Cross posted from New Zeal

President Barack Obama’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme court, Elena Kagan, has been sold to the public as a “moderate” – yes, a little liberal leaning, but moderate none the less.

In this first of a series of posts, I look at Elena Kagan’s patterns of association.

If Elena Kagan is a moderate, why then has she long associated with people connected to three interrelated organizations – the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee/ Democratic Socialists of America and the far left Washington D.C. think tank, Institute for Policy Studies?

Raised on New Yorks’ Upper West Side, Elena Kagan’s parents were both politically active in a place and era where politics was dominated by the Democratic, Socialist and Communist parties.

Elena’s mother Gloria Kagan campaigned to elect far left Democratic Congressman, William Fitts Ryan. Her older brother Marc Kagan was active in the socialist influenced New Directions movement in the Transport Workers Union. When one of its leaders, Roger Toussaint, was elected union president in 2000, Mr. Kagan became his chief of staff, until a falling out occurred in 2003.

Marc Kagan’s former comrade and boss, Roger Toussaint is prominent in the communist initiated Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which now led by D.S.A. member William Lucy. He also serves in the leadership of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University, alongside Ray Markey from the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence and D.S.A. leaders Gerry Hudson, Mark Levinson, Stanley Aronowitz and Frances Fox Piven, co-originator of the infamous Cloward – Piven Strategy.

Elena Kagan would later dedicate her Princeton history thesis on socialism in New York City to her activist brother.

I would like to thank my brother Marc whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism and in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.

Kagan first became interested in politics in high school and worked as a legislative intern for Rep. Ted Weiss, a Democrat from New York, during the summer of 1978, and as deputy press secretary for Rep. Liz Holtzman in the summer after her junior year.

The late Ted Weiss was very far to the left. In 1978 Congressmen Ted Weiss, John Burton, Ron Dellums (D.S.A. member), John Conyers (D.S.A. supporter) , Don Edwards, Charles Rangel and others, attended a meeting organized for the Soviet front World Peace Council on Capitol Hill.

W.P.C. delegation members included President Romesh Chandra (Communist Party of India), KGB Colonel Radomir Bogdanov and Oleg Kharkhardin of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union International Department.

In 1981 another World Peace Council delegation led by Romesh Chandra toured the U.S. to publicize the “nuclear freeze” then being promoted by Leonid Brezhnev.

This group met with several far left Congressmen at the Capitol, including Weiss, John Conyers, George Crockett, Ron Dellums, Don Edwards and Mervyn Dymally.

During one of the meetings in these Congressmen’s offices an official of the Communist Party USA reportedly was present and made a speech recommending that the “peace movement” unite in supporting the cause of several terrorist groups including the PLO and the communist guerillas in EI Salvador

Weiss was also close to the Institute for Policy Studies. In 1983 I.P.S. celebrated its 20th anniversary with an April 5, reception at the National Building Museum attended by approximately 1,000 I.P.S. staffers and former staff.

The Congressional I.P.S. committee members included Ted Weiss, Philip Burton , George Crockett, Ron Dellums , Tom Harkin and Leon Panetta, later appointed by President Obama to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Liz Holtzman is also way left of center. In the late 1980s and early 1980′s the Marxist based Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, or D.S.O.C. (later to become Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A.) was highly influential inside the New York Democratic Party and city government – even Mayor David Dinkins was a member.

On August 6 1993, a rally to commemorate Hiroshima Day was held in Dag Hammarskjold Park, New York. The rally was designed “to kickoff a national campaign to collect a million signatures supporting a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, commend president Clinton for extending the nuclear testing moratorium, urge renewal of the Non Proliferation Treaty, urge swift and complete nuclear disarmament.”

The event was sponsored by the radical Metro New York Peace Action Council.

Speakers included Liz Holtzman, then NYC Comptroller, leftist Congressmen Charles Rangel and Edolphus Towns, Leslie Cagan of Committees of Correspondence and the Cuba Information Project, Congressmen Major Owens (D.S.A. member) and Jerry Nadler (D.S.O.C. member) NYC City Councilor Ruth Messinger (D.S.O.C./ D.S.A. member) and David McReynolds, a leader of the Socialist Party USA and also a D.S.A. member.

Nearly 5 years later, in March 1998, McReynolds delivered a eulogy at a memorial service for Chicago D.S.A. activist Saul Mendelson. Fellow D.S.A. comrades Carl Marx Shier and Deborah Meier also spoke, as did then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

At Princeton Elena Kagan’s political beliefs emerged in an opinion piece she wrote for the Daily Princetonian a few weeks after Ronald Reagan’s victorious 1980 election night. Kagan described her disappointment at Liz Holtzman’s Congressional loss (Kagan had worked on her campaign) and her own “liberal views”. “I absorbed … liberal principles early,” she said. “More to the point, I have retained them fairly intact to this day.”

