CAP’s history as a Marxist-Leninist organization began with its October 1974 General Assembly. Over the next five years, CAP went through a process to grasp Marxism-Leninism and integrate it in a living way with the practice of making revolution, and to transform the organization along communist lines.
In 1976 CAP changed its name to the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought) to reflect its becoming a communist organization. CAP had come a long way since the late 1960’s, and had accumulated a wealth of experience and lessons. Its recognition that only socialist revolution could fundamentally solve the problems of national oppression and class exploitation gave a new strength and clarity to the organization’s purpose and work. But taking up Marxism-Leninism was not without struggle, and the organization would go through more twists and turns.
The situation was also complicated by the fact that the anti-revisionist communist movement itself was still very inexperienced and going through struggle to define a correct orientation and line for the U.S. revolution. There were various opportunist forces which had not yet been exposed or defeated. These would have an impact on CAP/RCL, with the organization coming under the influence of the ultra-left line of the so-called “Revolutionary Wing” for a period of time.
But because CAP/RCL fundamentally upheld the interests of the masses and struggled in a principled way for a correct Marxist-Leninist line, it was able to break with the “Wing’s” influence. RCL then established a more correct line and orientation, and made further contributions to the mass movement and the struggle for a single, vanguard communist party, especially in the line and work in the Black Liberation Movement.
After the October 1974 General Assembly, the study of Marxist theory began formally in the organization. By early 1975, the entire organization was studying Mao Zedong’s Four Essays on Philosophy, Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism and the History of the Communist Party Soviet Union(B).
The consolidation of the organization around Marxism took place unevenly and there were many difficulties along the way. One reason was that during CAP’s cultural nationalist and Pan Africanist period, the organization functioned in a bureaucratic centralist fashion with directives and theoretical positions formulated and given in a “top-down” manner. There had been insufficient democracy in the organization’s internal life and political discussion among the membership as a whole. As the organization took up the study of Marxism, there were remnants of this style in work and functioning. Some comrades were still accustomed to the old centralism and were reluctant to speak their minds. This slowed the development of the organization to a certain extent.
The leadership’s and general membership’s understanding of the Marxist style of study was weak. Marxist “definitions” and formulations tended to be viewed rigidly and translated mainly as slogans, rather than studying Marxism to grasp its essence and use it as a tool to analyze concrete problems.
These two factors combined meant that the initial study tended to be conducted in a “classroom” or bookish fashion without concretely linking theory and practice.
There was also continuing struggle with cadre who held to the cultural nationalist ideology that remained in the organization, since the organization’s outlook and practice could not be transformed overnight. As the overly bureaucratic centralist structure of CAP was criticized, some wanted to go to the opposite extreme by becoming anti-organization and anti-discipline, returning to the pre-nationalist days when many members led a non-revolutionary lifestyle.
One of the most important struggles was over the role of women in the organization and in the revolution. There were intense struggles against chauvinist views towards women left over from the cultural nationalist period. The idea that women should be submissive was deeply imbedded and it could not be simply erased. Women were promoted to more levels of leadership, but there was resistance from some male comrades who continued to believe women could not be leaders. There was also continuing struggle against male chauvinism in the home.
The organization deepened its study of the woman question and came to recognize that “women hold up half the sky.” Revolution is impossible without unleashing the full potential of the masses of women and taking up the struggle for women’s emancipation. But this recognition came about gradually and only through the education of the entire organization, and especially through the struggle of the women comrades.
Gradually by confronting these problems, the organization learned how to implement a collective internal life and democratic centralist principles of organization. However, the weaknesses of mechanicalness and dogmatism were not really recognized and would later be accentuated when the organization came under the influence of the “Revolutionary Wing.”
During late 1974 and into 1975, a struggle unfolded in the organization with some of the cadre from Houston who were influenced by the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL). These elements held some correct criticisms of the tendencies towards bureaucratic centralism and the “cult of personality.” But as these weaknesses in the organization were recognized and began to be corrected, some of the Houston cadre went to the other extreme in promoting ultra-democracy and anti-leadership views.
