Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Encyclopedia
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) — known in Spanish
as Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad (OSCL) — was formed in 1985 as many of the Maoist-oriented groups formed in the United States
New Communist Movement
of the 1970s were shrinking or collapsing. The FRSO/OSCL tried to solidify some of these groups into a single organization that would have some longevity.
The component groups of the FRSO saw ultraleftism as the main error of the New Communist Movement and attempted to reverse what they saw as that movement's excessive divisiveness and sectarianism
. FRSO was founded by a merger of two organizations - the Proletarian Unity League
and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
in 1985, and then a subsequent fusing with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity
in 1986. Freedom Road later absorbed other groups too, including the Amílcar Cabral
-Paul Robeson
Collective in 1988 and the Socialist Organizing Network
in 1994.
Freedom Road supports self-determination
, up to and including independence, for African Americans in the Black Belt Region of the U.S. South and Chicanos in the U.S. Southwest. Much of the theory regarding this comes from the African American Communist Harry Haywood
, as laid out in resolutions at the Comintern
in 1928 and 1930. Freedom Road's position on the national question is a defining feature of its politics.
In 1999, FRSO split into two competing organizations, each retaining the organization's name. Each of these groups considers itself to be the only legitimate Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
, and supported both of Jesse Jackson
's campaigns for the presidency of the United States
(1984
and 1988
). They also worked on the successful campaign to get African-American progressive Harold Washington
elected as mayor of Chicago
in 1983 and reelected in 1987.
In the 1980s FRSO also played an important role in the U.S. student movement. Particularly FRSO played a role in leading the Progressive Student Network
(PSN), a national, multi-issue, progressive student activist organization.
From the 1980s through the mid-1990s, Freedom Road published a magazine called Forward Motion, which previously had been published by the Proletarian Unity League, one of FRSO's predecessor organizations.
movement that emerged in 1990 in opposition to the Gulf War
. FRSO also helped build the reproductive rights
/ abortion rights movement in this period, including the massive 1989 demonstration in Washington DC.
In response to the fall of Eastern European governments, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
, and the fall of the Soviet Union
in 1991, two distinct positions began to emerge within Freedom Road on how to assess the socialist countries. One position saw the events of 1989-1991 as indicative of a deep crisis in socialism
that required what they called "left refoundation". The other position continued to assess the experience of socialist countries as essentially positive, and saw their defeats as the result of revisionism, not as a crisis of Marxism
itself. This side continued to identify itself as Marxist-Leninist. At organization's 1991 Congress, the group's highest decision, a document explaining the official position of the organization was adopted titled "On the Crisis of Socialism." This document was reaffirmed at the 1997 Congress. This internal division solidified throughout the 1990s until the organization split in 1999.
(SON) merged into FRSO. SON was formed out of the disollution of the League of Revolutionary Struggle
in the late 1980s, and included those who had been in LRS that still considered themselves Marxists (most of the LRS leadership had rejected Marxism when they decided to disband the LRS).
The merger between FRSO and SON technically marked the creation of a new organization, as at the time it was seen as a merger of two equal organizations into something new, rather than SON being incorporated in FRSO. Therefore for a brief time the merged organization was called "Freedom Road / Socialist Organizing Network", including both organizations' names, with the possibility existing that the merged organization would adopt an entirely new name. A new name never came to fruition, so the name reverted back to "Freedom Road Socialist Organization". But the 1994 FRSO Congress, at which the FRSO/SON merger was formalized, was referred to as the First Congress of FRSO/SON.
Socialist Organizing Network's publication Moving Forward was published by FRSO for a short period after the merger.
FRSO continued to sporadically publish Forward Motion during the 1990s.
In 1998, FRSO's Chicago District and Minnesota / Madison District began to publish a Midwest regional newspaper called Fight Back!.
For the remainder of this article, the two groups will be identified by their website address in order to remain objective, as neither group accepts any of the parenthetical qualifications of their name. Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Freedom Road] will now be referred to as FRSO (freedomroad.org), and Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Fight Back] is now referred to as FRSO (frso.org).