In the column, Kagan also expressed her despair the state of the political left at the time, bemoaning the lack of “real Democrats — not the closet Republicans that one sees so often these days” and the success of “anonymous but Moral Majority-backed … avengers of ‘innocent life’ and the B-1 Bomber, these beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left.”

At Princeton, Elena Kagan’s law school room mate was Sarah Walzer, the daughter of Princeton social sciences professor Michael Walzer.

Coincidentally Michael Walzer was a leader of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, both nationally and on campus..

In 1990 Michael Walzer was identified as a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Professor Walzer was also upset at Ronald Reagan’s famous victory

In her undergraduate thesis at Princeton entitled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the country as “sad” for those who still hope to “change America.” She asked why the “greatness” of socialism was not reemerging as a major political force:

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?

“Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness,” she wrote in her thesis. “Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation.”

Kagan called the story of the socialist movement’s demise “a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America … In unity lies their only hope.”

Elena Kagan spent a year working on her 1981 thesis, under the direction of Princeton historian Sean Wilentz.

When news of the thesis recently sparked controversy, Wilentz came out in defense of his former student.

Said Wilentz “sympathy for the movement of people who were trying to better their lives isn’t something to look down on… Studying something doesn’t necessarily mean that you endorse it. It means you’re into it. That’s what historians do…

Elena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist. Period. And always had been. Period.”

Few would be more qualified to identify a socialist than Sean Wilentz

In May 1980, Princeton University’s Progressive Forum sponsored a May Day rally opposite the Firestone Library. An advertisement for the event in the Daily Princetonian, “Workers of Princeton unite for a May Day rally” named speakers as Sean Wilentz and Stanley Aronowitz – a prominent D.S.A. leader

Today Sean Willentz serves on the board of Dissent magazine, which is effectively a mouthpiece for Democratic Socialists of America.

Dissent’s masthead is Marxist heavy and lists several well known D.S.A. affiliates including the late Irving Howe, Joanne Barkan, David Bensman, Mitchell Cohen, Maxine Phillips, Mark Levinson, Bogdan Denitch, Erazim Kohak, Deborah Meier, Harold Meyerson, Jo-Ann Mort, Carol O’Clearicain (NYC Finance Commissioner under David Dinkins) and Cornel West – a member of Barack Obama’s 2008 Black Advisory Council.

One of Dissent’s two editors is Elena Kagan’s old room mate’s Dad, Michael Walzer.

The other is Michael Kazin, an historian of the Communist Party and a veteran of the 1969 Venceremos Brigade to Cuba.

At Princeton, Elena Kagan won a fellowship to Oxford University, in England, where she studied “the history of British and European trade unionism.”

President Obama himself, has a long history with Democratic Socialists of America.

Is it possible that Elena Kagan shares similar associations?

Should she be asked some questions on the subject?

New York Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler is chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

In 2009, while serving in that role Nadler effectively halted a bill to deny Federal funding to the besieged radical “community group” ACORN, on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional “Bill of Attainder”.

A little while ago, the House passed an amendment to the bill that we were considering that says no contract or federal funds may ever go to ACORN, a named organization, or to any individual or organization affiliated with ACORN. Unfortunately, this was done in the spirit of the moment and nobody had the opportunity to point out that this is a flat violation of the Constitution, constituting a Bill of Attainder. The Constitution says that Congress shall never pass a Bill of Attainder. Bills of Attainder, no matter what their form, apply either to a named individual or to easily ascertainable members of a group, to inflict punishment. That’s exactly what this amendment does

Interestingly, the investigation was driven by Rep. John Conyers, the far left Democrat from Michigan – a man with close ties to the Marxist based Democratic Socialists of America. Strangely, ACORN is very closely tied to D.S.A. and has been for decades.

Now it turns out that Rep. Nadler also has close ties to Democratic Socialists of America.

So when the D.S.A. connected John Conyers, called for an investigation of D.S.A. connected ACORN, the effort was brought to an halt, by the D.S.A. connected Jerry Nadler. What are the chances?

When Nadler served in the New York state legislature in the late 1970s, he was an open and well known member of the Democratic Socialist Socialist Organizing Committee, which merged with former communists and student radicals from the New American Movement to form D.S.A. in 1982.

Like President Obama, Jerry Nadler has long been close to Democratic Socialists of America – regularly attending the D.S. A. sponsored annual Socialist Scholars Conferences in New York.

