New Communist Movement

The New Communist Movement (NCM) was a leftist political movement of the 1970's and 1980's in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution of 1949, but wanted to do so independently of already-existing U.S. communist parties.

Origins

In the 1960's student radicals gathered into the Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS grew to over 100,000 members before dissolving in 1969.

The AFL-CIO leadership supported the Vietnam War and sought to avoid strikes. At the same time union workers independently organized a series of wildcat strikes. Radical Marxist and African-American auto workers formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) which later became the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement. For a few years DRUM acted as a dual union with African-American leadership within the United Auto Workers.

Developments in the 1970s

As one if its last iniatives, SDS had begun to leave its campus base and organize in working class neighborhoods. Some former members developed local organizations that continued the trend. The attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of Lenin, Mao and Stalin. Maoism was highly regarded as a being more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Most NCM organizations referred to themselves as Maoist.

These new organizations rejected the post-1956 Communist Party USA as revisionist, or anti-revolutionary. They also rejected Trotskyism and the Socialist Workers Party 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. The organizations supported national self-determination for African-Americans and other national minorities in the United States. Organizations addressed problems of sexism and racism which they felt had not been addressed in the 1960s, albeit in different ways.

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 distiction 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 War.

The Revolutionary Union declared itself to be the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975. The other national organizations swiftly formed themselves into party organizations; e.g., the October League became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).

Developments in the 1980s

The movement became increasingly isolated in the 1980's. Some organizations dissolved while other merged. The Revolutionary Communist Party remains as an original product of the New Left. Many smaller organisations combined to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization during the 1980s. Subsequently, FRSO split into two similarly named organizations.

In 2003 Max Elbaum, a former member of the organization Line of March published Revolution in the Air a history of the New Communist Movement.

See Also

• Anti-Revisionism
• Communism
• Guardian (US)
• Leninism
• Maoism
• New Left
• Stalinism
• Vietnam War
• Left Refoundation

Predecessors

• Bay Area Revolutionary Union
• Black Panther Party - source of inspiration, not a direct predecessor
• Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
• Revolutionary Youth Movement II
• Students for a Democratic Society

NCM Organizations of the 1970's and 1980's

• Committee for a Proletarian Party
• Communist Organization, Bay Area
• Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
• Georgia Communist League
• League of Revolutionary Struggle
• Line of March
• Marxist Leninist Pary
• October League
• Organization for Revolutionary Unity
• Proletarian Unity League
• Revolutionary Union
• Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
• Revolutionary Workers Organization

Current Organizations Decended from NCM

• Freedom Road Socialist Organization
• Revolutionary Communist Party
• League of Revolutionaries for a New America

External Links

• New Communist Movement Wikipedia article sourced for this page May 20, 2005.

Archives

• Inventory of the Black Panther Party. Harlem Branch Collection, 1970, n.d.: Collection # Sc MG 80. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

• New Mass Party Movements, 1970‑1976 portion of Detroit Revolutionary Movements Collection at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University.

• Revolutionary Communist Party Collection: Tamiment 090. Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University.

Articles

• Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn To Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum
• An interview with Max Elbaum by Chris Crass. 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, no. 1&6 (1977-78).

Organizations

• Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Freedom Road)
• Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back)
• League of Revolutionaries for a New America
• Revolutionary Worker/Obrero Revolucionario Paper of the Revolutionary Communist Party

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.

• Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. 320 pages Publisher: Verso (June, 2002) ISBN 1859846173.

• 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 0896085716.

• Mitchell, Roxanne and Frank Weiss. Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type: Against the Ultra-Left Line. Publisher: United Labor Press (1977).

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

• 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.

• Kilpatrick, Admiral. A Veteran Communist Speaks... On the Struggle Against Revisionism 41p. Communist League. Chicago. 1974.

• National Network Of Marxist-Leninist Clubs. [Irwin Silber]. 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.