The two groups split principally over the proposal by a section of FRSO's membership in 1999 that FRSO adopt a Left Refoundation strategy. The Left Refoundation strategy was advocated by those who saw Marxism as in deep crisis. The aim of the statement and strategy was to further elaborate a response to the "crisis of socialism". It called for the construction of "a new type of political party" to unite with advanced sections of the masses, stressing collaboration across the left over strict adherence to Marxism-Leninism. Within the FRSO (freedomroad.org) group were proponents of the Left Refoundation statement and strategy and others while the FRSO (frso.org) group rejected it, characterizing it as an abandonment of Marxism-Leninism.
as a scientific ideology of socialist revolution rather than as an orthodoxy
or dogma
. The document restated FRSO's support of the dictatorship of the proletariat
while clarifying its line against the interpretation of this concept as a "massive repressive state apparatus over and above the people." The latter interpretation, the group argues, lead to counter-revolutionary tendencies taking hold in the Soviet bloc states and in China after capitalist restoration. According to an article in its magazine ("Toward a Critical Reassessment of Maoism") this is a problem it also sees in "Stalinian Marxism" or Stalinism
.
FRSO (freedomroad.org) continues to uphold FRSO's pre-split line supporting full self-determination for the Black and Chicano/a nations in the South's Black Belt Region and Southwest (Aztlan
) respectively, including "support and encourage[ment of] the independent organization of oppressed nationality revolutionaries and progressives, where they have determined it to be necessary" up to and including the formation of communist parties of a single oppressed nationality. Its theoretical materials stress the "intersections" of these struggles, with each other and with the struggles of feminism
, LGBT
liberation, and the labor movement; that is, oppressors and forms of oppression and goals that they hold in common. FRSO (freedomroad.org) argues that such "intersections" highlight the necessity of building a united front of the movements of the multi-national working class and those of oppressed communities and nationalities, toward the aim of revolution. It has summed up this line as "Organizing All the Oppressed To End All Our Oppressions."
In 2006, FRSO (freedomroad.org) began to officially call itself "Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad", using both the English and Spanish names together. In an abbreviated manner the group refers to itself to as "FRSO/OSCL" or "Freedom Road/El Camino".
FRSO/OSCL's Strategy for the Coming Period: 2010-2013 was produced at the organization's most recent Congress in 2009. This document discusses the present moment as a time when the left confronts three intersecting crises: the ongoing economic crisis, the political crisis which includes a waning of hegemony for the capitalist state, and the ecological crisis. The strategy points to several places for socialists to make interventions: left refoundation work that deepens relationships and collaboration with other organized and social movement Left forces, sharing a renewed vision of socialism broadly as part of communications and propaganda work, bringing an analysis of the crises and counter-hegemonic demands to mass work in the peoples' movements, an emphasis on participation in the rebuilding of the anti-war movement within the US, strategies for electoral work, and building a lens of ecological justice into all aspects of the organization's work.
In 2007 Camino Press published The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. The book represents theoretical contributions to the understanding of the national questions within the US, white privilege and intersectionality
from the creation of the white race over three centuries ago up through present day struggles. http://www.costofprivilege.com/
, and upholds an anti-revisionist
line. FRSO (frso.org) actively maintains friendly relations with many Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations around the world.
FRSO (frso.org) continues to uphold much of FRSO's pre-split line on the African-American and Chicano national questions, supporting self-determination for the African-American nation in the Black Belt South and the Chicano nation in the Southwest. The group puts forward the line that "a single, unified, multinational communist party is needed to build the strategic alliance" in place of the pre-split unity document's "support and encourage[ment of] the independent organization of oppressed nationality revolutionaries and progressives, where they have determined it to be necessary," support which extends even to the formation of communist parties of a single nationality.
FRSO (frso.org) bases itself on the strategy of forming a strategic alliance between the oppressed nationalities and the multi-national working class. FRSO intends to build toward the creation of a single, multinational, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Communist party
in the U.S.
Unlike FRSO (freedomroad.org), FRSO (frso.org) continues to uphold Joseph Stalin
as one of the "principal theorists" of Marxism-Leninism, along with Karl Marx
, Friedrich Engels
, Vladimir Lenin
, and Mao Zedong
. FRSO (frso.org) recognizes Cuba
, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vietnam
, Laos
, and China
as socialist countries. It is also close to the Workers Party of Belgium
(WPB) and a participant in the WPB's annual International Communist Seminar -- one of two U.S.-based groups to attend in 2006, along with Workers World Party
. They support national liberation movements such as those led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
, the Communist Party of the Philippines
, and the FARC-EP. FRSO's solidarity with the national liberation movements in Colombia and Palestine have been a defining feature of the organization in the period since the split in FRSO.
