Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

U.S. Anti-Revisionism

The third wave of U.S. anti-revisionism can best be described as a transition period – between the first and second waves, which were born from struggles inside the CPUSA, and the fourth wave, which developed out of the increasing radicalization of the mass struggles of the turbulent 1960s. While some of the anti-revisionist groups of the third wave – such as Progressive Labor and Hammer & Steel – did come directly out of the CPUSA, others, such as the Communist Party, USA (Marxist-Leninist) were independent formations, without direct roots in the CPUSA – influenced instead primarily by ’60s radicalism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese Revolution has always played an important role in U.S. anti-revisionism. The anti-revisionist groups of the late 1940s frequently referred to the Chinese experience, and, in the late 1950s, supporters of the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) quoted Mao in their critique of CPUSA policies. But it was the appearance of open polemics between the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s, which gave a tremendous boost to anti-revisionism internationally, including in the United States. The Chinese polemics against Soviet “modern revisionism” inspired many to question what had been, up-to-then, orthodox Communist positions on many subjects and provided the anti-revisionist movement with an international center and point of reference.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the proclamation of Maoism as a distinct version of Marxism-Leninism further stimulated and inspired many if not all prior anti-revisionists and others looking for a different kind of communism from the model represented by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This was particularly true of students and other young people, who looked to the Chinese Red Guards as a model of activism. While some of these young activists were drawn to Progressive Labor, the full flowering of American Maoism would not come until the proliferation of new groups and organizations after 1969, in the fourth wave of U. S. anti-revisionism.

Contents

General Background Materials

Family Tree Chart of U.S. Anti-Revisionism, 1956-1977 by the Communist Workers Group (Marxist-Leninist)

Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution by Robin D.G. Kelley and Betsy Esch

Transnational Correspondence: Robert F. Williams, Detroit, and the Bandung Era by Bill V. Mullen

Speech by U.S. Negro Leader Robert Williams, at a rally in Peking on Aug. 8, 1966, protesting the discrimination against African-Americans in the U.S.

Interview on the Cultural Revolution with Chris Milton, a Participant

Relevant Chinese Polemics

A Comment on the Statement of the CPUSA

People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Agressors and All Their Lackeys by Mao Tse Tung

The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) was launched in July 1962 in New York by some fifty former members of the CPUSA, who left the Party after a series of disputes on a variety of theoretical and political issues. Elected to leadership at the conference were Milt Rosen and Mort Scheer, as Chairman and Vice Chairman of National Coordinating Committee. Rosen had previously been a member of the NY State Committee of the CPUSA and its Labor Secretary. Scheer had also been a member of the State Committee and Chair of the Erie County Organization of the CPUSA. Early on, the founders of PL sympathized with China in the Sino-Soviet Split. The PLM was also active in the movement in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, arranging trips to Cuba in defiance of State Department policy. PL did important organizing in Harlem through the work of Bill Epton and others. The PLM was also one of the earliest organizations to mobilize against the Vietnam War through the May 2nd Movement. In the summer of 1965, the PLM became the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Later in the decade, supporters of the PLP played a major role in SDS and maintained control over the organization after the 1969 SDS convention. The PLP broke with Maoism at the beginning of the 1970s.

Historical Works

Maoism in the U.S.: A Critical History of the Progressive Labor Party by Mary-Alice Waters

The History of the Progressive Labor Party – Part One

Letter from Mort Scheer on PL's Relationship with other U.S. Anti-Revisionists

The Five Retreats: A History of the Failure of the Progressive Labor Party by Jim Dann and Hari Dillon

“On PL’s Leaders’ Origins in the CPUSA” by Jim Dann

Comrade Milt Rosen, 1926-2011 Founding Chairperson of PLP, Great 20th Century Revolutionary

Progressive Labor Party Forged in Struggle 1960-1964 (Draft)

A review of Challenge in the 1970’s (Draft)

Primary Background Materials and Polemics

A New Left Wing Emerging in U.S.

