California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : New Dilemma for U.S. Communists

The Communist Party U.S.A., a Marxist stepchild whose parents moved without leaving a forwarding address, is becoming more like the dispossessed and homeless it claims to represent. Increasingly alone as wayward uncles in Hungary, Romania, and finally the Soviet Union itself stray from the house of ideology built by Lenin and Marx, the party finds itself struggling to identify goals for today’s communist. “We have grown,” said party spokesman Jim West. “We’re not a hidebound thing. We have evolved. We have matured. We believe in a democratic human socialism.” But Richard Starr, editor of the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, contended that the party is shrinking and that U.S. communists are confused by the reform movement sweeping the Soviet Union toward a capitalist society.