New Communist Movement
Encyclopedia
The New Communist Movement (NCM) 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 Revolution
, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.
gathered into the Students for a Democratic Society
. The SDS grew to over 100,000 members before splitting in 1969. One of these splits, Revolutionary Youth Movement II, quickly splintered into a large number of small Maoist groups. These groups collectively became known as the New Communist Movement.
neighborhoods. Some former members subsequently developed local organizations that continued the trend, and they attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of Vladimir Lenin
, Mao Zedong
and Joseph Stalin
. Maoism
was then highly regarded as more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin Soviet Union
(see New Left: New Left in the United States). As a result, most NCM organizations referred to their ideology as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Similar to the New Left's general direction in the late 1960s, these new organizations rejected the post-1956 Communist Party USA
as revisionist, or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected Trotskyism
and the Socialist Workers Party
for its theoretical opposition to Maoism.
The groups, formed of ex-students, attempted to establish links with the working class through finding work in factories and heavy industry, but they also tended toward Third-worldism
, supporting National Liberation Fronts of various kinds, including the Black Panther Party
(then on the decline) the Cuban Revolution
, and the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. The New Communist Movement organizations supported national self-determination
for most ethnic groups, especially blacks and those of Latino origin, in the United States. These organizations addressed problems of sexism
and racism
, partly by voicing adamant support for self-determination and identity politics
, and felt that they were dealing with problems they were of the opinion had not been addressed in the groups of the 1960s. However, different NCM groups came to this similar conclusion via quite different routes.
In its early years, NCM organisations formed a loose-knit tendency in United States leftist politics, but never coalesced into a single organization. As time went on, the organizations became extremely competitive and increasingly dennounced one another. Points of distinction were frequently founded on the attitude taken toward the successors of Mao and international disputes between the Soviet Union and China regarding such developments as the Angolan Civil War
. The Revolutionary Union organized the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA in 1975.
The October League organized the founding congress of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977. During this period a few other new communist movement organizations also formed new communist party.
Unlike the majority of NCM groups, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
(DRUM), which evolved into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), was formed by factory workers rather than student activists. The AFL-CIO
leadership supported the Vietnam War
and sought to avoid strikes, but union workers saw through this and independently organized a series of wildcat strikes. Radical Marxist and other African-American auto workers subsequently formed DRUM. From 1968-1971 DRUM and the league acted as a dual union, with black leadership, within the United Auto Workers
.
The New Communist Movement as a whole became smaller in the 1980s. Some organizations dissolved in the early 1980s, such as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
. The Revolutionary Communist Party USA remains as an original product of the New Left. The Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
and Proletarian Unity League
joined forces to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization
in 1985, and various other new communist movement collectives and organizations later merged into FRSO. Subsequently, in 1999, FRSO split into two organizations, both of which continue to use the name Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
In 2003 Max Elbaum (a former member of the non-NCM group Line of March) published Revolution in the Air, a history of the New Communist Movement.
Books
Publications
Critical responses to the NCM
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.
Origins
In the 1960s, student activistsStudent activism
Student activism is work done by students to effect political, environmental, economic, or social change. It has often focused on making changes in schools, such as increasing student influence over curriculum or improving educational funding...
gathered into the Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
. The SDS grew to over 100,000 members before splitting in 1969. One of these splits, Revolutionary Youth Movement II, quickly splintered into a large number of small Maoist groups. These groups collectively became known as the New Communist Movement.
Developments in the 1970s and 1980s
As one of its last initiatives, SDS had begun to leave its campus base and organize in working classWorking class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
neighborhoods. Some former members subsequently developed local organizations that continued the trend, and they attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of 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...
, 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...
and 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...
. Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
was then highly regarded as more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin 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....
(see New Left: New Left in the United States). As a result, most NCM organizations referred to their ideology as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Similar to the New Left's general direction in the late 1960s, these new organizations rejected the post-1956 Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
as revisionist, or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
and the Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party (United States)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far-left political organization in the United States. The group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba...
for its theoretical opposition to Maoism.
The groups, formed of ex-students, attempted to establish links with the working class through finding work in factories and heavy industry, but they also tended toward Third-worldism
Third-worldism
Third-worldism is a tendency within left-wing political thought to regard the division between developed countries, and developing countries or "Third World" nations against the background of primary political importance...
, supporting National Liberation Fronts of various kinds, including the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
(then on the decline) the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
, and the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. The New Communist Movement organizations supported national 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...
for most ethnic groups, especially blacks and those of Latino origin, in the United States. These organizations addressed problems of sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, partly by voicing adamant support for self-determination and identity politics
Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
, and felt that they were dealing with problems they were of the opinion had not been addressed in the groups of the 1960s. However, different NCM groups came to this similar conclusion via quite different routes.
