park wrote:There's no way they can beat the capitalist control of main stream media. Revolution and armed opposition is the only way to take power.
This is incredibly simplistic. You'll never get anywhere if there isn't a mass movement and that means spreading your message, activism, organization, etc. well before anything resembling a revolution.
Also while it generally true that the ruling ideas stem from the ruling class and that corporate mainstream media plays a large role in this it is not absolute in its control. There always exists counter ideas and even now a large portion of people are growing disillusioned and cynical towards the standard line that comes from those in power. Information is spreading faster than ever and is becoming decentralized. Plenty of political movements around the world are taking advantage of this.
park wrote:How many Americans vote for the Communist party thanks to his pr?
Difficult to really gauge support based on this. In the presidential elections the communist and socialist parties combined typically don't get more than 12,000-15,000 votes. Then again with the way ballot access works they typically can only get on in a few states each election cycle. In 2012 the Marxist-Leninist group PSL had 9,388 votes but was only the ballot in 13 states.
Then again the Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant got elected to the Seattle City Council last year with 93,000 votes and that was just one city. So small victories in local elections like that certainly are possible, even in the US now.
mikema63 wrote:Hopefully none, CPUSA is complete shit. May as well vote for the democrats.
Also simplistic.
1. Calling the CPUSA "complete shit" is unnecessarily dismissive and fails to take a real look at the party. Yes it is true that the CPUSA has been gutted by infiltration from the FBI and other agencies, disinformation spread about it and the decline wrought over fall of the USSR. The current leadership is indeed inept and has shown itself to led by sellouts by endorsing Obama and other Democrat candidates which only serves to further right wing agenda that tries to label Obama as being "communist endorsed" or claiming that his is a socialist of some kind. The party itself however is apparently divided between this essentially hijacked leadership and those who are genuine Marxist-Leninists who want to salvage the CPUSA as a proper far-left party and return it to its Leninist roots. Further it still has "name recognition" and a somewhat substantial party infrastructure which still attracts a number of people interested in the movement. So it still yet may play role and parts of party may yet be salvageable. Or at least this is what I've been told by some CPUSA members unsatisfied with their current leadership.
2. I'm not sure why this question needs to necessarily imply the CPUSA in the first place since there are several communist and far-left parties in the US. Groups such as the Party of Socialism and Liberation and Socialist Alternative have actually been growing. The failures of the CPUSA doesn't necessarily extend to the other far-left parties in the US.
Pants-of-dog wrote:1. The revolution will never arrive.
A lot can happen between now and "never". Are you by any chance a future psychic?
How many revolutions have occurred throughout history? How many have occurred just over the past century or so? We have only been engaged in heavy industry as a species for a couple of centuries now. The current capitalist order is but a tiny blip in the span of human history and an even smaller seemingly infinitesimal blip on the span of Earth's history. Yet you suppose that this order will not usurped as it itself has largely usurped the orders that came before it?
I'm sure if went back 20 years before some of the great revolutions in history and asked people if they thought these revolutions were likely most would find the idea laughable. Yet they happened.
"All revolutions are impossible until they happen, then they become inevitable."
Ibid wrote:2. The revolution is happening right here right now.
This seems to contradict your point above but further it is also consist with Marxist notions on this issue. The economic and social conditions of society are indeed changing. Our technology continues to progress. The conditions of new societies are built on the foundations of the old. There are moments in the development of our civilization that existing superstructure becomes outmoded, archaic and unable to better service that civilization. It is times like these when the gradual developments of society necessitate stronger revolutionary breaks.