how all the US communists¶

I love how all the US communists in all their little One True Organizations always act so smug about the other organizations being failures, saying "See?? This is why I'm in [other organization that is also fundamentally flawed]!!"

I got news for you: they're all terrible. The instinct to find the "best org that can save us" is puerile. You are not entitled to a ready-made party apparatus, just because you're willing to "put in the work to change it from within." And it's not "wrecking" to point out the fatal flaws of ALL of these orgs. I'll be more specific: the central problem with every large "communist" or "socialist" org in the US is an inability to conceive of the full scope of the project ahead of us -- and an inability to recognize that gap in their conception. This error comes down to "Americanness." The farthest I have ever seen is a recognition that the US constitution needs to be replaced. Concessions are often made to the concept of decolonization, of "landback," but every org's horizon of a "socialist future" still retains the construct of "The US" within it. Yankee culture so thoroughly suffuses every corner of these organizations, leading to every other downstream error: belief that revolution is impossible, disbelief in the concept of labor aristocracy, opportunism, denunciation of shared revolutionary history, lack of democracy... ... lack of centralism, chauvinism, haphazard or nonexistent political development, disconnection from the material well-being of the masses, hyper-securitization, under-securitization, membership turnover, stagnant growth, labor/resource shortages, distrust, disunity, and so on. At the end of the day, you simply cannot call yourself "[X] of America" and expect to see any movement toward a coherent, unified, powerful, mass-supported party, capable of ending US hegemony. You are giving up the war of position before you even begin to fight it. You cannot reform Americanism out of Americanist orgs.

You cannot form a new organization and proclaim "This is it, guys! I promise, this time we have The Real Communist Party!"

You cannot carry forward "a good theoretical line" and expect the movement to coalesce around you. The urge to Join An Org™️ and hope that it's The Right One, and if it isn't, to Change It From The Inside is coming from a good place: a desire to actually WORK. But the work is being wasted. These orgs do not want to be changed. They are structurally impervious to reform. You think you can fight the riptide of liberalism and keep from being swept under, because you're a strong swimmer. But the best you can hope for is to struggle as hard as you can, just to tread water. No one is stronger than the current.

You need a boat. How do you build a boat? On dry land.

You form smaller, local groups. You study together. You feed your community together. You develop together. You convene with other local groups. You build your organizations into solid structures that do not bend in the wind. When we have a fleet of seaworthy vessels, with well-trained crews and a destination in mind, then and only then can we set out onto the water and have a chance of success. You can't skip steps by just jumping into the water. There are no shortcuts to revolution.