this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
98 points (95.4% liked)

Comradeship // Freechat

2130 readers
81 users here now

Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.

A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CrushKillDestroySwag@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love the CPUSA's the best, especially the one that's canted at 45 degrees. Love me some gears.

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I've never liked the gears for some reason. I liked when Lincoln's profile was part of the iconography.

It could just use some Americana in it, whatever that might be.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

a "communist" party that includes a depiction of any USian president in their logo is almost certainly PatSoc

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Lincoln was an avid reader of the New York Tribune, and as a result was reading Marx.

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. [...] Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Marx wrote him a letter after he won his second term.

"Sir, We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery. [...]"

Lincoln was such a enemy to capital interests at the time that they had him assassinated.

If you were to invoke any US president along side communism it would be Lincoln. Was he a socialist? No, he still believed in the wage labor system even as he made attempts to reform it, but there is a reason his face was used in the 1938 photo I posted. It was because he courted socialist and engaged in class struggle in the form of the antislavery movement.

Who can say what his aditudes would have been if he wasn't assassinated.

Edit: As an aside, found this gem on the reddit post attached to the image.

Their profile is full of comments about white genocide.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

One of the main characteristics of patriotic socialism in settler colonies is being against decolonization. Lincoln was almost certainly not pro-decolonization; as a result, I don't think it's appropriate for a US communist party to glorify him, regardless of his thoughts on Marx's work

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago

That's a very fair point. He was in fact pro-colonization. Along side his writting of the emancipation proclamation he penned a measure that would see some 5000 black slaves sent to an island near Haiti.

A fact I was not aware of until this conversation.

[–] CrushKillDestroySwag@hexbear.net 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately that is the case now, but when the original pic in the above post was taken the party was still in its original, USSR-aligned form.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

being pro-USSR unfortunately didn't (and still doesn't) preclude being anti-decolonization in the US

[–] doccitrus@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What year is that image from?

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My understanding its from 1938.

[–] doccitrus@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 10 months ago

I wonder what CPUSA's policies and statements/principles were back then, and whether they then held to the 'internal colony' line. I don't know the history well enough to place that, but maybe another comrade browsing does.