CPUSA: The Nov. 7 Elections and Our Path Ahead
Speech to World Conference of Communist Parties, Lisboa, Portugal, Nov. 10-12, 2006

By Tim Wheeler

I am very happy to be here. I bring greetings from the leadership and membership of the Communist Party USA. And many thanks to the Communist Party of Portugal for hosting this meeting. We have long admired Portuguese Communists for their valiant struggle against fascism, their struggle for democracy, against Portuguese colonialism and for socialism. The beloved Alvaro Cunhal was an immortal hero of those struggles.

We value highly these annual conferences.  It is proof positive that our science, Marxism-Leninism, endures and grows despite the tragic setbacks we suffered at the end of the last century. These meetings should be open to all Communist and Worker parties without any preconditions. That is what makes these meetings such a valuable forum for  exchanges on both theory and practice. Open dialogue here can lead to stronger bonds of unity and joint action against imperialism.

The theme of this meeting is expansive: “The dangers and possibilities of the international situation; the imperialist strategy and the energy issue; the people’s struggle and the experience of Latin America; the prospect of socialism.”

It has long been clear that the main danger facing the  world community is U.S. imperialism. In our view, curbing the interventionist war policies of U.S. imperialism is crucial to the self determination and sovereignty of all nations. Victory in that fight will mean breaking the blockade of Cuba, giving the Cuban people  breathing space in their struggle to construct a socialist society. It will open the way for other nations and peoples around the world to take the socialist path.

The stunning popular victories throughout Latin America, including Lula’s recent landslide victory in Brazil, has stirred the hearts of hundreds of millions of working people around the world seeking a way out of the transnational capitalist nightmare. In Mexico, the masses continue to struggle against a Florida-style theft of their victory in electing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The masses in these countries are showing that Margaret Thatcher was wrong when she taunted us, “There is no alternative.” A different, non-capitalist path is possible. As we proclaim on a colorful CPUSA tee shirt, “Another World is Necessary: Socialism.”

That Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution took power in Venezuela by way of the ballot is doubly significant. That method has now spread throughout the hemisphere as voters oust neo-liberal governments long under the domination of the U.S. State Department and U.S. transnational corporations.

These victories, employing peaceful, non-violent forms of struggle, stand in stark contrast to the indiscriminate violence of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban in their drive to impose feudalist, anti-working class, anti-women, anti-Communist regimes around the world. We should not forget that these groups had deep historic links to the CIA and continue to have suspicious connections with Washington.

Al-Qaeda terrorists fly passenger planes into the World Trade Center. Clearly the aim was to kill thousands of innocent people and enflame hatred and enmity between Muslims, Christians and Jews, between the people of the U.S. and the people of the Middle East. They played right into the hands of the ultra-right neo-conservatives in the U.S. scheming to find a pretext for war in the Middle East.

By contrast, Cuba sends thousands of doctors to treat the poor around the world. Venezuela sends CITGO tankers to cities and towns in the U.S. delivering home heating oil to poor people freezing in their homes. Cuba and Venezuela win the hearts and minds of the people while proving that socialism is a humane system that puts people before profits.

We have long embraced the struggle against U.S. imperialism as our internationalist duty. We know that victory hinges on winning the U.S. masses to the cause of peace.  Over thirty years ago, the peace movement’s success in winning the American people against the Vietnam war was crucial to victory for the Vietnamese people.  We are winning the struggle now to turn the majority of the American people against the war and occupation of Iraq.

Under the command of  the Bush-Cheney administration, U.S. imperialism has reached new lows in arrogance and recklessness. Bush publicly espouses a doctrine of unilateral, preemptive war. He justifies the aggression with brazen lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. This war has killed an estimated 600,000 Iraqis.

Last month 105 U.S. soldiers died, the fourth most deadly month since the war began. It gives the lie to Bush claims that progress is being made in stabilizing the country. This was has already cost U.S. taxpayers $400 billion and in the next five years the cost will exceed one trillion dollars.

This administration detains thousands of so-called “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, and other secret CIA prisons around the world. A majority are innocent of any ties to terrorism. They are denied all rights of due process, subjected to torture and abuse in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law.

This administration is an empire of greed, the most corrupt in U.S. history. Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon-Mobil, Lockheed-Martin and other firms with crony ties to the White House have waxed rich from no-bid contracts, war profiteering, and direct tax subsidies by the federal government.  

The war came home with a vengeance when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Thousands of poor, Black residents of New Orleans were left stranded on the roofs while Bush and Cheney dallied. Day after day, the people watched on their television screens this spectacle of Bush-Cheney criminal negligence.

Katrina has become a symbol of this administration’s incompetence and its indifference to the plight of poor and working people. The Bush-Cheney Administration has lavished trillions in tax cuts on the richest one percent while slashing programs that benefit working people, public education, health care, affordable housing, worker health and safety and environmental protection. They seek to privatize Social Security and public education. They would end all health and safety regulation of oversight of corporate America. They have stripped 10 million workers of their union rights, the most concerted union-busting drive in U.S. history.

