If you think you’ll ever become a public figure, even a minor one, it could easily become grounds for discrimination or worse. I think you could not mention it for low-level stuff like university admission or getting a low-level job. On the flipside if you end up doing anything important I doubt you could really hide it.

I’ve been reading a biography of the famous conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. He was that kind of neither Moscow nor Washington “progressive” (aside from maybe participating in some Society for Soviet Friendship kind of organizations during the 30s and 40s when it was relatively acceptable) but seemed to be sincere in the good stuff he did, for example he held many fundraisers, e.g. for the Black Panthers or the Derrigan brothers (anti-Vietnam activists) and some other things. I think he also wrote or scheduled a piece that would make a big anti-war statement at the opening of the Kennedy Center for which Nixon was supposed to be present.

Even this pretty tame stuff though prompted a lot of FBI surveillance and they have a lot of files on him. He was blacklisted for a while due to the actions of HUAC (prompted by the publication of “Red Channels” in Counterattack, which I believe was a newspaper) and put on a the list of the Emergency Detention Act that called for subversive public figures and labor leaders to be rounded up into concentration camps were the president to declar a state of emergency (this was repealed in the 70s). The FBI kept him under surveillance and recommended that Nixon not attend the aforementioned concert to avoid public embarassment. Bernstein lived longer but I haven’t finished the book yet. And despite this hardship, Bernstein still managed to have a very successful career. I can’t speak so much to his personal life since this biography is focused on his public facing side and politics specifically.

I think you should just be aware of the potential hazards. This stuff kept going on after HUAC and McCarthy, and it seems like we may be entering a new McCarthyite era to make things worse. But don’t let this stop you, instead you should never forget that the US Gov is your enemy and you should always be aware of what your enemy can do so that you can be better prepared to defend yourself.

You should definitely take your own circumstances into consideration, for sure. I’ve been with a party for a few months now, and I’m loving it! I don’t entirely put it out there that I’m in the party, but a select few people in my life do know. I don’t have any real online presence in terms of anything that would obviously identify me, but I just keep it on a need to know basis. If i got doxxed, I would be a bit worried I guess, but I think life would go on. Again, I’m saying this from the West Coast where “lefty” politics are a bit more tolerated.

That being said, organizing is an inherently dangerous thing and that should be taken into consideration. You probably could use an alias, but there would probably come a point where hiding yourself might be more of a burden than anything. A comrade made a point to me the other day about how a lot of the Occupy organizers had their faces blurred and everything, and safety is a valid concern, but that’s probably not too inviting of an image to see if you’re someone whose looking from the outside and you’re looking for a political home, y’know? If we’re all just online and hiding our identities then we’re about as good as a glorified book club.

If you’re still pretty young, I think it’s okay to read theory and interact with people online. If you find yourself in a more stable position to openly be a ML then do so! If not, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that and you should definitely consider your own specific circumstance!

Are the effects permanent? Will being a member prevent a person from traveling internationally and receiving a passport? Will being a member hurt chances of admissions to universities or jobs even if it is not disclosed? Will being a member be discoverable during security clearance checks and prevent the taking of a government job?

They could be if the government you’re under is reactionary like that, again it all depends, yknow? It’s hard to answer each one because it really depends on where you are and whatnot.

99% of the parties available are either controlled opposition or are minorists with little perspective capability for large development. In 2018 we saw a surge of membership to these parties under the banner of “why not? We’ve got to do something!” and “we can reform these orgs from within!” The results are observable; a lot of faux leftist nonsense in left spaces by members of these parties advocating voting and trade unionism, it reminds me of anarcho syndicalists. The US left is still disorganized and now the members who joined are now also confused by the indoctrination they received within these parties. There is only 1 party I know of that doesn’t follow theses trends and they’ve all but dropped off the face of the earth in the past 2 years; PCUSA. And within this stream there are a million tiny and unserious parties that have popped up as well, further degrading the situation: “You’re not the liberation front of America, we are! No no, we’re the American liberation front, you misunderstand.” 😵‍💫 I think it would not be inappropriate to declare that US mainstream nonsense has continued to successfully knee-cap ML organization in the US, something we haven’t overcame since it’s inception in the 60s of which the joke from my last sentence refers to. This is still going on today. Personally I believe it’s so pervasive due to the immaturity and adventurist character of so many Americans, although the character of the American worker is deeply and quickly changing as we are evidence of. If anything I think the best course of action would be to make yet anther new org, but to make it rooted in pragmatism. So not the American liberation front, but maybe the Chicago leftist org or something much more realistic. Then when those succeed, upgrade the name to something more appropriate to what has been built instead of what one wants to build. Of course, this is secondary to actually being a competent org which is why all of the smaller parties aren’t even worth remembering the names of because the names are often the best quality they ever had sadly. Everyone remembers the Panthers despite their immature and cartoonish name. We remember what they did, not what their shtick was. Otherwise, try to study and observe these parties for one actually worth joining. Who is doing the work? Who is causing results? Are they radical? Are they disciplined? Are they rooted in theory?