At the 1995 Socialist Scholars Conference Nadler served on Panel 1 “Crisis In The City” with D.S.A. honorary chair Frances Fox Piven, co-originator of the notorious Cloward – Piven Strategy of deliberately overloading city and state welfare systems to the point of bankruptcy.

In April 1996, Nadler was attended the 14th Annual Socialist Scholars Conference, themed : “Two Cheers for Utopia: Re – imagining Socialism”

Nadler shared a panel with Frances Fox Piven and Stanley Aronowitz of D.S.A entitled “The Left and the Job Agenda in the U.S.”

Nadler was also listed as a speaker at the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference held in March at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York.

According to D.S.A.’s [[Democratic Left]] of April 1 1999;

Recently, Congressional Representative Jerrold Nadler briefed D.S.A. activists from around the country on the state of the Social Security situation. According to Nadler, the Social Security “crisis” isn’t financial, it’s political”.

The rival Social Democrats USA have alleged that Nadler is an actual member of Democratic Socialists of America. S.D-U.S.A’s website history of the U.S. socialist movement confirms the known D.S.A, membership of former Congressmen Ron Dellums and Major Owens, former New York mayor David Dinkins and former AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. The Social Democrats also name Nadler as a D.S.A. member.

The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merges with the New American Movement, a socialist group that emerged from the New Left, to form the Democratic Socialists of America. To date, three members of the Democratic Socialists of America have served in the U.S. Congress: Ronald Dellums, Major Owens, and Jerry Nadler. Democratic Socialists of America member, David Dinkins, is elected mayor of New York City. John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, becomes president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization.

The list excludes another Congressional D.S.A. member, Danny Davis of Illinois. Nor does it include at least a dozen more who have ties to D.S.A., including one of the closest of all, John Conyers.

Nadler is a long time member of the D.S.A. created Congressional Progressive Caucus. He also runs on the ballot line of the D.S.A. infiltrated New York Working Families Party.

Despite its deliberately innocuous name D.S.A. is a Marxist organization, closely allied to the Communist Party and other radical organizations.

The organization openly believes in the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. According to D.S.A. national political Committee member, Mark Green of Detroit;

What distinguishes socialists from other progressives is the theory of surplus value. According to Marx, the secret of surplus value is that workers are a source of more value than they receive in wages. The capitalist is able to capture surplus value through his ownership of the means of production, his right to purchase labor as a commodity, his control over the production process, and his ownership of the final product. Surplus value is the measure of capital’s exploitation of labor

Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production.

Several D.S.A. members have connections to Cuba, while another former National Political Committee member Kurt Stand is currently serving a long prison sentence for spying for the then East Germany and Soviet Union.

If one of Mr Nadler’s New York constituents would like to write to him asking the question “are you now, or have you ever been, a member of Democratic Socialists of America”, I would be happy to either publish his reply, or publicize the lack of.

Cross posted from New Zeal

An excellent short doco on Boston’s radicalized Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

Symbolic of rampant appeasement of radical Islam in almost every Western country.

Many commentators on the U.S. left have tried to minimize the significance and importance of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, made famous by writer James Simpson and TV personality Glenn Beck.

According to Simpson and Beck, Columbia University sociologists, husband and wife team Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, devised a strategy in the early 1960s, to crash the U.S. economy and bring on socialist revolution by deliberately overloading state welfare rolls to the point of bankruptcy.

Many on the left regard this hypotheses as gross exaggeration at best, deliberate misrepresentation at worst.

Cloward and Piven outlined their strategy at the Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference , held September 9-11, 1966 at the Hotel Commodore, New York, in a panel entitled;

“Poverty and Powerlessness Organizing the Poor: Can it Be Done?”

Below is an eye witness report on this historic panel written by conservative journalist Alice Widener – a highly regarded authority on the U.S. left of the day. The report appeared in Widener’s USA Magazine, September 16, 1966 page 28 and 29.

Read it and judge for yourself Cloward and Piven’s intentions. Emphasis added.

Dr. Cloward’s paper for the Socialist Scholars opened with a call for a systematic strategy of “irregular and disruptive tactics” among the poor, urging them to overburden city and state governments with their “demand,,” as a means of forcing these governments to turn to the federal government for more and more funds.

Prof. Cloward said, “We need, to devote more attention to disrupting corporate power.” He described the poor as mere “supplicants” in the welfare state, and said they have most to gain “from a major upheaval in our society.” He said our welfare system is “lawless” and violates human and civil rights. He called for welfare recipients’ forcing city welfare departments to impose the labor union “check-off system” for welfare clients, by withholding 50 cents to a dollar for each client as dues to a fund for unionization of welfare clients to impose their demands for special benefits.

