(Pix © 2017 Larry Catá Backer)
The 2016 U.S. Elections and the Chinese 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress reflect two very different ways in which political parties serve as leadership organizations through which political life is organized and political discipline maintained. Each reflects the governing ideologies of the systems that they are each responsible for protecting. The CPC is a vanguard organization tasked with the profound obligation to lead the nation to the realization of a communist society. The two leadership political parties in the United States bear the great weight of the responsibility to preserve the normative foundations of the Republic--the protection of the customs and traditions of its peoples and their fundamental rights. In both cases, those core responsibilities have changed as each state has moved through the different stages of their historical development. In both these progressions to new historical stages have sometimes been bloody and have produced profound loss of life, liberty and property.
Both States, within a very short time of each other, have entered, quite self consciously, into a new era of development. But the new era of each appears to be both profoundly different and likely to diverge increasingly in the near term. For the United States, this new era puts it on a trajectory to reconstitute its relationship with its leading parties, which will increasingly lose their leadership (though they may maintain their institutional structures and the appearance of leadership) as they become supplanted by short lived grass roots movements driven increasingly through technology to establish virtual but powerful connections.
For China, the new era puts the CPC squarely at the center of politics, economics, society and culture--the conduit through which all activity of the state and its people are considered, shaped, approved and implemented. Grass roots movements serve as data input through which the CPC's work can be assessed and society managed. For China, CPC discipline is central to the successful leadership of the Party. For the United States, political parties are being carved out to serve as institutional platforms through which competing mass movements aligned against clusters of others may combine and assert leadership through elective politics and the control of engagement with the administrative sector.
Both of these trajectories are very starkly evidenced by recent reporting (on the U.S: side) and approved articles (on the Chinese side). They follow below along with some additional brief remarks.
In the wake of the November 2016 election in the United States, I suggested that the results might as easily reflect the weakening of the leadership of the two principal political parties in the United States and the rise of mass grassroots organizations (e.g., here, and here).
And indeed, the nasty bickering and hand wringing that followed the voting—and the hysterical calls to dismantle the structures of this ancient Republic to suit the short-term ambitions of the factions that now appear to gasp power—all suggest the start of what passes for rectification campaigns in the U.S. From the day after that first Tuesday in November, the authority of both political parties shattered. The intelligentsia stood marked as substantially out of touch (both of the left and the right and within ivory tower, think tanks and among the chattering classes who inhabit news and social media), and the fault lines of social, ethnic, religious, economic, and sub-national divisions became much clearer. ("Yes, Donald Trump Will Be A Good President").
Now, it seems, that trajectory might be understood as having started in its current form not with the grass roots mobilization of a Donald Trump era Post Tea Party mass movement(s), but rather in the quite deliberate and wildly successful efforts to develop a mass movement to make possible the election of our first grass roots president--Barack Obama. That effort was made possible only because the established structures and operations, the discipline and leadership, of the Democratic Party was rejected in favor of a tech fueled populism that more directly connected candidate to people.
By Election Day, Obama’s campaign would have 13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages. This wasn’t just some passive list of campaign supporters, Edley realized—it was an army of foot soldiers, seasoned at rallying support for Obama’s vision of change. . . . Edley echoed what many progressives were beginning to believe was possible with a President Obama: “There is a rare opportunity to have a citizen movement heading in the same progressive direction as an incumbent president.” According to his notes, the Silicon Valley luminaries on the call agreed. “Most felt it would be an unacceptable loss not to take advantage of the rare alignment of an incumbent President with a progressive agenda, and an online constituency of donors and supporters who can press for change against the inevitable upsurge of entrenched special interests which will resist it.” ("Obama's Lost Army").
This effort was at once both successful and then undermined by a political party quite conscious of the mortal danger this trajectory of American politics might produce. And it was quickly taken up by those on the political right.
Republicans, on the other hand, wasted no time in building a grassroots machine of their own—one that proved capable of blocking Obama at almost every turn. Within weeks of his inauguration, conservative activists began calling for local “tea parties” to oppose the president’s plan to help foreclosed homeowners. FreedomWorks, an antitax group led by former Representative Dick Armey, and Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, quietly coordinated hundreds of nationwide demonstrations designed to look like a spontaneous populist uprising. ("Obama's Lost Army").
But, after 2016, perhaps, to no avail. In the United States today both political parties lie in taters; they now are more apt to respond to grassroots driving forces than to lead political life themselves.