In its early years, NCM organisations formed a loose-knit tendency in United States leftist politics, but never coalesced into a single organization. As time went on, the organizations became extremely competitive and increasingly dennounced one another. Points of distinction were frequently founded on the attitude taken toward the successors of Mao and international disputes between the Soviet Union and China regarding such developments as the Angolan Civil War
Angolan Civil War
The Angolan Civil War was a major civil conflict in the Southern African state of Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with some interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. Prior to this, a decolonisation conflict had taken...
. The Revolutionary Union organized the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA in 1975.
The October League organized the founding congress of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977. During this period a few other new communist movement organizations also formed new communist party.
Unlike the majority of NCM groups, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main, Detroit, Michigan....
(DRUM), which evolved into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), was formed by factory workers rather than student activists. The AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
leadership supported the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and sought to avoid strikes, but union workers saw through this and independently organized a series of wildcat strikes. Radical Marxist and other African-American auto workers subsequently formed DRUM. From 1968-1971 DRUM and the league acted as a dual union, with black leadership, within the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
.
The New Communist Movement as a whole became smaller in the 1980s. Some organizations dissolved in the early 1980s, such as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (USA)
The Communist Party was a Maoist political party in the United States.- History :The Communist Party 's predecessor organization, the October League , was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when...
. The Revolutionary Communist Party USA remains as an original product of the New Left. 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...
and 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...
joined forces to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization — known in Spanish as Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad — 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...
in 1985, and various other new communist movement collectives and organizations later merged into FRSO. Subsequently, in 1999, FRSO split into two organizations, both of which continue to use the name Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
In 2003 Max Elbaum (a former member of the non-NCM group Line of March) published Revolution in the Air, a history of the New Communist Movement.
Predecessors
- Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party
- Bay Area Revolutionary Union
- Black Panther PartyBlack Panther PartyThe Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
- source of inspiration - Dodge Revolutionary Union MovementDodge Revolutionary Union MovementThe Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main, Detroit, Michigan....
- Revolutionary Youth Movement II
- Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
NCM organizations of the 1970s and 1980s
- Committee for a Proletarian Party
- Communist Organization, Bay Area
- Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (USA)The Communist Party was a Maoist political party in the United States.- History :The Communist Party 's predecessor organization, the October League , was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when...
- Communist Workers Party
- Georgia Communist League
- Guardian (US)
- League of Revolutionary StruggleLeague of Revolutionary StruggleThe 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...
- Marxist-Leninist Party, USAMarxist-Leninist Party, USAThe Marxist–Leninist Party was the final incarnation of a series of communist anti-revisionist groups that began in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s.- History :...
- October League
- Organization for Revolutionary UnityOrganization for Revolutionary UnityThe 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...
- Proletarian Unity LeagueProletarian Unity LeagueThe 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...
- Revolutionary Communist Party
- Revolutionary Union
- Revolutionary Workers HeadquartersRevolutionary Workers HeadquartersRevolutionary Workers Headquarters was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1977...
- Revolutionary Workers Organization
- Sojourner Truth OrganizationSojourner Truth OrganizationSojourner Truth Organization was a new communist organization, which came into existence in the winter of 1969-70. Throughout its fifteen year existence , it existed mainly in the Midwest and oriented towards organization in the workplace...
- Venceremos OrganizationVenceremos OrganizationVenceremos, Spanish for "We Will Overcome", or "We Will Prevail", was a radical left political group which took its name from the battle cry of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a revolutionary communist leader from Argentina and high ranking member of Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.Venceremos...
Current organizations descended from NCM
- Freedom Road Socialist OrganizationFreedom Road Socialist OrganizationThe Freedom Road Socialist Organization — known in Spanish as Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad — 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...
- League of Revolutionaries for a New AmericaLeague of Revolutionaries for a New AmericaThe League of Revolutionaries for a New America is an organization of revolutionaries in the United States formed with the stated goal of "educating revolutionaries and winning them over to a cooperative communist resolution to the problems faced in the economy and society." The League was...
- Revolutionary Communist Party, USARevolutionary Communist Party, USAThe Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , known originally as the Revolutionary Union, is a Maoist Communist party formed in 1975 in the United States. The RCP states that U.S...
Notable theorists and leaders
- Bob AvakianBob AvakianBob Avakian is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , which he has led since its formation in 1975. He is a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and the Left of the 1960s and early 1970s, and was closely associated with the Black Panther Party. He has published writings on Marxism and...
- H. Bruce FranklinH. Bruce FranklinHoward Bruce Franklin is an American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects. As of 2011, he is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar...
