For next time I suggest laughing at them when they say they’re a Trotskyist and exiting the conversation. And if they don’t like it, they can print it in their newspaper.

start here haha https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_United_States_of_America

It’s a leadership problem and it’s not new by any means. The page has the whole history, but then it’s up to you to decide how far you feel the history follows to the modern day.

The best thing that could happen, because this is still a big party all things considered, is that leadership gets ousted and actual communists are able to put it back on the right track.

However from my interaction with some CPUSA members many of them seem to buy fully into it. Some of their arguments (as far as “nuh-uh” can be considered an argument), including around decol for example all sound the same, which makes me think central is sending out canned responses to face criticism. This same contingent defends their leadership through and through, which is decidedly anti-marxist: everyone knows the leadership is revisionist and reformist, and by siding with them, members are announcing they like this corrupt, unaccountable leadership and sign off on it. They seem to think criticism of where the party is currently is criticism of them as members, but it’s by and large criticism made by communists to steer the CPUSA back on track! I’m sure there’s people who just want to see CPUSA burn, but yeah, criticism and self-criticism is basic marxist stuff.

I get not going against party line but if the party line is wrong then you should absolutely not throw your weight behind it – there are actually CPUSA members that want to change the party and don’t sign off on everything leadership does.

There’s other weird stuff imo, which is why I think it comes from leadership and gets instilled into new members. Like how they call it “the Party” with a capital P, as if they’re the only communist party in the US because they have communist in the name. It’s the kind of stuff Sarkozy used to do when he was campaigning for president lol. Or how they play up the cozy vibes, e.g. their podcast being called “Good morning revolution!”, as if you’re just about smelling a nice cup of coffee while looking out the window in a communist USA. Looks weird looking in from the outside, but people seem to respond well to it. I remember someone (just one person mind you) saying it felt comfy in CPUSA, that they could “retire in the party”.

There’s also corruption in the central committee, though not in legal sense necessarily. Just stuff that makes you raise an eyebrow and say, yeah, this ain’t it. They completely purged the Austin chapter for example recently, bypassing any due process, for reasons such as “walking out of the convention floor when the ‘Israeli’ guest was speaking” – I’m quoting this verbatim, you can read their statement here. All they did was walk out when some weirdo who started off by condemning Hamas and Operation Flood of al-Aqsa was invited to speak and given more time to do so than other comrades.

The whole convention was a mess to be honest, which is to be expected when your leadership only serves themselves. People’s World is privately owned (and the common defence from CPUSA members is that “they have to be careful about what they post bc it’s political” but I’ve never seen them actually expand on that). To participate, all members had to shell out something between 100 and 300 dollars (I want to say closer to 100), which is huge for some members. On top of that, ‘clubs’ (what they call chapters) had to pay 25$ for each delegate they wanted to send to the national convention. That comes on top of membership fees all members pay.

Do you think Guaido knows about the memes

Yep. At first he didn’t even name them, just called them a “pro-unification church”, and now he doesn’t care anymore and namedrops them any chance he gets.

Beware making false friends when it seems there are no real friends to be made! Hinkle, Haz and the midwestern marx crowd have been active for years and have yet to produce anything beyond youtube videos and donations. Even this founding statement does not indicate any party was established or formed, it’s literally just a PDF. They nameblasted several CPUSA chapters in this document who quickly got on twitter to say they have absolutely 0 ties to the “ACP”.

At every turn patsocs have lied and misrepresented both marxism and their positions. Even today they have very little support, because their plan of appealing to the maga working class (misidentifying that magas are mostly petty bouge, strike number 1) didn’t get them anywhere. If you run in their circles the average age is something like 14 years old, it appeals to the same kids that find Andrew Tate interesting. It’s edgy, it’s new, but it’s all aesthetics.

Even the video they published to accompany their party is only stock and AI Footage, the same kind content farms in Youtube shorts rely on to tell their “5 tips to a stoic lifestyle” lol.

More broadly, patsocs are trying to organize the “industrial” capital – they’ve said so themselves that they’re not against industrial capital (strike two). But industry by and large doesn’t exist anymore in the US, with over 80% of the workforce employed in the service industry. Yet, they unequivocally position themselves against this service industry, claiming they perform unproductive labor (strike three).

Beyond the aesthetics they don’t have much to offer, and their aesthetics are the exact same as cryptobros lol. Once they actually have to explain their line and not just talk about Dugin saying this or that or cherry-picking Marx quotes, they show they don’t get marxism, or perhaps purposely misrepresent it.

They’re Strasserites, which is nothing new. They’re also embedded in Laroucheist cults.