At the same time and within a year of that event it appeared that the leadership position of the Chinese Communist Party was experiencing the opposite transformation--from a trajectory of moving increasingly into the background to retain again a very public position as the supreme authoritative political voice int he state. The CPC has again emerged as the increasingly disciplined organization of the political power of the masses expressed through a Party organization itself bound by ts own guiding ideology. Beyond that there are strong efforts to coordinate other political sectors in the operation of the state, and an increasingly data driven approach to the management of mass movements under their leadership.
These divergences suggest plausible but not inevitable paths that each state might have taken. That they have each chosen, in their own ways, to follow increasingly divergent paths, however, will produce substantial effects on the way in which policy is created and implemented in each state.
For the United States, the trajectory suggests an increasing importance of what Americans call populism (as an insult when hurled against a mass movement with which one disagrees and as a hope when one identifies mass movements that further one's own interests and values). American political parties will increasingly serve as shells through which mass movements will express themselves politically. They appear to have ceased to function robustly as autonomous factions united under a singular (if broad) political agenda or philosophy. That was made clear enough with the revelations about the effective operations of the Democratic Party during the 2016 Presidential election and before that on the Tea Party's shift of effective control of the Republican Party (Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC; 5 years later, here's how the tea party changed politics). One would expect, increasingly, that American political parties will be driven rather than drive political agendas, and that the fight for political power among factions will revolve around control by coalitions of these factions of the machinery of political parties. As power shifts away from the traditional political parties, it will (is) moving elsewhere--to grass roots organization whose power is now made possible by technology that makes fund raising and organization substantially easier.
For China, the centrality of the CPC redirects political energy inward. What political leadership worries about is discipline and loyalty. The CPC increasingly realizes the vision of Mao Zedong's vision of a People's Democratic Dictatorship under the leadership of the CPC, to "to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right." (On the People's Democratic Dictatorship). But that vision must be accommodated to the new era of Chinese history and aligned with the new fundamental contradiction identified in the 19th CPC Congress Report-- "What we now face is the ever growing contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever growing need for a better life." (Ibid). To that end CPC discipline and focus becomes the central element of internal CPC organization. The need to socialize cadres becomes an overarching objective to make the larger societal objective attainable. And just as Mao Zedung worried about the distinctions between reactionaries and the people, so now the CPC must worry about the distinction between loyalty and false loyalty to the CPC and thus to the political order. CPC discipline, CPC socialization and CPC loyalty will likely become critical elements of CPC internal operation.
General Secretary Xi Jinping made an important speech at the second plenary session of the 19th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC. He emphasized at any time and under any circumstances that the leading cadres of the party should be politically stable and reliable, faithful to the party, and concentric with the party Central Committee Germany, listen to the party command, responsible for the party. In the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he demanded that all comrades in the party, especially the party's top cadres, should strengthen their party spirit and work hard to improve their political awareness and political capabilities, loyalty to the party, sharing their worries for the party, serving the party and benefiting the people Fundamental politics plays a decisive role in opposing two parties and two sides and forever preserving the political nature of the Communists. In contrast with General Secretary Xi Jinping's request, we see that in real life, there are still a few minority party members and cadres who have forgotten the initial intention of joining the party. They use different methods of action, shouting loyalty in their mouths and acting only for their personal gain. This phenomenon of "pseudo-loyalty" exists within a certain range, greatly undermining the party's image and undermining the party's advanced nature and purity. To continuously push forward the strategy of running the party strictly and strictly, we must be highly vigilant against "false loyalty", clearly oppose "false allegiance" and strive to eliminate "false loyalty." 旗帜鲜明反对“伪忠诚” (Clearly opposed to "false loyalty")
Both trends and some consequences can be extracted from recent writing from both states. For the United States, portions of Micah L. Sifry, Obama's Lost Army, New Republic (9 Feb. 2018) follows. It should be read together with Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC. For China, a new focus on loyalty and false loyalty recently circulated in an influential bell weather journal--旗帜鲜明反对“伪忠诚” (Clearly opposed to "false loyalty")
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Micah L. Sifry, Obama's Lost Army, New Republic (9 Feb. 2018)
On July 20, 2008, Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and a longtime denizen of Silicon Valley’s intellectual elite, dialed in to a conference call hosted by Christopher Edley Jr., a senior policy adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Joining them on the line were some of the world’s top experts in crowdsourcing and online engagement, including Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Mitchell Baker, the chairman of Mozilla. Drawing on Kapor’s influence, Edley had invited them to join a “Movement 2.0 Brainstorming Group.” Together, they would ponder a crucial question: how to “sustain the movement” should Obama, who was still a month away from accepting the Democratic nomination, go on to win the White House.
