The Communist Experience in America: A Political and Social History by Harvey Klehr

Author:Harvey Klehr [Klehr, Harvey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781351484749
Google: hpsuDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35865222
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

Comrades in the Takeover Wars

American radical groups often have a short shelf life. They also have frequently acted in extreme and bizarre fashions. Few, however, have made as complete a turnabout as one small, violence-prone party whose activities led to a shocking moment of murder in 1979. Today, they seem determined to become the first Yuppie Communists.

Six years ago, five members of the Communist Workers Party, a Maoist sect, were gunned down by a band of American Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen as they prepared to begin a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro, NC. For weeks before the rally, the CWP had taunted white racists as cowards and dared them to appear. The CWP’s tactics were based on its belief that the route to a Communist revolution was through armed confrontations with the Klan that would build up the CWP’s prestige and eventually lead to armed insurrection. Its rhetoric was strident and its threats bloodcurdling. The CWP regularly denounced its critics as misleaders, cowards and “scum.”

Such tactics and language did not prove very successful. Catapulted out of obscurity only by the Greensboro tragedy, the CWP briefly basked in the glow of media attention. Members were often in the news, threatening violence prior to marches and then attempting to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in 1980. Neither a state nor a federal prosecution resulted in any convictions for the killings; the Nazis and Klansmen pleaded self-defense and claimed they were provoked by the Communists. Earlier this year a federal jury awarded civil damages to several victims and next of kin, finding some of the racists and two Greensboro policemen liable for damages.

While the various trials were in progress, little was heard from the Communist Workers Party. The party did endorse Jesse Jackson’s presidential bid in 1984, deciding that the five murdered party members “were among the forerunners of multinational unity in the South which Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition is now striving to actualize.” Since the CWP had scorned electoral politics and “reformers,” that was a breathtaking assertion. There were signs, however, that all was not well in the CWP. Its newspaper, Workers Viewpoint, ceased publication in the summer of 1984 amid rumors that the party was reassessing its views.

The reassessment is now complete. And somewhat startling. The CWP has renamed itself the New Democratic Movement, recognizing that Americans are likely to respond more favorably to that name than to a group calling itself Communist. It has decided to combine Marxism-Leninism with American know-how to climb to power. The party’s new heroes are the Founding Fathers. In place of such outmoded and foreign concepts as “democratic centralism,” “working class” and “socialist revolution,” it uses such terms as “accountability system.”

The CWP has done more than simply change its language, however. Party leader Jerry Tung has developed a new tactic for achieving power. He advocates entering the Democratic Party and the union movement with the goal of capturing several state governments and union treasuries. Their money would then be used to gain control of American Express Co.

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