Liberation Communist Party

The Liberation Communist Party, commonly known as Liberation (to differentiate it with the similarly-acronymed Communist Labor) is a councilist political party in the United Republics, and is among the country's three largest parties. It was formed during the 1954-55 split of the Workers' Communist Party, and is regarded as consisting of the left-wing of the former party (with Communist Labor representing the right-wing).

The General Secretary of Liberation is musician and longtime California Premier Eric R. Boucher and the leader and current Premier of the UASR is Pennsylvania delegate Sara Innamorato. Current Secretary General of the UASR Chokwe Antar Lumumba is also a member of the Liberation Politburo.

History
Liberation originally grew out of the pro-Horn War fractions of the WCPA. These fractions (regarded as the successors of internationalist leaders like William Foster and John Reed) saw the Franco-British Union as an immediate threat to world peace, and sought to put an end to its reign by stifling its imperial ambitions. These pro- and anti-war fractions (eventually termed Workers’ Party-Liberation and Workers’ Party-Labor, respectively) would also split over questions on whether Marxism was malleable or invariant in regards to the vanguard party, and whether to end the “Arduous March” period of post-war austerity and rationing. Despite the best efforts of Premier Jack Satchel and the moderate Revolutionary Unity fraction, the split became insurmountable to resolve.

With the threat of a DFLP-DRP minority government on the horizon due to this split, Secretary-General James Cannon invoked his powers to dissolve the Central Executive Congress ahead of the 1954 election, de jure ending the WCP as an entity. Cannon and pro-war Congresspeople led by Benjamin Davis would form the current party from the Liberation fraction and would go on to win the 1954 election.

Under Cannon and Davis, the party was not much distinct from the WCP, largely following the 1952 WCP platform, but with a heavier emphasis on militarized response to international reaction as opposed to Communist Labor’s “containment” doctrine (inspired by Marshal Frunze and his recent split with the AUCP). The first indication of change came during the 1958 election, which saw the party flounder under Robert G. Thompson, losing the election to moderate Eric Hass.

The Party’s modern political identity would be forged under new congressional leader Richard Nixon, Politburo member Morris Childs, and Secretary General Langston Hughes. After Nixon’s election as Premier in 1960, he enacted a strong internationalist policy, funding paramilitary groups in Europe and India, and sending advisors and troops to back Marxist forces in the Indochina War and Congo conflicts. The victories in these conflicts would bolster the popularity of “militarized internationalism”, and by extension boosted the profile of the LCP.

Indifferent to social matters, Nixon was convinced by Childs and advisor Stanley Levinson to appeal to the growing student and minority movements during the Second Cultural Revolution, finding militants to help expand the party base and bolster their claims of being the most leftist of the two WCP successors. This strategy, which included cultivating groups like the African National Congress and the Students for Industrial Democracy (formerly the Young Communist League, now a forum for radical student groups across the country), would be successful in pushing the party to the left on cultural issues, but ultimately, the LCP split instead of absorbed leftist movements.

With these policies, continuing under Nixon’s successor Harry Haywood, the party would embrace a synthesis of Frunzeite militarized internationalism, cultural libertinism (advocating the complete destruction of both bourgeois states and bourgeois norms, whether at home or abroad) and councilism (further empowering the rule of elected soviets and trade union syndicates). The inclusion of former student radicals who refused to join the Social Ecology Union continued through the 60’s and 70’s, culminating in the election of former student radical Fred Hampton in 1980.

Under Hampton, the party would lean even more into these values, forming a unique ideology that at once embraces libertarianism and militarism. Recently, decolonization has become a priority for the party, which is represented by a growing Zapatismo faction. By the present, it currently is the largest and dominant party, and has called for the arming of anti-imperialist parties and movements worldwide.