Edley had been a personal friend of Obama’s since his days teaching him at Harvard Law School. * * *
The intervention, delivered with a full-blown harangue telling the troika managing the campaign—David Axelrod, David Plouffe, and Robert Gibbs—to “get over yourselves,” was deeply resented by the political professionals; in his memoir, Believer, Axelrod would later call Edley “systematically antagonizing.” But Jarrett and Michelle Obama, who was also in the meeting, hung on Edley’s every word. “He’s channeling Barack,” Jarrett thought, according to Game Change. Jarrett told Axelrod she thought Edley’s fiery presentation had been “brilliant.”
Now, a year later, Edley had been moved over to Obama’s still-secret transition team, helping to map out policy and personnel on education, immigration, and health care. . . . But Edley found himself newly motivated by a single big political idea, born in part from his past experience trying to win policy fights. What if Barack Obama could become not only the first black man elected president, but the first president in history to organize an enduring grassroots movement that could last beyond his years in office?
By that point in the race, there was every reason to think that Obama could build a lasting grassroots operation. His political machine had already amassed more than 800,000 registered users on My.BarackObama, its innovative social networking platform. “MyBO,” as it was known, gave supporters the ability—unthinkable in a traditional, top-down political campaign—to organize their own local groups, campaign events, and fund-raising efforts. Its potential for large-scale organizing after the election was vast—and completely without precedent in American politics. By Election Day, Obama’s campaign would have 13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages. This wasn’t just some passive list of campaign supporters, Edley realized—it was an army of foot soldiers, seasoned at rallying support for Obama’s vision of change.
* * *
After discussing his idea with his wife, Maria Echaveste, who had served as White House deputy chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Edley turned to his friend Kapor, a digital pioneer and progressive activist who was widely seen as a folk hero of the computer revolution. . . .
Opening the July brainstorming session, Edley framed the stakes sharply, according to notes he prepared for the meeting and a summary he wrote afterward. “On the morning of November 5,” he told the assembled tech leaders, “imagine saying to millions of donors, new voters, volunteers: ‘Thanks for everything; so long.’” Instead, he urged, “Imagine a way to transfer/transmute all of that involvement into a new mechanism or set of instrumentalities through which people can feel a heightened and more powerful kind of civic engagement with each other and with Obama and other leaders. And vice versa.”
Edley echoed what many progressives were beginning to believe was possible with a President Obama: “There is a rare opportunity to have a citizen movement heading in the same progressive direction as an incumbent president.” According to his notes, the Silicon Valley luminaries on the call agreed. “Most felt it would be an unacceptable loss not to take advantage of the rare alignment of an incumbent President with a progressive agenda, and an online constituency of donors and supporters who can press for change against the inevitable upsurge of entrenched special interests which will resist it.”
As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.
“We lost this election eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”
The question of why—why the president and his team failed to activate the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal—has long been one of the great mysteries of the Obama era. Now, thanks to previously unpublished emails and memos obtained by the New Republic—some from the John Podesta archive released by WikiLeaks, and others made available by Obama insiders—it’s possible for the first time to see the full contours of why Movement 2.0 failed, and what could have been.
In the midst of the 2008 campaign, the idea for Movement 2.0 seemed both obvious and inevitable. Obama himself recognized that he was sitting atop an organizing juggernaut. Speaking to hundreds of his core staffers in June, Obama praised them for building a campaign machine that had just taken down Hillary Clinton. “Collectively, all of you—most of whom are I’m not even sure of drinking age—you’ve created the best political organization in America, and probably the best political organization that we’ve seen in the last 30 to 40 years,” Obama told them. “That’s a pretty big deal.”
Movement 2.0 gathered steam quickly. In the wake of the initial brainstorming call, Edley connected Mitch Kapor with law professor Mark Alexander, a senior Obama adviser, and gave them the job of chairing the project. Kapor was excited. “Mark and I are exchanging email brain dump to try to surface big question and big priorities overall, speaking by phone, and meeting all day next Tuesday in New Jersey to do Vulcan mind meld,” he emailed two colleagues. “Already Mark and I have shared vision it’s huge, and will go far beyond normal January end of transition.”
Kapor and Alexander dived into the task. They spoke with Bob Bauer, the campaign’s legal counsel, about how to structure a new organization after November. They had several meetings with the architects of Obama’s online operation, including Slaby, the chief technology officer; his boss, Joe Rospars, the new media director; and Chris Hughes, the online organizing director. They dug into the details of how the campaign had built and managed its online network, and sketched out a way to transition it forward.
