On May 15, 2023, the Party of Communists USA issued a lawsuit against the American Council of Bolsheviks. Like the CWPUSA, the ACB is a communist organization, based in the United States, that formed after splitting with the opportunist leadership of the PCUSA in 2022. Now the PCUSA, filing as Ideological Fightback, Inc., is seeking $75,000 in “damages” resulting from the split. This lawsuit, which remains ongoing, is nearly unprecedented in the communist movement, the only other example we are aware of being a lawsuit by the CPUSA against the Committees of Correspondence in 1991.
In a bourgeois society, the courts, like the legislature, are merely an extension of the bourgeois state, the main instrument of power through which the capitalist class enforces its control over the labor power of the working class. Any decisions made by these courts are therefore necessarily going to favor business and monopoly interests over those of the workers. Thus, with this lawsuit, bourgeois laws are being leveraged by one “working-class” organization against another. Specifically, the PCUSA is demonstrating support for the privatization of “intellectual property” resulting from collective endeavors, in the form of patent and trademark laws. That the PCUSA believes they can benefit from these laws indicates either profound ignorance of communist principles or a blatantly bourgeois, anti-communist character.
This weaponization of bourgeois law can be seen in other “communist” parties and organizations internationally. In Spain, for instance, the main Communist Party (PCE) has entered into a coalition government aligned with the interests of Spanish capital, as well as those of the broader EU-NATO bloc. In Venezuela, the Maduro government is using the courts to delegitimize the Communist Party of Venezuela, which actively struggles against the anti-popular, anti-worker government of the United Socialist Party (PSUV). Need we even say anything about the Communist Party of China, which maintains a legal framework enabling the exploitation of millions of workers throughout the world? The PCUSA, however, does not have the same governmental influence as these other parties. For this reason, it seems, they have taken the more indirect path of utilizing the courts in their effort to undermine the revolutionary movement. Nevertheless, their decision to sue the ACB, at a time of intensified labor suppression at the hands of the Biden government, demonstrates that the PCUSA is no less anti-worker in its orientation.
We thus see the true threat presented by these faux-communists to the international communist movement. With this all in mind, the Communist Workers’ Party USA condemns the PCUSA as the bourgeois formation they really are. We stand in solidarity with the ACB against this blatantly anti-communist attack, and urge all principled communists in the US to do the same.
To support the ACB, please contribute to their legal defense fund on GoFundMe.
