From October 13–15, the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Workers' Platform USA (CWPUSA) convened its Second Plenum. The meeting reviewed the decisions of the previous Plenum; underscored the need to equip members with the political and ideological materials necessary to combat the rising tide of social democracy; set the date of the Second Convention and raised the need for fundraising; and discussed the organization's orientation toward unions, including its participation in and orientation toward staff unions.
2ND CONVENTION OF THE CWPUSA
Dates and Location
The 2nd Convention of the CWPUSA will convene July 2–5. The venue will be either Chicago or Denver.
Convention Slogan Proposals
The 2nd Convention should take place with under a revolutionary slogan. The Central Committee is accepting submissions for slogans from members.
Proposed Convention Agenda
Adoption of the CWPUSA Program
Decision on whether to officially assume the title of a "Communist Party"
Approval of the New Worker logo and layout
Presentation of a possible new CWPUSA logo
Expansion of the Central Committee
Fundraising is necessary to cover venue costs, food, delegate housing for fraternal parties and our own organization, and printing of materials. The CC has set a budget ceiling of $5,000, with a target of raising at least $625 per month. Fundraising for the Convention is the duty of every member.
Fund Drive Link: https://buy.stripe.com/9B63cv4Wjf1mfO7eUycQU0r
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: AN ALTERNATIVE FOR CAPITAL
The lead-up to the midterm elections, being held on November 3, 2026, takes place during Trump’s second term, where all 435 seats of the House and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested to determine the 120th US Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial elections, attorney general elections, and numerous state and local elections will also take place. The electoral campaigns waged to win votes for the next set of arbitrators of the controversies within the bourgeoisie have brought with them a resurgence of social democracy — a bid to rebuild the trust of the working class and impoverished sectors in the capitalist system.
The crisis within the Democratic Party – confirmed by the so-called 2024 Autopsy Report along with the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the strangulation of Cuba, and the precariousness conditions that have worsened under the Biden and Trump presidencies – has brought to life the so-called “Left” of the Democrats, generally led by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The victory of Zohran Mamdani has been hailed as the resumption of the “Democratic Revolution” – a supposed continuation of Reconstruction, the New Deal, and Civil Rights movement – breathing life into the DSA’s illusion that the Democratic Party can be transformed into a “socialist” project. The next stage of this “Revolution” is likely to be represented by a 2028 presidential run of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The DSA has endorsed or put up nearly 200 candidates for the 2026 elections, scoring victories for Congress seats in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, and Detroit. These forces, are propelled to the forefront by those who yearn to see their living conditions overcome.
Alongside the DSA slate, are other “fellow travelers” and “progressive” Democrats, such as Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan) and Nishya Raman (Los Angeles), who are campaigning on similar platforms such as Medicare for All, Abolish ICE, Ending War, Housing for All, a Green New Deal and so forth. Major political figures, Obama, Bernie Sanders, and the mouthpiece of social democracy – Hasan Piker – have joined the campaigns for many candidates to rally support.
Already, social democracy in the US has begun to show its true face in the figure of Mamdani, who on the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks regurgitated vulgar lies and fabricated news produced by the Israeli state and army—to whitewash their crimes, slander the struggle of the Palestinian people as "terrorism," and repeat the imperialist narrative reproduced by bourgeois governments worldwide. During his mayoral term, broken promises abound: soaring rent increases, slashed library funding, continuous forced removals of homeless encampments, the failure to eliminate the 24-hour work day—which weighs heaviest on workers, especially women and migrants—and the deployment of the Strategic Response Group, a counter-terrorism unit he had promised to abolish, against pro-Palestine protesters. Since Mamdani came to power, meetings with business leaders have become the norm: early in his term he moved to assuage the concerns of the captains of capital, sitting down with the bosses and maintaining the quarterly meetings of the Business Advisory Council. For social democracy, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Its historical mission is to serve as a stopgap against the revolutionary sentiment brewing among the workers and peoples.
The most insidious prop of social democracy is opportunism—forces that propagate its discourse and perpetuate the farce that socialism is on the ballot. Some go so far as to don the titles of "communist" and "Marxist," playing a central role in rallying supporters to transfigure the Democrats' Project 2029 proposal into a "Socialist Project 2029"—that is, a program for managing capitalism: maintaining the system of exploitation and private ownership of the means of production, and restructuring the capitalist state and its three main branches, that apparatus which embodies organized violence against the working class and popular sectors. At the center of this effort stands Geese: A Review of American Communism, a publication whose founders include both current and former members of the DSA and the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). For its part, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), has played its role by proposing a "socialist" program that purports to use the bourgeois state to build a "democracy for the working class," offering no solution to the problem of vast means of production remaining entirely in private hands.
Across the globe, similar programs draped in "socialist" promises—in Spain, Mexico, Venezuela—have delivered constant setbacks, convincing workers and people alike that there is no alternative. That is because they present reform packages which attempt to target the effects of capitalist exploitation and oppression, leaving their causes untouched.
It would be a mistake to believe that these campaigns unfold only at the level of parliamentarianism and electoralism. A telltale sign was Shawn Fain's statement—along with his endorsement of El-Sayed—that he would likewise line the workers up behind an AOC presidency. This cannot be viewed in isolation from social democracy's widening efforts to reach the working class and connect with the labor movement. For some time now, both the DSA and the PSL have made a concentrated effort in this direction, especially through the practice of "salting" at Amazon and the United Parcel Service.
The task of communists is to uncover and denounce these parties, to struggle against social democracy, and to expose its role as a safety valve for capitalism. The CWPUSA holds that it is our duty to intervene within the working class wherever it may be, turning those spaces into sites of direct confrontation with social democracy and opportunism. To this end, a reading list will be assembled, in the form of a bibliography that will be sent to each PBO. Following completion of the readings, each PBO will be required to discuss the readings and create reflections on how their lessons can be applied to the growth of social democracy in the US.