Progressive Labor Party (USA)
Encyclopedia
The Progressive Labor Party (originally the Progressive Labor Movement and often referred to as PL) is a transnational
communist party
based primarily in the United States
. It was formed in the fall of 1961 by members of the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA) who felt that the Soviet Union
had betrayed communism and become revisionist and state capitalist. Founders also felt that the CPUSA was adopting unforgivably reformist
positions, such as peaceful coexistence
, turning to electoral politics
and hiding communist politics behind a veneer of reform-oriented causes.
The party advocates a "fight directly for communism" that includes limited aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat
but virulently rejects the standard conception of the socialist economic transition-stage as a mistake of the 'old movement'. Its revolution would be followed immediately by a working class
-ruled, moneyless society, with policy to be administered by hundreds of millions of workers through Party locals worldwide, coordinated through several tiers of membership meetings and forums. It hopes to recruit these numbers "before the revolution", a phrasing they use to provide contrast to what they say was the habit of past communist parties to recruit the mass of its members during and after their revolutions, the latter of which they consider a failed strategy. The party has also stated numerous times and in numerous contexts, mostly in regards to lesser evil, how "workers must never again share power with class enemies" the way they did during the original movement.
Accordingly, PLP's greatest point of pride is how much it considers itself to have evolved in a positive direction away from the old communist movement. It constantly criticizes many aspects of the history of communism
, and also criticizes itself in relation to how closely current policies may resemble past failed ones, which it calls "right opportunism." While still taking cues from the past revolutionaries it admires, the party sees itself as being at the forefront of a new type of working class communist liberation that will truly carry the revolution through to fruition for the first time. It also espouses a unique approach to the issue of the Communist International, saying that instead of separate communist parties in each country, the revolutionary organization should be one monolithic, multiracial, cross-cultural PLP, with branches and collectives all over the globe.
To accomplish its goal of communism, the party feels it first must recapture the power and influence that the 1930s
-era CPUSA once had — i.e., being the largest and most politically influential communist party in the country — and to combine that influence with its mix of New Left
-tinged communist thinking, thereby making a new "mass party of the working class" that can gain momentum across the entire world.
In spite of this revolutionary fervor however, PLP's most recent self-assessment of its political line is noticeably reflective, and even somewhat sober, stating that "[t]he most significant error our Party made was to underestimate the significance of the old movement’s collapse." The party praises its own 1980s analysis as what enabled them to be 'advanced' enough to survive the dissolution of the Soviet Union
, alleging that "these advances were vital ideological contributions to the arsenal of revolutionary communism." But while "we correctly identified the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union and China" (see Chinese economic reform
and peaceful coexistence
for what is meant here), the party says that through the years its own ranks "failed...to understand the devastating consequences that this development would have on the revolutionary process world wide and the new life it would breathe into U.S. imperialism. In the decade and a half since the Soviet Union’s voluntary break-up, U.S. rulers have received a blank check to wreak murder and mayhem in the former Yugoslavia
, Afghanistan
, Iraq, and elsewhere. The end of socialism, and the...removal of the USSR as a key rival imperialist superpower, also enabled the U.S. rulers to dodge many of capitalism’s inevitable contradictions. Even more critical," the party writes, "it has had a chilling effect on class struggle
all over the world." It is perhaps clear via this document that the extent of PL's "long-range view" for communist revolution is much longer now than at any time in the past.
, PL made it clear that it wanted to advocate communist revolution
openly and aggressively among the working class
. Recruitment increased as the Civil Rights Movement
intensified: though it started as several score
based on the East Coast
early on, the group then became inspired enough by the Cuban Revolution
to wind up with many of its student-aged members going to Havana
to break the travel ban
. Defiance of the ban resulted in a congressional investigation before the House Un-American Activities Committee
at which the students banged on desks and heckled HUAC, shouting pro-communist slogans and generally causing too much disruption for the proceedings to continue. These actions prompted protests from other groups that would ultimately destroy HUAC's ability to hold hearings at all.
PL also founded the university-campus-based May 2 Movement (M2M), which organized the first significant general march against the Vietnam War
in New York City
in 1964. But once the Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) came to the forefront of the U.S. leftist activist political scene in 1965, PLP dissolved M2M and entered SDS, working vigorously to attract supporters and to form party clubs on campuses. By 1965 PLP had also attracted sufficient membership that it changed its designation from 'Movement' to 'Party'.
Within a few years, the nascent party had become the largest communist faction within SDS and a major player in the student movement's internal politics. Their politics were received with either disgust or admiration within SDS, but no one denied their massed presence and vigorous work in working class neighborhoods. When a New York City Police Department
policeman, Gilligan, killed an unarmed black youth in Harlem, the neighborhood erupted in intense violence, and PLP led these riots and its leaders were arrested and arraigned for this activity. Against that politically polarizing backdrop within the already intense worldwide movement against social injustice, various anti-PLP SDS factions took to developing their own interpretations of communist ideology and formed what it named the Revolutionary Youth Movement
(RYM), while PL, in its own right, was busy organizing its supporters into their Worker Student Alliance
(WSA) from 1966-69. The competing SDS factions did not get along peacefully; clashes between them were chronic and bitter, and would ultimately result in an irrevocable split of SDS into separate organizations and, shortly thereafter, the expiration of SDS itself.
By the middle of the sixties the party was arguing that its experiences from the Harlem rebellion onward had slowly convinced them to abandon advocacy of ethnic nationalism
as a politically appropriate route to workers seizing state power
, but it did not set out this new conviction in official Party doctrine until 1969, when it came out openly with an organization-wide document called Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism. This document, immediately controversial, reached the conclusion that all nationalism
, both nation-state
-based nationalism and ethnic nationalism among oppressed minorities, was ultimately reactionary
— that it was akin to identity politics
at home, like with the Black Panther Party
, and weakened any communist character of national-liberation struggles abroad, like with the Vietnam War.
The new position was greeted with open hostility and even rage among most of the non-PLP-supporting SDS, especially RYM, who interpreted it as anti-working class and even implicitly racist and refused to accept it. RYM thought that PL was categorically rejecting the political right of groups of everyday people to self-determination
. PL's attempted explanations that it was the political, not the personal, side of nationalism that it was rejecting were also refused by their opposition. The rage on RYM's end and continued defense of the position on PL's end could not, and did not, hold SDS together for long.
In the end, the PL/WSA wing did indeed win majority support at the 1969 SDS national convention in Chicago. RYM, as it turned out, had teamed with the Black Panther Party
to engage in deceptive tactics in the conference which deflated their political reputation and lessened the political impact of the split. However, the Weatherman organization
still successfully usurped the SDS name and public face through 1970 despite its defeat at the conference, and retained control of the SDS National Office until it decided to dissolve it, close the headquarters, and break off to become a violently revolutionary organization on its own. PLP alone ultimately did not have the strength to lead the SDS chapters it had successfully kept going, and so its wing buckled and collapsed a few years later — although not before a new group, the Committee Against Racism
(CAR), was formed to replace it. CAR was composed at first of mostly WSA student members and the black and Hispanic workers in the off-campus neighborhoods that had been recruited to WSA; over time it expanded somewhat and also founded chapters in other countries.