* * *
A few weeks later, on August 18, Edley sent a progress report to John Podesta and the other two co-chairs of Obama’s transition board, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse. “Campaign folks are joined at the hip with this effort (Rospars, Slaby, others),” Edley assured them. “The technical discussions about the software platform, etc., are moving quite well.” While he acknowledged that “the Senator” would ultimately have to sign off on the plan, Edley—confident that he was still channeling his old friend’s wishes—said he didn’t “see any particular hurry about it.” The candidate, he understood, had a few other things on his mind.
Edley attached the initial concept document for Movement 2.0. It outlined an audacious vision: to create “a new ‘home place’ for Obama supporters” that would be ready to go, the day after the election. The new entity would be closely aligned with Obama but independent of the party and his re-election campaign. “Think of it for now as AFO (Americans for Obama),” the memo declared, envisioning it as the “principal means for continuing the active participation of people in the Movement.” AFO would not simply whip up support for Obama’s legislative agenda—it would “gather the input to help shape it.” It would “be a place where Obama supporters can come together, affiliate and organize for change using cutting-edge online tools that will create and support a new and deeper form of civic engagement.”
Critically, the Movement 2.0 team envisioned AFO as a tax-exempt organization that would operate free of the Democratic National Committee. “Mitch and I argued that to make the movement ‘authentic’ and entrepreneurial,” Edley says, “it would have to be built outside of the DNC—which has institutional commitments and incumbent allegiances that will always be a fact of party life.” The team concluded by asking for permission to raise $250,000 to set up a staff infrastructure and develop the web site. The founding board would include Edley, Kapor, Alexander, and Podesta.
Podesta decided to circulate the concept document to higher-ups in the campaign. He asked Pete Rouse, Obama’s Senate chief of staff and key political consigliere, to forward the memo to Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, partners in a political consulting firm who had risen to positions at the top of Obama’s organization. Hildebrand was the deputy national campaign manager, and Tewes, after directing Obama’s Iowa campaign, was now running the DNC on the candidate’s behalf. Podesta had a simple question for them about Edley’s plan: He wanted to “see if they care whether this goes forward to a planning stage.”
That was the moment when Movement 2.0 began to stall.
The proposal had started with the campaign’s technology team and true believers, but now it had landed in front of two consummate Washington insiders. Hildebrand came to like the idea; creating a movement free from the DNC, he believed, would put more pressure on Congress to implement Obama’s agenda. But where others had seen great possibility, Tewes saw potential disaster. . . .
* * *
Rouse forwarded Tewes’s response back to Podesta. Podesta, in turn, sent it along to Edley with a pithy comment: “Let’s discuss Monday. Obviously some heartburn with the political crowd.”
There was plenty in Movement 2.0 to inspire heartburn in that crowd. In Silicon Valley terms, Obama 2008 had “disrupted” presidential campaigns, demonstrating how an underdog candidate could defeat a more experienced opponent by changing the terms of the game and empowering millions of people in the process. Now, it seemed, the Obamaites and their tech wizards wanted to disrupt the Democratic Party, diverting money and control from the DNC into an untried platform, while inviting “input,” and possibly even organized dissent, from Obama’s base. Earlier that summer, activists unhappy with Obama’s flip-flop on warrantless surveillance had used MyBO to build a group of more than 20,000 vocal supporters, earning national press and compelling a response from the candidate. What if Obama’s base didn’t like the health care reform he came up with, and rallied independently around a single-payer plan? Besides, grassroots movements, no matter how successful, don’t reliably yield what political consultants want most: money and victories for their candidates, with plenty of spoils for themselves. For insiders like Tewes, Movement 2.0 was a step too far.
Edley knew that Tewes’s blowback spelled trouble. . . . Looking back, Edley says now, Podesta made a tactical error by sharing the plan with party regulars like Tewes and Hildebrand before it had garnered more high-level support in the campaign. . . . It would be five long weeks later, on October 2—just a month before Election Day—before any reference to Movement 2.0 would surface again in Podesta’s emails. By that time, radical revisions had been made to appease the “political crowd.” Chris Lu, the transition team’s executive director, circulated a revised concept memo to Podesta and its board, in preparation for an all-day meeting. It was a far cry from Edley’s original call for a “citizen movement.” Instead, the memo explained, “we recommend a new, integrated approach to the Movement 2.0 work, in complete coordination with the ongoing efforts of the DNC, to plan for the continued growth and development of the online-offline community in support of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, our candidates and issues.”
Gone was the idea of a new organization, independent of the DNC. “A key working assumption,” the memo stated, “is that we should affirmatively empower Barack Obama as the head of the Party, and in the process strengthen both him and the Party. All Obama politics should be filtered through the DNC, and all Party politics”—including existing organizations that support candidates for Congress and statehouses—“should be filtered through the DNC. This all serves the agenda of one person, Barack Obama.”
