The
New Communist Movement (NCM) was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S.
New LeftThe New Left were the left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that, unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism, instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S...
which sought inspiration in the experience of the
Russian Revolution of 1917The Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
, the
Chinese RevolutionThe Chinese Revolution in 1949 refers to the final stage of military conflict in the Chinese Civil War. In some anti-revisionist communist media and historiography, as well as the official media of the Communist Party of China, this period is known as the War of Liberation .With the breakdown of...
, and the
Cuban RevolutionThe Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt that led to the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista of Cuba on January 1, 1959 by the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro....
, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.
In the 1960s,
student activistsStudent activism is work done by students to effect political, environmental, economic, or social change. It has often focused on making changes in schools, such as increasing student influence over curriculum or improving educational funding...
gathered into the
Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents 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 SDS grew to over 100,000 members before splitting in 1969.
The
New Communist Movement (NCM) was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S.
New LeftThe New Left were the left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that, unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism, instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S...
which sought inspiration in the experience of the
Russian Revolution of 1917The Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
, the
Chinese RevolutionThe Chinese Revolution in 1949 refers to the final stage of military conflict in the Chinese Civil War. In some anti-revisionist communist media and historiography, as well as the official media of the Communist Party of China, this period is known as the War of Liberation .With the breakdown of...
, and the
Cuban RevolutionThe Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt that led to the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista of Cuba on January 1, 1959 by the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro....
, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.
Origins
In the 1960s,
student activistsStudent activism is work done by students to effect political, environmental, economic, or social change. It has often focused on making changes in schools, such as increasing student influence over curriculum or improving educational funding...
gathered into the
Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents 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 SDS grew to over 100,000 members before splitting in 1969. One of these splits, Revolutionary Youth Movement II, quickly splintered into a large number of small Maoist groups. These groups collectively became known as the New Communist Movement.
Developments in the 1970s and 1980s
As one if its last initiatives, SDS had begun to leave its campus base and organize in
working classWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
neighborhoods. Some former members subsequently developed local organizations that continued the trend, and they attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of Lenin,
Mao, is a Japanese remake of the Korean suspense drama series titled Ma Wang which aired on KBS 2TV in 2007. The drama stars Satoshi Ohno of Arashi and Toma Ikuta, both under the talent agency Johnny & Associates.- Synopsis :...
and Stalin.
MaoismMaoism, variably and officially known as Mao Zedong Thought , is a variant of Marxism derived from the teachings of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong , widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology in the Communist Party of China from Mao's ascendancy to its leadership until the...
was then highly regarded as more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
(
see New Left: New Left in the United States). As a result, most NCM organizations referred to their ideology as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Similar to the New Left's general direction in the late 1960s, these new organizations rejected the post-1956
Communist Party USAThe Communist Party of the United States of America is a Marxist-Leninist political party in the United States.During the first half of the 20th century it was the largest and most widely influential communist party in the country, and played a prominent role in the U.S...
as revisionist, or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected
TrotskyismTrotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party...
and the
Socialist Workers PartyThe Socialist Workers Party is a communist political party in the United States. The group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928, and maintains Pathfinder Press, which...
for its theoretical opposition to Maoism.
The groups, formed of ex-students, attempted to establish links with the working class through finding work in factories and heavy industry, but they also tended toward
Third-worldismThird-worldism is a tendency within left wing political thought to regard the division between developed, classically liberal nations and developing, or "third world" ones as of primary political importance...
, supporting
National Liberation FrontNational Liberation Front can refer to several groups:* National Liberation Front for South Vietnam -- political wing of the Vietcong* National Liberation Front...
s of various kinds, including the
Black Panther PartyThe Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary organization established to promote Black Power, and by extension self-defense for blacks. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s...
(which was by then on the decline due to
COINTELPROCOINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States...
tactics) the
Cuban RevolutionThe Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt that led to the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista of Cuba on January 1, 1959 by the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro....
, and the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. The New Communist Movement organizations supported national
self-determinationSelf-determination is defined as free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion; and especially as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status. In other words, it is the right of the people of a nation to decide how they want to be governed...
for most ethnic groups, especially blacks and those of Latino origin, in the United States. These organizations addressed problems of
sexismSexism, a term coined in the mid-20th century, is the belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to, less competent, or less valuable than the other. It can also refer to hatred of, or prejudice towards, either sex as a whole , or the application of stereotypes of masculinity in relation...
and
racismRacism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment...
, partly by voicing adamant support for self-determination and
identity politicsIdentity politics refers to political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of social minorities, or self-identified social interest groups. Not all members of any given group are necessarily involved in identity politics....