Prof. Cloward explained that each welfare client in New York City is entitled under existing law to special benefits for clothing, blankets, etc. He said that in 1965 city special benefits welfare payments amounted to “about $40 per client” and he called for each welfare client to demand $100 to $1,000 in such benefits.

He said there are now 55,000 welfare clients in the city, but that by 1967 there probably will be 60,000. The poor, said Dr. Cloward, could become a stake and powerful organization “in small portions of power” within the context “of a broader point.”

Dr. Cloward said he had consulted with legal experts and “we estimate that $200 million in special grants” could be obtained in New York City alone: Dr. Cloward said that ‘in Cleveland, on June 20, 1966, 30 to 35 welfare recipients were joined by others in a demonstration that included the Hough area.

In early August, he said, he himself had taken part in “a national conference to organize the welfare recipients movement,: Dr. Cloward said he personally had taken part in Wednesday night meetings with welfare clients “week after week, month after month,” and that as a result, “Next Monday there will be a demonstration of welfare recipients at City Hall”

Dr. Cloward read his paper to the Socialist Scholars Conference in the East Ballroom of the Hotel Commodore on Saturday afternoon, September 10. On Monday night, September 12, CBS and NBC TV newscasts showed the demonstration of screaming welfare recipients that took place right on Cloward schedule. They shouted demands for more “special benefits,” though the present city general welfare budget (including hospital services, etc.) is almost a billion dollars annually, the Mayor says the city is “broke,” and New Yorkers were hit this year with a city income tax in addition to state and federal taxes to pay for it all.

Prof. Cloward was right about the success of his Wednesday night meetings. Evidently his strategy of “disruptive tactics” will require costly police reinforcements at city welfare departments throughout our nation.

The prospects delighted Prof. William Ryan, formerly of Harvard now of Yale, who described himself to the audience as “a radical without portfolio.” He said, “I have been enchanted with the Cloward strategy of blowing a fuse in the welfare agencies, housing developments, and among unmarried mothers. I wonder what would happen if there was a really systematic overload.”

When a member of the audience went to the floor microphone during the question period to ask whether Dr. Cloward’s strategy is a substitute for “Socialist organization of the proletariat, the industrial factory workers “ Dr. Frances Piven of Columbia replied from the dais: “I really only want to make one point-the disruption of the system. Welfare rolls will begin to go up; welfare payments will begin to go up-the impact will be very, very sharp. The mounting welfare budget will increase taxes, force cities to turn to the federal government. We have to help people to make claims; for this they will organize and act.”

The 1966 Socialist Scholars conference was organized by many of the leading radicals of the day including former and current Communist Party supporters Louis Menashe, James Becker, Philip Foner, Eugene Genovese, Paul Sweezy and James Weinstein – later a founder of the Marxist based Democratic Socialists of America, in which today Frances Fox Piven serves as an honorary chair.

One time Soviet Spy and Communist Party member Victor Perlo also addressed the conference, as did the Party’s chief theoretician Herbert Aptheker.

No doubt  all were impressed by Cloward and Piven’s cunning plan.

[5]

Ottawa’s spymaster, Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, risked his career by declaring in an interview with state-run television that cabinet ministers in two provinces and municipal politicians in British Columbia are “under the control of foreign governments.” Fadden did not specify the two provincial governments. However, B.C. and Alberta, Canada’s two westernmost provinces, have aggressively pursued trade relations with the People’s Republic of China. In his comments to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Fadden stated:

These politicians haven’t hidden their ties to foreign governments, and recently they’ve been shifting their policy decisions to reflect those relationships. I have discussed this with Canada’s Privy Council, how best to tell those provincial governments, that they may have been comprised. There is no evidence that any federal politicians have been infiltrated.

A number of countries take the view that if they can develop influence with people relatively early in their careers they’ll follow them through. Before you know it, a country’s providing them with money, some sort of covert guidance.

Fadden declined to name the elected officials or hostile countries involved, but when probed further whether the People’s Republic of China was complicit, the CSIS director acknowledged that recent media reports on the PRC’s economic espionage in Canada were not “entirely incorrect.” The CBC report added that “at least five countries, including China and Middle Eastern countries, are recruiting political prospects in universities.”

Hat Tip Once Upon a Time in West

The Young Communist League USA is getting ready to plan their role in the 2010 mid term elections and beyond.