Even so, the general crisis of the entire United States New Left
by 1975 only accelerated the eventual failure of PLP's ability to hold on to the SDS name and orientation. As tensions increased, PLP's remaining campus members and supporters were known to engage in particularly heated shouting matches and even occasional mutually provoked fistfights with Weathermen
and Chicano nationalists
the Young Lords
, as well as other smaller groups that would occasionally try to intimidate them, like the early grouping led by Lyndon LaRouche. Also, the party experienced internal split-offs; several significant PLP collectives left as the seventies progressed. While not reduced to being inoperable or insignificant, it shrank and became more fractious even as it ratcheted up its work. According to this chronology, "the majority of the Boston
chapter had left [PLP] in 1974" and in April 1977 "70% of the Bay Area
chapter of PLP" also left the organization, "just about the only remaining one with significant mass work" (O'Brein, Five Retreats). Meanwhile, some of the party's more widely influential members drifted away as well, including Bill Epton
, PLP's vice chairman and Harlem
branch leader, who presumably could not reconcile his own politics to that of PLP's rejection of nationalism in 1969.
Though in the 1960s PL was widely regarded as the torch-bearer of Maoism
within SDS, it had never really seen itself as a hard-line follower of Mao Zedong
; indeed, even early on, PLP's political line differed sharply from Maoism on fundamental points. It was briefly the subsidized fraternal party
to China, but broke that relationship in 1967 and reacted particularly harshly to the news of Mao meeting with President Richard Nixon
in 1972, denouncing Mao as revisionist. Claims to Maoism in the United States thereafter passed to other groups, most notably the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. Briefly in the early 1970s, PLP continued to offer limited tacit support to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party
in a fraternal party relationship.
. Chief among these was the argument that socialism
, the accepted transition-phase between capitalism
and communism in Marxist theory, was the primary reason behind the reversal of workers' power in the Soviet Union
and China
and should be abandoned. While seeming excessively radical to some, this position in fact flowed logically from the party's prior rejection of Mao's concept of New Democracy
, dismissed by the party as a reactionary "three-stage theory" of first New Democracy, then socialism, then communism. With PLP's subsequent rejection of the socialist stage as equally unnecessary and reactionary, PL's proletarian struggle was reframed as a "fight directly for communism" wherein these intermediate stages would be shunned in favor of widespread understanding and acceptance of fully communist ideology among the masses from the outset.
To PLP, such a strategy of mass participation in communist politics necessitates that current party members build true, deep, honest friendships with workers, rather than viewing such workers simply as potential recruits. In this vein, it advocates "basebuilding," meaning that members should get stable jobs that keep them in touch with the working class — teaching in public school as opposed to private, for example, or working in a welfare office as opposed to a day spa
— and should enjoy everyday lives while gradually attempting to win their co-workers, friends and family to respect and join the party.
In terms of its organization, the party has replaced the classic "cadre" conception of a communist party with that of a "mass party", by which it means that the party should not be an elite of "professional revolutionaries
" but should be composed of, by, and for the whole working class, where everyone has full knowledge and appreciation of communist principles and action so that they do not allow the party leadership structure to become corrupt. It is one of only a few US-based communist parties to both explicitly struggle towards (in speech and writing) and contain (in its membership and leadership ranks) a multiracial and even majority-nonwhite membership. PL says it believes that revolutionaries cannot claim anti-racism without putting it into explicit practice in their own ranks. Its recruitment strategies within the US typically tend to focus on impoverished and semi-impoverished working class neighborhoods with majority black and Hispanic inhabitants. In general, very little attention is paid to recruiting members out of general conglomerations like anti-war
or G20 demonstrations and the like— while it is true that PLP politically has no particular opposition to recruiting from within the activist community, many of its members and leaders seem to dislike it and to refer to it as, at best, not very fruitful, and at worst as a total waste of time much better spent on working full-time with inner-city workers and youth.
Members are cautioned not to necessarily expect revolution in their lifetimes, but to build for it anyway, so that the working class has the largest and deepest collective participation in revolutionary communist activity and ideas by the time circumstances for such a revolution are ripe. The party still sees the need for a Red Army
and an armed populace
to defend the new communist society they envision from attack by resurgent ruling class
es, and they utilize the term "dictatorship of the proletariat
" to refer to this necessity. But since it rejects the socialism stage of communist "struggle", PLP's usage of the term today differs starkly from usage by other communist groups, who generally consider the dictatorship of the proletariat to be synonymous with the classic conception of socialism.
Other than its fight directly for a communist political and economic system, perhaps the biggest change to come from its steep changes in political line is PLP's current belief in a complete and total abolition of money and the wage system immediately upon the seizure of state power
by the working class. After PLP's revolution, cash and credit money and all forms of market-based and profit-based exchanges of all types would immediately cease (or if the world were already in shambles due to world war, would simply not be restarted). Members argue that wage differences based on type of work and the retention of a certain amount of competitiveness
and elitism
under socialism was what led it to turn back into capitalism
with time. They see the immediate abolition of money, wages, and other market society elements as an approach that would more easily enable workers to adopt a sense of communist culture, ethics, and morality. Meanwhile, PL fiercely opposes the Theory of Productive Forces
espoused by past communists, which it points out placed more emphasis on achieving abundance in socialist societies than it did on actually winning the working class to communist ideology and practice, particularly in the cases of the Great Leap Forward
and the Five Year Plans. PLP argues that communism should have been the glue that held these societies together, rather than abundance. In part, the party states:
PLP thinks of itself as having been born out of "the struggle against revisionism
" and from that mindset takes several interesting positions regarding the 20th-century communist movement. They believe that the political and economic choices of Joseph Stalin
extend back to Vladimir Lenin
's New Economic Policy
and were ultimately endemic to the Soviet Union's entire history — i.e., the history of socialism and its concessions to capitalism, which in PLP's view cannot lead to communism. Therefore, they say, regardless of the leader in question, and regardless of whether or not s/he made good political advances in the country or towards the communist movement as a whole (which they believe Stalin did, especially against the Nazis), mistakes were made that were common to all of those leaders, because the faulty theory of socialism was common to all of them. PLP attacks the cult of personality
and any "Great Leader" status as anti-working class, and pledges that the elimination of the socialist stage, the retention of the armed dictatorship of the working class to defend against a comeback by the ruling class
es, and "confidence in the working class" from the beginning that they can fully understand and utilize openly communist ideas collectively, without having to look to a great figure (or figures) for guidance, will signal much deeper and more profound strides towards communism than socialism could ever have hoped to achieve.
