Origins of the Revolutionary Communist Party
The most important and long-lasting of the Maoist groups that emerged from the New Left was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), formally established in 1975. Its origins were principally in the SDS, although it also drew some of its membership and leadership from the ethnically and racially oriented groups that appeared during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The predecessor of the RCP was the Revolutionary Union (RU). Bill Kingel and Joanne Psihountas have described the origins of the RU. They wrote that “Many from the Black Panther Party to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit to many in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were influenced by and in varying degrees based themselves on Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung Thought. Some were forming local revolutionary groupings and trying to establish ties with the workers’ struggles. It was in this situation that the Revolutionary Union was formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968.” This group was “Made up principally of young activists from the period’s mass struggles, plus a few older comrades who had left the revisionist C.P. ”[44] By 1970, according to these same authors, “The organization had begun to sink roots in the working class, was no longer confined to the Bay Area, and had some significant influence within the revolutionary movement as a whole.”[45]
Within the SDS, the RU people had opposed the domination of that organization by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). When the SDS split into three separate factions, that is, the PLP-dominated group, which continued for some time to use the SDS name, the Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II), and the so-called Weathermen (which soon turned to individual violence and terrorism), the Revolutionary Union group stood apart from all of these.[46]
Factional Fights within the Revolutionary Union
During its seven years of existence, the Revolutionary Union experienced several severe factional fights. The earliest of these took place in 1969 and pitted a group led by Marv Treiger against the majority of the group. Treiger labelled the RU ‘economist’ because it took part in the day-to-day struggles of the workers, and attacked it as ‘national chauvinist’ because it did not base the strategy for Black liberation on the struggle of the Afro-American nation for self-determination (the right to secession) in the Black Belt area of the South.” It also condemned the RU leadership for refusing to condemn the Weathermen as “enemies of the people.”[47]
More serious was the struggle in 1970—1971 between a faction led by Bruce Franklin, a young Stanford University professor, and the majority leadership captained by Bob Avakian. Franklin’s opponents summed up his position thus: “that the Black communities (and those of other oppressed nationalities) were … potential revolutionary base areas which were under police occupation and fascism and were engaged in the initial stage of a protracted armed revolutionary war. The task of communists was to raise the level of this war of attrition against the imperialist enemy and to spread it. For opposing this, the RU was labelled, ‘revisionist, national chauvinist and social pacifist.’”[48]
The Avakian group “pointed out that not only would such a line lead away from the real pressing tasks of communists, but that it would lead to the destruction of the RU. … The line that the oppressed Black nation would lead the revolution was fought, pointing out that the main and leading force would be the industrial proletariat. Black workers are part of the single U.S. proletariat, while the national struggles were a key apart of the United front.”[49]
The last factional struggle within the Revolutionary Union took place in 1974. The RU had in May of that year officially proclaimed its intention to form a political party, a move that one group among the leadership, led by D. H. Wright, felt was premature. However, a sharp ideological difference lay behind Wright’s claim. His opponents later claimed that “The line of struggle initially took shape over the question of revolutionary nationalism and the slogan ‘Black Workers Take the Lead’ in the mass movement and over whether Black and other Third World’ communists had a special leading place within the RU and in the Party that was yet to be formed. At the heart of the struggle were very important questions: The character of the national struggle in the U.S., whether there was a single multinational proletariat in the U.S. with a single common world outlook expressing its interest. Whether the multi-national proletariat could (and would through the leadership of its vanguard) lead the fight against all oppression, including the struggle against national oppression, and how the ideology of nationalism is not the same as proletarian ideology, but a form of bourgeois ideology.”[50]
In the meanwhile, the RU had joined in 1972 in forming a Liaison Committee with the Black Workers Congress, the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, better known as the Young Lords, and Iwor-Kun, an organization of Asian Americans. The avowed aim of this committee was to launch a new revolutionary party.
However, disagreements developed between the majority of the RU and the other groups in the Liaison Committee. These somewhat paralleled the differences within the RU itself, between the Wright group and the majority led by Bob Avakian. The Black Workers Union, for instance, argued that each ethnic group within the new party should concentrate on working particularly among people of its own ethnic background. As a consequence of these disagreements, the Liaison Committee finally disbanded.
Formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party
The majority of the Revolutionary Union, together with some elements from the other groups that had originally formed the Liaison Committee, went ahead with the idea of formally establishing a party. In June 1974, the RU put forward the bases on which it thought the new party would be established.
The first basic principle proposed by the RU was that “the Party be based on Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung Thought.”
The second was that “The central task of the Party once it is formed is to build the revolutionary workers movement and the proletariat’s leadership in the united front.”
Insofar as the question of the role of the Blacks in the revolution was concerned, the RU proposed that “The genuine communist Party recognizes that the oppressor nation must not impose a forcible solution to the question of separation … the multinational proletariat and the minority peoples’ struggle against national oppression and for liberation.”[51]
Finally, the RU suggested that “the Party operate on the basis of democratic centralism.”[52]
In preparation for founding the new party, the RU “set about the task of contacting and struggling with various forces in Marxist-Leninist collectives and groups and advanced forces in mass organizations moving toward Marxism-Leninism", although without a great deal of success. As Kingel and Psihountas put it, The RU even made some attempts to meet and struggle with the October League in hopes that there was a chance that their revisionist lines had not been consolidated yet into a thoroughly revisionist world outlook.”[53]
44
Bill Klingel and Joanne Psihountas, Important Struggles in Building the Revolutionary Party, U.S.A., RCP Publications, Chicago, October 1978, page 9.
46
Interview with Carl Dix, National Spokesperson of Revolutionary Communist Party, New York City, December 15, 1992.