FRSO (frso.org) is active in the new Students for a Democratic Society.http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2008/sds-study-struggle-unite-fight.htm
At the 2001 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) adopted a new version of their main Unity Statement, since the pre-split version did not explicitly mention Marxist-Leninism.
At the 2004 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) produced a new statement on the National Questions in the U.S., which they said, "represents a concluding step in placing our organization on a Marxist-Leninist basis."2
At the 2007 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) released a document titled "Class in the U.S. and Our Strategy for Revolution".3 They stated that this document would be the first piece of a larger organizational political program, the other parts of which are still in the process of development. Freedom Road has historically not had an organizational program, instead having a "Unity Statement". Historically it is more common for communist parties and organizations to have a program. At the 2007 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) also released a document titled "The Movement Against the War in Iraq: A New Period and Our Tasks."4
FRSO (frso.org) held their Sixth Congress in 2010.5
According to their website, "The members of Freedom Road are very active in movements fighting for justice, particularly in labor, oppressed nationality, anti-war and anti-imperialist, and student movements."6
, which as of 2007 is published 5 times yearly, and includes a Spanish-language section called Lucha y Resiste.
FRSO (frso.org) has published various pamphlets and flyers.1
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
as Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad (OSCL) — was formed in 1985 as many of the Maoist-oriented groups formed in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
New Communist Movement
New Communist Movement
The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
of the 1970s were shrinking or collapsing. The FRSO/OSCL tried to solidify some of these groups into a single organization that would have some longevity.
The component groups of the FRSO saw ultraleftism as the main error of the New Communist Movement and attempted to reverse what they saw as that movement's excessive divisiveness and sectarianism
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
. FRSO was founded by a merger of two organizations - the Proletarian Unity League
Proletarian Unity League
The Proletarian Unity League was formed in Boston in 1975 by Students for a Democratic Society members who had been associated with the Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping that emerged out of the split in SDS at its summer 1969 convention. The Proletarian Unity League was critical of what...
and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1977...
in 1985, and then a subsequent fusing with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity
Organization for Revolutionary Unity
The Organization for Revolutionary Unity was an anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist organization in the United States. ORU was formed in 1983 from a merger of the Committee for a Proletarian Party and the Communist Organization, Bay Area . These groups, and the ORU itself, were part of the U.S...
in 1986. Freedom Road later absorbed other groups too, including the Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral was a Guinea-Bissauan and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, writer, and a nationalist thinker and politician. Also known by his nom de guerre Abel Djassi, Cabral led the nationalist movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands and the ensuing war of independence...
-Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
Collective in 1988 and the Socialist Organizing Network
Socialist Organizing Network
The Socialist Organizing Network was a socialist group in the U.S. that formed in the early 1990s out of the dissolution of the League of Revolutionary Struggle . When the LRS dissolved, the Socialist Organizing Network grouped together ex-LRS members who still wanted to build a socialist...
in 1994.
Freedom Road supports self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
, up to and including independence, for African Americans in the Black Belt Region of the U.S. South and Chicanos in the U.S. Southwest. Much of the theory regarding this comes from the African American Communist Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States...
, as laid out in resolutions at the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
in 1928 and 1930. Freedom Road's position on the national question is a defining feature of its politics.
In 1999, FRSO split into two competing organizations, each retaining the organization's name. Each of these groups considers itself to be the only legitimate Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
The 1980s
In the 1980s, members of Freedom Road and its predecessor organizations worked to build the Rainbow CoalitionRainbow Coalition
Rainbow Coalition may refer to any of the following groups:* National Rainbow Coalition, a former Kenyan political party* The 24th Government of Ireland, formed after the previous coalition fell apart...
, and supported both of Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
's campaigns for the presidency of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
(1984
United States presidential election, 1984
The United States presidential election of 1984 was a contest between the incumbent President Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate. Reagan was helped by a strong economic recovery from the deep recession of 1981–1982...
and 1988
United States presidential election, 1988
The United States presidential election of 1988 featured no incumbent president, as President Ronald Reagan was unable to seek re-election after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, won the Republican nomination, while the...
). They also worked on the successful campaign to get African-American progressive Harold Washington
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.- Early years and military service :...
elected as mayor of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1983 and reelected in 1987.
In the 1980s FRSO also played an important role in the U.S. student movement. Particularly FRSO played a role in leading the Progressive Student Network
Progressive Student Network
The Progressive Student Network was a national, multi-issue, progressive college student activist organization in the United States. It was founded at a conference in 1980 as a merger of the Revolutionary Student Brigade, the Midwest Coalition against Registration and the Draft , and the Student...
