Vol. 71/No. 27      July 9, 2007

The pieces advocate that opponents of the war support proposals in Congress to set a date for withdrawing the troops, even if they are tacked onto bills to fund the war. This reflects the continued evolution of the CPUSA away from any pretense of building a revolutionary workers party and instead toward a radical political association entrenched in bourgeois politics.

In the May 26-June 1 PWW, the paper’s national political correspondent Tim Wheeler penned an opinion piece entitled, “The dubious history of a slogan.” In it, Wheeler argues that those who chant, “Out Now!” against the Iraq war today are making an error, just as those who chanted that same slogan against the war in Vietnam did.

On April 24, 1971, the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) organized a march of half a million people in Washington, D.C., against the war in Vietnam around the demand “Out Now!” Despite the massive turnout, Wheeler says, the movement was weakened by NPAC’s refusal to support resolutions in Congress to end the war by a “date certain”—a demand supported by PCPJ and the CPUSA.

“Today, as in 1971,” Wheeler wrote, “the antiwar bloc is growing on Capitol Hill, with Democrats holding a slim majority … we must be supportive of the compromises the antiwar bloc is forced to make to win a bipartisan majority against the war.”

Similarly, an editorial in the March 17-23 issue of PWW entitled “A path out of Iraq” welcomed the House approval of the $100 billion war funding bill as “an exit strategy with a firm end date.”

“Isn’t it better to have troops out of Iraq by next year, through a concerted coalition effort, than to still be holding anniversary vigils with the slogan ‘Out Now’?” it said.

The PWW writings address political differences with groups that the CPUSA works with in United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), one of the main coalitions that have organized demonstrations against the war in Iraq.

In a report to the CPUSA National Committee March 24, which is posted on the party’s web site, CPUSA chairman Sam Webb called the March 23 U.S. House of Representative’s approval of a war funding bill with a timeline for troop redeployment “a major victory.” But, he noted, some peace groups, such as UFPJ, Code Pink, Peace Action, and others, did not see it that way and actively campaigned against the bill.

Webb also said that some members of the CPUSA have asked whether the party’s current position contradicts a past convention resolution calling for immediate withdrawal. Webb said the convention resolution was “never intended to box us in or fence us off from responding to new conditions on the ground.”

For decades the CPUSA has tried to pass itself off as the rightful bearer of the legacy of the October 1917 Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. In his report to the National Committee, Webb frequently quotes V.I. Lenin, a central leader of the Bolsheviks. Webb takes the quotes out of context in order to justify the CPUSA and top labor leadership’s course of class collaboration with the bosses and their parties, the Democrats and Republicans; and voting for war appropriations—a course against which Lenin was an implacable opponent.

In a section in his report on tactics Webb said, “The real task, however, is to combine partial demands that elicit broad support and are winnable in the near term with more advanced demands that are not yet supported by a broad constituency.”

Webb described a nonbinding resolution against sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq along with the war funding bill as “partial demand[s].”
 
 
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Baathist militias aid U.S. occupation forces
Civilian deaths in Afghan war rise  
 
 
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