The one group that did join the Revolutionary Union in organizing the Revolutionary Communist Party was one headed by Mickey Jarvis, consisting largely of ex-SDS members, and with its strength largely on the East Coast.[54]
The RCP was finally founded “in the latter part of 1975.” The founding congress “forged one Party with one line. This was concentrated in its Main Political Report and especially the Party Programme and Constitution.”[55]
Bob Avakian, who was elected Chairman of the Central Committee of the new RCP, said in his closing speech to the convention, that “It was in the course of struggle that, in order to discover the cause of the evils they were fighting against and the means to end them, and in order to deepen, broaden and advance this fight, these forces took up the revolutionary science of the working class, Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung Thought.”[56] He likewise said that “the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party marks the second time the Party of the working class has been formed in this country (the CP was founded in 1919). And this will be the last time! The Revolutionary Communist Party must not and will not go revisionist.”[57]
Break of the RCP with Post-Mao Chinese Regime
After Mao Tse-tung’s death and the purge of the Gang of Four by Hua Kuo-feng in October 1976, the Revolutionary Communist Party broke with the post-Mao Chinese leaders. Until Mao’s death, there was no evidence of a break of the RCP with the Chinese regime. On the occasion of the death of Chou En-lai, earlier in 1976, the RCP had said that “In this moment of solemn reflection, we strengthen our resolve to unite the universal practice of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung Thought with the concrete practice of United States revolution in solidarity with the revolutionary struggle of the peoples of the world.”[58]
However, after Mao’s death, the RCP argued that under his successors, “the historical mission, the final aim, of the working class—to wipe out all class distinctions and all oppression and establish communism—was smashed as the principle and replaced by ‘something practical’: the so-called modernization of China by the year 2000.” The RCP professed to see “the disappearance of all the ‘idealistic talk’ about the masses of Chinese people, increasingly armed with Marxism-Leninism, as the real heroes and makers of history, waging class struggle, revolutionizing society and on that basis developing socialist production, shattering convention, achieving the impossible … the masses basically disappear from the pages of the Peking Review, except as pawns and slaves to produce, produce, produce until China has caught up to the level of the advanced capitalist countries— all according to the master plans of some revisionist ‘geniuses.’”[59] The repudiation of Mao’s successors brought a major internal crisis and split in the Revolutionary Communist Party. A faction led by Mickey Jarvis supported the ouster of the Gang of Four and opposed the RCP’s taking a position condemning that development. Jarvis’s opponents also accused him and his group of assuming a “reformist” position on issues in the United States.[60]
The issues in this schism were debated in two plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the RCP at the end of 1976 and in mid-1977. The split in the party actually took place in January 1978. Jarvis and his group established what they called The Revolutionary Workers Headquarters.[61] Harvey Klehr estimated that about one third of the RCP membership left with this split.[62]
After the split with the Chinese and the schism in the RCP itself, the party adopted in 1980 a revised Program and Constitution. A pamphlet printing these new documents noted that “the Central Committee approved the final version,”[63] apparently without its being submitted to a national convention of the party.
The RCP continued its strong opposition to the post-Mao Chinese leadership. This was demonstrated upon the occasion of the visit of Teng Hsiao-ping to the United States in 1978. Of this, Harvey Klehr has written that “It mounted loud and violent demonstrations against him“. On January 29, 78 RCP’ers were arrested at an unruly rally while Deng was at the White House.
More than a dozen were convicted of various felony charges, including Bob Avakian who labelled Deng “a puking dog who deserves worse than death … Even though the charges against him were eventually dropped Avakian … remained in France, leading the Party from there.”[64]
Following the split of the party in 1978, the RCP developed what might be labelled a “cult of personality” around Bob Avakian. He was frequently referred to as “Chairman Bob Avakian, “ apparently copying the Chinese custom with regard to Mao Tse-tung. Avakian’s picture appeared frequently in the party’s publications—as in the pamphlet containing the party’s new Program and Constitution, to which we have referred. When asked about this, other figures in the party defended this attitude towards Avakian on the basis that “he had always been right,” as in consistently insisting on the proletariat as the leading force in the revolution, and in taking the lead in supporting the Gang of Four against Mao’s successors.[65]
The Revolutionary Communist Party remained largely an organization of students, professionals and other “petty bourgeois” elements. However, it had some very modest success in working in the organized labor movement. In 1977 it organized a National United Workers Organization, and claimed to have “collectives” in steel, auto and garment unions. In late 1977, activities of its members in the West Virginia coal fields, where there was a rash of wildcat strikes, were the subject of a two-column article in the New York Times.[66] However, there is little indication that the RCP was ever able to develop a notable influence within the labor movement.
The RCP and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
Perhaps the most significant activity of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States was its effort to bring into existence a Maoist Communist International. As we have already noted, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese party had made no such attempt, remaining satisfied with conducting individual party-to-party relations with those parties in other countries that accepted Mao’s doctrines and leadership.
One can only speculate on the reasons for Mao’s failure to unite his followers around the world into a new international organization. Perhaps one of them was the fact that there were in a number of countries several competing groups claiming loyalty to Maoism, and that the interests of Mao and the Chinese party could be better served if they did not have to make hard and fast decisions concerning the orthodoxy of each of these, as would presumably have been required if the attempt were made to bring all of them into a single international organization. Perhaps it was also more convenient to have Mao and the Chinese party remain the only source of orthodox Maoism, rather than transferring all or part of that function to an international body in which, to a greater or less degree, leaders of other parties would share that function.
In any case, with the splintering of International Maoism after the death of its source, the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States sought to undertake the unification of those parties and groups that remained loyal to the “orthodox Maoism” of the Great Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four. The RCP first joined with its namesake in Chile in issuing a call for an international conference of such parties, which apparently took place in 1981. The second meeting, three years later, resulted in the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).[67]
54
“RCP Split Leaves Maoist Youth in the Dark,” in Young Spartacus, April 26, 1978, page 6.
56
Revolution, newspaper of Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago, October 1, 1975, page 3.
61
Young Spartacus, April 26, 1978, page 6, and Unity, organ of League of Revolutionary Struggle, New York, January 26—February 8, 1979, page 3.
62
Harvey Klehr, Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1988, page 93.
63
Nuevo Progmma y Nueva Constitucidn del Partido Comunista Revoludonario, EEUU, RCP Publications, Chicago, 1981, page 2.