Student Tells of Challenge, New Harlem Weekly Paper by Brian Keleher

The Progressive Labor Party is a Conciliator of Modern Revisionism by the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)

The PLP and Vietnam by the Progressive Workers Movement [Canada]

PLP: A Critique by the Old Mole

SDS Expels PL by New Left Notes

Where Is PL Going? by Neil Anthony

Editorial: The End of Progressive Labor Party by the Revolutionary Age

PL: Road to Oblivion? by the Spartacist League

PL on the Road to Reformism: An Insiders’ Viewpoint by Art Carling and Jay Franklin

PL “Picks Up the Gun” for Uncle Sam by Young Spartacus

Primary Documents

Progressive Labor Movement

Here We Stand: A Statement of Principles by the Editors [Milton Rosen and Mort Scheer]

Road to Revolution

U.S. Grand Jury Calls PL Leaders – Milton Rosen Blasts Kennedy “Fear”

How They Muzzled The Aug. 28 March: 200,000 Took A Step Towards Freedom, But There’s Still A Long March Ahead [On the 1963 March on Washington]

“Freedom Now Party” – A Comment by Bill Epton

First PL Election Campaign Winds Up

Kennedy’s Assassination: A System in Crisis [A Progressive Labor Special Supplement]

William Z. Foster by Fred Carlisle

War on SNCC: Turning Point for Freedom Fighters

Johnson’s War in Vietnam by the Editors of Progressive Labor

Armed Police Terror by Bill Epton, Fred Jerome and Milton Rosen

With The 84 Americans in Cuba

Brown Calls Cops to Teach Students [Progressive Labor Movement leaflet, Berkeley Free Speech Movement]

On The Marxist-Leninist Method of Reaching Decisions by Lee Coe

Nix on Nikita

Progressive Labor Editorial Comment: Malcolm X and Black Nationalism

Call For A National Founding Convention

Statement of Principles and Strategic Concepts

The Student Committee for Travel to Cuba Comments

It is not enough to be for peace... by the May 2nd Movement

On the Party

Preconvention Discussion on Black Liberation

Black Self-Determination by Bill Epton

Black Nationalism is the Correct Strategy by Andrew Gunder Frank

Freedom NOT Nationhood by Bob Glaberson

Some Ideas on Black Liberation. A Report of a Discussion from the State of Washington

’Parallel Struggle’ The Right Way by Bill Turner

Progressive Labor Party

To Build a Socialist U.S.A.: PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY BORN

Army Occupies Strategic Hamlet of Watts – A statement from the National Committee of the Progressive Labor Party

What is the May 2nd Movement?

The great Flint Sit-down Strike Against GM 1936-37 by Walter Linder

Of Ballots and Guns by Ed Clark

Editorial: Revolutionary Socialism Will Triumph

Progressive Labor Party Trade Union Program

Criticism and Self-Criticism

We Accuse: Bill Epton Speaks to the Court

’They’re Crawling Out of the Walls Again’ An Editorial

PLP Community Work: 1001 Days and Nights on the Lower East Side by Alice Jerome

PLP Community Work: Struggles in the Mission District by the PLP Club Mission District

New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A. (A Draft): “Pretty Pictures of Singing Tomorrows” by Alice Jerome and Mort Scheer

On Black Power – Progressive Labor Party Statement

We stand united against imperialist wars

On HUAC’s cesspool bill: A Statement by Progressive Labor Party Witnesses, August 19, 1966

The War and the Movement A Statement by the National Committee Progressive Labor Party

Stop the Draft! by Len Ragozin

Elections: A Method of Struggle by Jeff Gordon

Origins of Revisionism in the USSR by John Ericson

Road to Revolution II

A program for action: Worker-Student Alliance by Jeff Gordon

Build a Base in the Working Class

PL Editorial: U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!

Blacks Answer in Fury: Non-Violence is Dead. Organize! [on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

France May 1968 Workers Rebel!

