The ACP

[K-Dog]

The ACP is has many of the same people who are behind Midwestern Marx.  I have had an interest in Midwestern Marx for months.

[K-Dog]

I did a call in on Noah's show.

Start at 1:36:40  I left a link to a post about 'Carbon Fee and Dividend.' on the Discord so users could visit the Diner and read about it here.

Being on the show caused the men in black to wipe us out.  Several days of Diner activity has been lost.  I just restored what I could, and I regret not making a new back up right after I did the call-in.  It was a precise surgical strike that wiped the post and member database clean.

The tables where RE added links to his You-Tube channel was wiped out. He will have to remember what he did to fix it.

Carbon fee and dividend is not a tax. Taxes are collected by government for government use. A fee collected and paid to all people equally is a payment from the social commons not a tax. It is important to understand this or you likely will dismiss the benefits. Consider oil as the example, coal and gas would have fees collected as well but talking about one is easier. Money is taken at the wellhead where it is mined. Before first sale. If a dollar worth of oil is pulled out of the ground a percentage of value is taken from it. A percentage determined by a citizens assembly. After that the added cost is passed on as markup in the distribution chain. All the money is equally divided among all citizens. This allows the individual to cancel the fee added at the wellhead if they use an average amount of fossil fuel. If you use less fossil fuel than average the system pays you money. If you use more you pay more. Collected money is equally distributed with kids getting a percentage starting at 16. Younger children don't use gasoline or diesel, and the money, all of it, must go to citizens who use oil products. Younger kids are excluded because they do not buy anything and the money is paid out to consumers to offset the added price consumers must pay. Having a citizens assembly set the fee is appropriate and should not be done by government. Government provides infrastructure, but the commons should decide to do with the commons. Not an elite group.

[K-Dog]

Perhaps republishing the Kamala rant had something to do with it.

Sorry, men in black.  She's back.

* it takes a minute to get to Kamala.  I could have cut the first minute, but I liked what Carlos was saying.  I had to check out Apologetics, and found this by checking out who Lukács was.

The thinkers of the Frankfurt School — Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, Benjamin, Wellmer, Marcuse — were for Lukács too much devoted to theorizing capitalism and barbarism and too little about changing it. They were like imagined world-weary residents in the Grand Hotel Abyss, observing the unfolding catastrophe but doing nothing to intervene to stop it. They were about theory, not praxis.

That is the same as my gut feeling.

[K-Dog]

On the Launching of the American Communist Party.
By: Carlos L. Garrido
8/4/2024

All around the country normal working-class Americans are asking themselves one question: why? Why is it that I am struggling to make ends meet at the end of the month? Why is the price I paid for the same groceries a couple years ago doubled today, while my wage or salary has stagnated? Why is it that I was forced to go into drowning debt for getting sick, daring to get an education, wanting a home for my family? Why are the politicians on my screens so keen on waging war on half the world with our tax dollars, but so averse to investing any money on the people and the country's decaying infrastructure? Why is my day pervaded by stress when I drop my children off at school, not knowing whether they can be the next victim of the horrendous shootings all too common in our country? Why do none of the people who govern the country seem to care about the desperate and deteriorating conditions of those like my family, neighbors, and co-workers?

Poor, indebted, and desperate, the American working class has begun to organically question the assumptions of the ruling capitalist order. While they have been generationally fed the idea that America is the greatest country on earth, where freedom, democracy, and equality reign, today the desperation they experience in their everyday lives has made critical reflection necessary, spontaneous though it might still be. Can there be any real equality between those in their class and those that benefit from their toil, indebtedness, and instability? Can there be any freedom for the men and women enchained for life to a debt they owe a major bank? Can there be freedom and equality for the millions of children going to sleep hungry every night in America, or the 600 thousand homeless wandering around in a country with 33 times more empty homes than homeless people? Can there be any democracy in a system where the people who control the major corporations, banks, and investment firms hold power over the state, using it to enforce their will, I.e., the accumulation of capital, as the bottom line and most supreme value in all social relations?

What has emerged, then, is a serious crisis of legitimacy. Faith in the ruling institutions of the capitalist class is rapidly diminishing. Only 11 percent of the American public trusts the mainstream media, the main ideological institutions of the capitalist ruling class. The politicians which enforce the interests of the owners of big capital aren't doing much better, with just 19 percent of Americans holding that their elected representatives actually represent them. It is clear to the American people, albeit in a form that is still abstract and embryonic, that the media is simply there to manipulate them into consenting to the agenda of the ruling class — twisting facts, lying, and removing context to invert reality on ongoing world events. It is evident to them that their so-called representatives are in reality the representatives of their exploiters, oppressors, and parasitic creditors.