These elements also belittled open communist work, which was due in part to the influence of the RWL line that the masses were not “ready” for communism but only for “anti-imperialism.” These cadre also held and practiced an incorrect line on what role CAP should play in the National Black Assembly (NBA). CAP wanted to build the NBA as a mass, united front structure independent of the Democratic and Republican parties. Some of the Houston cadre, though, tended to tail the petty bourgeois and bourgeois politicians that wanted to tie the NBA to the Democratic Party. They also opposed CAP’s open communist stand in the NBA. This dovetailed with the Democrats’ anti-communist redbaiting against the organization.
The struggles with the Houston cadre finally came to a head in 1975 when they resigned from the organization. This struggle was important because it helped CAP contrast its developing line with other lines on basic questions like democratic centralism and the role of communists in the united front. Out of this struggle, CAP cadre became better equipped to distinguish a correct Marxist-Leninist line from incorrect lines.
Also during this early period of consolidation, CAP identified five major questions around which to focus developing its theoretical line. These were the national question, the woman question, trade unions, party building, and the international situation. Work around developing these positions proceeded at a slow pace, however, since the organization’s theoretical understanding was not very developed and because of its weaknesses in not knowing how to link theoretical and practical work.
As CAP went through this period of consolidation around Marxism-Leninism, one of the most difficult questions it confronted was how to reshape and expand its mass work from a Marxist-Leninist perspective.
At first, some of the mass community programs were continued with the old methods from the nationalist period. Later, the error was made of abandoning some programs that were necessary and beneficial, rather than reconstructing the work based on a Marxist analysis.
One important example was the Afrikan Free School. It was closed in late 1974, even though the parents of the children were some of CAP’s staunchest supporters and opposed the closing. The school had grown to a full-fledged educational institution with grades one through eight, and running the school required more and more of the organization’s resources and manpower. The organization felt the school was a “legacy of CAP’s cultural nationalism,” and that it was better to go into the public schools and struggle for change in those institutions where the majority of the Black masses have their children.
It was correct to recognize the limitations of building “alternative institutions” alone and the need to go into the public schools to do mass organizing. During CAP’s nationalist period, there had been an incorrect view which saw “alternative institutions” replacing the established institutions. But in actual practice, CAP had never really negated doing mass organizing in the public schools, and in fact had done a great deal of work in them. The criticism of reformism and cultural nationalism though was carried out mechanically, downplaying the positive aspects of these programs as vehicles for mass organizing and as fulfilling a need in the community. The organization did not understand that as long as the oppressed nationality people suffered from inferior schools, they would inevitably demand their own schools as part of the struggle for decent and equal education.
CAP continued its work in the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), although the ALSC never regained its mass and united front character since the 1974 split with the right-wing narrow nationalists. This was due in large part to the “left” line held by the RWL which was in the leadership of the ALSC. The RWL’s “left” sectarianism and dogmatism, coupled with its liquidation of the national question, had already driven many progressive and revolutionary nationalist forces out of the ALSC.
By late 1974, most of the forces left in the ALSC were Marxist-Leninist organizations, including the RWL, CAP, the Revolutionary Workers Congress (a split-off from the Black Workers Congress), and later the Workers Viewpoint Organization. Already it would be a difficult task to build the ALSC back up as a broad united front formation that could mobilize the masses to support African liberation. This was never really done due to the incorrect line of the RWL. By late 1975, the ALSC had declined considerably due to the incorrect line, and the RWL proposed that it be dismantled. CAP vigorously opposed this proposal and criticized the RWL for its sectarianism and “left” dogmatism which pitted party building against work among the masses. CAP initiated a proposal to establish a continuations committee to discuss the future of ALSC. The majority of local ALSC chapters supported this proposal, and the RWL agreed to stay.
But the Continuations Committee was plagued with the same problems as the ALSC, because the same incorrect line dominated the situation. This line held that the ALSC should discuss party building and engage in “line struggle.” CAP saw that this was inappropriate for a united front organization and criticized the other organizations for practicing “hegemonism” in the ALSC – i.e., placing their narrow organizational interests above the need to build a mass movement to support African liberation. But CAP was unable to turn the situation around due to a number of factors. For one, most of the mass elements had already left the ALSC. Secondly, CAP was not clear enough to deal with the “leftism” of the RWL, and due to CAP’s own desire to “clarify political line” fell into abstract political debates within the ALSC.
However, CAP continued to actively support African liberation. Unity and Struggle had consistent coverage of the situation in Africa, and did educational work especially in opposing the civil war in Angola that was instigated by the two superpowers.