The original backers of Movement 2.0 had been sidelined. . . . Edley and his cohorts weren’t finished yet. The idea of keeping Obama’s online loyalists involved and active had not entirely died; the new memo called for moving quickly to enable the campaign to keep engaging its grassroots supporters after the election. “Steps should be taken now to ensure this possibility does not evaporate, leaving no vehicle for community in the short-term,” the memo read. But there was no proposed budget for that to happen—just a call for the formation of a new working group for Movement 2.0, to pull all the stakeholders together. That group never materialized.
The revised memo was not the only postelection plan being considered. Julius Genachowski, co-chief of the transition team’s “Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform” group, wanted to launch a White House web site aimed at engaging the public in policy discussions. The TIGR group was a powerhouse of wonks, many of whom were headed into top positions in government, and its planning memo ran to 12,500 words, compared to just 1,500 for the revised Movement 2.0 proposal. The result—in the middle of a heated campaign and a global economic meltdown—was widespread confusion about what would happen to Obama’s campaign machine after Election Day.
* * *
One person, however, seemed to understand that such half-measures wouldn’t be enough: the president-elect. The same day Hughes posted his message, Obama reached out to David Plouffe. Unlike other top operatives from the campaign, the campaign manager had decided not to follow Obama into the White House, but to take time off to be with his family before returning to political consulting. His daughter was born in the early hours of November 7, and Obama called him that morning. . . .
* * *
Plouffe led Obama’s supporters to believe that the decision was in their hands. On November 19, he emailed a survey to everyone on the campaign’s list. “You’ve built an organization in your community and across the country that will continue to work for change,” Plouffe told them, “whether it’s by building grassroots support for legislation, backing state and local candidates, or sharing organizing techniques to effect change in your neighborhood. Your hard work built this movement. Now it’s up to you to decide how we move forward.”
Obama’s army was eager to be put to work. Of the 550,000 people who responded to the survey, 86 percent said they wanted to help Obama pass legislation through grassroots support; 68 percent wanted to help elect state and local candidates who shared his vision. Most impressive of all, more than 50,000 said they personally wanted to run for elected office.
But they never got that chance. In late December, Plouffe and a small group of senior staffers finally made the call, which was endorsed by Obama. The entire campaign machine, renamed Organizing for America, would be folded into the DNC, where it would operate as a fully controlled subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Plouffe stayed on as senior adviser, and put trusted field organizers Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird in charge of the new group. Bird says the OFA team was never even told about the idea for Movement 2.0. “None of these documents were even shared with us,” he says. “I’m not sure the senior staff on the campaign even knew they existed.”
Obama unveiled OFA a week before his inauguration. “Volunteers, grassroots leaders, and ordinary citizens will continue to drive the organization,” he promised. But that’s not what happened. Shunted into the DNC, MyBO’s tools for self-organizing were dismantled within a year. Instead of calling on supporters to launch a voter registration drive or build a network of small donors or back state and local candidates, OFA deployed the campaign’s vast email list to hawk coffee mugs and generate thank-you notes to Democratic members of Congress who backed Obama’s initiatives. As a result, when the political going got rough, much of Obama’s once-mighty army was AWOL. When the fight over Obama’s health care plan was at its peak, OFA was able to drum up only 300,000 phone calls to Congress. After the midterm debacle in 2010, when Democrats suffered their biggest losses since the Great Depression, Obama essentially had to build a new campaign machine from scratch in time for his reelection effort in 2012. (Plouffe and Messina declined requests to speak about Movement 2.0; Axelrod, Podesta, and Rouse said they had no comment.)
Republicans, on the other hand, wasted no time in building a grassroots machine of their own—one that proved capable of blocking Obama at almost every turn. Within weeks of his inauguration, conservative activists began calling for local “tea parties” to oppose the president’s plan to help foreclosed homeowners. FreedomWorks, an antitax group led by former Representative Dick Armey, and Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, quietly coordinated hundreds of nationwide demonstrations designed to look like a spontaneous populist uprising. When members of Congress went home for the summer to hold town hall meetings with their constituents, they were confronted by well-organized and disruptive protests over health care reform. The grassroots discontent that Obama had harnessed so skillfully in 2008 now belonged to the right.