Like virtually all groups descended from Maoism
, however, the party supports a positive interpretation of Stalin's legacy. Most members, while allowing that "errors" were made, expressly deny the view of him by mainstream scholars as mass murderer and tyrant, claiming that his leadership helped defeat fascism
, that the numbers killed by the policies in his era were far fewer than the many millions widely accepted, and that the rest resulted from a combination of the Russian Civil War
, famine, and World War II
. Typically, PLP also defends killings unrelated to these factors as ultimately justified to protect the Soviet Union
's proletarian dictatorship against spies, Fifth column
elements, counterrevolutionaries
, and other class enemies. It should again be noted, though, that PLP sees the "lessons" it takes from the past (and the past itself) as only a general blueprint from which to construct a revolution in the future, not as a political safety-net in which to take refuge. In keeping with their Maoist roots, PLP emphasizes action over theory, with study of the latter being education for the former. In this way, they claim to be 'forward-thinking' in ways that other communist groups with similar roots, in their opinion, are not.
and popular front
strategies, members say, have been proven wrong despite all valiant attempts to make them work by forces genuinely fighting for communism; they say that such forces' alliances with "lesser-evil" bosses and/or fake-left groups for short-term gains has been one of the main weaknesses of the old communist movement. They cite as evidence for this the fall of the Spanish Civil War
to the fascists and the assassination of Salvador Allende
in Chile
, among other examples. So, rather than focus energy on participation in (or creation of) leftist coalitions, as it sees most other groups claiming Marxism
doing, PL prefers to steadily strengthen its own political standing and recruitment via its basebuilding strategy.
On the circumstances that would lead to revolution, PLP looks at the world situation believing that the primary contradiction today is—unfortunately—between various groups of competing imperialists for world domination, or "inter-imperialist rivalry," rather than between workers and bosses, or (as Maoists claim) between imperialism and national-liberation movements. It recognizes the weakness of the radical left
at the present stage in history and notes that nationalism
has presently replaced communism as the driving force in the worldwide popular left. But the PLP simultaneously sees an inexorable economic and political decline of the U.S. versus other capitalist powers, like China and the European Union
(EU), and dwindling of necessary imperial resources around the world like oil. The party thinks that cutthroat competition over such resources will inevitably lead to a third world war. They assert that such a war, while it will bring much suffering and death for workers, will also be the catalyst for a great new communist revolution, provided enough people are won to the party's ideas before and during such a conflict.
In line with its anti-nationalist
politics, while firmly denouncing the "fascist" policies of the State of Israel, the party also criticizes both the Palestinian intifada and the Iraqi insurgency
because of what it sees as these movements' reactionary nature; that the most they will do is put another capitalist government in power and establish new domination by local bosses, and dependency on non-US imperialists such as the European Union.
And in response to the current worldwide economic crisis, the party has continued its overall fight against the ideas and policies of the US ruling class, organizes workers into mainstream unions from which it then tries to lead wildcat strikes, berates cops and community policing strategies, and unreservedly criticizes US President Barack Obama
for being yet another example of the rulers fooling the people with an impressive-seeming figurehead, in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Bill Clinton
(the latter of whose "workfare
" policies it had mercilessly blasted as racist "slave labor").
PL upholds what some might consider a purist
vision of a mass-based communism, one that it claims was the true spirit of the Cultural Revolution
sabotaged by Mao's cult of personality
, reactionary elements within the Communist Party of China
, and Mao's own political weaknesses. It believes it "stands on the shoulders of giants" but can also learn a lot from their mistakes, "to get it right the next time."
Despite the nature and intensity of its work and the fact that it sees itself as advocating a new type of communism inspired by but still separate from the old, the party has remained small throughout its history, staying relatively stable at an estimated few thousand active members, and neither gaining nor losing significant numbers along the way. Because of internal PLP security, it is not possible to get a public declaration of whether the estimate of a few thousand members includes members in countries other than the U.S. or members in the military forces and other non-public work. Generally, there is a consensus among members that "members lists", or even a general knowledge of specific or general membership size among participants, is both unnecessary and dangerous to the party's internal security in relation to law enforcement
under capitalism. It would seem recently, however, that PLP has begun to increase its international work as it continues to face what it acknowledges is a comparatively stagnant and underdeveloped working-class militancy situation in the United States, and also amidst its own continued lack of steady growth in party membership even as it approaches the 50-year anniversary of the original PLM's formation.
of the Palestinian territories
. It is unknown whether PL has played any significant openly communist part in the 2011 Wisconsin protests
or the similar protests happening around the US in response to parallel initiatives by other state governors, other than the innately apparent situation of several PLP members being active in the participant unions themselves as members, recruiting individual union members to participate in and perhaps join the party and/or participate in party marches and rallies. In late February 2011 upon the 2011 Egyptian revolution
, PL published a fiercely supportive reaction and also called the mainstream media's characterisation of the revolution as nonviolent "lies", asserting instead that revolutionary violence and even a quasi-communistic or at least genuinely populist spirit saturated the entire process. It therefore seems apparent that PL does support the overall people power
spirit of the revolutions in Egypt
, Tunisia
, Bahrain
, Yemen
etc., even while at the same time (and in characteristic fashion) it qualifies its support somewhat with their classic worry that these revolutions will be quickly co-opted by the forces of the ruling elite and/or that full-fledged capitalism will be inevitably (re)established and popular control and collective self-determination will fade.
The party still vociferously pursues activities opposing racism, some of which are quite militant, even if not all such activities cross the line into violence (which some do). Members who work as teachers, for instance, target policies in the schools
that they consider racist, single them out for being so, and sometimes try to launch campaigns involving both teachers and students to oppose those measures (such as metal detector
s in schools, or increased police presence in front of or inside school buildings). In society more generally, the party claims that the best way to consistently and tangibly prove its anti-racist nature, given that it does not support ethnic nationalism
, is to fight racism physically, through direct action
. It led a street battle in Boston in 1975 that broke apart the briefly influential mass anti-desegregation busing
group Restore Our Alienated Rights
, and repeatedly targeted Arthur Jensen
and similar scientific racists
through the 1990s, particularly once The Bell Curve
came into vogue. The PLP front group International Committee Against Racism
(InCAR) at an academic conference in 1977 famously poured a pitcher of water on sociobiologist E. O. Wilson
's head while chanting "Wilson, you're all wet". In the 1980s the Ku Klux Klan
told the Hartford Courant that "it's because of those commies in InCAR and PLP that our boys are afraid to come out in public wearing their hoods." In 1999, when the KKK tried to hold a rally in Manhattan
, a member (misidentified in the media as public school teacher Harvey Mason, but actually public school teacher Derek Pearl) made headlines by infiltrating the Klan members' protest space and using it to punch a Grand Dragon in the face. More recently PLP has also targeted the Minuteman Project and Save Our State
.
Today, at least in the United States, the party continues to be most widely known among the general public for its wilfully confrontational and often violent stance of militant anti-fascism against Klan
and Nazi groups. Whenever an organized opposition to a racist or fascist rally has not yet been planned, PL will often organize and lead one. The party takes open and intense pride in being the "only organization publicly known for advocating both communism and militancy" in the US. It is also active in anti-police brutality
work, public health
, public schools
, and various types of basic industry, including Boeing
. The Amalgamated Transit Union
Local 689 in Washington, D.C.
had an open PLP member who was its president for one term and, though he has since retired, for many years exercised substantial leadership and influence in the Local.
Rebuilding in New Orleans has also become a staple of the party yearly "Summer Project" work in the months of July and August, particularly among US East Coast collectives.