CAP also supported other international struggles. In Pittsburgh, for example, CAP helped build a coalition in support of Palestinian self-determination which staged a mass demonstration in September 1975, when the Zionist leader Moshe Dayan visited that city.
The organization’s work in the NBA also reached a critical turning point. Objectively differences already had sharpened within the NBA. On the one hand, CAP and other progressive mass forces wanted to build the NBA as a united front mechanism for mass organizing around basic issues of the Black masses and to build an independent Black political movement, as was laid out at the 1972 Gary Convention. On the other hand, there was a trend of Black petty bourgeois and bourgeois politicians, who wanted to bring the NBA under the wing of the Democratic Party. These petty bourgeois and bourgeois reformists and politicians began to take over the leadership of the NBA for their own purposes. They decertified chapters they opposed and held fake conventions to certify new chapters under their control. They blocked and stifled the mass work of the NBA on both the national and local levels, and undermined the united front character of the NBA by limiting membership to those classes and political tendencies in the Black community that were harmonious with their own. By early 1975, the mass character of the NBA had fallen off steeply.
Now that CAP was a communist organization, the struggle sharpened even more. The petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements aligned with the Democratic Party wanted Amiri Baraka, then-Secretary General of the NBA, out of the leadership on the grounds that he was an “avowed communist.”
CAP continued to struggle for the NBA to be built in the direction laid out at the Gary Convention and opposed attempts to attach the NBA to the Democratic Party. It proposed a “Strategy 76” for the NBA to take up around the 1976 Presidential elections. “Strategy 76” called for a broad-based coalition that would run an “anti-depression, anti-repression, anti-Democrat and anti-Republican” platform and candidate, and would be a way to do organizing around the main issues facing the masses. CAP’s objectives in proposing “Strategy 76” in the NBA was to concretely counter the moves towards the Democratic Party.
At the same time, CAP proposed “Strategy 76” to other Marxist-Leninist groups, as a way to further Marxist-Leninist unity around what stand to take towards the elections. CAP also wanted to use “Strategy 76” to hook up the NBA with the progressive and Marxist-Leninist movement.
The NBA passed the resolution for “Strategy 76” but the reformists stalled on it for half a year, never wanting its implementation. CAP later abandoned “Strategy 76,” summing up that while it was not incorrect in principle, CAP could not implement the plan without the support and participation of other Marxist-Leninists and Black Liberation Movement forces. CAP had overestimated the strength of the left and the Marxist-Leninist movement in being able to deal in national electoral politics.
CAP also played an active role at an NBA-sponsored Economic Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1975. The conference brought together representatives from various schools of thought on the question of the economic crisis and its impact on Black people. A struggle unfolded there between CAP and the Nation of Islam over the question of socialist revolution versus Black capitalism as the answer to Black oppression.
Since Malcolm X’s death, the Nation of Islam had grown increasingly conservative and business-oriented, and less involved in any mass struggle against national oppression. CAP defeated the Muslim line at the Economic Conference, and the masses roared their approval. The reformists in leadership of the NBA, however, cast aside the results of the Conference and never acted upon them.
The Atlanta Economic Conference was the last major program pushed by CAP in the NBA. This was due to a “left” error that CAP made of seeing the struggle against the reformists and politicians as mainly a question of “line struggle” to be conducted at meetings. CAP fell into “left” phrase-mongering at meetings and did not really go out and organize the mass forces that were still in the NBA. Consequently, CAP became more isolated and also became more vulnerable to the attacks and maneuvers by the leadership aligned with the Democratic Party.
The struggle in the NBA reached the point of a split in October 1975, at the NBA meeting in Dayton, Ohio. The petty bourgeois and bourgeois reformists and politicians in the NBA, led by NBA President Ron Daniels, an ex-CAP member and right-wing Pan Africanist, staged an all-out coup to force the progressive elements out of the NBA. Bonafide delegates from many states including Michigan, New York, Illinois, Louisiana and Ohio were not allowed to register and their protests were met with charges of “disruption.” Instead, Daniels seated bogus “delegates,” some of whom had never even been in the NBA before. Many of these people were staff workers from anti-poverty agencies who were told by their bosses they had to attend the conference in order to get their pay!