* * *
Ultimately, of course, the failure to keep the grassroots movement going rests with Obama. It was his original, and most costly, political mistake—not only a sin of omission, but a sin of imagination, one that helped decimate the Democratic Party at the state and local level and turn over every branch of the federal government to the far right. In December, in an exit interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Obama himself sounded haunted by it. “You know, when I came into office, we were just putting out fires,” he said. “We were in a huge crisis situation. And so a lot of the organizing work that we did during the campaign, we started to see right away wasn’t immediately transferable to congressional candidates. More work would have needed to be done to just build up that structure. And, you know, one of the big suggestions that I have for Democrats as I leave, and something that, you know, I have some ideas about is: How do we do more of that ground-up building?”
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2018年01月25日 11:13:30 来源： 红旗文稿 作者： 中共湖北省委党校课题组
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习近平总书记在党的十九届中央纪委二次全会上发表重要讲话强调，任何时候任何情况下，党的领导干部在政治上都要站得稳、靠得住，对党忠诚老实、与党中央同心同德，听党指挥、为党尽责。在党的十九大报告中，他要求全党同志特别是党的高级干部要加强党性锻炼，不断提高政治觉悟和政治能力，把对党忠诚、为党分忧、为党尽职、为民造福作为根本政治担当，坚决反对搞两面派、做两面人，永葆共产党人政治本色。对照习近平总书记的要求，我们看到在现实生活中，仍存在少数党员干部忘记了入党的初心，表里不一、言行不一， 嘴上高喊忠诚，行动只谋私利。这种“伪忠诚”的现象在一定范围内存在，极大损害了党的形象，破坏了党的先进性、纯洁性。持续推进全面从严治党战略，必须高度警惕 “伪忠诚”，旗帜鲜明反对“伪忠诚”，竭力清除“伪忠诚”。
一、“伪忠诚”的各种表现及其本质
“伪忠诚”的党员干部虽然组织上入了党，但思想上并没入党，与党不同心，尤其是在大是大非面前，在个人利益和诉求得不到满足的时候。一是口头信仰马克思主义，其实真正信的是风水师，心里装的只有个人的升官发财；二是表面勤勤恳恳，背后吃喝享乐；三是表面谋划发展，背后以权谋私，有的即便干了些工作，但同时也不忘中饱私囊；四是表面一心为公，背后官商不分，有的前门当官，后门经商；五是表面是党员领导干部，背后脚踏两条船，把国（境）外当后路，随时准备“跳船”；六是表面老老实实，背后肆意妄为，什么挑战底线的事情都敢干；七是表面任人唯贤，背后任人唯亲、任人唯钱；八是表面五湖四海，背后拉帮结派。把正常的同事关系演变成江湖兄弟关系，把上下级关系搞成“老板”与“马仔”的人身依附关系。
“伪忠诚”的实质是背叛，是党内政治文化的毒瘤，严重损害了政治生态。透过现象看本质，不难发现，“伪忠诚”实际上是一种投机行为，“伪忠诚”者是政治投机者、行动两面派、道德伪君子。