, and felt that they were dealing with problems they were of the opinion had not been addressed in the groups of the 1960s. However, different NCM groups came to this similar conclusion via quite different routes.
In its early years, NCM organisations formed a loose-knit tendency in United States leftist politics, but never coalesced into a single organization. As time went on, the organizations became extremely competitive and increasingly dennounced one another. Points of distinction were frequently founded on the attitude taken toward the successors of Mao and international disputes between the Soviet Union and China regarding such developments as the
Angolan Civil WarThe Angolan Civil War began in Angola after the end of the war for independence from Portugal in 1975. The war featured conflict between two primary Angolan factions, the Communist MPLA and the anti-Communist UNITA...
. The Revolutionary Union organized the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA in 1975.
The October League organized the founding congress of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977. During this period a few other new communist movement organizations also formed new communist party.
Unlike the majority of NCM groups, the
Dodge Revolutionary Union MovementThe Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main, Detroit, Michigan....
(DRUM), which evolved into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), was formed by factory workers rather than student activists. The
AFL-CIOThe American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL-CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States and Canada, made up of 65 national and international unions, together representing more than 10 million workers. It...
leadership supported the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
and sought to avoid strikes, but union workers saw through this and independently organized a series of wildcat strikes. Radical Marxist and other African-American auto workers subsequently formed DRUM. From 1968-1971 DRUM and the league acted as a dual union, with black leadership, within the
United Auto WorkersThe International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico...
.
The New Communist Movement as a whole became smaller in the 1980s. Some organizations dissolved in the early 1980s, such as the
Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)The Communist Party was a Maoist political party in the United States. Its predecessor organization, the October League, was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when SDS split apart in 1969...
. The Revolutionary Communist Party USA remains as an original product of the New Left. The
Revolutionary Workers HeadquartersRevolutionary Workers Headquarters was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1977...
and
Proletarian Unity LeagueThe Proletarian Unity League was formed in Boston in 1975 by Students for a Democratic Society members who had been associated with the Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping that emerged out of the split in SDS at its summer 1969 convention. The Proletarian Unity League was critical of what...
joined forces to form the
Freedom Road Socialist OrganizationAs many of the Maoist-oriented groups formed in the United States New Communist Movement of the 1970s were shrinking or collapsing, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization was formed in 1985 to try to solidify some of these groups into a single organization that would have some longevity.The...
in 1985, and various other new communist movement collectives and organizations later merged into FRSO. Subsequently, in 1999, FRSO split into two organizations, both of which continue to use the name Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
In 2003 Max Elbaum (a former member of the non-NCM group Line of March) published
Revolution in the Air, a history of the New Communist Movement.
Predecessors
- Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party
- Bay Area Revolutionary Union
- Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary organization established to promote Black Power, and by extension self-defense for blacks. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s...
- source of inspiration
- Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main, Detroit, Michigan....
- Revolutionary Youth Movement II
- Students for a Democratic Society
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...
NCM Organizations of the 1970s and 1980s
- Committee for a Proletarian Party
- Communist Organization, Bay Area
- Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
The Communist Party was a Maoist political party in the United States. Its predecessor organization, the October League, was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when SDS split apart in 1969...
- Communist Workers Party
- Georgia Communist League
- Guardian (US)
- League of Revolutionary Struggle
The League of Revolutionary Struggle was a communist organization in the United States. It was formed in 1978 and was dissolved by the organization's leadership in 1990...
- Marxist-Leninist Party, USA
The Marxist-Leninist Party was a communist anti-revisionist and Marxist-Leninist group in the United States that published the paper Workers Advocate. During its history, it became a Hoxhaist group, before turning away from backing Albania and attempting to advance a distinctive anti-revisionist...
- October League
- Organization for Revolutionary Unity
The Organization for Revolutionary Unity was an anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist organization in the United States. ORU was formed in 1983 from a merger of the Committee for a Proletarian Party and the Communist Organization, Bay Area . These groups, and the ORU itself, were part of the U.S...
- Proletarian Unity League
The Proletarian Unity League was formed in Boston in 1975 by Students for a Democratic Society members who had been associated with the Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping that emerged out of the split in SDS at its summer 1969 convention. The Proletarian Unity League was critical of what...
- Revolutionary Communist Party
- Revolutionary Union
- Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1977...
- Revolutionary Workers Organization
- Sojourner Truth Organization
Sojourner Truth Organization was a new communist organization, which came into existence in the winter of 1969-70. Throughout its fifteen year existence , it existed mainly in the Midwest and oriented towards organization in the workplace...
- Venceremos Organization
Venceremos, Spanish for "We Will Overcome", or "We Will Prevail", was a radical left political group...