Out of this general and spontaneous rejection of the current state of affairs has arisen various different forms of dissent in the American working class. Some were mobilized by the Bernie Sanders movement in 2016 and 2020, seeing in it the potential for a genuine political, although not social, revolution which could guarantee the basic rights afforded in social democracies but absent in our country. In the same years, some were captivated by Donald Trump and his call to Make America Great Again (MAGA), which for many working-class folks in the country signified a striving to return to an age long gone, where their parents and grandparents could secure comfort in life and a high standard of living with a normal working-class job. Others have taken various apolitical routes, showing antipathy in the face of a political arena where they rightly observe that, as of right now, they have no ability to change anything.

While others are certainly present, these three have been the major channels for working people to express their discontent in the ruling order. Many, many flaws are evidently present in each route. But they all share a common rational kernel — the rejection of the status quo, and in the first two, the faith and willingness to work towards changing it. As it currently exists, however, one route leads to paralysis in the face of the task of constructing something new, while the other two have led to fake prophets being elevated as embodying the interests of the people, while they, in reality, have merely expressed more novel and disguised ways of upholding the same ruling order. We are in the period where it becomes evident that the hopes of 8 years ago are hollow, that a new way of framing and articulating discontent must be sought.

For us, only a communist party can live up to this task. A communist party is, after all, fundamentally the vehicle for the most advanced detachment of the working class to win the faith of the critical mass and guide their struggles to the finish line — the conquest of political power. It is a communist party which has the potential of giving these different forms of dissent some coherence, unity, and direction. Coherence arises out of the systematic understanding of the ills individuals face — ills which are not individual moral failings but systemic in character. Unity is premised on this coherence, on the understanding of our commonality of interests and our shared source of discontent. And direction arises out of the previous two — only when we can coherently understand the social order upon which our troubles are based can we see that in its own contradictions there's a way forward. In the correct understanding of the problem, we find the premises through which the solution can be sought. When the decaying capitalist system we have before us is comprehended so too is the fact that working people — the producers of all value in society — have it within their power, as a class, to build a world anew in their own image. Once this recognition of our shared fundamental reality is achieved and the varied forms of dissent unified, then the steps forward will show themselves in the process of a struggle clear about its direction.

Lamentably, the historical communist party in our nation has shown itself incapable of living up to the task of the organization which bears that name. It has sought class collaboration in the era where class struggle is an imminent reality. It has sided, under the cynical auspices of 'fighting fascism,' with the Democratic Party whilst such organization has sent hundreds of billions in U.S. taxpayer money to neo-Nazis in Ukraine for a proxy war against Russia. It has supported this party through its murderous funding and equipping of the Zionist entity's genocide in Palestine. It is a "communist" party which objectively has supported fascism and class collaboration under the justification of fighting that which they precisely support. Fascism, for them, is simply the social conservatives who disagree with the more liberal social values recently accepted by the forces of hegemony. For them the fascist threat emanates from our conservative co-workers and not the capitalist state that uses both parties to fund war and genocide. But what can be more fascist than supporting, financing, and equipping a genocide carried out by a white supremacist apartheid state?

The "communist" party USA spits on the legacy of Stalin, Dimitrov, and the great anti-fascist fighters of the world communist movement when it cites them tongue in cheek to support the fascistic American state. It forgets that, as Michael Parenti wrote "the fascist threat comes not from the Christian right or the militias or this or that grouplet of skinheads but from the national security state itself, the police state within the state."[1] These are the forces which enforce the "open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital," central to the Marxist understanding of fascism, elaborated in the brilliant work of Georgi Dimitrov.[2] The "communist" party USA operates, therefore, with an idealist and anti-Marxist understanding of fascism when it ignores the role of fascism as a form of capitalist governance in periods of crisis. It reduces fascism to a problem of ideas in the mind, and it's unable to see how, as a form of capitalist governance in crisis, it's been present here in both parties all along. The basic understanding of the spurious dialectic of Democrats and Republicans, of the unending and performative back-and-forth used to mask the continuity of the imperialist state and serve its continual reproduction, is completely lost on these "communists." They side with one side of the capitalists, imperialists, and fascists. In doing so they don't actually fight against the 'fascist threat' they so often invoke but reinforce it. They feed into the spectacle of American politicking; they become complicit in its operations.