Supreme (Fig Leaf) Court Hands Out Anti-Epton Decision. Progressive Labor Party National Committee Statement

Defeat USSR Imperialism-Czechoslovak Revisionism

SDS: An Analysis by Jeff Gordon

White House-Kremlin Collusion in Vietnam. Anti-Revolutionary Axis A Progressive Labor editorial

Rulers Coopt Nationalist Demands: Black & Brown Students Used by Don King

One World Imperialists Run ’Third World’ Student Movement by Hari Dillon and Bridges Randle

On ’Super-Revolutionaries’ – Why Che Had to Fail by Jim Dann

Guevera’s Great Adventure by Eric Johnson

Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism

Panthers Unite with CP Hacks

Panthers Suffer Local ’Atrocities’: Black Workers Feared

Southern Students Defeat Liberalism: The South Must Be Won by Ed Clark

Is Cuba Socialist? by Jake Rosen

Nationalism Divides Workers – Don’t Be a Sucker for the Bosses [PL Replies to Its Critics] by Mort Scheer

Campus Worker-Student Alliance by Bob Leonhardt

Students Upset Courtroom ’Order’: Put the Courts on Trial by John Levin

Vietnam: Defeat U.S. Imperialism

Who Are the Bombers? Often the Rulers! by SDS

New York: a big “YES” for internationalism by the Canadian Worker

Challenge Editorial: Workers Will Smash Nixon-Mao/Chou Axis

Road to Revolution III

Notice from the National Committee of the Progressive Labor Party [on the expulsion of Bill Epton]

An Inside View: Progressive Labor Party

Fight Sectarianism – Build Party Unity with the Masses

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Reversal of Workers’ Power in China

Strengths and Weaknesses in the line of the International Communist Movement

The 7th Comintern Congress and The United front Against Fascism

30 For 40

Suggestions for the [Third] Party Convention [On the Crisis in PL] by Dennis King

P.L.P. Third Convention

The Party, the Current Period, and Fighting the Right-Wing Trend by T.C.

On Male Chauvinism [in the PLP] by Susan L.

Exchange on Homosexuality in Challenge-Desafio

“Chicken Little in Boston” [On the Boston PL split]

Fascism and Busing in Boston

Organize On-the-Job Struggle

Reform and Revolution

Mao: The Two Sides of His Life

China:The Reversal of Socialism

Break with the Canadian Party of Labour

Bury Trudeau with anti-racism and revolution: Raise red flag over Quebec and all of Canada by the Progressive Labor Party

Lenin’s road to revolution: Support Quebec’s right to self-determination by the Canadian Party of Labour

Minutes of Toronto Cell Leaders’ Meeting, August 13, 1978 [including “PL’s Abandonment of Leninism”]

Can’t fight racism with nationalism: Nationalism equals capitalism by the Progressive Labor Party

Leninist principles guide CPL’s work by the Canadian Party of Labour

PLP: Liberals with baseball bats by the Canadian Party of Labour

An encore for chauvinist PLP by the Canadian Party of Labour

PLP factionalism by the Canadian Party of Labour

Letter: Change in PLP line? by the Canadian Party of Labour

Mourn for him, boys PLP-LP rewrites Joe Hill by the Canadian Party of Labour

* * *

Albania’s Leaders Rewrite History. Statement of the National Committee of the Progressive Labor Party

Road to Revolution 4

Road to Revolution 4.5

Periodicals

The Marxist-Leninist Quarterly

Progressive Labor magazine, 1971-1982

The Communist

The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) was the first independent Black revolutionary Marxist organization of the 1960s. Organized in 1962 by Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford), a close associate of Malcolm X and Queen Mother Audley Moore, RAM was a national semi-clandestine organization which articulated a revolutionary program for African Americans that fused Black nationalism with Marxism-Leninism.

