Clearing up some confusion

I’m no longer a member of the Communist Party, but I want to clarify a policy of the Party’s adopted decades ago since there seems to be a good deal of confusion and misunderstanding of it. The shift of the Communist Party to a strategy that singles out the ultra right came out of the Nat’l Committee meeting of the Party following Reagan’s election in 1980. Gus Hall’s report — What the Reds Say Today — outlines the reasons for the strategic and tactical adjustments in some detail. On this matter, we were far ahead of most of the left.

As for endorsing Democratic candidates at the Congressional or any other level as a result of this shift, we never did for “tactical reasons”, thinking that it could do more harm to the candidate’s election prospects than good. It was never a matter of principle — only a sensible concession to the power of anti-communism in our country. Marx and Engels didn’t have that worry in 1860 and thus publicly endorsed the presidential candidacy of the Republican, Abraham Lincoln.