But errors in party lines are amendable when the operational method of a communist party is upheld. Democratic centralism, when actually present, gives the party the potential to rectify — to improve its understanding of the situation and its failings. It allows the slippages into social chauvinism, opportunism, and ultraleftism (so evident in the cpUSA) to be reeled in and corrected. But here too, the "Communist" Party USA has completely violated its obligations. Ample evidence has shown that at the 32nd National Convention party democracy was thwarted, and democratic centralism tossed out the window.[3] And when those courageous cadres sought to rectify this usurping of the party — this coup of the American working class's historic organization by a small clique of lifelong bureaucrats — through constitutional means stood up to share a petition requesting the democratic consultation thwarted at the convention, all real communists were purged, often expelling whole clubs themselves. The evidence has been documented and made public. As was made evident, the ruling clique of the cpUSA, then, has completely destroyed party democracy in order to defend its support for class collaboration with a party that supports Nazis and carries out genocidal wars on native peoples.

But no amount of fettering the class struggle would achieve their desired stoppage of the movement of history. An organization of the working class, grounded not in middle class professionals and bureaucrats but in the working class itself, guided by Marxism-Leninism and not the purity fetish, was bound to arise. On July 7th of 2024 this organization was born. It's birth, as Executive Chairman Haz Al-Din noted, was itself a triumph in deed, not merely in word. It brought together a broad group of different communist forces, stemming from those which were unconstitutionally purged by the cpUSA, to carry forth the struggle together, to reconstitute the American Communist Party our people so desperately need. It is bounded not by abstract and pure doctrines, but by the living science of Marxism-Leninism, which sees truth in the deed, in practical results and organizational achievements. Our standard of success will not be the construction of theory built off of the purest abstract ideas. Our standard of success will be our capacity to fulfill the role history has assigned to the American Communist Party, namely, to provide the coherence, unity, and direction that can get our people out of the perpetual crises which have pervaded our decaying capitalist mode of life, and establish in its place a society of, by, and for working people — Socialism.

Notes

[1] Michael Parenti, America Besieged (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998), 119.

[2] Georgi Dimitrov, Against Fascism and War (New York: International Publishers, 1986), 2.

[3] Our Institute has a whole playlist discussing the 32nd National Convention and interviewing around a dozen purged members. You can watch the six videos in that playlist here:

[TDoS]

Is it reasonable to assume that an American communist party is capable of creating a better economic environment for its citizens than the USSR was able to achieve for its citizens? I realize this is the natural claim of any form of political replacement theory for the two party oligarchy based system the US seems to have, but any tearing down (the easy part) needs just as solid a "building up" part to be taken seriously.

The complaints in the quote are completely reasonable from anyones perspective who thinks they have been left out of the "American dream". Depending on what any one of us Americans thinks that dream might be of course, compared to the alternative system offered (as opposed to just the complaint of the present one).

[K-Dog]

Is it reasonable to assume that an American communist party is capable of creating a better economic environment for its citizens than the USSR was able to achieve for its citizens? I realize this is the natural claim of any form of political replacement theory for the two party oligarchy based system the US seems to have, but any tearing down (the easy part) needs just as solid a "building up" part to be taken seriously.

Yes, the first part of what Kyle says addresses this.  The Marxist-Leninist tradition has to be interpreted with regards to modern American circumstances.  A fair wage, health care and such.  These things are #1 communist party goals. The first word in the partys' name is 'American'.  Communism with American characteristics.  The party is strongly rooted in theory and determined to put the people in power who will represent the American working class.

The complaints in the quote are completely reasonable from anyones' perspective who thinks they have been left out of the "American dream". Depending on what any one of us Americans thinks that dream might be of course, compared to the alternative system offered (as opposed to just the complaint of the present one).

Kyle Pettis of the American Communist Party.  Kyle is on the Plenary Committee



31 minutes in patriotism is discussed.  Oligarchs are not patriotic.

[TDoS]

Is it reasonable to assume that an American communist party is capable of creating a better economic environment for its citizens than the USSR was able to achieve for its citizens? I realize this is the natural claim of any form of political replacement theory for the two party oligarchy based system the US seems to have, but any tearing down (the easy part) needs just as solid a "building up" part to be taken seriously.