Current Organizations Descended from NCM
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization
As many of the Maoist-oriented groups formed in the United States New Communist Movement of the 1970s were shrinking or collapsing, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization was formed in 1985 to try to solidify some of these groups into a single organization that would have some longevity.The...
- League of Revolutionaries for a New America
The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is a communist party in the United States founded by a group in California around Nelson Peery who split from the Communist Party USA in 1958...
- Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , known originally as the Revolutionary Union, is a Maoist Communist party formed in 1975 in the United States. The RCP states that U.S...
Notable theorists and leaders
- Bob Avakian
Bob Avakian is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , which he has led since its formation in 1975. He is a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and the Left of the 1960s and early 1970s, and was closely associated with the Black Panther Party...
- H. Bruce Franklin
H. Bruce Franklin is an American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects. As of 2008, he is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar and...
- Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States...
- Noel Ignatiev
Noel Ignatiev is an American history professor at the Massachusetts College of Art best known for his call to "abolish" the white race, which he defines as "white privilege and race identity." Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society...
- Michael Klonsky
Michael Klonsky is an American educator, author, and political activist. Klonsky is one of the leaders of the modern small schools movement which has done much to transform the face of secondary school education in the United State...
- Nelson Peery
Nelson Peery is an American political activist and author. Peery spent over 60 years in the revolutionary movement, and has been active in the Communist Party USA , the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Party , the Communist League , the Communist Labor Party ,...
Archives
Articles
- An interview with Max Elbaum by Chris Crass
Chris Crass is an anarchist organizer and writer from San Francisco, California. He is an organizer with the , which is a center for political education and movement building. The Catalyst Project grew out of the Challenging White Supremacy workshop...
. Onward: Magazine of Anarchist News, Opinion, Theory and Strategy of Today. Fall 2002
- American Leninism in the 1970s. by Jim O’Brien. Radical America 11–12:27–64, 1977.
Charts
- The New Left/Maoist Tree. the NCM/New Left/Maoist tree charts the development of various Maoist movements. Justin Denton, Direct Action Tendency of Socialist Party, USA.
Organizations
Further reading
Articles
- Bush, Rod When the Revolution Came. Radical History Review. Issue 90, Fall 2004, pp. 102-111
Books
- Avakian, Bob. From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, A Memoir. 449 pages Publisher: Insight Press (2005) ISBN 0-9760236-2-8
- Committee on Internal Security. America's Maoists: The Revolutionary Union; The Venceremos Organization. 202 pages. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. index. Trade Paperback. Photos & facsimile documents.
- Georgakas Dan and Marvin Surkin. Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution. 254 pages Publisher: South End Press; Revised edition (August 1, 1998) ISBN 0-89608-571-6.
- Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978. 700 pages. ISBN 0-930720-53-9
Publications
- Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Class struggle, journal of Communist thought. Spring, 1975 no. 1 to Winter 1979, no. 11. Communist Party (M-L), Chicago. 1971-79
- Kilpatrick, Admiral. A Veteran Communist Speaks... On the Struggle Against Revisionism 41p. Communist League. Chicago. 1974.
- National Network Of Marxist-Leninist Clubs. (Irwin Silber
Irwin Silber is an American journalist, editor, publisher, and political activist. The co-founder, and former long-time editor of Sing Out! magazine from 1951 to 1967, Silber was perhaps best known for his writing on American folk music and musicians until he left Sing Out! and began writing for...
). Rectification Vs. Fusion: The Struggle Over Party Building Line. 55p. National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs. San Francisco. 1979.
- October League (Marxist-Leninist). Statement of political unity of the Georgia Communist League (M-L) and the October League (M-L). 20p. Statement of unity adopted at joint unity congress of the Georgia Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) and the October League (Marxist-Leninist). Los Angeles. 1973.
- Proletarian Unity League. On the October League's call for a new communist party. A response. United Labor Press. New York. 1976.
- Sojourner Truth Organization. The New Face of Fascism and the Klan. Special issue of Urgent Tasks. No. 14. Fall/Winter 1982. Chicago. STO, 1982. Contains three speeches to the National Anti-Klan Network Conference, Atlanta, June 19, 1982. Also: Lance Hill’s “Huey Long: Bayou Fascist?”; exchange on Anti semitism & Nazi ideology between Lenny Zeskind and Noel Ignatin.
Critical responses to the NCM
- Goldfield, Michael and Melvin Rothenberg. The myth of capitalism reborn: a Marxist critique of theories of capitalist restoration in the USSR. 118p. Soviet Union Study Project, distributed by Line of March Publications, San Francisco. 1980.
- Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. 320 pages Publisher: Verso (June, 2002) ISBN 1-85984-617-3.