The right-wing elements in addition resorted to disenfranchising entire delegations, such as cutting Cleveland out of the Ohio delegation. The fraud was so great that a Black studies professor known to be living and working in Michigan was admitted as a Massachusetts’ delegate. Over the protests of the Women’s Caucus, Daniels even railroaded the seating of a woman whom he claimed represented the Caucus, although both she and Daniels had always opposed the Women’s Caucus.
On top of all this, it was soon discovered that one of the major documents handed out in the registration packet was a fraud. This document was supposed to have presented a proposal for changes in the NBA Charter, based on a recent meeting of the Charter Committee in Chicago. In passing out the proposal, the right-wing elements completely deleted all references that pointed to the capitalist system as the source of Black oppression. The Chicago meeting had added to the Charter, “Actually, most whites do not totally benefit from those institutions which only benefit a small class of whites and an even smaller class of Blacks that benefit from them.” These sections were all deleted from the document that was passed out in Dayton!
These underhanded moves were obviously aimed at thwarting any anti-capitalist motion in the NBA. The right-wing petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements wanted to promote a view of “Black versus white” nationalism. This allowed them to profit and rise up in the system of monopoly capitalism while all the time they could cry their opposition to “white oppression.”
Actually, their idea of “white oppression” was narrowly defined as the exclusion of Blacks from bourgeois politics. And their idea of fighting “white oppression” was to get some Black faces – namely themselves – into those high places. They were not concerned with the harsh realities of national oppression faced by the masses of Black people, let alone waging a mass movement to change the situation.
Other sections also were deleted from the documents, such as the calling for a united front in the NBA that included different political tendencies. The right-wing elements wanted the NBA to be composed of only one political tendency – Democratic Party reformism.
At the Dayton meeting, the Daniels leadership refused to deal with many matters of importance that delegates raised, but concerned itself mainly with railroading the election of new officers to consolidate the takeover. Because of the demands of many people present, Daniels finally agreed to take up the concerns of the Women’s Caucus and other key issues including a presentation on prisoners’ struggles. But when people showed up for this session, they were told it was canceled.
It was clear that Daniels and company’s “Dayton Strategy” was to completely take over the NBA and squash all aspects of its united front character. Due to the maneuvers and attacks of the right-wing, Amiri Baraka was forced to resign as Secretary General in order to disassociate himself and CAP from the takeover.
In January 1976, NBA members from ten states and Washington, D.C., met in Pittsburgh and decided to resign from the NBA. These forces were either connected to or supported CAP. They stated their reasons for leaving as the new leadership’s lack of commitment to build a Black united front, and the continuous lack of work on the many proposed programs of the NBA. They criticized the NBA leadership for its betrayal of the mandate from the Gary Convention to build a Black political movement independent from the Democratic and Republican parties. (This was soon confirmed in full when the NBA threw its weight behind the Democrat Julian Bond’s candidacy for the presidency.) The resigning chapters pledged to continue to organize the masses of people and to build fighting mass organizations in their areas.
While it was correct and necessary to make a break with the sellout leaders of the NBA, it was an error for the CAP forces to completely withdraw from the NBA. There were still some mass forces left in the NBA, and CAP could have exerted some influence had it remained.
While these developments were taking place in established mass work and united front situations, CAP broke new ground in some other areas of work around labor issues and in the Black Liberation Movement.
CAP cadre began to work in auto plants, steel mills, foundries and mines in the Northeast and Midwest. The first major campaign around labor issues was initiated in November 1975, called Workers Solidarity Day. CAP organized demonstrations in several cities, linking the economic recession to the nature of the capitalist system and raised the need for socialist revolution as the final answer to the problems of the masses.
During 1974, CAP participated in the Boston busing struggle. This struggle was a focus of national attention as well as a key issue of struggle within the communist movement on the national question.
A mandatory busing plan ordered by a federal court was implemented in Boston in 1974. It called for the forced busing of Black school children to historically all-white schools in white working class districts in Boston. The Boston busing plan did not meet the Black masses’ demands for desegregation and quality education. Rather, it further violated the Black masses’ democratic rights by imposing upon them a plan that forcibly dispersed Black students into schools where the education was no better, and where a racist atmosphere had been stirred up against them. In fact, the city of Boston was ripped open as mobs of racist whites stoned the buses, attacked and beat Black children and adults. An hysterical atmosphere was fanned up by white racist forces led by the notorious segregationist Louise Day Hicks, a South Boston slumlord and former head of the Boston School Committee.
