Membership in the RIM varied from one year to another, depending on the disappearance of some of its original members, and addition of new ones. Most member groups were located in developing countries.
It is to be presumed that the RCP of the United States continued to play a major role in the RIM, even though its official headquarters were in London. However, the secretiveness of the organization, which never published a full list of members of its executive committee, makes it difficult for an outsider to know exactly what part the RCP, or any other member group, played in the organization.
The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Another Maoist group to emerge from the New Left of the 1960s was the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). It had its origins in the Revolutionary Youth Movement II faction of the SDS, and was led by Michael Klonsky. He and his followers formed the October League (OL), and following the Chinese lead, adopted several positions that were different from those of most of the far Left groups in the United States. They opposed the movement for homosexual liberation.[68] Also, in late 1974 and 1975 they came out in support of the Shah’s regime in Iran. In defending this position, the OL said that their critics were wrong on two counts: First, they “did not see the importance of the attempts by the Shah to exercise independence from the U.S. imperialism. The second is to underestimate the danger of Soviet social imperialism. Both are examples of substituting subjective ideals for objective reality.”[69]
The Oh had some influence in established civil rights groups, particularly in the South. These included the Southern Christian Leadership Council led by Hosea Williams, and the Southern Conference Educational Fund, which had been largely under control of the pro-Moscow Communist Party of the United States.[70]
The October League established a youth group, the Communist Youth Organization. Near the end of 1975 it organized a “National Fight Back Conference” in Chicago which it claimed was attended by 1,000 people and which had the slogan, “unite against the two superpowers.” Present at the meeting were representatives of the Congress of African People, the August 29th Movement (largely made up of Chicanos) and the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee of San Francisco.[71]
In June 1977, the October League was converted into the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CPM-L). Michael Klonsky was chairman of the new party and Eileen Klehr was its vice chairman. The CPM-L, having endorsed the purge of the Gang of Four, received the “Chinese franchise” in the United States. In July 1977, Klonsky and Klehr visited Peking and were officially received by Hua Kuo-feng. According to Harvey Klehr, these two were “prominently displayed by the Chinese.”[72] In June 1978, another leader of the party, Harry Haywood, a one-time leader of the CPUSA, “met with Chinese leaders.” In 1978, too, the editor of the CPM-L paper The Call visited Cambodia, and upon his return, had an article on the Op Ed page of the New York Times denying that the Pol Pot regime had been involved in any kind of genocide.[73]
The CPM-L’s complete endorsement of the post-Mao leadership in China was evident at the time of the Chinese Party’s Eleventh Congress in August 1977. At that time, the CPM-L periodical The Call carried a front page article, “Victory and Unity at Eleventh Congress, China’s New Leap Forward.” It said that “the eleventh party congress is clearly a major development in the Chinese revolution and its decisions will be warmly supported by people all over the world. The utter repudiation of the ‘gang of four’ and the defeat of their efforts to make a counter-revolution in China are victories which belong to the revolutionary movement internally, because the cause of socialism has been advanced and the danger of capitalist restoration has been checked.”[74]
The CPM-L strongly attacked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The January 7, 1980 issue of its party paper commented that “the strategic Russian plan for global domination … was brought closer to fruition when Soviet troops marched into Kabul.” The CPM-L even attacked “The continuing compromise and vacillation of the U.S. imperialists in response to Soviet expansionism,” which was “evident in what Carter could have, but did not do, following the invasion.” It called for the Carter administration to “give direct aid to the Afghan rebels,” end its “ban on sales of sophisticated arms to China for that nation’s self-defense,” and impose a “total embargo of all strategic materials trade with the USSR.”[75]
The CPM-L also used the “Mariel” mass exodus from Cuba early in 1980 to attack the Soviet Union and its allies. It “viewed the mass departures from Cuba as further confirmation of the counter-revolutionary nature of the Soviet Union. By ‘mortgaging the Cuban revolution to Moscow,’ it charges, Castro was guilty of a ‘monumental betrayal’ Cubans were leaving their country, explained the party’s weekly, The Call … because the revolution had been betrayed.”[76]
After severe internal struggles, the CPM-L disappeared by the mid-1980s.[77]
Other Maoist Groups
There were several other groups, particularly originating with ethnically or racially based segments of the New Left that appeared in the 1970s which proclaimed themselves Maoists. Some of these supported the post-Mao regime in China and others proclaimed their adhesion to the Gang of Four. None of these received any kind of official recognition from the Chinese party or regime.
Among those which supported the post-Mao Chinese leadership was the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse-tung Thought). It was led by Amiri Baraka (the former Leroy Jones) and came out of the African Liberation Support Committee, organized in 1972 as a student group to support the liberation struggles in Africa.[78] From this there emerged under Baraka’s leadership the Congress of African People, which put particular stress on Black cultural nationalism. However, in February 1976 this group was converted into the Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M).[79]
The conversion of the Baraka group to Maoism was quite sudden. One leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party recalled attending a meeting at which the Baraka people spoke out strongly against the Maoist allegiance of the RCP; but when the meeting was resumed a week later, the Baraka representative suddenly proclaimed allegiance to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and asked the RCP representative for advice on what to read on the subject of Maoism.[80]
The Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M) proclaimed that Mao Tse-tung Thought was “the acme of Marxism-Leninism in the present era,” to be used in “struggles in all countries against imperialism, Soviet Social Imperialism, Modern Revisionism and all reaction.”[81]
It also said that “we recognize the 3 strategic tasks which must be accomplished if we are to make proletarian revolution in the U.S.A.: 1) Building a Vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party; 2) Building the United Front; 3) Armed Struggle.”[82]
68
Harvey Klehr, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1976, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 529.
70
Interview with Carl Dix, 1992, op. cit., and Harvey Klehr in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1976, page 529.
71
Harvey Klehr, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1977, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 501.
72
Harvey Klehr, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1978, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 418.
73
Harvey Klehr, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., 1979, page 391; and New York Times, November 21, 1979.
75
Cited in “Maoists United with Uncle Sam,” Workers Vanguard, organ of Spartacist League, New York, February 22, 1980, page 6.
76
Joseph Shatten, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 108.
79
Unity and Struggle, organ of Revolutionary Communist League (Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse-tung Thought), New York, June 1976, page 1.