UPDATE (1/31/23): Apparently PCUSA is still active. They have been busy pissing off the bourgeois state, getting their site seized, their sub shutdown, accusations not unlike those levied against Maupin, Halali, and Redneck Revolt, against them, and distributing medicine in Cuba according to Cuba in their sub. So they’re still around, but unfortunately still too small.

(I wrote a long comment that starts on-point but then increasingly becomes a bit ranty. I’ve kept it in in case it is helpful. The ranty bit may seem defeatist or pessimistic. It’s not intended to be. I just think it would be unethical to encourage someone to join a party without knowing the risks. You have spotted some. If the risks are known, though, fill your boots.)

You could always feign the Marxist > Trot > Neo-con pipeline… I can’t comment about experience in the US, but… I also can’t see many repercussions from joining a college Communist org. Loads of politicians and pundits join radical orgs in university. Then they ‘mature’ out of it. You don’t have to sell your soul like Hitchens, but you can also claim youthful exuberance if it comes up in a job interview.

The only people who know the full extent to which e.g. the government cares about you being in a political party are the government. (Maybe a few of our three-letter handlers will come out the woodwork and tell us.) So we can only really guess, here.

That said… I don’t know about joining under an alias. The security state will know your name, anyway. Do employers care enough to ask? One thing I would do is avoid any politics on social media in your own name. Because employers will Google your name to see what you get up to in your free time. So even just having, say, anti-Trump FB posts under your real name could be held against you by a Trump supporting employer. And besides the employer’s politics they want their product etc to have mass appeal, which means not pissing off any demograph, which means opting for employees who appear ‘neutral’.

I’m not a member of a party, so I cannot speak to being discriminated against for that. But there is discrimination against union members. I suppose the difference is that you could feasibly separate party politics from work, but being in the union directly affects those at work who disagree with your politics. So in your day-to-day work life you can avoid the conflict from the former but not the latter.

Talking about Marxism in any positive light will beget discrimination in professional settings where I’m from. But in informal settings, nobody seems to care. Most university students will be curiously open minded and will treat political differences as a cause for banter. So as long as you remain personally friendly, I can’t see people avoiding you in college for being in a party. Unless it’s all you talk about. The key IME is to be humble about all knowledge and phrase things as uncertain rather than giving the impression that you have access to immortal truths. Let people see that you’re a normal (non-tyrant) person with political views, and they’ll generally give you the space to share those views and may have fruitful conversations.

Visitors to the US get asked if they’re part of a communist party or ever have been. So the state does care, if that indicates anything.

Almost everyone who has been an effective anti-capitalist in the US was murdered, imprisoned, tortured, or harassed until they retired to a quiet, unassuming, apolitical life. (Michael Parenti was beaten, arrested, blacklisted, and hounded out of academia for protesting the Vietnam war.) Or escaped. It’s not a reason to do nothing, but it is a reason to be cautious and to study radical history to learn from past mistakes. (It’s okay to do something before you know everything, though.)

There’s also a way of doing radical things in such a way that can be later sold to employers as extra curricular activities. Cynical, I know. For example, you could go to a language exchange and speak in English to immigrants. You could volunteer somewhere that provides food for poor children. The Black Panthers had great success with this kind of thing. IIRC, its acupuncture against drug use program (or something like that) gained a lot of public support, as did it’s food programs.

I’m not saying ‘just’ do voluntary work (although that could be a safer way of building community strength if party organising would be dangerous for you). But there may be a way of doing party work that can be explained away in a professional environment as volunteering (if that’s what you’re worried about).

I’ll also suggest, perhaps controversially, that ‘apolitical’ voluntary kind of work could be more effective than working for a political org that is co-opted and focuses on electoral politics. Many of the more successful radical US groups grew out of other successful political groups that had slightly different politics. At this point in the imperial core, it’s as much about building capacity for organising as much as ‘achieving revolution’. I mean, we can’t even get people to agree that starvation and homelessness are bad and unnecessary; never mind seize the means of production.

Marx argued, the people need years of struggle to ‘make [them]selves capable of political rule’.¹ Lenin argued that it may take three or more years to prepare someone for revolutionary government after five years already of Soviet rule.² It seems that learning organisational and administrative skills while reading theory is crucial, whether it is inside or outside a party that has all the right aesthetics. So even if you decide you cannot join a party, you can do something.

¹ ‘1850 Split in the German Communist League’.

² ‘Better Fewer, But Better’.