This column could be considered an epilogue to recent columns I’ve written about why the bulk of the self-described socialist and communist organizations seem to despise our little Party.

It’s not that any new kind of criticisms or slander have been thrown at us (except for some ill-informed and half-assed comments about one of our members who recently tried her hand at running for office). Rather, what has warranted one (hopefully) final venture into the swamp of “middle class” socialism is a recent phenomenon I and other Party members have noticed in the articles of those groups.

It appears that, while many of these groups will not hesitate to criticize or slander us, they seem to have no problem using the formulations and terminology that has been used for years in our paper.

(I’ve chosen not to name names this time, mostly to keep to my space limits.)

A good example of this is the use of the term “Great Powers” to describe what these groups would traditionally call “imperialist.” We decided to start using “Great Powers” years ago because it did not have the stigma of being “leftist” jargon, and was an accurate way to describe the main imperialist rivals in the world without speaking in tongues.

Another one that has begun to appear in the articles from other organizations is “workers’ republic.” Now, it is true that this term has been used in the past, and self-described socialists and communists in Ireland have used fairly consistently throughout the last century, but we have been the only ones using it otherwise (except for a now defunct tendency in the “middle class” Socialist Party). Now we are seeing it being used for the same reasons we chose to use it in the first place.

The term “corporatism” and the formulation of a “corporate welfare state” are also beginning to appear in articles from the “middle class” socialist groups to describe the current political system in Washington. Indeed, even liberals have taken to the term and formula.

Normally, all this would only cheer me up. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I relish the thought of so many of these groups that criticize us crudely imitating our political language and formulations.

But I felt differently when I saw other groups refer to Obama as “Bush’s Third Term.”

When we first raised this slogan in 2008, we were roundly attacked by a multitude of groups and individuals, including the group now using the phrase. Criticisms ranged from “jumping the gun,” to being “just crazy,” to false accusations of racism and bigotry.

Many of these groups praised Obama for being “historic” (accurate) and his election for “striking a blow against racism” (nonsense).

Two years later, when being openly critical of Obama is more acceptable among the “middle class” left groups, these elements come and steal the rhetorical (and political!) crumbs left on our table, and then have the gall to pretend they came up with them!

As I spent yesterday blowing my stack over this issue, a comrade of mine made sense of it all. She said, “What did you expect of the ‘middle class?’ This is what they do. They live off the sops and crumbs of workers’ labor, and then try to pass off any improvement in efficiency or success as their own achievement.”

In the end, it is a testament to the richness of our world outlook, and to the utter poverty of that of the “middle class” socialists, that organizations much larger and “learned” than ours feel they have no choice but to crudely mimic and echo what we’ve said for years.