The party makes a point of celebrating May Day
with public marches every year. Historically it held its own marches, on the Saturday closest to the first day of May, to accommodate 5-day-per-week working schedules. This closest-Saturday tradition meant that PL's May Day rally sometimes, but not often, fell on 1 May itself. Today, however, PLP has largely melted itself into the more general immigrants rights-centered International Workers Day marches which claim themselves (since the first such event, in 2006) to be part of a rebirth of an International Workers Day celebration in the United States. PL often marches in these situations the same way they tend to march at rallies they organize themselves — chanting loudly for communist revolution and forming a sea of red flags. Members chiefly claim that involving themselves in the more general marches, rather than hosting their own, gives them more maneuverability, and also more visibility, amongst the larger segments of the working class. Both the historical party-run marches from the 1970s through the early 2000s, and the current marches in which the party now participates as contingents, have always largely been in its most active cities for political activity and recruitment — New York
, Chicago and Los Angeles
. However, smaller supporting May Day marches sometimes have occurred in less prominent cities and towns. Globally, PLP supporters typically take part in the rest of the world's much larger May Day events as contingents.
PL's biweekly newspaper
is Challenge
and the parallel Spanish language
counterpart Desafío, as well as a semi-annual theoretical magazine
, The Communist. In particular, the party's 2005 document Dark Night Shall Have Its End is said to be the most up-to-date representation of overall Party political thought
; prior to this, its Road To Revolution documents had acted in that manifesto
-type capacity. The party has not published a new Road To Revolution document with party-wide endorsement since Road To Revolution IV in 1982, which marked the start of its pledge to "fight directly for communism" and disown the idea of socialism. There still exists a Road To Revolution 4.5 published in 1996, but support for this document has in recent years been withdrawn by the majority of leading PLP political figures and its contents have been disavowed.
Transnational political party
A transnational political party is a single political party with members or representatives in more than one country.A well-known example is the Arab Baath Socialist Party, established as an Arab nationalist and socialist party aspiring to pan-Arab political union...
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...
based primarily in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was formed in the fall of 1961 by members of the 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....
(CPUSA) who felt that 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....
had betrayed communism and become revisionist and state capitalist. Founders also felt that the CPUSA was adopting unforgivably reformist
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
positions, such as peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence was a theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of its ostensibly Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and was adopted by Soviet-influenced "Communist states" that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc...
, turning to electoral politics
Criticisms of electoralism
Although highly controversial at various points in history, representative democracy has become the modern civics global-standard. Nevertheless, criticisms of electoral politics continue to come from both within the Western world and the developing world...
and hiding communist politics behind a veneer of reform-oriented causes.
The party advocates a "fight directly for communism" that includes limited aspects 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...
but virulently rejects the standard conception of the socialist economic transition-stage as a mistake of the 'old movement'. Its revolution would be followed immediately by a working class
Working 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...
-ruled, moneyless society, with policy to be administered by hundreds of millions of workers through Party locals worldwide, coordinated through several tiers of membership meetings and forums. It hopes to recruit these numbers "before the revolution", a phrasing they use to provide contrast to what they say was the habit of past communist parties to recruit the mass of its members during and after their revolutions, the latter of which they consider a failed strategy. The party has also stated numerous times and in numerous contexts, mostly in regards to lesser evil, how "workers must never again share power with class enemies" the way they did during the original movement.
Accordingly, PLP's greatest point of pride is how much it considers itself to have evolved in a positive direction away from the old communist movement. It constantly criticizes many aspects of the history of communism
History of communism
The history of the political ideology of communism hypothetically stretches all the way from the Palaeolithic up until the present day. However, most modern forms of communism are based upon Marxism, a variant of the ideology formed by the sociologist Karl Marx in the 1840s...
, and also criticizes itself in relation to how closely current policies may resemble past failed ones, which it calls "right opportunism." While still taking cues from the past revolutionaries it admires, the party sees itself as being at the forefront of a new type of working class communist liberation that will truly carry the revolution through to fruition for the first time. It also espouses a unique approach to the issue of the Communist International, saying that instead of separate communist parties in each country, the revolutionary organization should be one monolithic, multiracial, cross-cultural PLP, with branches and collectives all over the globe.
To accomplish its goal of communism, the party feels it first must recapture the power and influence that the 1930s
1930s
File:1930s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Dorothea Lange's photo of the homeless Florence Thompson show the effects of the Great Depression; Due to the economic collapse, the farms become dry and the Dust Bowl spreads through America; The Battle of Wuhan during the Second Sino-Japanese...
-era CPUSA once had — i.e., being the largest and most politically influential communist party in the country — and to combine that influence with its mix of 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...
-tinged communist thinking, thereby making a new "mass party of the working class" that can gain momentum across the entire world.
In spite of this revolutionary fervor however, PLP's most recent self-assessment of its political line is noticeably reflective, and even somewhat sober, stating that "[t]he most significant error our Party made was to underestimate the significance of the old movement’s collapse." The party praises its own 1980s analysis as what enabled them to be 'advanced' enough to survive the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
, alleging that "these advances were vital ideological contributions to the arsenal of revolutionary communism." But while "we correctly identified the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union and China" (see Chinese economic reform
Chinese economic reform
The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping.China had one of the world's largest...
and peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence was a theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of its ostensibly Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and was adopted by Soviet-influenced "Communist states" that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc...
for what is meant here), the party says that through the years its own ranks "failed...to understand the devastating consequences that this development would have on the revolutionary process world wide and the new life it would breathe into U.S. imperialism. In the decade and a half since the Soviet Union’s voluntary break-up, U.S. rulers have received a blank check to wreak murder and mayhem in the former Yugoslavia
Former Yugoslavia
The former Yugoslavia is a term used to describe the present day states which succeeded the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....
, Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
, Iraq, and elsewhere. The end of socialism, and the...removal of the USSR as a key rival imperialist superpower, also enabled the U.S. rulers to dodge many of capitalism’s inevitable contradictions. Even more critical," the party writes, "it has had a chilling effect on class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
all over the world." It is perhaps clear via this document that the extent of PL's "long-range view" for communist revolution is much longer now than at any time in the past.
Early history of the party
As it broke away from the CPUSA amidst the Sino-Soviet SplitSino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
, PL made it clear that it wanted to advocate communist revolution
Communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
openly and aggressively among the working class
Working 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...
. Recruitment increased as the Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
intensified: though it started as several score
20 (number)
20 is the natural number following 19 and preceding 21. A group of twenty units may also be referred to as a score.-In mathematics:*20 is the basis for vigesimal number systems....
based on the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
early on, the group then became inspired enough by 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...
to wind up with many of its student-aged members going to Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
to break the travel ban
United States embargo against Cuba
The United States embargo against Cuba is a commercial, economic, and financial embargo partially imposed on Cuba in October 1960...
. Defiance of the ban resulted in a congressional investigation before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
at which the students banged on desks and heckled HUAC, shouting pro-communist slogans and generally causing too much disruption for the proceedings to continue. These actions prompted protests from other groups that would ultimately destroy HUAC's ability to hold hearings at all.
PL also founded the university-campus-based May 2 Movement (M2M), which organized the first significant general march against 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...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1964. But once 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...
(SDS) came to the forefront of the U.S. leftist activist political scene in 1965, PLP dissolved M2M and entered SDS, working vigorously to attract supporters and to form party clubs on campuses. By 1965 PLP had also attracted sufficient membership that it changed its designation from 'Movement' to 'Party'.