Although it was not a large organization, RAM influenced a wide range of groups, including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Black Workers Congress. RAM dissolved in 1969. As Max Elbaum notes, “RAM’s significance had not resided in its organizational strength, but in its popularization of revolutionary nationalist, Marxist and Maoist ideas during a critical period of the Black freedom movement.” (Revolution in the Air, p. 65)

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM): A Case Study by Maxwell C. Stanford

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

The 12-Point Program of RAM

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) was formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. The League united a number of different Revolutionary Union Movements that were growing rapidly among rank-and-file Black workers in the Detroit auto plants. The formation of the League was an attempt to create a more cohesive political organization guided by the principles of Black liberation and revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. By the summer of 1971, the League ceased to exist, having split into several groups. One of these groups joined with the Communist League and other organizations to found the Communist Labor Party. Others were part of the Black Workers Congress and its progeny. While the LRBW was only active for a short period of time, it was a significant and influential organization in a time of increasing militancy and political action by Black workers and in the context of both the Black liberation and anti-revisionist communist movements in the United States.

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

To the Point of Production – An Interview with John Watson of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers

“Finally Got the News” – film (1970)

“Finally Got the News” – the Making of a Radical Film by Dan Georgakas

BWC leader looks at past, sees new stage of struggle

Soul Power or Workers Power? The Rise and Fall of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers

Revolutionary struggles of Black workers in the 1960s

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers: A Historical Study

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the coming of revolution

Dying from the Inside: The Decline of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers by Ernie Allen

Dan Georgakas on the Successes and Failures of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM)

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Arab Americans and Palestine Solidarity by Lauren Ray

Remembering a History-Making Movement 30 Years Later. DRUM: The Beat Goes On and On

Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers

Hammer & Steel (H&S) developed from a split in the CPUSA in New England in 1960-61. It was led by Homer Chase, the former organizer of the New England District, CPUSA and and a member of its National Commmittee, together with a small group of his supporters. Notice of the appearance of the H & S group first appeared in the newspaper of the POC in November 1961. The Hammer & Steel Newsletter began appearing the following year. Sometimes going by the name to the New England Party of Labor, H & S criticized the CPUSA for what it described as a liquidation of the revolutionary line on the African American national question, and for returning to a position of “American Exceptionalism” (by supporting the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy). Though a small group, H&S was the only U.S. anti-revisionist organization to be attacked by Khrushchev by name in a polemic against the Communist Party of China (CPC) in which he accused the Chinese of supporting splits in Communist Parties around the world. H & S's efforts to collaborate with the POC and PL failed to bear fruit, but, for a bried period in the mid-1960s, it did succeed in issuing joint statements with the Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party. From 1961 through 1966 H & S strongly supported Chinese and Albanian positions in the polemics within the international Communist movement and H & S representatives claim to have met with the Central Committees of both the Chinese and Albanian parties. In 1968, however, H & S sharply criticized the leaders of Cultural Revolution as “left revisionists who are different in form but the same in essence as modern revisionists.” H & S later began calling itself Ray O. Light before adopting its current name – the Revolutionary Organization of Labor.

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

The American Road to Socialism by Homer Chase

Letter to the Members of the New England District from the National Secretariat, CPUSA

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

Introduction to Which Path – Cowardice or the Teaching of Mao Tse-Tung?

Ad Hoc Committe and Hammer & Steel Condemn Scheduled Moscow Conference, Brand Imperialism and Revisionism Twin Enemies of People

“On a Speech by Sidney Rittenberg”

The Meaning of Martin Luther King’s Death

Left Revisionism and the National Question

Purge the Ranks! Clarify the Program! [Hammer & Steel handout to the 1969 SDS Convention]

Maoism vs. National Liberation: Where Does RYM II Stand?

Antithesis appears to have been a small group of young people in San Francisco, who published seven issues of an anti-reivisionist newsletter of the same name from August 1964 until November 1965. It is believed that this group may have had some connections with Hammer & Steel.

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

The Khrushchev Ouster

Student Movement U.S.A. – ’60s to the Present [On the Berkeley Free Speech Movement]

In 1968, differences within and around Hammer & Steel led to the formation of a group called Youth for Stalin, which later that year issued a long polemic entitled, “The Role of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the International Marxist-leninist Movement. The October Revolution vs. the ’Cultural Revolution’.“ Shortly thereafter, the group changed its name to the Stalinist Workers Group for Afro-American National Liberation and a New Communist International. The Stalinist Workers Group issued an irregular publication, the Stalinist Workers Group Bulletin until at least 1973.