On July 17-18, in the city of Chicago, the Communist Party and the Young Communist League will hold a two day conference followed by a four day school on young people today. It’s a chance to discuss and examine the main characteristics of today’s young generation, and what economic-social- political have influenced them most. What’s new and emerging? What adjustments does the party have to make in organizing among young people? Why do young people need their own organization?

This conference/school follows on the heels of the very successful convention of the CPUSA, where many young people participated, sharing their experiences, helping to craft party policy and to build the YCL.

Youth played an extraordinary role in the 2008 elections. The vast majority supported change over the rightwing dominated status quo. The Obama campaign/movement ignited a new spirit of youth activism and brought record numbers of youth to the polls. The desire for change and the spirit of activism among youth continues today with the worsening conditions of life brought on by the economic crisis.

The movement for jobs has to also focus on the November midterm elections. The extreme right is trying to reverse the results won in the 2008 election. They want a Republican rightwing majority in the U.S. House and Senate. They want to set the stage for a defeat of Obama in 2012.

The CPUSA/YCL conference and school will examine how both organizations can work to defeat this extremely dangerous right wing counter offensive.

Discussion topics at the school will include political economy, objective assessment of the Obama administration, the political balance of forces, the socialist perspective and the U.S., building unity and organizing at the grassroots for jobs and equality.

Despite its comparatively small size the Young Communist League has considerable influence in United for Peace and Justice, student governments, “community organizations and Barack Obama‘s organizing for America.

During Barack Obama‘s 2004 Senate run, Chicago YCLers were active in Youth for Obama, the League also threw all its resources behind Obama in 2008.

Cross posted from New Zeal Blog

Australia has its first female Prime minister “Red Julia” Gillard.

Often touted as a moderate, or even to the “right” by Australian Labor Party standards, she is unfortunately, anything but.

Gillard is a member of the socialist Australian Fabian Society, joining through her membership in an even more left organization – a fact she has been very cagey about.

In the run-up to the 2007 Australian elections, then ALP deputy leader Gillard was the centre of controversy, after then Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello exposed her past ties to to a Communist Party of Australia linked organisation, Socialist Forum.

Initially Gillard admitted her association, but played it down.

Here’s part of a 17th October Lateline interview with ABC journalist Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

JULIA GILLARD: (Laughs) Tony, I think that question shows how silly all of this is getting, though I suspect in this interview, probably the Howard Government would think you’re the dangerous radical. After all, I’m only from the Labor Party, you’re from the ABC.

TONY JONES: Well look, seriously, Peter Costello has thrown this out. Let’s deal with it properly. What’s the Socialist Forum? Were you an organiser for it? And when did that happen, if you were?

JULIA GILLARD: Tony, it’s 2007 and I’m a 46-year-old woman. What Peter Costello is referring to is more than 20 years ago when I was in my 20s. I was a full-time university student and I had a part-time job for an organisation called Socialist Forum, which was a sort of debating society. It ultimately amalgamated with the Fabian society, which of course is a long-running ideas and debating group in Australian politics and indeed in British politics before Australian politics. I’ve worked in the cleric and administrative work.

TONY JONES: It wasn’t a front organisation for Communists?

JULIA GILLARD: Certainly not. It was an organisation where people who identified themselves as progressives, some in the Labor Party, some outside the Labor Party, would come together and would talk about ideas. I did clerical and administrative work, Tony. This is so long ago. It’s the days before modern computers and the internet, in the days where if you wanted to put out a meeting notice to people you wouldn’t send an email, you’d get out an envelope and put it in your IBM electric typewriter and type up the address and then get the next one. That’s the sort of thing I used to do.

Julia Gillard’s vagueness with Tony Jones is surprising, as a week before the Sunday Herald Sun’s Lincoln Wright had published this story on News.com.au

Scrapping the ANZUS treaty, twinning Melbourne with Leningrad and introducing a super-tax on the rich were among radical policies devised or backed by Julia Gillard as a student activist.

Labor’s deputy leader was a key figure in a socialist group that pushed radical policies and social agendas in the 1980s and early ’90s.

Founded in 1984 as a pressure group within the ALP, the Socialist Forum also wanted to sever Australia’s alliance with the US, remove the spy base at Pine Gap, introduce death duties and redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.

The Sunday Herald Sun has gained access to the forum’s archive – held in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne.

The archive contains material revealing the radical past of Ms Gillard, including her links to former members of the Communist Party of Australia.

Ms Gillard, who could be Australia’s next deputy prime minister, was on the management committee of the forum for many years. She acted as its public officer, secretary, and legal adviser on the drafting of its constitution.

Her signature is on liquor licence applications for the forum’s social events, such as theatre nights.

In a pamphlet from the mid-1980s, Ms Gillard describes herself as a “socialist and a feminist” and someone who joined the ALP at 16.