Within a few years, the nascent party had become the largest communist faction within SDS and a major player in the student movement's internal politics. Their politics were received with either disgust or admiration within SDS, but no one denied their massed presence and vigorous work in working class neighborhoods. When a New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
policeman, Gilligan, killed an unarmed black youth in Harlem, the neighborhood erupted in intense violence, and PLP led these riots and its leaders were arrested and arraigned for this activity. Against that politically polarizing backdrop within the already intense worldwide movement against social injustice, various anti-PLP SDS factions took to developing their own interpretations of communist ideology and formed what it named the Revolutionary Youth Movement
Revolutionary Youth Movement
The Revolutionary Youth Movement was the section of Students for a Democratic Society that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party...
(RYM), while PL, in its own right, was busy organizing its supporters into their Worker Student Alliance
Worker Student Alliance
The Worker Student Alliance in the United States was the section of Students for a Democratic Society led by the Progressive Labor Party. The WSA argued that the best way to build a movement in the working class, like SDS wanted, was for students to become involved in workers' struggles both on...
(WSA) from 1966-69. The competing SDS factions did not get along peacefully; clashes between them were chronic and bitter, and would ultimately result in an irrevocable split of SDS into separate organizations and, shortly thereafter, the expiration of SDS itself.
By the middle of the sixties the party was arguing that its experiences from the Harlem rebellion onward had slowly convinced them to abandon advocacy of ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
as a politically appropriate route to workers seizing state power
State power
State power may refer to:*Police power, the capacity of a state to regulate behaviours and enforce order within its territory*Government force, state coercion to induce conforming social results* The extroverted concept of power in international relations...
, but it did not set out this new conviction in official Party doctrine until 1969, when it came out openly with an organization-wide document called Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism. This document, immediately controversial, reached the conclusion that all nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, both nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
-based nationalism and ethnic nationalism among oppressed minorities, was ultimately reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
— that it was akin to 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...
at home, like with 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....
, and weakened any communist character of national-liberation struggles abroad, like with the Vietnam War.
The new position was greeted with open hostility and even rage among most of the non-PLP-supporting SDS, especially RYM, who interpreted it as anti-working class and even implicitly racist and refused to accept it. RYM thought that PL was categorically rejecting the political right of groups of everyday people to 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...
. PL's attempted explanations that it was the political, not the personal, side of nationalism that it was rejecting were also refused by their opposition. The rage on RYM's end and continued defense of the position on PL's end could not, and did not, hold SDS together for long.
In the end, the PL/WSA wing did indeed win majority support at the 1969 SDS national convention in Chicago. RYM, as it turned out, had teamed with 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....
to engage in deceptive tactics in the conference which deflated their political reputation and lessened the political impact of the split. However, the Weatherman organization
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
still successfully usurped the SDS name and public face through 1970 despite its defeat at the conference, and retained control of the SDS National Office until it decided to dissolve it, close the headquarters, and break off to become a violently revolutionary organization on its own. PLP alone ultimately did not have the strength to lead the SDS chapters it had successfully kept going, and so its wing buckled and collapsed a few years later — although not before a new group, the Committee Against Racism
International Committee Against Racism
The International Committee Against Racism was the "mass organization" of the Progressive Labor Party in the United States...
(CAR), was formed to replace it. CAR was composed at first of mostly WSA student members and the black and Hispanic workers in the off-campus neighborhoods that had been recruited to WSA; over time it expanded somewhat and also founded chapters in other countries.
Even so, the general crisis of the entire United States 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...
by 1975 only accelerated the eventual failure of PLP's ability to hold on to the SDS name and orientation. As tensions increased, PLP's remaining campus members and supporters were known to engage in particularly heated shouting matches and even occasional mutually provoked fistfights with Weathermen
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
and Chicano nationalists
Chicano nationalism
Chicano nationalism is the ethnic nationalist ideology of Chicanos. While there were nationalistic aspects of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Movement tended to emphasize civil rights and political and social inclusion rather than nationalism...
the Young Lords
Young Lords
The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York , Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican nationalist group in several United States cities, notably New York City and Chicago.-Founding:...
, as well as other smaller groups that would occasionally try to intimidate them, like the early grouping led by Lyndon LaRouche. Also, the party experienced internal split-offs; several significant PLP collectives left as the seventies progressed. While not reduced to being inoperable or insignificant, it shrank and became more fractious even as it ratcheted up its work. According to this chronology, "the majority of the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
chapter had left [PLP] in 1974" and in April 1977 "70% of the Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
chapter of PLP" also left the organization, "just about the only remaining one with significant mass work" (O'Brein, Five Retreats). Meanwhile, some of the party's more widely influential members drifted away as well, including Bill Epton
Bill Epton
William Leo "Bill" Epton Jr. , was a Maoist African-American communist activist. He was Vice Chairman of the Progressive Labor Party until approximately 1970, and chairman of its Harlem branch until that position went null upon Epton's incarceration for incitement to violence in 1964.Epton was "the...
, PLP's vice chairman and Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
branch leader, who presumably could not reconcile his own politics to that of PLP's rejection of nationalism in 1969.
Though in the 1960s PL was widely regarded as the torch-bearer of 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...
within SDS, it had never really seen itself as a hard-line follower of 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...
; indeed, even early on, PLP's political line differed sharply from Maoism on fundamental points. It was briefly the subsidized fraternal party
Fraternal party
Fraternal party literally means brother party. The term refers to a political party officially affiliated with another, often larger and/or international, political party or governmental party....
to China, but broke that relationship in 1967 and reacted particularly harshly to the news of Mao meeting with President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
in 1972, denouncing Mao as revisionist. Claims to Maoism in the United States thereafter passed to other groups, most notably the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. Briefly in the early 1970s, PLP continued to offer limited tacit support to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party
Puerto Rican Socialist Party
The Puerto Rican Socialist Party was a Marxist and pro-independence political party in Puerto Rico seeking the end of United States of America control on the Hispanic and Caribbean island...
in a fraternal party relationship.
Changes in thought, direction, and approach
In the early 1980s the party went beyond opposing nationalism and began to more aggressively develop new political positions that were radically different from any other known version 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...
. Chief among these was the argument that 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,...
, the accepted transition-phase between capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and communism in Marxist theory, was the primary reason behind the reversal of workers' power in 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....
and China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and should be abandoned. While seeming excessively radical to some, this position in fact flowed logically from the party's prior rejection of Mao's concept of New Democracy
New Democracy
New Democracy or the New Democratic Revolution is a Maoist concept based on Mao Zedong's "Bloc of Four Social Classes" theory during post-revolutionary China which argues that democracy in China will take a decisively distinct path from either the liberal capitalist and/or parliamentary democratic...
, dismissed by the party as a reactionary "three-stage theory" of first New Democracy, then socialism, then communism. With PLP's subsequent rejection of the socialist stage as equally unnecessary and reactionary, PL's proletarian struggle was reframed as a "fight directly for communism" wherein these intermediate stages would be shunned in favor of widespread understanding and acceptance of fully communist ideology among the masses from the outset.