Yes, the first part of what Kyle says addresses this.  The Marxist-Leninist tradition has to be interpreted with regards to modern American circumstances.  A fair wage, health care and such.  These things are #1 communist party goals. The first word in the partys' name is 'American'.  Communism with American characteristics.  The party is strongly rooted in theory and determined to put the people in power who will represent the American working class.

Hopes, dreams, aspirations, claims of wonderfulness, these aren't a plan. They are sales points, just as capitalism has.

So....does he explain HOW they are going to bring about Communism without it being the living conditions and political and financial extremes and rules for some but not party officials of the USSR or the ChiComs?

Everything discussed around the 31 minute mark bashing the oligarches and whatnot is no different than what the Communists did...some are above the law, collect all the money on the backs of the working folks.

[K-Dog]

Everything discussed around the 31 minute mark bashing the oligarches and whatnot is no different than what the Communists did...some are above the law, collect all the money on the backs of the working folks.

31 minutes in:

What does it mean to be a communist.  It means the working people taking collective responsibility for their country.  This is in line with the Declaration of Independence.  In line with the ideological premise that the United States is based on.  This is fundamentally the guiding ethos of the American people.  If you call yourself a patriot and you aren't a communist well then I don't really think you're that much of a patriot.  You have  fallen into what Michael Parenti calls super-patriotism or something maybe even darker and deeper.  Do you not believe in the American people enough to say that we are the ones who should be running everything.  Why do we need an oligarchical click telling us what to do.  We don't.   If you look at these oligarchs.  Sean O'Brien touched on this in the teamsters speech at the RNC.  The oligarchs of this country the ruling class, they don't have any form of national pride.  They don't care about the nation.  They care about lining their pocketbook.  Most of these people are in bed with foreign governments trying to undermine our sovereignty as a nation, as a people.  They don't care if their wealth is measured in dollars or or Euros or or what have you  They care only that the number continues to rise in their bank accounts.  They care not for the suffering of the American people or the stripping away of their national sovereignty or or their individual rights.  How you can ascribe to a political system that that is at the heart of this and call yourself a patriot is truly beyond me.

Your claim is that communists are no better is not relevant.  This is not about ancient history in a foreign land.  This is about America and not about a garbled tale you obsess with concerning a time and place far away, of which you know nothing about.

What does it mean to be a communist.  It means the working people taking collective responsibility for their country.

That is what Kyle is talking about.  What communist do you think he is talking about?

This video is about America.  Tune in, your head is somewhere else.

Concerning the how, the answers are in the video.

[TDoS]

What does it mean to be a communist.  It means the working people taking collective responsibility for their country.

That is what Kyle is talking about.  What communist do you think he is talking about?

The kind that hasn't existed in reality yet. Hopes and dreams aren't a plan, nor are claims of outcomes not seen before in evidence in big communist countries, the USSR and ChiComs.

Can you point me at his discussion as to why other Communist systems turned out so poorly for the people or the country at large, and his PLAN as to why his new communism won't arrive at the same outcome?

This video is about America.  Tune in, your head is somewhere else.

America isn't communist. The American Communist Party isn't one I can vote for, nor does it advertise its advantages to capitalism locally, nor have I seen any claims it makes in the papers, on the TV at night, etc etc. Bashing America because you don't like the way it works is just bashing America, regardless of what political system you favor in its place. Its popular and easy. Discussing the details howeever...

Is it explained in the video by the American Communist Party how I will be affected by their PLAN to make the US communist? Are people with above average incomes to be taxed so everyone can have free health care? Will be housed in places where my neighbors might an Elon Musk folks on one side of a large concrete apartment complex and the other a family who thinks vodka and reefer cures all ills? What will happen to those who have accumulated wealth, will households with 7 figure housing equity be required to sell it to get to the expected level of housing as the rest of us? Can we all own multiple luxury cars, or only party leaders?

Concerning the how, the answers are in the video.

If you tell me my obvious questions of a neophyte to the history of how countries transition from something not Communism to something Communism is in the video, I will watch it all, front to back.

If you, having watched the video, know it doesn't answer what strikes me as obvious questions that any new or potential party member might ask (and recruiters who know the story should have ready and easy answers for), then please venture that now. If you say that information is there and all it takes is the time to listen, I will find time tomorrow to watch it from to back.

