This piece is a contribution to the Pre-Convention Discussion for our 32nd National Convention. During Pre-Convention Discussion, all aspects of the party’s program, strategy, and tactics are up for consideration and debate. The ideas presented here are those of the author or authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Communist Party USA, its membership, or their elected leadership bodies. — Editors

 As the Communist Party USA (Party) prepares for its 32nd National Convention, this short piece is simply an offering up of some of the author’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions on what can, must, and will be done.

Six points are on my mind:

1. In Utah as elsewhere, we face a crisis; a crisis of good government, a crisis of the existing federal system locally, statewide and nationally, which needs to be rectified at once.
2. It is the honest opinion of the author that all honest socialists must commit to both the expansion of electoral and non-electoral left-center coalitions, as well as encouraging workers to set up General Assemblies (GAs) and Community Councils (CCs).
3. Why GAs and CCs? Because there were attempts at people’s power in D.C. in the form of the Black Lives Matter Autonomous Zone and in Seattle in the form of “the CHOP” GA. CCs have also been set up by democratic socialists covering their city council wards in Chicago. GAs and CCs are the organs of the new state-power combined with the old state-power a la Venezuela’s own unique path to multiparty democratic socialism.
4. The Party must continue to run candidates, as it furthermore pushes for the creation of a new mass party of labor which can, must, and will successfully contest and win seats on a grand scale. On the point that this is “social-democratic,” what of the fact that the earliest socialist groups — the international social-democratic parties — were both electoral and non-electoral and wholly radical and revolutionary, with a right and left wing which worked together around fighting for peace, democracy, and socialism? If by “social-democratic” we mean the fake “socialists” staffing the modern, latter-day social-democratic party of Germany, the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, etc. then such an argument holds water, but what can, must, and will be revived is the fighting spirit of a huge, all-encompassing tent-pole party of labor with a moderate right and more radical left in alliance with the Party and other true Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties which will serve to hold such a great party accountable to the broad mass of workers.
5. I strongly think the Party should also continue to work with liberals, temporarily, while strongly opposing the new cold war with China, Russia, and Iran.
6. The anti-war movement: it needs to be realized that the Millenium would not give up without a brutal, bloody fight to the finish. Likewise, the class struggle can only end with a great peaceful antiwar movement waging a final struggle against not just the ongoing Gaza genocide or Ukraine debacle, but also against the seemingly never-ending war on the poor. It must lead to a mighty war on poverty, a real, sustained fight for community control of the police, the carrying out of a Green New Deal, the planning and drafting of a second economic bill of rights, and so much more.

Forward together, not one step back!

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