To PLP, such a strategy of mass participation in communist politics necessitates that current party members build true, deep, honest friendships with workers, rather than viewing such workers simply as potential recruits. In this vein, it advocates "basebuilding," meaning that members should get stable jobs that keep them in touch with the working class — teaching in public school as opposed to private, for example, or working in a welfare office as opposed to a day spa
Day spa
A day spa is a business establishment which people visit for professionally administered personal care treatments such as massages and facials. It is similar to a beauty salon in that it is only visited for the duration of the treatment. Day spas sited in airport terminals are often called airport...
— and should enjoy everyday lives while gradually attempting to win their co-workers, friends and family to respect and join the party.
In terms of its organization, the party has replaced the classic "cadre" conception of a communist party with that of a "mass party", by which it means that the party should not be an elite of "professional revolutionaries
Professional revolutionaries
The concept of professional revolutionaries, alternatively called cadre, is in origin a Leninist concept used to describe a body of devoted communists who spend the majority of their free time organizing their party toward a mass revolutionary party capable of leading a workers' revolution...
" but should be composed of, by, and for the whole working class, where everyone has full knowledge and appreciation of communist principles and action so that they do not allow the party leadership structure to become corrupt. It is one of only a few US-based communist parties to both explicitly struggle towards (in speech and writing) and contain (in its membership and leadership ranks) a multiracial and even majority-nonwhite membership. PL says it believes that revolutionaries cannot claim anti-racism without putting it into explicit practice in their own ranks. Its recruitment strategies within the US typically tend to focus on impoverished and semi-impoverished working class neighborhoods with majority black and Hispanic inhabitants. In general, very little attention is paid to recruiting members out of general conglomerations like anti-war
Anti-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...
or G20 demonstrations and the like— while it is true that PLP politically has no particular opposition to recruiting from within the activist community, many of its members and leaders seem to dislike it and to refer to it as, at best, not very fruitful, and at worst as a total waste of time much better spent on working full-time with inner-city workers and youth.
Members are cautioned not to necessarily expect revolution in their lifetimes, but to build for it anyway, so that the working class has the largest and deepest collective participation in revolutionary communist activity and ideas by the time circumstances for such a revolution are ripe. The party still sees the need for a Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
and an armed populace
Red Guards
-Communist groups:*Red Guards , during the Finnish Civil War*Red Guards , during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War*Red Guards , in the Bavarian Soviet Republic...
to defend the new communist society they envision from attack by resurgent ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
es, and they utilize the term "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...
" to refer to this necessity. But since it rejects the socialism stage of communist "struggle", PLP's usage of the term today differs starkly from usage by other communist groups, who generally consider the dictatorship of the proletariat to be synonymous with the classic conception of socialism.
Other than its fight directly for a communist political and economic system, perhaps the biggest change to come from its steep changes in political line is PLP's current belief in a complete and total abolition of money and the wage system immediately upon the seizure of state power
State power
State power may refer to:*Police power, the capacity of a state to regulate behaviours and enforce order within its territory*Government force, state coercion to induce conforming social results* The extroverted concept of power in international relations...
by the working class. After PLP's revolution, cash and credit money and all forms of market-based and profit-based exchanges of all types would immediately cease (or if the world were already in shambles due to world war, would simply not be restarted). Members argue that wage differences based on type of work and the retention of a certain amount of competitiveness
Competitiveness
Competitiveness is a comparative concept of the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and/or services in a given market...
and elitism
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
under socialism was what led it to turn back into capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
with time. They see the immediate abolition of money, wages, and other market society elements as an approach that would more easily enable workers to adopt a sense of communist culture, ethics, and morality. Meanwhile, PL fiercely opposes the Theory of Productive Forces
Theory of Productive Forces
The Theory of Productive Forces is a widely-used concept in communism and Marxism placing primary emphasis on technical advances and strong productive forces in a nominally socialist economy before real communism, or even real socialism, can have a hope of being achieved.The most influential...
espoused by past communists, which it points out placed more emphasis on achieving abundance in socialist societies than it did on actually winning the working class to communist ideology and practice, particularly in the cases of the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
and the Five Year Plans. PLP argues that communism should have been the glue that held these societies together, rather than abundance. In part, the party states:
PLP thinks of itself as having been born out of "the struggle against revisionism
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...
" and from that mindset takes several interesting positions regarding the 20th-century communist movement. They believe that the political and economic choices of 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...
extend back to 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...
's New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
and were ultimately endemic to the Soviet Union's entire history — i.e., the history of socialism and its concessions to capitalism, which in PLP's view cannot lead to communism. Therefore, they say, regardless of the leader in question, and regardless of whether or not s/he made good political advances in the country or towards the communist movement as a whole (which they believe Stalin did, especially against the Nazis), mistakes were made that were common to all of those leaders, because the faulty theory of socialism was common to all of them. PLP attacks the cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
and any "Great Leader" status as anti-working class, and pledges that the elimination of the socialist stage, the retention of the armed dictatorship of the working class to defend against a comeback by the ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
es, and "confidence in the working class" from the beginning that they can fully understand and utilize openly communist ideas collectively, without having to look to a great figure (or figures) for guidance, will signal much deeper and more profound strides towards communism than socialism could ever have hoped to achieve.
Like virtually all groups descended from 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...
, however, the party supports a positive interpretation of Stalin's legacy. Most members, while allowing that "errors" were made, expressly deny the view of him by mainstream scholars as mass murderer and tyrant, claiming that his leadership helped defeat fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, that the numbers killed by the policies in his era were far fewer than the many millions widely accepted, and that the rest resulted from a combination of the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, famine, and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Typically, PLP also defends killings unrelated to these factors as ultimately justified to protect 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....
's proletarian dictatorship against spies, Fifth column
Fifth column
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
elements, counterrevolutionaries
Counterrevolutionary
A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part...
, and other class enemies. It should again be noted, though, that PLP sees the "lessons" it takes from the past (and the past itself) as only a general blueprint from which to construct a revolution in the future, not as a political safety-net in which to take refuge. In keeping with their Maoist roots, PLP emphasizes action over theory, with study of the latter being education for the former. In this way, they claim to be 'forward-thinking' in ways that other communist groups with similar roots, in their opinion, are not.
"Inter-imperialist rivalry"
United frontUnited front
The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
and popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
strategies, members say, have been proven wrong despite all valiant attempts to make them work by forces genuinely fighting for communism; they say that such forces' alliances with "lesser-evil" bosses and/or fake-left groups for short-term gains has been one of the main weaknesses of the old communist movement. They cite as evidence for this the fall of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
to the fascists and the assassination of Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, among other examples. So, rather than focus energy on participation in (or creation of) leftist coalitions, as it sees most other groups claiming 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...
doing, PL prefers to steadily strengthen its own political standing and recruitment via its basebuilding strategy.
On the circumstances that would lead to revolution, PLP looks at the world situation believing that the primary contradiction today is—unfortunately—between various groups of competing imperialists for world domination, or "inter-imperialist rivalry," rather than between workers and bosses, or (as Maoists claim) between imperialism and national-liberation movements. It recognizes the weakness of the radical left
Radical left
Radical left is a term used in the names of several political movements:* Det Radikale Venstre, a social-liberal party in Denmark* Radical Party of the Left , a social-liberal party in France...
at the present stage in history and notes that nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
has presently replaced communism as the driving force in the worldwide popular left. But the PLP simultaneously sees an inexorable economic and political decline of the U.S. versus other capitalist powers, like China and the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(EU), and dwindling of necessary imperial resources around the world like oil. The party thinks that cutthroat competition over such resources will inevitably lead to a third world war. They assert that such a war, while it will bring much suffering and death for workers, will also be the catalyst for a great new communist revolution, provided enough people are won to the party's ideas before and during such a conflict.
