Progressive Labor Party

So the stages might as well be skipped.

Well MJ, it's a contradiction. So, the answer is yes, we should "skip" all of the stages by directly fighting for a communist society, BUT we will pass through lower order communism. Within lower order communism the workers themselves will become conscious and take hold of the ways and means of production -- their own minds. So, the contradiction is that we must fight directly for communism, but recognize that there will be stages as we fight for it, but the stages are accidental to the fight for communism.

We have to fight directly for a communist world; regardless of the form that the struggle takes, the content must be communist.

Unless an "accidental stage" somewhere happens to be when workers decide to expropriate the capital owned by foreign capitalists first because it's easier, in which case we should fight against it?

Progressive Labor can be succinctly described as "Ultra-Left Stalinists" -- paradoxical as this sounds.

They are the only Leninist sect that I know of that is completely, unconditionaly opposed to nationalism -- this places them well to the left of certain anarchist groups I can think of. And PL are for a violent proletarian revolution that will immediately abolish wage labor, money and commodity production.

Okay, so far so good.

Unfortunately, their idea of the last, best attempt to create communism was Mao's China and Stalin's Russia. So there's quite a bit of a problem there!

I forgot to mention that with their politically primitive take on reality -- illusions about Stalinist Russia, for fuck's sake -- they are also always "smashist" or "fascist."

All political phenomena external to their organization are inevitably described as "fascist." And like all good energetic Stalinists, except during the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the proper response to anything they oppose is "smash" ist; "smash" dis, "smash" dat, etc.

But that doesn't sound paradoxical at all.

What certain anarchist groups?

The obvious answer to your question is no, but I'm trying to understand why it was postulated in the first place. I think it has to do with the use of the term "accidental". I meant that whatever stages do arise are contingent upon the direct fight to communism. So, if the workers expopriate foreign capital first, great, if not, bad, as ALL capital must be expropriated and all money burned. We must fight directly for a cashless, capital-free, egalitarian society. So, if the angry workers get to the "foreign" owned factory first, on their way to that one owned by the local bourgeoisie, that's great, but so long as they keep marching to the local bourgeoisie's factory.

I'm going out on a limb here, but Socialist China WAS the LAST best attempt at communism. It illustrated the peasant masses fighting without rank or privelege. The contradiction of the state negated much of the egalitarian thrust of the revolution, but timewise, 1970 or so being the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, would put it at the tale end of the international revolutionary movement. The movements that followed China were pretty much narrow national lib. movements that paid lip service to some vague socialism. I'm not saying that I uncritically support Mao, but in the historical context we are discussing, China postdates all of the other 20th century proletarian revolutions, though it was doomed to fail due to its own internal contradictions of fighting for socialism.

Agreed 100%.

PL is NOT uncritical of Stalin. He of course is responsible for dissolving the COMINTERN. He made a deal at Yalta that sacrificed potential communist uprising in Italy. He built socialism and not communism.He gave up on winning workers to communism in the War against Fascism. He allowed a nationalist campaign, instead, that appealed to save Mother Russia instead of defending the revolutionary movment . That was reflected in the movie about Peter the Great that was released during WWII
and some film about some feudal king who defeated a Germanic invasion. After WWII the move to egalitarian communism was completely reversed with growing income differences between skilled and unskilled workers and corruption of Communist Party officials who received much higher wages than the average worker. In his defense, Stalin the CPSU saved the world from fascist barbariusn by defeating the Nazi's almost single-handedly with the Battle of Stalingrad and the largrest tank battle in the history of mankind at Kursk. The objective facts are that the early communist revolutionaries did not have the advantage of our hindsight. Marx himself believed the socialist phase was necessary before wageless communism could be achieved. This only shows that communists must use the Marxist method of dialectical and historical materialism to understand where previously held theory has been proven incorrect.Only dogmatists just as religionists believe there is one universal truth that never changes Communists have a science to ev lauate theory and change. Nothing is forever static that is only what the appearance may show. There are always contradictions that are causing quantitative changes to transform to qualitative change. PL understands this and that is why we have avoided the pitfall of dogmatism and have advanced our theory through our practice and analysis of past practice.
Those workers who have differing ideas will be struggled with in debate and practice. We will urge them to try the party's way and see if it works in the real world. If it doesn't we can all learn from the experience and make adjustments.If it does work then we will ask them to join the party and advance the struggle for egalitarian communism. If they organize against the party they will be isolated and by their co-workers and and their activities carefully watched. Communism can't work iof the factionalism occursd. We can differ on issues but must unite to implemet polciy and if it proves wrong it will be reevaluated and changed. That is concensus
and democratic centralism. AS the party becomes a party of millions, than tens of millions, and hundreds of millions, the old selfish destructive ideas will be defeated.

Damn dude, way to unbury the dead. Although it was hilarious looking at a thread and then finding out it was 90% about the anarchist group I'm in.

Anyways, did you make an account here just to post a defense of your crappy stalinist party?