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

Why We Are Youth for Stalin

The Role of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the International Marxist-Leninist Movement. The October Revolution vs. the “Cultural Revolution”

Note on Hammer & Steel

Little is known about the Ad Hoc Committee. It appears to have been a secret faction within the CPUSA in Chicago. It published the Ad Hoc Bulletin (Marxist-Leninist) from 1963 through 1971. The group strongly supported the Chinese Cultural Revolution and some of its materials were reprinted by the Chinese in the mid-1960s.

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

Ad Hoc Committee and Hammer & Steel Condemn Scheduled Moscow Conference, Brand Imperialism and Revisionism Twin Enemies of People

Modern Revisionism – The Essence behind the Appearance

China Is World Revolutionary Centre, Says Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party, U.S.A.

Revisionism in the Service of Imperialism

U.S. Ad Hoc Committee for Marxist-Leninist Party Acclaims China’s Cultural Revolution

U.S. Ad Hoc Committee for Marxist-Leninist Party Hails Mao Tse-tung’s Thought

Old Left Orthodoxy – Impediment to Revolutionary Progress? [On SDS]

Letter to the Guardian [on the Guardian Forums]

The C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) was born in Los Angeles during the 1965 Watts riots out of a split in the local POC. It published a newspaper, the People's Voice and a theoretical journal, Red Flag from 1965 to 1968. In 1968, the Party underwent a split, with both successor organization's keeping the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) name. One, under Arnold Hoffman, continued to publish the People’s Voice. The other, headed by Michael Laski, began publishing a new newspaper, The New Worker in 1969. That same year, the Laski group merged with the Proletarian Revolutionary Party in New York, led by Jonathan Leake, a former anarchist turned Maoist, who had been active in the Resurgence Youth Movement, which was founded in September 1964 as the youth section of the Anarchist Federation to which Murray Bookchin and Noam Chomsky belonged. Both C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)s appear to have disappeared by 1971. After the demise of the Laski C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.), the former members of the Proletarian Revolutionary Party and others reconstituted themselves as the Marxist-Leninist Party. These C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)s should not be confused with the C.P.U.S.A. (M-L) founded by the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee (M.L.O.C.) in 1978 nor with the C.P. (Marxist-Leninist) created by the October League in 1977.

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M-L) by Joan Didion

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

We Call on the People of the World to Support the Heroic Struggle of the People of Los Angeles

Notice of Expulsion [of Nelson Peery and Eva Rodriguez]

Declaration of the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)

Central Committee Expels M. I. Laski from Communist Party U. S. A. (Marxist-Leninist)

New Developments on Expulsion of Renegade M. I. Laski from the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)

C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)-Progressive Workers Movement Communiqué

Revisionist-Panther Fraud: Right Wing Communists Run Anti-Fascist Show

Unity Conference Held N.Y.C., Achieves Goals

Struggle Between Two Lines in the Proletarian Revolutionary Party

RED GUARDS MOVEMENT – Basic Guidelines For the Building of a New Communist Youth and Student Organization Based on Mao Tsetung Thought

PERIODICALS

Red Flag

In 1970, as the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) began to collapse, former Proletarian Revolutionary Party members in New York who had joined the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) and other members and supporters on the East Coast regrouped as the Marxist-Leninist Party. Together with its associated organizations, the Red Women’s Detachment and the Red Guards, the Marxist-Leninist Party was active for several years. The Party itself published a paper called Communist, and the Red Women’s Detachment published a paper called Red Star. This Marxist-Leninist Party should not be confused with the Marxist-Leninist Party created by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (C.O.U.S.M.L.) in 1980.

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

Open Statement of the Marxist-Leninist Party

Guns, Sisters, Guns

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