“Contrary to what may have been suggested, Socialist Forum is not a secret organisation nor is it a sub-caucus with the Socialist Left,” Ms Gillard says in the pamphlet.

“The members of the forum are drawn from varied backgrounds. Around 45 of the forum’s members left the Communist Party of Australia in the division of a year ago and about 80 are members of the ALP. The largest group are not members of any political party.”

The 200-plus member forum sought to influence Bob Hawke’s Labor government, especially on foreign and economic policy, through the free discussion of ideas.

One key document is the 1985 “Pine Gap – Planning a Strategy”, drafted by Philip Hind, who recommends a long-term policy of abrogating the ANZUS Treaty, removing Pine Gap and eventually closing all US bases.

Mr Hind visited the former Soviet Union and came back praising the reforms of president Mikhail Gorbachev. He recommended stronger ties with the USSR, including making Melbourne a sister city of Leningrad (now St Petersburg).

The archive also reveals the forum’s debate over tax policy was based on a Communist Party tax pamphlet titled “A Case for Radical Tax Reform”.

“We argue that there is only one effective way to reform the tax system, by a sweeping redistribution of the tax burden which now hits hardest at low and middle-income earners,” the pamphlet says.

In reality Socialist Forum was almost wholly a vehicle for former leaders of the Communist Party. I quote Australian Marxist-Leninist paper Green Left Weekly from an article from 30th November 1994 on late Communist Party of Australia leader Bernie Taft.

The end was in sight by the early ’80s, and Taft, most of the Victorian leadership and a quarter of the CPA National Committee departed to form Socialist Forum, an ALP ginger group.

Social Action Australia, claims that Socialist Forum was, not a split in the Communist Party, but a deliberate communist attempt to infiltrate the ALP, in response to Catholic aligned Labor “rightists” moving back into the party.

Left-wing acquiescence for the re-entry of the Grouper unions into the ALP in 1984 resulted in the Victorian branch of the CPA being allowed to enter the ALP en masse and consequently to form an inner party organisation called ‘Socialist Forum’. This organisation was led by the former communist Victorian leader, Bernie Taft, who had adhered to the strategy formulated by the influential Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramasci. Gramasci’s strategy envisaged that power transformation could be facilitated through communists gaining control of the levers of power: i.e. Marxist infiltration of trade unions, educational facilities, cultural associations and political parties.

Gillard came semi-clean about her long term involvement in Socialist Forum in a 23rd October interview with Melbourne radio station 3AW, now unfortunately scrubbed.

JULIA GILLARD: I’ve been predominantly asked about the time I worked there and so I’ve talked about that, I’ve answered all of those questions. What happened is I worked there for a period of time when I was at university. I then finished my university career and moved into my legal career. To do that, I did the course you could do instead of being an article clerk, Leo Cousins; that was a full time course and to support myself through it I waitressed three nights a week. And then I went and got a job at Slater and Gordon, worked pretty hard there, made partner in three years. So whilst I kept a membership of Socialist Forum, I sort of drifted out of active involvement with it. So yes, I would have attended the occasional meeting, but…

NEIL MITCHELL: When would you last have gone to a meeting?

JULIA GILLARD: Oh, look I really couldn’t tell you that, honestly Neil but a very long time ago. In the sense that as my legal career got more and more intense, as a partner I didn’t have time left over for other things, so…

NEIL MITCHELL: So were you on the Management Committee until 1994 at least?

JULIA GILLARD: I would’ve been. I mean, certainly the records show that I would’ve stayed on the management committee. But Neil, this is a voluntary organisation; a couple of hundred members. Once you’re on the management committee of something like that it can be hard to get off because no one wants to step up and take your place!

NEIL MITCHELL: Did you ever resign? Did you ever resign from the Socialist Forum?

JULIA GILLARD: No, it petered out, what…

NEIL MITCHELL: Well, it sort of became the Fabian Society, didn’t it?

JULIA GILLARD: Yeah, what happened is, its membership went into decline – it was only ever a very small thing. You know, its membership went into decline. It entered an arrangement with the Fabian Society and what was then the Evatt Foundation in Victoria which was also a bit of an ideas think tank. Entered an arrangement to share offices and share costs and all the rest of it. That happened in 1997, I think. And sort of slowly after that the Forum petered out. And now…

NEIL MITCHELL: Did you…

JULIA GILLARD: …people who want to join that sort of thing join the Fabian Society.

NEIL MITCHELL: So are you a member of the Fabian Society?

JULIA GILLARD: Yes I am.