一是信仰投机。列宁说：“徒有虚名的党员，就是白给，我们也不要。”讲的就是共产党员必须真正地、表里如一地忠诚于自己的信仰。现实生活中，有些投机分子本不信马列，但就像毛泽东警示过的那种“到执政党里来为个人捞好处”的人一样，只是把入党当作跳板和捷径，谋求个人私利。刘志军、朱明国等人不信马列信鬼神、不问苍生问“大师”，就是典型的信仰投机，最终的结局必然是跌下万劫不复的深渊。
二是政治投机。习近平总书记指出：“对党绝对忠诚要害在‘绝对’两个字，就是唯一的、彻底的、无条件的、不掺任何杂质的、没有任何水分的忠诚。”然而，一些党员干部貌似忠诚、实则不忠诚，像王珉、吕锡文、周本顺等，为了捞取政治资本，“坚决拥护”的调门唱得比谁都高，但实际上搞阳奉阴违，不仅妄议非议中央，更是大捞个人实惠，并千方百计地用各种假面具掩盖其肮脏意图，用高喊“紧跟”遮盖其两面人的虚伪面目，在政治舞台上投机钻营，最终被党和人民抛弃。
三是权力投机。有的领导干部习惯于以地缘、学缘、业缘划线，拉山头、搞派系、编织“小圈子”，大搞人身依附、权力依附，看似忠诚于某些人，实则是对党的不忠诚。更有甚者，一些干部竟然明目张胆地说当官是为了有权。很多领导干部上任之初信誓旦旦，把为人民办实事、为党干事业的口号喊得山响，但往往很快就开始走向腐败，有的甚至对举报人打击报复。有一位山西吕梁地区的村支书落马后，面对办案人员的问询，竟然回答“我不贪污，当官干啥”，其投机权力的“伪忠诚”暴露无遗。持这类想法的党员领导干部并不罕见。
二、“伪忠诚”的极端危害
“伪忠诚”现象污染着政治生态，腐蚀着政治文化，阻隔着党员对党的信仰宗旨的认知和内化，对党的形象和事业具有巨大的危害。
一是欺骗性。电视剧《人民的名义》中某部委赵处长，骑自行车上班，吃炸酱面就大蒜、住旧楼，看起来生活俭朴，和蔼老实，却在豪宅中私藏两亿多受贿赃款，其“伪忠诚”的一面令人触目惊心！现实中，部分党员干部过着“双面人生”，说一套做一套，台上一套台下一套，人前一套背后一套，批评别人是一套、面对自己又是一套，把忠诚老实当作面具，以掩盖信仰上的荒芜、对钱权的贪念。这种貌似忠诚、实则不忠的现象，很具迷惑性，很难被甄别，对党和人民的事业危害极大。
二是破坏性。在党的组织中，“伪忠诚”如同病菌，不及时“治疗”，就会慢慢吞噬肌体中好的细胞，最终解构组织成员共同的信仰与价值观，削弱党的执政根基。党的十八大以来查处的山西吕梁、广东茂名、湖南衡阳、安徽萧县和泗县等地的系统性、塌方式腐败中的官员，从某个角度讲都是“伪忠诚”的表演者，对我们党的公信力和经济社会发展的影响极为恶劣。
三是污染性。政治生态和自然生态一样，一旦出现问题，再想恢复就要付出很大代价。“伪忠诚”是政治生态最致命的“污染源”之一，对政治生态具有潜移默化的影响。长期以来，一些地方和部门一度出现的形形色色的“潜规则”、大大小小的关系网、“劣币驱逐良币”的逆淘汰，都可以从中找出“伪忠诚”的影子，不仅玷污了共产党人的纯洁性和先进性，更是严重损害了一个部门、一个地方、一个系统的政治生态。
四是杀伤性。“伪忠诚”是最可怕的政治隐患，极具杀伤力。苏共亡党不是败于敌对势力的武装进攻，而是败于对马克思主义的伪忠诚与假信仰。“伪忠诚”导致亡党亡国，殷鉴不远，值得我们深思和警惕。
三、 “伪忠诚”的治理路径
习近平总书记在党的十九大报告中强调，要把党的政治建设放在首位，营造风清气正的良好政治生态。治理“伪忠诚”问题，必须标本兼治、综合施策。
一是旗帜鲜明反对“伪忠诚”。忠诚，在逻辑上是个定性的概念，而不是定量的概念，只有100%才称得上忠诚，99%就是伪忠诚。伪忠诚就像鞋里的沙子，虽然很小，却阻碍着我们长途跋涉。或者说像癌细胞一样，若无遏制，就会扩散蔓延，最终不治而亡。因此，在对党忠诚的问题上，一定不能含糊，要旗帜鲜明、斩钉截铁地反对哪怕是一点点的不忠诚，在全党全社会旗帜鲜明反对“伪忠诚”，培育在党爱党、在党言党、在党兴党、在党为党的政治生态环境。
二是火眼金睛甄别“伪忠诚”。“伪忠诚”总是披着忠诚的外衣，用美丽漂亮的外衣将背叛、自私层层包裹、深深隐藏，这就需要我们用火眼金睛识破其伪装、勘破其表象。既要看一个人口号喊了什么，更要看他具体做了什么；既要看一个人表面上信仰什么，更要看他骨子里迷信什么；既要看一个人在工作中的履历怎么样，更要看他在老百姓心目中的形象怎么样；既要看一个人对领导干部怎么做，更要看他对同事下属什么样；既要看一个人面对小事琐事怎么做，更要看他面对大是大非怎么办；既要看他在顺境、得意时怎么表现，更要看他在低谷、逆境中是否坚守；既要看他面对别人犯错时怎么表态，更要看他自己出现问题时如何对待。
