Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist

The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) 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 October League came out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping in the SDS split.

In 1977, the October League transformed itself from an organization into a party, declaring itself the vanguard party of the U.S. proletariat. This is when it changed its name to the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). Michael Klonsky, who had been a national leader in SDS in the late 1960s, was the main leader of the CP(M-L). The CP(M-L) has a very multi-racial membership compared to other organizations that were part of the New Communist Movement of the 1970s. Longtime Black communist Harry Haywood became a CP(M-L) member near the end of his life, and the CP(M-L)'s press, Liberator Press, published Haywood's book Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist in 1978.

After the death of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong in 1976, the CP(M-L) became the main U.S. group that the post-Mao Chinese leadership recognized as a U.S. fraternal party. As the Chinese Communist Party moved away from Maoism, this moved the CP(M-L) away from other Maoist groups, who opposed the post-Mao Chinese leaders. The CP(M-L) published Class Struggle and The Call before disbanding in 1981 soon after Klonsky resigned from the leadership and amidst the beginnings of soon to be massive free-market reforms in China.

Further reading

• Haywood, Harry. Negro Liberation. Chicago. Liberator Press, 1976. 245p.

• October League (Marxist-Leninist) Building a new Communist Party in the U.S. October League (Marxist-Leninist), Los Angeles. 1973, 17p., wraps. Cover title: Party building in the U.S.