The “Albanians”
With the splintering of International Maoism after the death of Mao, two groups in the United States took the side of the Albanians. These were the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist) or CPUSA (M-L) and the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.
The CPUSA (M-L) traced its origins to a small split in the pro-Moscow Communist Party of the USA in 1958, establishing the Provisional Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of a Marxist-Leninist Party. In 1965, the majority of that group proclaimed the establishment of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist). It held its second convention in 1969. With the break of the Albanians with the Chinese, the CPUSA (M-L) proclaimed its support of the former. At its Fifth Plenum, held in May 1980, the party proclaimed that “The immediate concern for all those who cherish freedom, peace and democracy is to unite to fight against fascism and imperialist world war.” The party supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.[97]
The other pro-Albanian group had its origins in the New Left of the 1960s, specifically in the Cleveland Draft Resistance Union, set up early in 1967 and made up principally of Blacks. In 1968 it became the Cleveland Workers Action Committee, which proclaimed its support of Maoism.
The Workers Action Committee took part in May 1979 in a meeting in Regina, Canada, which was called “The First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists,” which established the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) or ACWM. That meeting “denounced both U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism and set forth the tasks of the American proletariat as building its own party, defeating opportunism, overthrowing its ‘own’ bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.”[98]
The ACWM soon took the name Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. It proclaimed its allegiance to Albania. Thus, in an article entitled “Socialist Albania—A Country Free of Exploitation of Man by Man,” its periodical proclaimed that Today, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania is the red fortress of socialism in the world. … In what lies the great significance of this small socialist country in the middle of Europe?… The eyes of the working class and the oppressed people of all countries see in socialist Albania their future, the model of the new society which they too are struggling to achieve. … Most significantly, the Albanian working class and people are building their new society, their free, prosperous and happy life without the capitalist exploiters or any other parasites, who live off the blood and sweat of the working people.”[99]
On January 1, 1980, the COUSML became the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. The Workers’ Advocate proclaimed that “In the midst of the work of the Founding Congress, at 11:50 P.M. on December 31, 1979, the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (COUSML), the militant nucleus of the party whose work prepared the conditions for the Founding Congress, was dissolved. At 12:01 a.m. on January 1st, followed by jubilant celebration, the birth of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S. (MLP-USA) was proclaimed.[100]
The MLP-USA established fraternal relations with pro Albanian groups in other countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Iran and New Zealand.[101] The MLP-USA survived into the 1990s.
Conclusion
Most of the Maoist groups of the United States in the 1970s emerged from the New Left of the previous decade. Rejecting the inchoate, semi-anarchist proclivities of much of the New Left, they endorsed Maoism and the Chinese regime as their guide and inspiration. However, there was little effort to unite these disparate groups proclaiming allegiance to Maoism, and with the various shifts in Chinese “line” and personnel, the different Maoist groups reacted quite differently, some endorsing the new Chinese leadership, others proclaiming solidarity with the Gang of Four and still others joining the Albanian dissidence in International Maoism.
Canadian Maoism
Canadian Maoism appeared almost as soon as the Chinese Communist Party began to seek to split away their own followers from the traditional Communist parties to form specifically pro-Chinese groups. Subsequently, however, Canadian Maoism gave rise to at least four different groups, each of which tended to have what support it achieved from a different part of Canada. As the Chinese party and government changed their policies in the 1970s, the Canadian Maoist organizations veered off in different directions as a response to the zig-zags of the Chinese.
Progressive Workers Movement
The oldest of the Canadian Maoist groups was the Progressive Workers Movement (PWM). It was founded late in 1964 under the leadership of Jack Scott, who had recently been expelled from the Canadian Communist Party for his pro-Peking proclivities. Its principal center of operations was in the western province of British Columbia. According to the Canadian Trotskyist periodical Workers Vanguard, the PWM experienced “a brief interlude of rapid growth, mostly through regroupment of older left-wing elements from the decaying B.C. [British Columbia] Communist Party and from the CCF-NDP [Cooperative Commonwealth Federation-New Democratic Party],” but then “entered a period of attrition and decline.”
The new Maoist party “attacked the Communist party leadership for its liberal-reformist politics and its crass Canadian nationalist line. PWM attacked the CP record of supporting the wartime ‘no strike pledge’ and its call for a ‘Liberal-labor coalition’ in support of Mackenzie King in 1944. They blamed these class-collaborationist politics on the American Communist Party leader of that period, Earl Browder.”
The PWM was avowedly Stalinist as well as Maoist. At its first public meeting in December 1964, it featured a large portrait of Stalin.
The Progressive Workers Movement strongly attacked all other elements on the Canadian Left. It “dismissed title New Democratic Party as a capitalist party,” and “called upon all ‘genuine’ socialists to leave the NDP and join the PWM.” It also violently attacked the principal Trotskyist group of the period, the League for Socialist Action.
Pursuing its anti-NDP line, the PWM entered a candidate in the 1965 federal election against a local Vancouver NDP parliamentary nominee. The PWM put up Jerry Le Bourdais, president of the local affiliate of the Oil Workers International Union and a member of the Vancouver Labor Council executive committee. The PWM nominee received 300 votes in contrast to the several thousand received by the NDP candidate.
The Progressive Workers Movement also attacked the Canadian Labor Congress and its provincial group in British Columbia on the grounds that they were affiliates of the AFL-CIO, railing instead for purely Canadian unions. The results of the campaign were disastrous for the PWM. “Ultraleftism led to the isolation of some of its best trade unionists, most notably Jerry Le Bourdais. During his term as an executive member of the Vancouver Labor Council, Le Bourdais and the PWM had a caucus of almost a dozen VLC delegates.” But by 1970, it was said that “Nothing now remains of the PWM presence in the unions on the local level or at the VLC.” The remaining PWM unionists joined with Liberal Party workers and others to form the Committee for the Canadian Unions.
98
The Workers’ Advocate, organ of Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist, and subsequently of Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S., May 12, 1979, pages 4—5.