三是刮骨疗毒清除“伪忠诚”。我们党始终把忠诚作为共产党员的基本素质，在不断与“伪忠诚”作斗争、不断清理“伪忠诚”中保持肌体健康。当前，伴随着全面从严治党的深入推进，“伪忠诚”的表现更隐蔽、隐藏更深、危害更大，清除“伪忠诚”不能是轻风拂过、一般性地强调一下，必须拿出刮骨疗毒、壮士断腕的勇气和决心。这样固然会遇到不小阻力，却可以惩前毖后、固本清源，保持党的队伍的纯洁性。
四是建立机制杜绝“伪忠诚”。谨防“伪忠诚”，关键在于严肃党内政治生活，净化党内政治生态，从根本上让“伪忠诚”者靠边站、受冷落，没市场、没出路，现原形、难存活。首先要建立教育机制。绝对忠诚离不开理性认同、理性自觉。要通过构筑党员干部稳定的政治信仰，使“伪忠诚”没有市场。其次要建立监督机制。构筑监督主体多元化的立体监督体系，使“伪忠诚”无所遁形。再次要建立预警机制。发现苗头性问题，采取咬耳扯袖、红脸出汗等方式将其化解在萌芽状态。
四、厚植对党绝对忠诚的政治品质
“天下之德，莫过于忠”。“伪忠诚”是党的建设的大敌。弘扬和培育对党绝对忠诚是党的建设的主要任务。对党忠诚，不是有条件的，而是无条件的，不是抽象的而是具体的。必须体现到对党的信仰、党的组织、党的路线、党的纪律、党的事业的忠诚上。
一是做政治上的明白人，不断增强“四个意识”。新时代，将党的建设新的伟大工程推向前进，每个党员干部要做到政治上清醒，最重要的就是要牢固树立政治意识、大局意识、核心意识、看齐意识，真正做到对党忠诚、襟怀坦白，自觉在思想上政治上行动上同以习近平同志为核心的党中央保持高度一致，坚决维护习近平总书记的核心地位，维护党中央权威和集中统一领导。“四个意识”是意蕴深刻相互联系的有机统一体，集中体现了我们党在新时代根本的政治立场、政治原则、政治方向。强化“四个意识”，要坚决反对与党中央唱对台戏、阳奉阴违的人，反对那些对党中央大政方针态度暧昧甚至心怀不满的人，反对那些心术不正甚至有政治野心的人，反对那些与党离心离德、“身在曹营心在汉”的人。
二是做理论上的清醒者，在真学真懂真信真用上下功夫。理论上的清醒是共产党员绝对忠诚的基础，是保持政治定力、做好一切工作的智慧和力量源泉。当前，自觉用习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想武装头脑指导工作是每一位党员干部的头等大事。要在领会精神实质上下功夫，在入脑入心上下功夫，践行好提出的“学而信、学而用、学而行”的要求。学而信，就要坚定理想信念,筑牢精神支柱；学而用，就要坚持问题导向，用新思想指导解决实际问题；学而行，就要内化于心、外化于行，形成思想认同、理论认同、情感认同，真正成为思想和行动罗盘。
三是做工作上的实干家，撸起袖子加油干。对党忠诚，不是空对空的口号，而是实干的具体行动。 “世界上的事情都是干出来的，不干，半点马克思主义也没有。”习近平同志在“1.5”讲话中要求全党同志以时不我待、只争朝夕的精神状态投入工作。我们“心中有党、对党忠诚”，就必须把对组织、对人民的感恩之情，转化为奉献社会、服务群众的实际行动，转化为勇创佳绩、拼搏进取的工作劲头，深学、细照、笃行焦裕禄精神，认真践行“三严三实”要求，在老老实实干工作中、默默无闻的奉献中，全面而深刻地体现共产党人的忠诚精神。
四是在廉洁上做红哨兵，严守纪律和规矩。廉洁不廉洁、守不守纪律和规矩是党员干部对党是否忠诚的集中表现。“蠹众而木折，隙大而墙坏”。腐败是社会毒瘤，是影响经济社会发展、国家长治久安的致命风险。党员干部特别是领导干部，一定要当好自己廉洁自律的哨兵，加强自身修养，做到慎独、慎微。始终能够反躬自省、谨言慎行，做事一丝不苟，在细微之处保持警惕、警觉和警醒，不以善小而不为，不以恶小而为之，强化“不敢”、“不能”、“不想”意识，始终敬畏法纪、敬畏组织、敬畏群众，防微杜渐、警钟长鸣，不断增强自我净化、自我完善、自我革新、自我提高能力。要以对党和人民事业高度负责的使命感，全面落实党的十九大提出的各项任务，在决胜全面建成小康社会、建设社会主义现代化强国的新征程中，在为人民群众谋幸福、为中华民族谋复兴的伟大事业中建功立业，谱写共产党员的人生华章。
（本文是中共湖北省委党校《新时代管党治党面临的挑战研究》课题之部分研究成果之一）
（课题组首席专家为陶良虎，主要成员有李兆雄、李新华、朱玉涛、鲁长安、江雨、朱封洲、盛翺等）
责任编辑：尹 霞
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