He’s actually on bad terms with Infrared last I heard lol

tank u

I am so happy that this resource exists so that I don’t have to type an entire essay lol. Follow the bluelinks: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Patriotic_socialism

They’re patsocs, i.e. Infrared, Haz, Midwestern Marx etc. This is who signed the founding statement:

While Edward Liger’s signature is very funny and on brand, note that all those CPUSA chapters they imply are joining them in this statement hurried to distance themselves from this new “party” (aka money funnel into Haz’s and MWM’s bank accounts)

I find myself in a bind trying to give you an answer, which is why it’s taken so long to get back to you. Of course I could simply ignore your request and move on, but I don’t think that would solve or progress anything.

The first difficulty is I don’t know where to start with my answer. But maybe first, let me answer some concerns you’ve brought up in the past. I’ve seen comments from you here and there before that you weren’t sure if you were allowed to edit the CPUSA page, as in if your account would be banned for it or your edits reverted.

I’m not sure where those concerns come from, as your account hasn’t had any ban or other restrictions placed on it and we’ve never banned anyone for editing a page. This is something I want to point out before I give a proper answer to the comment above; it’s a bit difficult to move forward with someone when they go around claiming things that won’t happen but giving the impression that they will happen. This is something that, in my opinion, should have been brought up to the admin- or editorship directly to receive a clear answer instead of letting hypotheses and what-ifs fester for weeks and months.

This is the bind I find myself in and why it took me so long to reply and I think I can only give you a proper admin-to-editor reply if I acknowledge and bring up this point. On the one hand, as an admin [of ProleWiki] I can’t easily take sides against editors and I try to defend and support all our editors as much as possible so they get their due process. On the other, I think you’ll agree that your fondness for CPUSA is well-known and that our page on CPUSA is not the most complimentary.

On paper, there’s nothing preventing you from editing any pages as you have an account on ProleWiki. We don’t prevent anyone from editing any page and committing their edit. In practice though, this is just my own individual answer. The reality of it will depend on what the editorship thinks about an edit – any edit. We often come back to editing even longer pages, if only to clarify the wording, or sometimes even change entire paragraphs to give a different meaning. We’re having huge conversations on our naming conventions currently for example, and especially relating to “Israel”.

So the best answer I can give you is as a facilitator, which is what the administration of ProleWiki is. I know who has contributed to the CPUSA page the most and I know where they want to take it, so I can give you advice and suggestions. Beyond that, I can give you a clear list of your permissions on ProleWiki (same as any other editor currently) to help you form a decision. But this is only my personal suggestions, and I can’t predict how the editorship reacts to an edit with 100% certainty. This response belongs to them, and our task as admins is not necessarily to prevent a response from happening. Likewise, my suggestions are not orders or conditions; your decision to edit the page (or not) belongs to you, I can only help inform you so you can make a decision with all the facts in your hand.

What I would suggest is to first use the talk pages to talk about what you want to add to the article, running it by the editorship first. I would also advise against removing anything on the page but rather only adding content to it. Lastly, please note that we require all claims to be sourced since early 2024 when committing an edit, otherwise it might be reverted.

And I think that’s my complete answer to remove as much doubt and opaqueness as possible. I could have simply said “you’re free to edit the page”, but I don’t think it would have achieved any progress or mutual understanding.

Lol I wish. If you listen to twitter we’re absolutely terrible, no redeeming qualities, nothing worth engaging with, but they never say why. And when you eventually ask them they fall completely silent and just ignore the question. It’s maddening if only because you want some honest and sincere criticism and for them to actually back up their claims, but they will never do that and instead keep saying whatever they feel like saying at the moment with no principles or discipline behind it. Complete liberals that call themselves communists.

On the edits themselves we are getting some edits on tendencies and sometimes countries, but still very few. Most contributions are corrections in the form of fixing typos, resourcing, updating pronouns, titles or tenses, etc. Mostly clerical stuff if you can call it that. Which is still valuable of course, but it highlights that the proposed edits to tendencies (such as maoism or leftcommunism) are still very much a minority.

Also les camarades francophones vous devriez rejoindre l’instance française de ProleWiki on cherche du monde.

I think it’s the one with the best line currently in France but I also heard that they use French flags in protests and marches, what’s up with that?

My litmus tests for parties are how they see themselves as relating to the proletariat, their line on LGBT issues, their line on China, and finally their position on decol if they are a colonizer. PRCF is good on China and LGBT, didn’t find much about decol and the little I did find was a little eyebrow-raising but requires more investigation.

I originally read your comment as “biggest” thread, but I can’t delete or edit lol.

I like that votes are turned off tbh, we should keep that as a feature after the bug is fixed.

There’s bigger :P

You can sort by “most comments” on the homepage

Kind of early capitalism, but also its own creation that has no historical basis and very little material basis. Even just looking at the game without trying to find any parallels in the real world, it’s very constrictive how families in the game will do exactly one job and nothing else even as they starve to death lol

Still waiting for that historical materialism sim :(

It’s linked at the very top of the article but I can also link it here: https://criticalresist.substack.com/p/a-look-at-historically-inaccurate

lmao this is even better

Thanks for reading 😀