Response of the Editorial Group of communistcentury.com to the Webb and Drummond exchange.

Edward A. Drummond's “Reflections on Revisionism in the USA” (Jan, 2006 in www.mltoday.com) critique of Sam Webb's “Reflections on Socialism” (RoS) (CPUSA, June, 2005) is, as far as we know, the first published response to the paper in either a Party publication or anywhere else. We agree with the main points of Drummond's criticism of RoS namely that Webb's shallow dismissal of the Soviet experience and his idealistic view of democracy reflect an opportunist and reformist tendency.

However, Drummond's criticism has its own problems. It tends to measure Webb's work against long-standing, Party, political premises while disregarding “the conditions, changes and sensibilities of our own time” (RoS). This dogmatic tendency in Drummond causes him to distort the history of the CP by establishing a false, or at least exaggerated, dichotomy between a supposedly revolutionary pre-Webb period and the reformist Webb approach. (Webb is the chair of the Communist Party, USA). Reformism has too long a history in our Party and country, reflecting the twisted marriage of anti-communism and national chauvinism that has been embedded in the US psychological makeup since the end of Reconstruction.

In truth neither Webb nor Drummond takes up the challenge of producing a theory for the current stage of development of society. While Webb seems to be aware that there have been objective changes in economic life and social relations that communists must address, his inclination is to draw reformist conclusions.

The crisis of the communist movement in the developed capitalist countries goes back to the end of World War II. After the war these countries (and the Soviet Union) rebuilt their industrial capacity on a qualitatively more advanced technological basis. This enabled a quantum jump in production that initiated deep-going social changes that among other things transformed the living conditions of the majority of workers in those countries. The leading edge of industry, its most dynamic sector, began to shift from mass production manufacturing to the knowledge-based sectors of industry. Correspondingly with regard to the category of “advanced workers,” which is based not on subjective factors but on the objective relation of workers to production, a shift began from manual workers in mass production to knowledge workers in manufacturing and the direct reproduction of labor power.¹

The political successes of the CPUSA in the nineteen thirties and early forties, which were quite significant, never put the issue of power on the agenda. Post-War Party leaders did not respond nor seem even to understand the emerging situation, which was characterized by capitalist regeneration, expansion of finance capital internationally, and intensification of surplus value creation. They failed to shift from the strategy of the people's front of the anti-fascist period to one of socialist transformation.

In the Soviet Union the spectacular advances of the Lenin/Stalin period, without match in depth and speed in world history, created a whole new economic and social situation. Soviet leaders after Stalin pursued policies that retreated from socialist economic development, overestimated the ease with which communism would evolve, and underestimated the malignancy of US state policy. While continuing to make advances in science and technology and expand the socialist intelligentsia, they failed adequately to utilize those advances to meet the growing social and cultural requirements of the people. It was this along with the direct sabotage by the U.S. and other bourgeios states that led to the dissolution of the USSR, not the so-called crimes of the earlier period.

Gus Hall wrote of a politics based on what he believed to be the overall subjective coloration of the US working class, such as its supposed attachment to democracy. But Hall never validated his conclusions about these “thought patterns”, as he called them.

Objectively, the US working class is the indispensable class for political rule. The two political parties are working class in composition, and neither can rule without its support. Nevertheless, despite this power and the long efforts by the Party and others, US workers have never taken the crucial step of political independence. They can barely be inconvenienced to vote. While most immigrants are assimilated as proletarians and many bring a degree of proletarian political culture, unfortunately, there is no US proletarian political culture. The class as a whole is highly stratified , and, even in its most active “militant” sections, is backward, acquisitive, narrow minded, chauvinistic, mired in religious obscurantism, and bigoted. It has demonstrated a pronounced tendency to social passivity and an unwillingness to take political responsibility for social harmony and development.

Democracy is not a universal political system. It is an integral, necessary and specific component of capitalism. As such it is designed to afford the mass of the people very little opportunity to participate in the administration of economic, social and political life. The current crisis of the democratic state in the most developed capitalist nation reflects the contradiction between its promises and its increasingly obvious inability to develop a harmonious and sustainable society in which economic, scientific and cultural advances enable all its members to lead a dignified and enriching life.

Webb fetishes democracy and by refusing to be critical of the US working class propagates the classic error of “American exceptionalism”. Even if his picture of the US working class contains elements of truth he takes a strikingly anti-Marxist approach – giving primacy to the particular. Marxist analysis by contrast goes from the general to the particular and is then able to draw universal conclusions and lessons, so that the specific features of a people, class, moment, person or thing are seen in their dynamic way, in their development, their becoming, not merely their being. Webb practices historicism as opposed to historical materialism and dogmatism/mechanism rather than dialectical and historical materialism. He fails to place the US in the world, in history with a past and future.

The struggle between socialism and democracy manifested itself in the 1991 split in the Party.  Objectively the Party represented the movement towards socialism, while the CoC, under the banner of democracy, represented an anti-socialist motion in the world.  Following its victory the Party leadership did not take the next logical step, to develop a theory of revolution for our time, despite demands to do so from the base and all levels of the organization.  The failure to advance, necessarily resulted in retreat, which is manifested in RoS as well as in the 2005 new party program. Without a theory that is based on a thorough-going analysis of objective developments, the Party and the proletariat is left with an eclectic amalagam of opportunism, reformism and dogmatism. Unhappily Webb's RoS and Drummond's polemic live in the netherworld of that amalagam.