In what was  on the whole a very fine article on  what Communist parties and Communists should do to adjust to 21st century realities, Sam Webb suggested that we should begin to call ourselves Marxists as against Marxist-Leninists.  Others(not Sam) have suggested that the word Communist itself be removed from the name of the CPUSA.

I am opposed to both ideas.  First let me say that terms like "revisionist" "opportunist," aka I am a real revolutionary and you aren't have no real meaning for me, except to create conflict for the sake of conflict. 

My objections have to do  with the significance first of all of Lenin's contribution to Marxism and the Communst movement  on what I see  as the more important of the two questons  and second with the use of the word Communist historically in the CPUSA and its significance today.

Lenin provided Marxism with a theory of politics and modern political economy that made it into a global movement.  This theory also served as the basis for the successful socialist revolutions and establilshment of socialist states in the world that we have seen so far.  That does not mean that there are not other approaches possible  to establish socialism, but none so far can on any level compare to  Lenin's achievements.

Lenin did not revise Marxism as I see it but update or "modernize" it.  He made three major contributions to Marxism and the socialist movement which became the basis for Communist parties, whatever those parties called themselves, through the world.

The first of course was the theory of the vanguard party.  Marx had supported the  formation of workers parties for socialism that would ally with and build unions and educate workers in the struggle both for democracy and the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. 

But Lenin's theory called for a party that would do that without factionalism and with a much higher level of involvement and commitment than the faction ridden mass electoral parties already in existence in Western Europe. Democratic centralism as an organizing method would both prevent factionalism and maintain democracy in the party.  The party would in effect be a party of advanced workers and "intellectuals" committed to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. 

If anything, it would be broader in the groups that it sought to organize and reach than the mass social democratic parties  then in existence.  Where there was perhaps a difference with Marx(and here it was more implicit) was that the revolutionary party would not only organize and educate but coordinate and lead the workers struggle against not only the capitalist class but the capitalist state machine.

I am not here to deny that democratic centralism has not been abused in many places and at many times by oligarichal cliques inside Communist parties.  Nor am I saying that Leninism means  that the revolutionary party will become in effect the new socialist state, constructing socialism from the top as it made the revolution from the bottom.  Our definition of bill of rights socialism explicitly rejects any such policy.  But I am saying that democratic centralism inside the CPUSA and bill of rights socialism are not only necessary but an expression of Marxism-Leninism.

Lenini's second great contribution, related directly to his first, was his theory of the state.  Here, Lenin once more upheld Marx, building upon Marx's long battles with the anarchists and with the social reformists by contending that the workers movement must neither "smash the state"(the anarchist view) and establish non state cooperatives and other forms or as the reformists advocated,  simply through elections and reforms take over the existing state and use it to establish socialism. 

The state was a machine of the capitalist ruling class that the working class would have to overthrow and replace with a new socialist state to advance socialism.  Just as Marx had no blueprint for how the working class would overthrow capitalism, Lenin had no blueprint for how the working class and its revolutionary vanguard party would overthrow the capitalist state machine and replace it with a socialist state.  But his updating of Marxism on these points created a clearer and much sharper framework for advancing socialism.

Lenin's third great contribution to Marxism was his theory of imperialism.  Marx had been critical of the crimes of imperialism in China, India, and most of the world and had written widely on the subject of imperialist abuses and the economic forces behind them following the publication of the Communist Manifesto and the defeats of the revolutions of 1848 to his death in 1883, spending virtually all of that time as a political exile in Britain, the great empire of the world.

But Lenin connected imperialism with the development of  advanced industrial capitalism which in effect exported capital to the non industrial regions, militarized the industrialized countries at the expense  at home of capitalist liberty and demoncracy, and brought about new and large imperialist wars that now brought the peoples of the colonial regions into the struggle against finance/monopoly capitalism (which was the foundation of imperialism) making the struggle of the workers in the industrialized countries to overthrow domestic capitalism and the struggle of the masses in the colonial regions to overthrow foreign capital and its domestic servants closely inter-related and interdependent.  

Of course Lenin and the Bolshevik party he led provided the leadership for the first successful socialist political revolution in history and in the aftermath of that revolution a new International of Marxist parties, most of whom revived the name Communist which Marx had used in the Manifesto, was created and that International called upon those parties who applied for membership to identify themselves with revolutionary principles and polices that were based on Marx's general theory and Lenin's contemporary updating of that theory.

That Lenin in the last few years of his life didn't use the term Marxism-Leninism is certainly true; but the fact that the term was developed in the Stalin period and was use by the Stalin leadership does not in any way discredit it, since Marxism-Leninism was present as both theory and policy  I would contend in the early Comintern and one should remember that the Stalin leadership as it developed moved away from the Comintern and eventually  abolished the Comintern during WWII. 

I don't think that Sam Webb in his article or his thinking rejects or sees as insignificant Lenin's theory of the party, his theory of the state or his theory of imperialism,  I believe that the overwhelming majority of Communists in the U.S. and through the world continue to adhere to thes analyses.  For that reason, dropping Leninism can accomplish nothing positive.  It will only spread conflict and confusion in the ranks of those who are with us or for us and do nothing to contain anti-Communists from attacking us, since the sort of people who routinely villify the CPUSA are the people who see everyone to the left of themselves as socialists and communists.

Changing the name of the Communist party is also a bad idea.  First, many Communist parties are called by different  names in different countries because  of historical reasons, e.g, Workers parties in some Asian countries, parties of labor in some places, the Socialist Unity Party in the former German Democatic Republic, the former Polish United Workers Party in former  socialist Poland, etc, but in the majority of places, Communist parties.

Here, because of Red Scare repression after WWI, it wasnot t until the middle 1920s that the CPUSA, initially two rival parties forced underground by repression, was able to move above ground under its present name.  The CPUSA has throughout its history fought for full legality and rights under its name as it sought to win over workers and farmers to its program and become a mass force. 

 During WWII, Earl Browder sought to dismantle the CPUSA as a Communist party and turn it into  the Communist Political Association(CPA) essentially a society somewhat like Britain's Fabian Society which would seek to advance socialism through education and the involvement  of trade unionists and people in the arts, sciences, and professions. 

Although Browder essentially repudiated Marxism-Leninisn on this and also on his support for alliances with "progressive capitalists" and his timidity in criticizing U.S. imperialism, he kept the word Communist, which for advanced workers and their allies was associated with the gains of the period. 

Browder himself and his policies were of course repudiated.  I am not saying that the word Communist has not been demonized in the U.S. through the cold war and post cold war period in a way that few things have been demonized.  But it should be our role to fight and disprove that demonization instead  of retreating from it or appeasing it in any way. 

In this country, our comrade predecessors fought against Klansmen and FBI agents and Red Squad police and local vigilantes for the right to be called Communist, to belong to a Communist party, and to advance our politics with full civil rights and civil liberties.  Without denying mistakes and abuses that are also part of our history, we should be proud of the name Communistl advance it and continue the struggle to make it legitimate in U.S political life.