This situation posed an important challenge for U.S. Marxist-Leninists. The struggle demanded communists take a stand and organize the masses to beat back the racist violence against the Black people of Boston, and to firmly support the struggle of the Black community against national oppression in the schools. The Boston situation required Marxist-Leninists to strive to build the multinational unity of the working class based on support for the struggle against national oppression and against the capitalist system.
CAP played an active role in the Boston busing struggle, and stressed the need to end the violent attacks on Blacks, and uphold the right of the Black community to armed self-defense. CAP saw the basic issue as one of national oppression and fighting for “democratic rights, self-defense and quality education.”
CAP opposed the Boston busing plan, correctly pointing out that the plan did not serve to combat segregation or to improve the quality of education for the Black masses. CAP pointed out that the plan, being wholly conceived and handed down by the state, had no input from the Black masses. In fact it took the initiative out of the hands of the masses and gave it to the NAACP and Democratic Party. Lastly, CAP correctly stressed that communists had to fight for the multinational unity of the working class. This could only be done by taking a firm stand against national oppression and racism, and by educating white workers as to their real class interests. CAP pointed out that the schools for working class whites in South Boston were only minutely better than the Black schools, and that communists had to educate white working people to see their enemy was not Blacks but capitalism.
CAP played a major role in struggling against incorrect lines that were being put forth by different forces in the struggle. It vigorously opposed the line of the NAACP that promoted bourgeois integrationism. It also opposed the chauvinist lines of the Revolutionary Union (RU) (now the Revolutionary Communist Party) and the Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO), which attacked busing as the key issue and tailed the backward white workers who were attacking the Black masses. Both the RU and the WVO refused to support the struggles being waged by the Black community against national oppression and fascist attacks. WVO even refused to support the right of the Black community to self-defense, attacking CAP as “narrow nationalist” for raising this demand!
CAP worked to build the Black Women’s United Front (BWUF), a mass organization of Black women which developed out of the Afrikan Women’s Conference of 1974. The first meeting of the BWUF was held in January 1975, in Detroit, drawing over 600 women from all over the country. Throughout the year there would be several more such gatherings in Detroit and Atlanta.
The BWUF was an important mass organization that focused on Black women’s struggles. It was also intended to help raise the level of struggle around the woman question in CAP and in the Black Liberation Movement generally, and to win Black women to Marxism.
One notice to join a local BWUF chapter in Newark stated, “Black women workers, students, unemployed, old and young, join in and help build the local Black Women’s United Front. A fighting organization of Black women for quality education, free medical care, a shorter work day, child care for working mothers, family planning not genocide, stop killer cops, help us fight inflation, high prices and unemployment. Join in with us to struggle for the Democratic Rights and Self-determination of all Black people.”
Local chapters of the BWUF existed in many cities including Newark, the Bronx, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, South Bend, Washington, D.C., Columbia, South Carolina, Albany, and Baltimore. These local chapters got involved in a whole variety of mass issues and struggles. The Baltimore local took up a struggle against a racist policeman who raped a 15-year old Black student. The chapter conducted demonstrations, public forums, media outreach and distribution of leaflets.
Chapters in Albany and South Bend got involved in local education struggles. The Pittsburgh local fought a reactionary welfare reform law that threatened to impose gross stipulations on welfare recipients. In Washington, D.C., the BWUF got involved in prisoner support work. All over the country, BWUF chapters took up mass struggles, and did educational work around understanding the causes of women’s oppression and how to fight it. CAP’s work in the BWUF was significant as it brought out the need to fight women’s oppression, got women concretely involved in mass struggle, and did education about the nature of women’s oppression as part of capitalism.
Through its work in these various struggles and continuing campaigns like Stop Killer Cops, CAP carried out Marxist education to large numbers of people. CAP successfully popularized basic Marxist-Leninist concepts about imperialism, the state, the necessity to organize and rely on the masses, the leading role of the working class, the need for multinational unity and the revolutionary role of the national movements.
CAP continued to publish its newspaper, Unity and Struggle. The newspaper explained CAP’s development into a Marxist-Leninist organization and why it saw socialist revolution as the only solution to the oppression of the masses of people. Unity and Struggle also continued with topical domestic news coverage and analysis, including national politics, issues like the economy, and coverage of struggles of workers, and oppressed nationalities. There was also international coverage, especially of the third world. The newspaper ran regular cultural features and columns.