- Harry HaywoodHarry HaywoodHarry 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...
- Noel IgnatievNoel IgnatievNoel Ignatiev is an American history professor at the Massachusetts College of Art best known for his call to "abolish" the white race, which he defines as "white privilege and race identity." Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society...
- Michael KlonskyMichael KlonskyMichael Klonsky is an American educator, author, and political activist. He is known for his work with the Students for a Democratic Society, the New Communist Movement, and, later, the small schools movement.-Political activism:...
- Nelson PeeryNelson PeeryNelson Peery is an American political activist and author. Peery spent over 60 years in the revolutionary movement, and has been active in the Communist Party USA , the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Party , the Communist League , the Communist Labor Party ,...
Archives
- Inventory of the Black Panther Party. Harlem Branch Collection, 1970, n.d.: Collection # Sc MG 80. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
- New Mass Party Movements, 1970‑1976 portion of Detroit Revolutionary Movements Collection at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State UniversityWayne State UniversityWayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
.
- Revolutionary Communist Party Collection: Tamiment 090. Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Articles
- An interview with Max Elbaum by Chris CrassChris CrassChris Crass is an anarchist organizer and writer from San Francisco, California. He is an organizer with the , which is a center for political education and movement building. The Catalyst Project grew out of the Challenging White Supremacy workshop...
. Onward: Magazine of Anarchist News, Opinion, Theory and Strategy of Today. Fall 2002 - American Leninism in the 1970s. by Jim O’Brien. Radical America 11–12:27–64, 1977.
- PDF version (warning: large document)
Charts
- The New Left/Maoist Tree. the NCM/New Left/Maoist tree charts the development of various Maoist movements. Justin Denton, Direct Action Tendency of Socialist Party, USA.
Organizations
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization (www.freedomroad.org)
- FRSO's NCM Timeline and articles
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization (www.frso.org)
- League of Revolutionaries for a New America
- Revolutionary Communist Party link to their newspaper, Revolution. They have no official organizational website
Further reading
Articles- Bush, Rod When the Revolution Came. Radical History Review. Issue 90, Fall 2004, pp. 102-111
Books
- Avakian, Bob. From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, A Memoir. 449 pages Publisher: Insight Press (2005) ISBN 0-9760236-2-8
- Committee on Internal Security. America's Maoists: The Revolutionary Union; The Venceremos Organization. 202 pages. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. index. Trade Paperback. Photos & facsimile documents.
- Georgakas Dan and Marvin Surkin. Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution. 254 pages Publisher: South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
; Revised edition (August 1, 1998) ISBN 0-89608-571-6.
- Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978. 700 pages. ISBN 0-930720-53-9
- Mitchell, Roxanne and Frank Weiss. Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type? Against the Ultra-Left Line. Publisher: United Labor Press (1977).
Publications
- Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Class struggle, journal of Communist thought. Spring, 1975 no. 1 to Winter 1979, no. 11. Communist Party (M-L), Chicago. 1971-79
- Kilpatrick, Admiral. A Veteran Communist Speaks... On the Struggle Against Revisionism 41p. Communist League. Chicago. 1974.
- National Network Of Marxist-Leninist Clubs. (Irwin SilberIrwin SilberIrwin Silber was an American journalist, editor, publisher, and political activist.-Early years:Irwin Silber was born October 17, 1925 in New York City to ethnic Jewish parents....
). Rectification Vs. Fusion: The Struggle Over Party Building Line. 55p. National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs. San Francisco. 1979.
- October League (Marxist-Leninist). Statement of political unity of the Georgia Communist League (M-L) and the October League (M-L). 20p. Statement of unity adopted at joint unity congress of the Georgia Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) and the October League (Marxist-Leninist). Los Angeles. 1973.
- Proletarian Unity League. On the October League's call for a new communist party. A response. United Labor Press. New York. 1976.
- Sojourner Truth Organization. The New Face of Fascism and the Klan. Special issue of Urgent Tasks. No. 14. Fall/Winter 1982. Chicago. STO, 1982. Contains three speeches to the National Anti-Klan Network Conference, Atlanta, June 19, 1982. Also: Lance Hill’s “Huey Long: Bayou Fascist?”; exchange on Anti semitism & Nazi ideology between Lenny Zeskind and Noel Ignatin.
Critical responses to the NCM
- Goldfield, Michael and Melvin Rothenberg. The myth of capitalism reborn: a Marxist critique of theories of capitalist restoration in the USSR. 118p. Soviet Union Study Project, distributed by Line of March Publications, San Francisco. 1980.
- Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. 320 pages Publisher: Verso (June, 2002) ISBN 1-85984-617-3.