So They Voted to Condemn Socialism: A Response from the New York Young Communist League
On February 2nd 2023, The United States House of Representatives passed H. CON. RES. 9 titled “Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism”, with 328 YAY votes vs 86 NAYS. The New York District of the Young Communist League (YCL) not only sees this resolution as oppressive and anticommunist, but views the passing of this decision as a dangerous attack on all historic and current revolutionary working class movements.
The history referenced in the resolution is not only incorrect but steeped in anticommunist rhetoric. The statement begins by claiming that “Socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships.” Not only is this a blatant lie, but The US government would rather rely on an incorrect, anticommunist interpretation of history than have to deal with the repercussions of mass Socialist struggles throughout the world. One example of this is the claim that the Revolutionary government of Cuba “expropriated the land of Cuban farmers and the businesses of Cuban entrepreneurs, stealing their possessions and their livelihoods, and exiling millions with nothing but the clothes on their backs.” What the red-baiting resolution leaves out is that this expropriation was at the expense of the Cuban Bourgeoisie, whose wealth came from exploiting Cuban labor and protecting US backed corporations in support of the fascist Batista regime. We support the Revolutionary Cuban government in their policies that benefit the majority instead of the minority. This is from their Agrarian reforms in 1960, which expropriated large US backed landholdings to the 1962 mass literacy campaigns throughout the nation. The US government will always see themselves as the victims when their economic interests are sacrificed for the good of the majority.
The anti-Cuba propaganda is just one example. This resolution attacks the great success of Communist movements to suppress the possibility of similar movements gaining strength throughout the US. But what would happen if Americans learned from the history of Communist movements? US citizens would see that through Socialism millions have been brought out of extreme poverty in China, millions have been educated and given free medical care in Cuba, and in Nicaragua extreme poverty has been stopped and literacy programs have been provided. This is all while 41% of Americans are in extreme medical debt because they cannot afford to be sick in private hospitals, while Black and Brown working class people are continually gunned down and imprisoned by the racist police state; Black men in particular are hunted are executed at beyond alarming rates, while the average US citizen, though working multiple jobs, lives in an unending state of precarity and destitution. This is in the richest Capitalist nation in the world- a nation that has more than enough to the point of overproduction and waste to provide for everyone, but is unable to do so because it does not align with the interests of Capitalist profit.
But the resolution said that the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), “Denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.'' This ultimately does not only mean Communist goals but any goals that threaten the maintenance of the Capitalist system. This goes further in suppressing even the widely accepted policies related to Democratic Socialism. For instance, this attack on “Socialist policies” is equally an attack on Medicare for All, a policy that has held 63% support or more since last year and virtually any policy which seeks to lift the crushing burden of extreme poverty for millions of people. This includes the investment in public housing and free college tuition, policies are becoming increasingly popular for the masses of working class people throughout this country as a result of Capitalist dispossession. What this resolution represents is the suppression of mass working class movements fighting for collective interests and threatening the relationship between the Capitalist system and the US state.
The statement claims that the USA was founded on the belief in the “sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed.” For the US state, the fantasy of the individual is so important that it sacrifices the survival of the majority. The U.S needs individualism to breathe life into its terroristic capitalist project and, in turn, takes the lives of everyone else. For the millions of workers throughout the US, the Capitalist system gives an illusion of choice with two hopeful options: work or starve. As Karl Marx said in Wage Labor and Capital, indeed the worker “leaves the capitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labor-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers.” The United States ruling-classes project is a fantasy that the working class person has similarities with the Capitalist class, obfuscating the destruction they cause onto the masses with capitalist aspirationalism and preventing collective goals.
The Young Communist League not only regards this resolution as anticommunist and false, but also denounces the senators who voted to support the resolution. This not only includes Republican lawmakers who are clearly antagonistic to progressive movements, but also mainstream Liberal and faux-progressive Democrats who chose to side with the reactionary Capitalist political system rather than denounce a bill that was an attack on working class movements throughout the world. This includes 14 Democrats who voted “Present” during the proceedings. Some progressive politicians may try to fight for their version of Democratic Socialism via the Democratic Party, but this vote highlights that the dominating forces of the two US political parties will always rely on a shared economic system to crush socialism and protect their mutual class interests. The vote by 109 Democrats to "condemn the horrors of socialism” disintegrates at once any and all illusions that the Democratic party is some sort of "convenient" ally. The YCL will continue to denounce the smearing of Communist, socialist, and workers movements and all progressive movements. We will struggle with all workers and oppressed people to fight for a better world, to fight for Communism and revolutionary workers movements which have provided opportunities and liberation to billions the world over, and we will continue to denounce the actual historical proof of the horrors of capitalism.