NEIL MITCHELL: And what, you just sort of went from Socialist Forum to Fabian Society?

JULIA GILLARD: I hold a membership of the Fabian Society, I do support people getting together and talking about ideas. I think that’s all to the good.

NEIL MITCHELL: Mmm.

JULIA GILLARD: I, obviously, with all my responsibilities am not a regular attendee at Fabian Society events…

NEIL MITCHELL: Sure.

JULIA GILLARD: They generously invited me to address their recent dinner which I did.

The parliamentary register of interests states that Julia Gillard remained a member of Socialist Forum from 1998-2002, after which the group merged with the Fabian Society.

Read Julia Gillard’s August 31 2007 speech to the Inaugural Fabian Society Annual Dinner in Melbourne here

Communist Party USA National Secretary and Obama “friend” Sam Webb, writing in the Peoples World on working with the Democratic Party. The communists are blatantly working with and through the Democrats, to further their own agenda and Sam Webb is not shy about about admitting it.

No decisive and enduring shift in class relations in our country is possible without a decisive shift of power in the state sphere. Other things are necessary – mass sentiment, grassroots organization, popular insurgency, broad alliances, division in your adversary’s camp, etc. – but by themselves these are not sufficient to fundamentally change the trajectory of the class struggle.

Only when combined with control over some, if not all, of the levers of state power (presidency, Congress, governmental agencies, courts, military, and more) does the wish for fundamental change turn into a real possibility.

The notion that electoral politics has little progressive potential, that it is “politics lite,” that it pales in the face of direct action (an unnecessary juxtaposition) is mistaken and harmful.

Furthermore, a relationship with the Democratic Party isn’t heresy or something to profusely apologize for.

Now, it’s true that there is always a danger of losing one’s political identity and independence in the mainstream of politics (which is where the left should be), but to turn it into a reason to boycott (or participate only half-heartedly in) the electoral arena is a recipe for marginalization. In fact, I would argue that for the left, a relationship to the Democratic Party at this stage of struggle is a strategic necessity and later on probably a tactical requirement.

In 2008, there was no way to defeat the right without such a relationship. The same can be said about this fall’s elections.

The Democrats will be exploited, until the communists feel the until the time is right to build their own massed based political party to seize state power. New York’s communist and socialist led Working Families Party, could provide a model and framework for such a future organization.

What is more, there is no evidence that it backburners the struggle for political independence. In fact, new forms of political independence have developed in recent years in important ways, but differently than most of us on the left imagined. To our surprise, they took shape within the framework of the two-party system, not outside of it, and within labor and other major social organizations, operating under the broad canopy of the Democratic Party.

If an alternative people’s party is going to emerge (and we should persuasively make the case for one as we participate in existing struggles), these new independent expressions will be its basis and combine with forms operating outside the two party system, such as the Working Families Party, the Progressive Party, and others.

Finally, the state in our society is a historical product and is structured to produce and then reproduce on an extended scale the profits and power of the transnational corporations and banks. Obviously this is an enormous advantage to the right since it favors capitalism in the raw. But still it doesn’t follow that the left should avoid the state like the plague.

Properly organized and united, the working class and people’s movement can win positions in government and harness them to shift public policy, institutions and agencies to the advantage of working people and their allies. And in so doing, they will create the practical and ideological conditions for more radical changes.

With the elections a few months away, we should quickly digest the lesson.

The pro Cuban/pro China Communist Party USA is openly admitting to working with the Democratic Party to advance its marxist-leninist agenda. Surely the brave and vigilant MainStreamMedia will be all over this story?

The Republican Party and the “Tea Party Movement” need to understand that their real enemy is not the Democrats, But the people behind the Democrats.

One of the major forces behind the Democrats is the almost forgotten and hugely underestimated Communist Party USA.

The Communist regard the Democrats as little more than a tool, a conduit for their own agenda.

This quote from an October 2007 Young Communist League board report, by YCL leader Erica Smiley illustrates my point;

But even though the ultra-right is in retreat, kicking and screaming and even calling Hillary Clinton’s half public-half private healthcare proposal “socialist”, they still haven’t been defeated. As Communists, we have to finish the task of isolating the ultra-right and completely removing them from power—using the Democrats to finish the job.

In communist terms, The “ultra-right”, is any organized force to the “right” of the now completely leftist Democratic Party. That is “middle America”, the entire Republican Party and nowadays, most certainly the Tea Party Movement.

The communists will have no qualms about using the Democrats to destroy their “ultra-right” opponents, just as they will not hesitate to smash the Democrats when the time is appropriate.

