and encouraged to use telephone conferencing for up to three of those meetings, provided that there is at least one face-to-face meeting per year. The goal is to encourage the meetings to occur, and thereby to strengthen the district organizations where meetings have not taken place. Language pertaining to District Conventions is amended and clarified, to give districts flexibility in ensuring good composition, and participation of members who are not yet in functioning clubs due to geography.

In line with recommendations presented by the Party Structure Committee to streamline the National Committee and increase its role as a policy making body, our draft proposes at least three (3) meetings of the National Committee per year.

The Review Commissions on the District and National levels were effectively abolished as standing committees at our last convention. Our draft proposes to delete references to them from the Constitution. Comrades should understand that the both the National and District bodies of the Party may create review bodies and other committees as they deem advisable, from time to time, but as standing bodies, this proposes that they are dropped. The National Council is also deleted, per decisions from the previous Convention.

In Article VI (Rights and Duties of Members) we made a number of changes with the intent of making our concepts more accessible and understood by potential members, and to update references to our multi-racial, multi-national working class to reflect current usage and struggles. In previous Constitutions, members had an obligation to organize unions at their workplaces if no unions existed. For some reason that no one could explain, that obligation had been dropped in the 1987 edition. We have restored that. As part of the working class, all comrades should join and be active in their unions, and to organize new ones wherever possible. We also have modified the language concerning criticism and self-criticism. It was felt by some on our committee that the words "criticism" and "self-criticism" were understood by many in the movement to be negative, and not constructive. We propose to retain and support the concept and the practice of criticism and self-criticism, and the right of review of the work of Party bodies and leadership, but to modify the language to clarify that this process is intended to improve the work of the Party, that it is not necessarily negative, but contains both negative and positive evaluation.

Article VII (Discipline): We dropped the language of "control" because we felt it was susceptible of being misunderstood and misinterpreted by people in the movement generally, and we use other language to describe the giving of assistance to comrades to overcome weaknesses. We dropped references to the Review Commissions, and added language to the due process provisions in disciplinary hearings.

Articles VIII, IX and X, pertaining to dues, amendments and authority to issue publications are retained without modification.

The work on the Preamble took the longest time and most discussion. We wanted to make it a brief statement that could be used independently in our literature. We wanted it to be good literature, without being too "lofty" or academic, or too long. We wanted to identify our roots in the historical experience of the working class in the United States, to update references to our people and reflect recent developments in the world history, and to address the main struggles today. In the process, we have produced a Preamble that is longer than the last one. None of the Committee members claim to be a Lenin, a Paine or a Jefferson when it comes to inspirational writing. In the event that any comrades produce something that accomplishes the aims set for ourselves, and is more eloquent or inspirational, we would welcome that contribution. In the meantime, let this draft of the Preamble be a touchstone for discussion.