(PSN), a national, multi-issue, progressive student activist organization.
From the 1980s through the mid-1990s, Freedom Road published a magazine called Forward Motion, which previously had been published by the Proletarian Unity League, one of FRSO's predecessor organizations.
1989-1991
FRSO played a role in the anti-warAnti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
movement that emerged in 1990 in opposition to the Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
. FRSO also helped build the reproductive rights
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
/ abortion rights movement in this period, including the massive 1989 demonstration in Washington DC.
In response to the fall of Eastern European governments, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
, and the fall of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1991, two distinct positions began to emerge within Freedom Road on how to assess the socialist countries. One position saw the events of 1989-1991 as indicative of a deep crisis in socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
that required what they called "left refoundation". The other position continued to assess the experience of socialist countries as essentially positive, and saw their defeats as the result of revisionism, not as a crisis of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
itself. This side continued to identify itself as Marxist-Leninist. At organization's 1991 Congress, the group's highest decision, a document explaining the official position of the organization was adopted titled "On the Crisis of Socialism." This document was reaffirmed at the 1997 Congress. This internal division solidified throughout the 1990s until the organization split in 1999.
The 1990s
In 1994 the Socialist Organizing NetworkSocialist Organizing Network
The Socialist Organizing Network was a socialist group in the U.S. that formed in the early 1990s out of the dissolution of the League of Revolutionary Struggle . When the LRS dissolved, the Socialist Organizing Network grouped together ex-LRS members who still wanted to build a socialist...
(SON) merged into FRSO. SON was formed out of the disollution of the League of Revolutionary Struggle
League of Revolutionary Struggle
The League of Revolutionary Struggle was a communist organization in the United States. It was formed in 1978 and was dissolved by the organization's leadership in 1990...
in the late 1980s, and included those who had been in LRS that still considered themselves Marxists (most of the LRS leadership had rejected Marxism when they decided to disband the LRS).
The merger between FRSO and SON technically marked the creation of a new organization, as at the time it was seen as a merger of two equal organizations into something new, rather than SON being incorporated in FRSO. Therefore for a brief time the merged organization was called "Freedom Road / Socialist Organizing Network", including both organizations' names, with the possibility existing that the merged organization would adopt an entirely new name. A new name never came to fruition, so the name reverted back to "Freedom Road Socialist Organization". But the 1994 FRSO Congress, at which the FRSO/SON merger was formalized, was referred to as the First Congress of FRSO/SON.
Socialist Organizing Network's publication Moving Forward was published by FRSO for a short period after the merger.
FRSO continued to sporadically publish Forward Motion during the 1990s.
In 1998, FRSO's Chicago District and Minnesota / Madison District began to publish a Midwest regional newspaper called Fight Back!.
The 1999 Split
In 1999, FRSO split into two groups, each retaining the organization's name. For a time after the split the two identically-named groups were identified by their respective publication's name — Freedom Road Magazine (which was started by the Freedom Road (freedomroad.org) group shortly after the split) and Fight Back! Newspaper (which had been started as a region newspaper by Mid-western districts pre-split). This led to the use of "Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Freedom Road]" and "Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Fight Back!]". The parenthetical terms are not used by either group to describe itself - both groups consider themselves to be the only legitimate Freedom Road Socialist Organization.For the remainder of this article, the two groups will be identified by their website address in order to remain objective, as neither group accepts any of the parenthetical qualifications of their name. Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Freedom Road] will now be referred to as FRSO (freedomroad.org), and Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Fight Back] is now referred to as FRSO (frso.org).
The two groups split principally over the proposal by a section of FRSO's membership in 1999 that FRSO adopt a Left Refoundation strategy. The Left Refoundation strategy was advocated by those who saw Marxism as in deep crisis. The aim of the statement and strategy was to further elaborate a response to the "crisis of socialism". It called for the construction of "a new type of political party" to unite with advanced sections of the masses, stressing collaboration across the left over strict adherence to Marxism-Leninism. Within the FRSO (freedomroad.org) group were proponents of the Left Refoundation statement and strategy and others while the FRSO (frso.org) group rejected it, characterizing it as an abandonment of Marxism-Leninism.
