The CPUSA–UT: What We Want, and How to Get It

The Call

We in the Communist Party of America–Utah (CPUSA–UT) want to build a new Utah, a free Utah, a truly democratic, multiparty, Socialist State of Utah.

The People’s Government

To do this, the CPUSA–UT aims to create a Socialist State People’s Government (PG) of General Assemblies of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Farmers’ Representatives.

What will be the nature of the Utahan PG?

The PG will be based on duly elected, sovereign, General Assemblies (GAs) of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Farmers’ Representatives from top-to-bottom and from bottom-to-top: Each town and city will elect neighborhood and workplace GAs to govern their affairs, up to an All-Utah Socialist State People’s Congress of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Farmers’ Representatives.

Each GA will be made up of a certain number of Communal Councils. Each town and city will be governed by a pyramid of neighborhood and workplace GAs which will lead up to a single town or city GA. Every city and town GA will also serve alongside the city or town council but wholly separate from it, eventually replacing the old bourgeois legislative body.

Mayors and town administrators will serve alongside GA chairs, the latter likewise eventually replacing the local bourgeois executives.

The powers of review, veto, and letting a bill sit on the desk will be taken from the executive and devolved to the people of Utah locally and statewide, with the people allowed to decide the fate of a bill via the holding of a popular referendum.

The Utah State People’s Congress will be unicameral in spirit but bicameral in practice; there will be a House and a Nationalities Chamber, the latter chamber serving in place of a senate. Both chambers will be able to instantly make laws, with no recourse to a senate. This will ensure the speedy enactment of laws both minor and major.

The PG of Utah will have nearly limitless domain over the economy, putting private property into the commons on a whim wherever and whenever the people demand it to do so, in the interest of the Socialist State; if the State is simply the Society, then Government is just the coercive arm of that Society per Laurence Gronlund. That coercive arm will render the old Society Social, through a combination of persuasion and force: State security will be made the domain of the people of Utah, who will serve on Military Revolutionary Committees (MRCs) at the local level; these MRCs will rid our State of closed, secretive State security organs. As such, Socialist State security will be truly open, transparent, and popular, in marked contrast to old capitalist State security formations. These MRCs will command Socialist State workers’ militia members and work with Party worker-cadre both urban and rural to forge Socialism in our wonderful, new Socialist State.

Make no mistake: the new PG we are forging through everyday struggle will be strong. Its powers will be almost exhaustive, to better safeguard the Utahan People’s Political and Social Revolution from the inevitable counterrevolution.

The PG will at once draft a Socialist Bill of Rights, tacking it onto the existing Utah State Constitution, the old constitution eventually to be replaced by a distinctly Utahan Socialist State Constitution which will enshrine communal, popular people’s power forever.

Now that we have briefly outlined the nature of the new PG, let us move on to

The New Socialist Culture

Culture must be complete, all-embracing, and all-encompassing. In contrast to the old bourgeois culture which cherishes individuality, the new Socialist culture will pride collectivism. Not just collectivism, but the new Socialist man and woman, the new Socialist people in our beautiful, immaculate Socialist State of Utah.

It is the pressing task of our vaunted Vanguard Party to make this new, powerful culture real here, now.

How is this to be achieved?

Through the formation of revolutionary, Red dance troupes, the revival of “three penny operas,” the creation of vast mural paintings in the streets, the opening of cheap, if not free art houses, and so forth.

This new culture will thus be insurgent, daring, boldly going beyond the decrepit bourgeois culture.

Not just dance troupes, street art, and operas, but Socialist dinner parties, Socialist lectures in worker-owned lecture halls, and so much more, all held at the expense of the CPUSA-UT with generous financial aid from the national CPUSA.

This is the only way our Party can become “mainstream,” not unlike the old Socialist Party of America (SPA), which had created such a mighty, revolutionary “counterculture” within the existing bourgeois State and yet undoubtedly at odds with that selfsame State over a hundred years ago.

Party cadre must fight to create this bright new culture by all learning to become artists, writers, lecturers, musicians, men and women dedicated heart, mind, body, and soul to Social revolution, men and women who all must be made to realize that they have unique, untapped cultural talents which must be brought out by constant struggle.

This new Socialist culture is struggle. It is the fightback, the hammer which will smash the old, well-worn and outmoded culture. It is the tempest, the storm which will wash away the past in one fell swoop.

Our discussion must now veer into the subject of alliances.

Working with Liberals

The Utah State Democratic Party is, on the one hand, but one wing of the capitalist, corporate class in our Utahan Society, which puts us in bondage each day in the workplace, passing abusive, disgusting laws made in the State legislature via bourgeois representatives, etc.

On the other hand, that party is facing a revolt from its rank-and-file.

Rank-and-file working-class Democrats have pushed the State party apparatus to field reform-minded candidates in the recent elections.

Our Party has a duty to work with these rank-and-file liberals, aiding them in reclaiming the Democratic Party, making it of, by, and for workers and Socialism.

However, our Party absolutely will not and cannot work with the compromised corporate suits making up the Utah State Democratic Party apparatus.

We will not corrupt our ranks by rubbing shoulders with the current Democratic Party leadership.

At times, it may become strategic for our Party to field a candidate or two through the Democratic Party.

But we in the CPUSA–UT are not so naïve as to believe that a “ballot box revolution,” waged primarily through the Democratic Party in isolation from other crucial factors, is the order of the day. Not just ballot box initiatives, but mass strikes waged in conjunction with those ballot box initiatives are to lead to the promised, fated, God-given Socialist revolution.

As we energetically throw ourselves into work with liberals, let us not forget that we are proletarian vanguard warriors for true economic and political democracy, for Socialism.

Now, let us go over to

Working with Socialists

Working with Socialists is a must. Not just a must, the key.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Wasatch Socialist Party (WSP) are our main allies in the fight to realize a truly Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth of Utah.

Our Party must work with the Utahan Socialists in the streets, running candidates via joint “fusion tickets” with the DSA and WSP.

The end goal is a Socialist-Communist coalition PG.

We must reach out to those parties, working on common goals with them.

Center-left unity is all well and good, but true left unity is paramount to the CPUSA–UT’s success in the long run.

Nothing good ever came from purely center-left coalition governments in Italy, Weimar Germany, and elsewhere, and both the Socialists and our Party know full well that Communists and Socialists must work with each other if Socialist revolution is to be achieved and Fascism is to be not just defeated but thoroughly crushed.

Religion

Finally, we must touch upon religion.

The author makes no secret about his religious views: He is a Mormon, but one who embraces the Mormon Church’s early Socialist, cooperative past under Brigham Young.

But the author also recognizes the burning necessity of the separation of church and State, which must remain the case under Socialism.

He would also like to add that he favors a Liberation Theology, exactly like the one practiced in revolutionary Socialist Cuba.

The Mormon Church’s vast tax-free holdings could be utilized fully for the people of Utah, holdings that are to be taxed under the new PG for fairness’s sake.

Religion, far from dying away under Socialist Society, can be transformed around a radical, liberating, and peaceful fightback ideology.

Religion is far from being what Marx called “the opium of the masses”; he also said that capitalists weren’t true Christians, that they ravaged the Earth in search of endless surplus-value, destroying God’s creatures and human life itself through massive, criminal ecological destruction.

The author, it must be said, is not a theocrat.

Far from it.

As the Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints say:

We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. (Author’s emphasis)

To conclude:

Onwards to victory!

For a Socialist State of Utah!

For peace, land, and bread!

For Socialism!

Signed with a loving hand,

Reece Gatliff, co-leader of the CPUSA–UT