A powerful democratic movement has sprung up to fight this rightwing Republican gang. We call it an “All People’s Front” and it is led by the labor movement, by Black, Latino, and other racially and nationally oppressed people, the women’s equality movement, the environmental movement and the peace movement. 

In this democdratic movement of today, we see the embryo of tomorrow’s struggle for socialism. I am proud that our Party across the length and breadth of the U.S. is deeply engaged in helping build that movement.

Last April 29, over half a million marched in a huge demonstration in New York sponsored  by United for Peace & Justice to demand an end to the Iraq war. Marching in the vanguard were military families, the wives, parents and children of soldiers trapped in Iraq. Also marching were some active duty soldiers, Iraq war veterans and Veterans for Peace. Tens of thousands of trade unionists marched. Many people of all religious faiths also joined the procession down Broadway. More and more, this movement reflects the popular majority that has turned against the Iraq war.
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This All People’s Movement played an enormous role in  last Tuesday’s midterm elections. For the first time in 12 years, the Republicans lost majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and nearly lost control of the U.S. Senate too. The Bush Administration and the Republican National Committee tried to use their well-worn strategy, whipping up hysteria that only Bush and the Republicans can protect us from Osama bin Laden and other jihadists.  The U.S. must “stay the course.” Bush branded the Democrats, the Party of “cut and run.”

It backfired so badly that the White House publicly announced that Bush would no longer use the words “stay the course.” And “cut and run” was also rarely heard as Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from Bush and the Iraq war.

The Republicans attempted to gain traction with other “wedge issues.” They rammed through Congress an insane scheme to build a 700 mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. They attempted to whip up support for mass deportation of undocumented workers to incite racist, xenophobic hysteria. They attempted once again to stir evangelical Christians with hysteria about homosexual marriage, abortions, and embryonic stem cell research.

Voters saw through Karl Rove’s flim flam. With crystal clarity they saw that the overriding issue was George W. Bush and his criminal folly in dragging us into a nightmare war in Iraq. A powerful consensus emerged that it is time for a change. Voters cast their ballots for the Democrats because it was the only way for them to say NO to Bush, the war, and the rest of his rightwing agenda.

Republican loss of the House means that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, a former Detroit auto worker, will become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. His legislation calling for a full investigation of Bush and his decision to invade Iraq can now go forward.  Conyers also introduced a “Resolution of Inquiry” on possible grounds for impeaching Bush and Cheney.

There are several bills introduced by Democrats that call for an “exit strategy” to end the U.S, occupation of Iraq. They include a bill by Rep. James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, to terminate all funding for the Iraq war except for funds earmarked to bring the troops home and for the reconstruction of Iraq. All this legislation, successfully blocked when the Republicans had majority control on Capitol Hill can now be moved forward.

It is worth contemplating just how quickly the neo-conservative fantasy of permanent U.S. global hegemony is coming unraveled. Just before the Iraq war began three years ago, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and gthe rest of the neo-conservatives were proclaiming the dawn of a new epoch in which the U.S., with its enormous military power, would impose a Pax Americana. The war in Iraq would be a “cake walk.” American soldiers would be greeted as “liberators.” 

Back in those heady days, the Republicans saw their control of all three branches of the U.S. government reaching out for generations. A few days ago, I interviewed the leader of a group called Texans For Public Justice in Austin, Texas. He told me of Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s tactics in redistricting in House districts across Texas. His plan was to make it impossible for challengers to unseat Republican House incumbents, a plan bankrolled by unlimited corporate cash and the GOP system of vote suppression aimed at disenfranchising Black and working class voters. “This is not about one election,” he told me. “This is about long term Republican hegemony over every branch of our government.” Now Tom DeLay is gone, indicted, facing trial and a jail term for money laundering.

This past Tuesday, voters delivered the first real blow aimed at ending one-party Republican rule in Washington. It reflects a deep shift in mass political consciousness in every region of the U.S., among all sectors of the population. The ideological dimensions of this shift are immense. We have an opportunity for the first time in forty years to shift mass thought patterns among the American people against dog-eat-dog “free market” capitalist ideology. The people are now more open to support a foreign policy based on peace, toward domestic policies that promote racial and gender equality, that favor the needs of the people over profits for the rich.

Now the challenge for us is to exploit that breakthrough, to fight the chronic tendency of the Democrats to waver, compromise and retreat. Candidates who vowed to oppose the war and the Bush agenda must be challenged to keep their promises. We must prepare to generate “street heat.” Thank you.

Tim Wheeler is the National Political Correspondent of the People’s Weekly World, a member of the National Committee and National Board of the Communist Party USA. He lives in Baltimore, MD.