Freedom Road Socialist Organization - the 'freedomroad.org' group
Freedom Road (freedomroad.org) continues to uphold the line FRSO adopted in 1991 (prior to the split) encapsulated by its organizational document, "On the Crisis of Socialism". This document was adopted in light of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in China in 1989. It stressed an interpretation of Marxism-LeninismMarxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
as a scientific ideology of socialist revolution rather than as an orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...
or dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
. The document restated FRSO's support of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
while clarifying its line against the interpretation of this concept as a "massive repressive state apparatus over and above the people." The latter interpretation, the group argues, lead to counter-revolutionary tendencies taking hold in the Soviet bloc states and in China after capitalist restoration. According to an article in its magazine ("Toward a Critical Reassessment of Maoism") this is a problem it also sees in "Stalinian Marxism" or Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
.
FRSO (freedomroad.org) continues to uphold FRSO's pre-split line supporting full self-determination for the Black and Chicano/a nations in the South's Black Belt Region and Southwest (Aztlan
Aztlán
Aztlán is the mythical ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. And, by extension, is the mythical homeland of the Uto-Aztecan peoples. Aztec is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan".-Legend:...
) respectively, including "support and encourage[ment of] the independent organization of oppressed nationality revolutionaries and progressives, where they have determined it to be necessary" up to and including the formation of communist parties of a single oppressed nationality. Its theoretical materials stress the "intersections" of these struggles, with each other and with the struggles of feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
liberation, and the labor movement; that is, oppressors and forms of oppression and goals that they hold in common. FRSO (freedomroad.org) argues that such "intersections" highlight the necessity of building a united front of the movements of the multi-national working class and those of oppressed communities and nationalities, toward the aim of revolution. It has summed up this line as "Organizing All the Oppressed To End All Our Oppressions."
FRSO (freedomroad.org) Post-Split Congresses
FRSO (freedomroad.org) held organizational Congresses in 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009. The 2003 Congress produced the document FRSO/OSCL's Strategy for a New Historical Period. This document states that, "The main task of socialists in this period is to win a significant minority of the US population to oppose the program of planetary military control, or empire, which Bush and company are implementing. We must win a subset of this significant minority to be fully anti-imperialist. Anti-empire and then anti-imperialist practice — both of which include opposition to white supremacy within the US — is the key link for building a socialist movement in the US." 1In 2006, FRSO (freedomroad.org) began to officially call itself "Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad", using both the English and Spanish names together. In an abbreviated manner the group refers to itself to as "FRSO/OSCL" or "Freedom Road/El Camino".
FRSO/OSCL's Strategy for the Coming Period: 2010-2013 was produced at the organization's most recent Congress in 2009. This document discusses the present moment as a time when the left confronts three intersecting crises: the ongoing economic crisis, the political crisis which includes a waning of hegemony for the capitalist state, and the ecological crisis. The strategy points to several places for socialists to make interventions: left refoundation work that deepens relationships and collaboration with other organized and social movement Left forces, sharing a renewed vision of socialism broadly as part of communications and propaganda work, bringing an analysis of the crises and counter-hegemonic demands to mass work in the peoples' movements, an emphasis on participation in the rebuilding of the anti-war movement within the US, strategies for electoral work, and building a lens of ecological justice into all aspects of the organization's work.
FRSO (freedomroad.org) Publications
FRSO (freedomroad.org) began publishing Freedom Road Magazine in 2001. They ceased publication of it in 2003 after publishing three issues. At that time they declared they would focus more on web-based publications and flyers and pamphlets. They have not published a regular newspaper or magazine since 2003, but does publish a monthly enewsletter Forward Motion.In 2007 Camino Press published The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. The book represents theoretical contributions to the understanding of the national questions within the US, white privilege and intersectionality
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw . Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations"...
from the creation of the white race over three centuries ago up through present day struggles. http://www.costofprivilege.com/
Freedom Road Socialist Organization - the 'frso.org' group
The Freedom Road group that publishes Fight Back! Newspaper is associated with the website frso.org. FRSO (frso.org) continues to explicitly uphold Marxism-Leninism, is organized according to democratic centralismDemocratic centralism
Democratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organization used by Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party...
, and upholds an anti-revisionist
Anti-Revisionist
In the Marxist–Leninist movement, anti-revisionism refers to a doctrine which upholds the line of theory and practice associated with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and usually either Mao Zedong or Enver Hoxha as well...
line. FRSO (frso.org) actively maintains friendly relations with many Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations around the world.