Communist Party USA leader Sam Webb‘s latest message to the troops 2010 Elections: It Takes a Fight to Win

As if we didn’t know, the Communist Party is backing the Democrats and their claimed “friend” Barack Obama, against the Republicans in this year’s Mid term elections. The communists also claim to be “joining” organizations like Obama’s Organizing for America and MoveOn.

One key arena of struggle is the Congressional elections this fall. This will be a fierce battle. I don’t have to tell you that its outcome is uncertain and will have vast repercussions, either good or bad.

It’s pretty clear that if the Democrats lose their majorities in Congress both the president and the broader people’s coalition will be weakened. Going forward will get a lot tougher.

Only an incredible grassroots effort by the core political forces (working class and labor, nationally and racially oppressed people, women, youth, seniors, immigrants), and other social movements will turn back rightwing extremism and increase the Democratic majority in both chambers in Congress. Any less than that is playing with fire.

The right wing’s minimum program is to regain the House and its maximum one is to regain the Senate as well.

Much like the last election, all hands should be on deck. Not every club has to do the same thing, but every club – bar none – has to make its imprint, however big or small, on the outcome.

No one should sit this one out. Actually, I expect the leadership and membership will respond to the bell. It’s pretty hard not to see what is at stake. We will join with the broader movement, including new formations like Organizing for America and MoveOn.

But as Sam Webb acknowledges, elections aren’t the only battle;

Hearing that the immediate challenges facing the American people are joblessness and Congressional (and state) elections this fall this some may ask, “Are we putting everything else on hold?” The answer is no, but I would add that both of these issues have to command our primary attention.

Other issues such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the military budget, the elimination of nuclear weapons, green jobs and a safety net, the environment crisis and global warning, budget deficits and national debt, the fight against racism and for equality, repeal of the draconian immigration law in Arizona, passage of comprehensive immigration reform, a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, normalization of relations with Cuba and freedom for the Cuban 5 – all of these issues and more have to be a part of the 2010 elections and the struggle against the economic crisis.

By the same token, the elections and jobs campaign have to find their way into each of these struggles. Neither the elections, nor jobs, nor anything else can be won if the battle is fought along narrow lines.

Success depends on connecting the links on the chain of struggle, while understanding that the jobs and election struggles are the two links that have to be grasped at this moment in order to move the entire chain forward.

Of decisive importance is the mobilization of people whose resumes don’t read “political activist.”

For some voter education and registration or canvassing or online support for the Harkin, Miller, and other jobs bills may be what draws them into politics.

For others, it may be participating in a Labor Day march or urging their organization to pass a resolution supporting comprehensive immigration reform.

For still others it may be organizing a town hall meeting or establishing a jobs and relief committee in their local or central labor council or volunteering to be an election captain or lobbying elected officials to reroute monies going for war to cities and states.

Finally, it may be some form of mass civil disobedience – a tactic that will resonate in current circumstances. Imagine the buzz if a group of UAW retirees sat down in a plant scheduled for closure!

In short, a fresh surge of popular, sustained, and ever wider insurgency and militancy in the neighborhood and workplace, in churches and community, on college and high school campuses, in the corridors of political power and the in the streets is a necessary condition for progressive and radical advance.

If numbers aren’t there initially, they will come as people come to understand the protracted character of this crisis and the necessity for organized action.

As a good Leninist Sam Webb, knows that Party must stay abreast of the mood of the people.;

As for us, we will continue to be in the mix – building people’s confidence, fighting for unity, keeping strategic focus on the right wing and the corporate criminals, bringing clarity and vision to a growing audience, and staying attuned to the thinking and mood of the American people.

I say “staying attuned to the thinking and mood of the American people” because that is the point of departure as far as building broad united action is concerned. What we think and how we say it to a larger audience is important and necessary for sure. In fact, our message is needed now more than ever.

But we should not make the mistake of assuming what we think is necessarily what the American people think and are ready to fight for.

Nor should we make the mistake of thinking that what unites working people and their allies and what they are ready to fight for is a static target. What energizes people today can easily give way to something of a more radical nature tomorrow.

What’s the moral of the story?

It isn’t that socialism is around the corner; it isn’t.

Nor is it that millions are ready to vacate the Democratic Party; they aren’t.

It is that a new era is rolling out, defined by an intensification of class and people’s struggles on national and global level.

That being so, we should:

Stay tuned, stay connected, be sober minded, be flexible, be a long marcher, think dialectically, appreciate fluidity, be ready to shift gears, have the courage to lead, and build the constituency for jobs, peace, equality, political independence and socialism.

That readers, is the Communist Party USA “blueprint” for 2010. Study it well. These people are the real backbone of the Democratic Party.