[K-Dog]

On Noah Khrachvik's show with Christopher Helali.  A great show and a great guest.

KDog barks with fellow comrades.  An excellent adventure, learning, sharing and spreading the word.  Not much on eco-socialism and  in this episode.  That will be in future episodes.

I clipped the front of the show off leaving the part with me in it which was at the end.  I kept the intro. 

See the original here:   https://youtu.be/osO2u60IaBk

* I could not initially get on the show, then the technical issues vanished near the end of the show.  The sun came out and bunnies hopped in the meadows.  I was able to talk.

[K-Dog]

I have been trying to join the ACP but need a hardware key to do it.  Why would that be?

Because of my perennial men in black infestation is why.

I was listening to an interview of Haz Al-Din by Doug Lain on Doug Lain's channel.  Haz is on the ACP Plenary Committee.

I left a comment.  Here it is.



But this is odd.  Two comments are indicated, but three are shown. It looks like some shadow-banning is going on.  I'll look through the onion.



Something is wrong, my comment is missing.  The count is wonky.  Here only three comments show.  I change locations and log in.



Yes I am shadowbanned.  I return to my own rig where you can see all is good and my comment is visible FOR ONLY ME TO SEE.

[TDoS]

If you tell me my obvious questions of a neophyte to the history of how countries transition from something not Communism to something Communism is in the video, I will watch it all, front to back.

As expected. You can't vouch for these videos doing more than going on and on and hoping that anyone with functioning neurons doesn't ask the most obvious questions....do the videos explain how they are going to avoid what Communism has been demonstrated to be IRL by the Soviets and ChiComs.

It is a reasonable political idea...but no one has made it work yet and if those pimping it haven't figured out the most obvious answer to the most obvious question, then it is still in the land of intellectual circle jerk among those who are the FIRST that need to figure out that answer.

And apparently in your video...don't. Was my ask so difficult, in order for me to spend 90 minutes watching it from end to end?

[K-Dog]

If you tell me my obvious questions of a neophyte to the history of how countries transition from something not Communism to something Communism is in the video, I will watch it all, front to back.

As expected. You can't vouch for these videos doing more than going on and on and hoping that anyone with functioning neurons doesn't ask the most obvious questions....do the videos explain how they are going to avoid what Communism has been demonstrated to be IRL by the Soviets and ChiComs.

It is a reasonable political idea...but no one has made it work yet and if those pimping it haven't figured out the most obvious answer to the most obvious question, then it is still in the land of intellectual circle jerk among those who are the FIRST that need to figure out that answer.

And apparently in your video...don't. Was my ask so difficult, in order for me to spend 90 minutes watching it from end to end?

I had enough of TDOS and his insults.  I banned his ass for a week.  Beyond taking his abuse, now he equates the ACP with "Soviets and ChiComs".  Oh hell no.  The ACP is American. 100%. Time for the commercial.

The nerve of someone telling me to tell him what was in a video so he could decide if it would be good enough for his time.  My time obviously being worth less than his.  On my own platform.  Fuck him.  And what good would it be to enlighten someone like TDOS?  He does not care about anybody else, and that makes him a poor use of my time.  Anything he learned he would not share.  He would keep it to himself, and I do not exist on this Earth to entertain TDOS.

Real or phony.  It does not matter.  His only intent is to disrupt.

[RE]

Real or phony.  It does not matter.  His only intent is to disrupt.

Yup.  Apparently, he can't seem to get that  behaving the same way over and over will just yield the same result of a trip to the cooler.



I think he averages about 1 day of posting before some snide remark or insult sends him back for another 3-7 days worth of solitary confinement.  If he really wanted to chat with us, one would figure he would grasp that showing some respect is required?  Nope.  So the conclusion is he isn't here to chat, he's here to disrupt.

Ever the Optimist, I remain hopeful that someday I lightbulb will pop on in his head and he'll change his behavior. Don't bet on it though.

RE

[K-Dog]

Ever the Optimist, I remain hopeful that someday I lightbulb will pop on in his head and he'll change his behavior.

Total irony.  We are both optimists and doomers at the same time.  I feel exactly the same way.  Logically it makes no sense since most likely:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

But the 0.01% chance this does NOT apply to TDOS keeps that vain hope in us alive.