In line with its anti-nationalist
Anti-nationalism
Anti-nationalism denotes the sentiments associated with the opposition to nationalism, arguing that it is undesirable or dangerous. Some anti-nationalists are humanitarians or humanists who pursue an idealist form of world community, and self-identify as world citizens. They reject chauvinism,...
politics, while firmly denouncing the "fascist" policies of the State of Israel, the party also criticizes both the Palestinian intifada and the Iraqi insurgency
Iraqi insurgency
The Iraqi Resistance is composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the United States-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government...
because of what it sees as these movements' reactionary nature; that the most they will do is put another capitalist government in power and establish new domination by local bosses, and dependency on non-US imperialists such as the European Union.
And in response to the current worldwide economic crisis, the party has continued its overall fight against the ideas and policies of the US ruling class, organizes workers into mainstream unions from which it then tries to lead wildcat strikes, berates cops and community policing strategies, and unreservedly criticizes US President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
for being yet another example of the rulers fooling the people with an impressive-seeming figurehead, in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
(the latter of whose "workfare
Workfare
Workfare is an alternative model to conventional social welfare systems. The term was first introduced by civil rights leader James Charles Evers in 1968; however, it was popularized by Richard Nixon in a televised speech August 1969...
" policies it had mercilessly blasted as racist "slave labor").
PL upholds what some might consider a purist
Purist
A purist is one who desires that an item remains true to its essence and free from adulterating or diluting influences. The term may be used in almost any field, and can be applied either to the self or to others. Use of the term may be either pejorative or complimentary, depending on the context...
vision of a mass-based communism, one that it claims was the true spirit of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
sabotaged by Mao's cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
, reactionary elements within the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
, and Mao's own political weaknesses. It believes it "stands on the shoulders of giants" but can also learn a lot from their mistakes, "to get it right the next time."
Despite the nature and intensity of its work and the fact that it sees itself as advocating a new type of communism inspired by but still separate from the old, the party has remained small throughout its history, staying relatively stable at an estimated few thousand active members, and neither gaining nor losing significant numbers along the way. Because of internal PLP security, it is not possible to get a public declaration of whether the estimate of a few thousand members includes members in countries other than the U.S. or members in the military forces and other non-public work. Generally, there is a consensus among members that "members lists", or even a general knowledge of specific or general membership size among participants, is both unnecessary and dangerous to the party's internal security in relation to law enforcement
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
under capitalism. It would seem recently, however, that PLP has begun to increase its international work as it continues to face what it acknowledges is a comparatively stagnant and underdeveloped working-class militancy situation in the United States, and also amidst its own continued lack of steady growth in party membership even as it approaches the 50-year anniversary of the original PLM's formation.
Present-day activities
In May 2010, the Party claimed to have seeded a study-group club in the West BankWest Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
of the Palestinian territories
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...
. It is unknown whether PL has played any significant openly communist part in the 2011 Wisconsin protests
2011 Wisconsin protests
The 2011 Wisconsin protests were a series of demonstrations in the state of Wisconsin in the United States beginning in February involving at its zenith as many as 100,000 protestors opposing the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill. Subsequently, anti-tax activists and other conservatives, including tea...
or the similar protests happening around the US in response to parallel initiatives by other state governors, other than the innately apparent situation of several PLP members being active in the participant unions themselves as members, recruiting individual union members to participate in and perhaps join the party and/or participate in party marches and rallies. In late February 2011 upon the 2011 Egyptian revolution
2011 Egyptian revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 and is still continuing as of November 2011. The uprising was mainly a campaign of non-violent civil resistance, which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil...
, PL published a fiercely supportive reaction and also called the mainstream media's characterisation of the revolution as nonviolent "lies", asserting instead that revolutionary violence and even a quasi-communistic or at least genuinely populist spirit saturated the entire process. It therefore seems apparent that PL does support the overall people power
People power
The term as currently defined was first used in the Philippines in 1986, during the revolt thattoppled the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. The word is derived from the 1960's flower power movement against the Vietnam War....
spirit of the revolutions in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
, Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...
, Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
etc., even while at the same time (and in characteristic fashion) it qualifies its support somewhat with their classic worry that these revolutions will be quickly co-opted by the forces of the ruling elite and/or that full-fledged capitalism will be inevitably (re)established and popular control and collective self-determination will fade.
The party still vociferously pursues activities opposing racism, some of which are quite militant, even if not all such activities cross the line into violence (which some do). Members who work as teachers, for instance, target policies in the schools
Education in the United States
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory.Public education is universally available...
that they consider racist, single them out for being so, and sometimes try to launch campaigns involving both teachers and students to oppose those measures (such as metal detector
Metal detector
A metal detector is a device which responds to metal that may not be readily apparent.The simplest form of a metal detector consists of an oscillator producing an alternating current that passes through a coil producing an alternating magnetic field...
s in schools, or increased police presence in front of or inside school buildings). In society more generally, the party claims that the best way to consistently and tangibly prove its anti-racist nature, given that it does not support ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
, is to fight racism physically, through direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
. It led a street battle in Boston in 1975 that broke apart the briefly influential mass anti-desegregation busing
Desegregation busing
Desegregation busing in the United States is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools in such a manner as to redress prior racial segregation of schools, or to overcome the effects of residential segregation on local school demographics.In 1954, the U.S...
group Restore Our Alienated Rights
Restore Our Alienated Rights
Restore Our Alienated Rights was an anti-desegregation busing organization formed in Boston, Massachusetts by Louise Day Hicks in about 1974. The group's purpose was to fight off U.S. Federal Judge W...
, and repeatedly targeted Arthur Jensen
Arthur Jensen
Arthur Robert Jensen is a Professor Emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen is known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, which is concerned with how and why individuals differ behaviorally from one another.He is a major proponent...
and similar scientific racists
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
through the 1990s, particularly once The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...
came into vogue. The PLP front group International Committee Against Racism
International Committee Against Racism
The International Committee Against Racism was the "mass organization" of the Progressive Labor Party in the United States...
(InCAR) at an academic conference in 1977 famously poured a pitcher of water on sociobiologist E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
's head while chanting "Wilson, you're all wet". In the 1980s the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
told the Hartford Courant that "it's because of those commies in InCAR and PLP that our boys are afraid to come out in public wearing their hoods." In 1999, when the KKK tried to hold a rally in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, a member (misidentified in the media as public school teacher Harvey Mason, but actually public school teacher Derek Pearl) made headlines by infiltrating the Klan members' protest space and using it to punch a Grand Dragon in the face. More recently PLP has also targeted the Minuteman Project and Save Our State
Save Our State
Save Our State is an activist organization opposed to illegal immigration in Southern California. The group also has a chapter in Northern California...
.