Factions
In the tradition of one of its main ideological antecedents, Amadeo Bordiga, factions in the party are referred to as “fractions” in reference to the “Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party” used in Bordiga’s writings. That is to say, they are parts of an indivisible whole, not antagonists:


 * Militarized Internationalists - Referred to as “Nixonists” (originally a press joke), they are the main purveyors of the titular ideology in the party, believing in a constant escalation of global class conflict until complete victory, whereupon a world workers' republic is formed. It is the largest fraction and historically the dominant one, and still largely dictates party policy.
 * Zapatistas - Also called “Hamptonists”, the fraction split from MilInt largely in its particular focus towards colonial conflicts. Zapatistas believe in empowering oppressed peoples in the AFS dominated Global South, and giving them more support in their decolonization, believing that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the main capitalist powers. This fraction is bolstered by strong support from immigrants, often themselves working class radicals.
 * Ereists - Formed by pressure groups like the Cosmism Society, the Ereists believe that capitalism, already on its dying days, should be destroyed with haste, and that humanity should unite into a single, spacefaring commune, trying to expand the human biosphere to the stars. This sets it apart from the other fractions (mostly lukewarmly supportive or indifferent to space exploration)

Ideology and platform
The LCP follows three main tenets:, militarized internationalism, and “cultural revolution”, in all versions of its charter from 1960 onwards. Various other policies have been added, including, strong support for , the universal right to bear arms, and the formation of a world communist government, but those three central tenets have guided even those policies.

Militarized Internationalism is perhaps the best known of these tenets, but the tendency is itself often misunderstood. In the words of LCP stalwart William Buckley, “the notion of just invading various countries and imposing communism top-down is ludicrous. The idea behind [militarized internationalism] is more about the internationalist part. The idea of empowering peoples the world over to take up arms against their oppressors. To use our resources to help them to fight their own revolutions, not simply make communist colonies out of them.”

The LCP believes in “military intervention” in revolution, but has a lot of leeway in its execution, from direct invasion to simply providing resources to radical leftist groups in conflict with a bourgeois state. The ultimate goal is complete worldwide revolution, and the formation of a world commune. As put by Fred Hampton, “We must not stop at just one or two revolutionary states being formed from the ruins of bourgeois, imperialist states, but the entire capitalist system brought down by the will of the people! As long as the Evil Empire [referring to the Franco-British Union and its allies] continues to exist, the job of the revolutionary is never finished!”

“Cultural revolution” is not simply cultural libertarianism, as some foreign observers have described it. It’s not simply “no governmental intervention in cultural issues”. Rather, it seeks to form a new “international proletarian culture” that is led primarily by the working class, separate from official cultural institutions or large collectives. Culture should be rebuilt, destroying all remnants of bourgeois norms and attitudes, including the nuclear family and notions about what “natural rights” constitute, replaced by revolutionary ideals. Art should reflect the concerns and attitudes of the working class and a rejection of capitalist attitudes, and should advocate on behalf of socialism.

In practice, this had led to LCP criticism of CulSec funded projects that are more experimental and critical of the military or parts of the proletarian experiment and began the Hampton era policy of the armed forces supporting film productions involving the military in various capacities (leading to criticism that blockbuster films are in effect becoming ).

Both military internationalism and cultural revolution are an expression of a core belief of the LCP: that the transitory dictatorship of the proletariat state must, as a matter of form, centralize control of capital by the working class, distributing its products through a common economic plan, until such time as the last vestiges of bourgeois society fade away from society. In other words, there must be a strong transitionary proletarian state with a democratic centralist economy in order for communism as a system to reach its fullest potential. Even with the transition to lower-stage communism, the belief continues that all forms of the capitalist value-form be deescalated in any way, in any part of the world.

This belief has made the LCP most popular amongst the military, state security, heavy industry, more militant student and minority organizations, and especially immigrants from capitalist nations, who have become the biggest constituency and advocates (particularly Indians, Cubans, and Rhodesian communities)

Councilism, perhaps the most esoteric, but also most important tenet, is another expression of this. Derived from the “council communism” of KAPD and the localist tendencies of the AUSLID, councilism sees the local councils and soviets (federated and centralized) as the purest expression of working class democracy. Thus, empowering them, whether at home or abroad, would be the best way to help the proletariat form individual democracy.

Originally formed amongst radical student groups in the AUSLID, as the LCP began recruiting to that organization’s left wing, it began to abandon the “vanguard party” idea that had been the WCPA’s main objective through its existence and embrace decentralized soviets to bring forth the “eternal revolution” (as opposed to Labor, which continues to advocate the idea of a democratic centralist vanguard party-union as the main expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat.)

The LCP, along with allied think tanks like the Center for Workers’ Progress, have funded the creation of “Soviet towns” by radical groups, independent of the state, to help give a model for revolutionaries in the region.