CB
>>> "Andrew English" <aenglish at igc.org> 04/05/00 10:24AM >>>
The CP has always lied pretty shamelessly about its membership figures.
I've never known a period in the last 25 years when they didn't claim that
the CP and its youth organization was growing by leaps and bounds.
-Andy English
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Kromm <ckromm at mindspring.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 2:21 PM Subject: Communism's surprising appeal to a new generation
>Young, Gifted, and Red
>Communism's surprising appeal to a new generation
>By Leora Broydo, Utne Reader
>
>Where have all the commies gone? Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and
>the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly a decade ago, Reds have been all but
dead
>in this country. In the early '90s, membership in the Communist Party USA
>(CPUSA), America's largest and oldest communist organization, dropped to an
>all-time low of 15,000. Trying to attract young people to the party was
>about as easy as selling Yanni CDs at a Snoop Dogg concert.
>
>But now communism appears to be on the rebound, at least in the United
>States. In 1997 the Young Communist League, the youth arm of the CPUSA,
>opened up shop on the Internet to promote its Marxist-Leninist doctrine
>("capitalism sucks") to the 14-to-30 crowd. Since then, YCL has signed on
>more than 1,500 new members, increasing its ranks by more than a third. The
>overall membership of the CPUSA, which also has a Web site, is growing by
>100 to 150 a week, with more than 4,000 signing on in the first four months
>of 1998 alone.
>
>Breathing further life into the party was the release in 1998 of several
new
>versions of Marx and Engels' incendiary page-turner, The Communist
>Manifesto, to coincide with the 150th anniversary of its publication. One
>version, by lefty British publisher Verso, features a red ribbon marker and
>a chic cover design by New York duo Vitaly Komar and Alexsandr Melamid
>(Russians who, ironically, fled Soviet communism). The Verso Manifesto has
>sold more than 30,000 copies and hit No. 3 on The Village Voice's
>best-seller list.
>
>Clearly, communists in America are still a tiny minority and have a way to
>go before the ruling classes start to tremble. But the recent upsurge
leaves
>one wondering what the attraction is--given communism's monstrous track
>record. Why would a young American want to wave the red flag that so many
>equate with tyranny?
>
>"Partly it may be the mystique of lost causes; pining for the egalitarian
>dream of socialism could be seen as something like an adolescent fixation
on
>the glory and romance of Scarlett O'Hara's Old South," offers Liza
>Featherstone in Swing (Oct. 1998). "It's also perhaps the ultimate
>rebellious statement--what could be more outrageous and contrarian in
>America today than solidarity with a dead and evil empire?"
>
>Or it could just be that the time is ripe. The American economy is booming,
>yet the disparity between rich and poor is constantly widening. And many
>feel estranged from the political process. "We have lost faith in our own
>ability to change the political system," write Ivan Frishberg and Mark
>Strama in Tikkun (July/Aug. 1998).
>
>
>After all, what's so outrageous about fighting for a world where there's
>full employment, where everyone has access to quality health care and
>education, where there are equal rights for all? And young people probably
>don't equate their own brand of communism with that of, say, Stalin or Mao.
>"Kids who are 17 and 18 today were 10 when the Soviet Union collapsed," YCL
>member Libero Della Piana, 26, told Swing. "They're like, 'Communism,
what's
>that?' "
>
>Yet there's quite a legacy to contend with. The CPUSA stubbornly refuses to
>denounce atrocities that resulted from Soviet communism. On its Web site,
>the YCL responds to the question "Did Stalin kill millions?" with "Maybe.
We
>have only been told what the capitalist class wants us to believe."
>
>It's this sort of historical amnesia and the party's stubborn reluctance to
>distance itself from ideologues like Russian party leader Gennady Zyuganov
>(who blames "the spread of Zionism" for current conditions in Russia) that
>most stifles wider acceptance of communism in the United States.
>
>Still, hate mongering does seem worlds away from current young communist
>activities. "YCL clubs all over the country are working with otheractivists
>on a diverse range of issues," reports Featherstone. "In Baltimore, they're
>protesting wasteful use of school money; in Chicago, the focus is on child
>labor in overseas sweatshops; in California, the group worked on the
>successful campaign to defeat Proposition 226, a state initiative that
would
>have severely limited union organizing."
>
>At a YCL convention in Philadelphia last June, members attended workshops
>including "It's Good to Be Red: Socialism and Standing Up for the C-Word."
>They got advice from comrades on how to discuss communism ("avoid talking
>about stuff like the bourgeoisie and the proletariat"). And they listened
to
>YCL national coordinator Noel Rabinowitz, 28, play "Get Up, Stand Up" on
his
>guitar.
>
>The CIA no doubt has already been alerted.
>