Today, at least in the United States, the party continues to be most widely known among the general public for its wilfully confrontational and often violent stance of militant anti-fascism against Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and Nazi groups. Whenever an organized opposition to a racist or fascist rally has not yet been planned, PL will often organize and lead one. The party takes open and intense pride in being the "only organization publicly known for advocating both communism and militancy" in the US. It is also active in anti-police brutality
Police brutality
Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
work, public health
Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
, public schools
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
, and various types of basic industry, including Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
. The Amalgamated Transit Union
Amalgamated Transit Union
The Amalgamated Transit Union is a labor union in the United States and The Amalgamated Transit Union Canadian Council in Canada, representing workers in the transit system and other industries...
Local 689 in Washington, D.C.
Washington Metro
The Washington Metro, commonly called Metro, and unofficially Metrorail, is the rapid transit system in Washington, D.C., United States, and its surrounding suburbs. It is administered by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority , which also operates Metrobus service under the Metro name...
had an open PLP member who was its president for one term and, though he has since retired, for many years exercised substantial leadership and influence in the Local.
Rebuilding in New Orleans has also become a staple of the party yearly "Summer Project" work in the months of July and August, particularly among US East Coast collectives.
The party makes a point of celebrating May Day
International Workers' Day
International Workers' Day is a celebration of the international labour movement and left-wing movements. It commonly sees organized street demonstrations and marches by working people and their labour unions throughout most of the world. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries...
with public marches every year. Historically it held its own marches, on the Saturday closest to the first day of May, to accommodate 5-day-per-week working schedules. This closest-Saturday tradition meant that PL's May Day rally sometimes, but not often, fell on 1 May itself. Today, however, PLP has largely melted itself into the more general immigrants rights-centered International Workers Day marches which claim themselves (since the first such event, in 2006) to be part of a rebirth of an International Workers Day celebration in the United States. PL often marches in these situations the same way they tend to march at rallies they organize themselves — chanting loudly for communist revolution and forming a sea of red flags. Members chiefly claim that involving themselves in the more general marches, rather than hosting their own, gives them more maneuverability, and also more visibility, amongst the larger segments of the working class. Both the historical party-run marches from the 1970s through the early 2000s, and the current marches in which the party now participates as contingents, have always largely been in its most active cities for political activity and recruitment — New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Chicago and Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. However, smaller supporting May Day marches sometimes have occurred in less prominent cities and towns. Globally, PLP supporters typically take part in the rest of the world's much larger May Day events as contingents.
PL's biweekly newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
is Challenge
Challenge (Communist journal)
Challenge is the name of organisational publications of two separate known communist groups.The first is a magazine periodical produced by the British Young Communist League, the youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain. The first issue came out in March 1935...
and the parallel Spanish language
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...
counterpart Desafío, as well as a semi-annual theoretical magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, The Communist. In particular, the party's 2005 document Dark Night Shall Have Its End is said to be the most up-to-date representation of overall Party political thought
Party line (politics)
In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...
; prior to this, its Road To Revolution documents had acted in that manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
-type capacity. The party has not published a new Road To Revolution document with party-wide endorsement since Road To Revolution IV in 1982, which marked the start of its pledge to "fight directly for communism" and disown the idea of socialism. There still exists a Road To Revolution 4.5 published in 1996, but support for this document has in recent years been withdrawn by the majority of leading PLP political figures and its contents have been disavowed.
Further reading
- Benin, Leigh David. A Red Thread In Garment: Progressive Labor And New York City’s Industrial Heartland In The 1960s And 1970s. Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1997.
- Benin, Leigh David. The New Labor Radicalism and New York City's Garment Industry : Progressive Labor Insurgents During the 1960s. Garland Studies in the History of American Labor Series. 330 pages. Garland Publishing. November, 1999. ISBN 0-8153-3385-4.
- SDS: The Last Hurrah (document 4 of 5 in series) chronicles the last tumultuous days of the original Students for a Democratic Society and the rise of the Revolutionary Youth Movement and PL's Worker Student Alliance as the two principal SDS factions. Claimed to have been written by an undercover federal agent at the proceedings.
- Sumner, D.S. and R.S. Butler (Jim Dann and Hari Dillon). The Five Retreats: A History of the Failure of the Progressive Labor Party. Reconstruction Press, 1977. ISBN (????)
- The PLP-LP: Power to the Working Class. Review of PLP album of contemporary revolutionary songs. Published on Thursday, April 13, 1972. The Harvard CrimsonHarvard CrimsonThe Harvard Crimson are the athletic teams of Harvard University. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2006, there were 41 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country...
. Retrieved October 8, 2005. - Waters, Mary-Alice. Maoism in the U.S.: A Critical History of the Progressive Labor Party. Young Socialist AllianceYoung Socialist AllianceThe Young Socialist Alliance was a Trotskyist youth group of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States of America. It was founded in 1960, although it had roots going back several years earlier. It was dissolved in 1992...
, New York, 1969.
Historic PLP publications
- Ault, Paul, Bill Epton, et al. eds. Progressive Labor vol. 3, no. 4, March 1964. Progressive Labor Movement. Brooklyn, NY. 1964.
- Epton, Bill. The Black Liberation Struggle (Within The Current World Struggle). Speech at Old Westbury College, Feb. 26, 1976. 26 pages. Harlem: Black Liberation Press, 1976. Stapled paperback, cover illustrated by Tom Feelings.
- Epton, Bill. We accuse; Bill Epton speaks to the court. Progressive Labor Party, New York. 1966.
- Harlem Defense Council. Police Terror In Harlem. NY: Harlem Defense Council, nd [1964?]. 12 pages. Stapled paperback pamphlet. Photos.
- [Nakashima, Wendy]. Organize! Use Wendy Nakashima's campaign for assembly (69 a.d.) to fight back!. Progressive Labor Party, New York. [1966].
- Progressive Labor Movement. Road to revolution: the outlook of the Progressive Labor Movement. PLM, Brooklyn. 1964.
- Progressive Labor Party. Notes on black liberation. Black Liberation Commission. Progressive Labor Party, New York. 1965.
- Progressive Labor Party. ILWU report. Trade Union Commission of the Progressive Labor Party, Berkeley. [1965].
- Progressive Labor Party. Smash the bosses' armed forces. A fighting program for GIs. Defeat racism and anti-Communism—build GI-Worker Alliance—Smash the bosses' use of the Army against workers at home and abroad. Progressive Labor Party, Brooklyn, NY. [1969?].
- Progressive Labor Party. Nixon mines North Vietnam ports, threatens world nuclear war. Workers and students must say NO with a GENERAL STRIKE!!. Progress Labor Party, Boston. [circa 1969-71].
- Progressive Labor Party. PL red line newsletter. vol. 1, no. 4. Campus Progressive Labor Party, [Berkeley, CA]. [1971?].
- Progressive Labor Party. Revolution Today, USA: A look at the Progressive Labor Movement and the Progressive Labor Party. Exposition Press, New York, 1970.
External links
- of the Progressive Labor Party
- "Dark Night Shall Have Its End", a 2005 report reflecting the current world outlook and political line of PLP
- Rise and Fall of the Anti-War Movement (Students for a Democratic Society, 1966-1974)