FRSO (frso.org) continues to uphold much of FRSO's pre-split line on the African-American and Chicano national questions, supporting self-determination for the African-American nation in the Black Belt South and the Chicano nation in the Southwest. The group puts forward the line that "a single, unified, multinational communist party is needed to build the strategic alliance" in place of the pre-split unity document's "support and encourage[ment of] the independent organization of oppressed nationality revolutionaries and progressives, where they have determined it to be necessary," support which extends even to the formation of communist parties of a single nationality.
FRSO (frso.org) bases itself on the strategy of forming a strategic alliance between the oppressed nationalities and the multi-national working class. FRSO intends to build toward the creation of a single, multinational, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Communist party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
in the U.S.
Unlike FRSO (freedomroad.org), FRSO (frso.org) continues to uphold Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
as one of the "principal theorists" of Marxism-Leninism, along with Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. FRSO (frso.org) recognizes Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
as socialist countries. It is also close to the Workers Party of Belgium
Workers Party of Belgium
The Workers' Party of Belgium is a Marxist political party in Belgium. It is one of the few parties that operates as a single Belgian party...
(WPB) and a participant in the WPB's annual International Communist Seminar -- one of two U.S.-based groups to attend in 2006, along with Workers World Party
Workers World Party
Workers World Party is a far-left political party in the United States, founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy. Marcy and his followers split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1958 over a series of long-standing differences, among them Marcy's group's support for Henry A...
. They support national liberation movements such as those led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organisation founded in 1967. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization , the largest being Fatah...
, the Communist Party of the Philippines
Communist Party of the Philippines
The Communist Party of the Philippines is a leading communist party in the Philippines. It remains an underground political organization since its founding on December 26, 1968 and has been operating in clandestine manner since its founding...
, and the FARC-EP. FRSO's solidarity with the national liberation movements in Colombia and Palestine have been a defining feature of the organization in the period since the split in FRSO.
FRSO (frso.org) is active in the new Students for a Democratic Society.http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2008/sds-study-struggle-unite-fight.htm
FRSO (frso.org) Post-Split Congresses
FRSO (frso.org) has held organizational Congresses in 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2010.At the 2001 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) adopted a new version of their main Unity Statement, since the pre-split version did not explicitly mention Marxist-Leninism.
At the 2004 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) produced a new statement on the National Questions in the U.S., which they said, "represents a concluding step in placing our organization on a Marxist-Leninist basis."2
At the 2007 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) released a document titled "Class in the U.S. and Our Strategy for Revolution".3 They stated that this document would be the first piece of a larger organizational political program, the other parts of which are still in the process of development. Freedom Road has historically not had an organizational program, instead having a "Unity Statement". Historically it is more common for communist parties and organizations to have a program. At the 2007 Congress, FRSO (frso.org) also released a document titled "The Movement Against the War in Iraq: A New Period and Our Tasks."4
FRSO (frso.org) held their Sixth Congress in 2010.5
According to their website, "The members of Freedom Road are very active in movements fighting for justice, particularly in labor, oppressed nationality, anti-war and anti-imperialist, and student movements."6
FRSO (frso.org) Publications
FRSO (frso.org) publishes Fight Back! NewsFight Back! News
Fight Back! News is a news service and website founded in 1998 and based in the United States. It publishes articles and commentary on a variety of topics, including the antiwar movement, the labor movement, the African-American movement, the Chicano movement, and others. The website is updated...
, which as of 2007 is published 5 times yearly, and includes a Spanish-language section called Lucha y Resiste.
FRSO (frso.org) has published various pamphlets and flyers.1
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (frso.org)
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization - Home page.
- Public Statement on the Future of FRSO, June 1999 - Views and analysis of 1999 split.
- Unity Statement of Freedom Road Socialist Organization - Statement on organization's line. Dated 2001
- Statement on National Oppression, National Liberation, and Socialist Revolution - Line statement on the national question, from 2004 (post-split).
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization: 20 Years of Struggle - Summation of organization's activities.
- Fight Back Newspaper
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (freedomroad.org)
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization - Home page.
- "Freedom Road Socialist Organization Loses Two Districts in Split" - Views and analysis of 1999 split.
- Freedom Road Magazine - Articles from (now defunct) magazine.
- Unity Statement on National Oppression, National Liberation and Socialist Revolution -Line statement on the national question, from 1991 (pre-split).
- "Meeting the Challenge of Crisis and Opportunity: Left Refoundation and Party Building" - Analysis and statement of views by organization's Party Building Commission. Dated 1 January 2000.
- "The Crisis within the Left: Theory, Program, Organization" - Analysis and statement of views. Dated 31 December 2004.