Comics

start here haha https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_United_States_of_America

It's a leadership problem and it's not new by any means. The page has the whole history, but then it's up to you to decide how far you feel the history follows to the modern day.

The best thing that could happen, because this is still a big party all things considered, is that leadership gets ousted and actual communists are able to put it back on the right track.

However from my interaction with some CPUSA members many of them seem to buy fully into it. Some of their arguments (as far as "nuh-uh" can be considered an argument), including around decol for example all sound the same, which makes me think central is sending out canned responses to face criticism. This same contingent defends their leadership through and through, which is decidedly anti-marxist: everyone knows the leadership is revisionist and reformist, and by siding with them, members are announcing they like this corrupt, unaccountable leadership and sign off on it. They seem to think criticism of where the party is currently is criticism of them as members, but it's by and large criticism made by communists to steer the CPUSA back on track! I'm sure there's people who just want to see CPUSA burn, but yeah, criticism and self-criticism is basic marxist stuff.

I get not going against party line but if the party line is wrong then you should absolutely not throw your weight behind it -- there are actually CPUSA members that want to change the party and don't sign off on everything leadership does.

There's other weird stuff imo, which is why I think it comes from leadership and gets instilled into new members. Like how they call it "the Party" with a capital P, as if they're the only communist party in the US because they have communist in the name. It's the kind of stuff Sarkozy used to do when he was campaigning for president lol. Or how they play up the cozy vibes, e.g. their podcast being called "Good morning revolution!", as if you're just about smelling a nice cup of coffee while looking out the window in a communist USA. Looks weird looking in from the outside, but people seem to respond well to it. I remember someone (just one person mind you) saying it felt comfy in CPUSA, that they could "retire in the party".

There's also corruption in the central committee, though not in legal sense necessarily. Just stuff that makes you raise an eyebrow and say, yeah, this ain't it. They completely purged the Austin chapter for example recently, bypassing any due process, for reasons such as "walking out of the convention floor when the 'Israeli' guest was speaking" -- I'm quoting this verbatim, you can read their statement here. All they did was walk out when some weirdo who started off by condemning Hamas and Operation Flood of al-Aqsa was invited to speak and given more time to do so than other comrades.

The whole convention was a mess to be honest, which is to be expected when your leadership only serves themselves. People's World is privately owned (and the common defence from CPUSA members is that "they have to be careful about what they post bc it's political" but I've never seen them actually expand on that). To participate, all members had to shell out something between 100 and 300 dollars (I want to say closer to 100), which is huge for some members. On top of that, 'clubs' (what they call chapters) had to pay 25$ for each delegate they wanted to send to the national convention. That comes on top of membership fees all members pay.