In this period, CAP sought to place its work in the context of the anti-revisionist movement and build unity with other Marxist-Leninist forces, and struggle against opportunism. While CAP had not fully developed its line on party building, it did recognize that uniting Marxist-Leninists and party building could not be separated from communist work in the mass movement. It saw the need for principled struggle in the communist movement to arrive at a correct line. Through its work in various struggles, CAP gained a better understanding of different organizations’ views.
Through the Boston busing struggle CAP learned firsthand the opportunism and chauvinism of the RU and the WVO, and recognized that the inability of the communist movement to arrive at a correct view of the national question and implement it in the mass movement was a critical weakness. Towards forging a correct line on this issue, CAP participated in forums on Boston busing held in 1974.
CAP also tried to build greater unity with various Marxist-Leninist forces. During 1974-75 for example, CAP developed some joint work with the October League (OL) although this later declined due to differences CAP had with the OL, particularly on the national question. CAP criticized the OL for tending to equate the Black masses’ struggle against national oppression to bourgeois integrationism. This tendency manifested itself in the OL’s line on the Boston busing struggle which tailed after the liberal reformist NAACP. CAP criticized the OL for upholding the right of self-determination for the Afro-American nation on the one hand, while at the same time stating that it opposed secession. CAP correctly maintained that to oppose, in the abstract, one of the Afro-American nation’s options to self-determination was to in fact liquidate the right to self-determination.
By late 1975, the so-called “Revolutionary Wing” began to form, and the lines of the “Wing” started to have an influence on CAP.
The basic unity of the “Wing” was seven idealist and metaphysical formulations which supposedly demarcated genuine “Bolshevism.” The “Wing” promoted a number of ultra-left lines, although there were differences inside the leading organizations in the “Wing.” For example, in the “Wing,” the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Worker’s Organization (PRRWO) promoted a “left” dogmatist line, saying that “party building as the central task” meant communists should not do mass work.
The Workers Viewpoint Organization, another member of the “Wing,” was a counterrevolutionary organization which had conspired and maneuvered ever since its inception to wreck the communist movement. It sometimes took on a rightist line and at other times promoted a “left” line. For example, WVO liquidated the revolutionary nature of the national movements saying they were for bourgeois democratic rights. They advocated unity with the labor aristocracy under the line of “unite to expose” the union bureaucrats. In party building WVO advocated an idealist line of absolutizing theory and negating the need to link theory and practice and that practice is the sole criterion of truth. In practice WVO tailed right-wing elements and red-baited other communists in the mass movements, whipped up national chauvinism and racism towards the oppressed nationality peoples, and promoted the revisionist CPUSA and social-democratic types. WVO attacked the whole history of the revolutionary and communist movements to promote itself as the group with the “only correct line.”
RCL (CAP formally changed its name to the Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M) in 1976) was never formally a part of the “Wing” and opposed its sectarianism and the lines of the “Wing” forces on a number of key questions. The RCL engaged in vigorous debate with WVO and other forces in the “Wing” around the issue of Boston busing and their chauvinism on the Afro-American national question. Around International Working Women’s Day (IWWD) in 1976, RCL, I Wor Kuen (IWK) and the OL had opposed the “Wing’s” opportunism. WVO united with the CPUSA’s attempt to link up IWWD to the international revisionist’s “Women’s Year” campaign for “detente” and later, WVO, PRRWO and RWL attempted to turn an IWWD coalition into an arena for their own “internal” “Wing” debates.
But while RCL opposed the formation of the “Wing” and criticized it, it was still influenced by the “Wing’s” “leftism” and began to adopt much of the “Wing’s” ultra-left, phrasemongering style, mistaking this style for being “revolutionary.” RCL’s own tendencies towards mechanicalness and dogmatism were the basis for it being influenced by the “Wing.” In addition, as RCL’s political lines were not all that well developed, and because it was genuinely concerned with achieving clarity and unity around questions of party building and political line, it became susceptible to the “ruthless struggle, merciless blows” atmosphere that the “Wing” created in the communist movement at that time.
RCL for example was influenced by the line of PRRWO on party building, which reduced party building to going to party building forums and studying party building completely divorced from any practical tasks or the masses.
RCL furthermore adopted a “left” line on the role of its mass organizations and mass work in general. The BWUF was put down after the “Wing” published an article by the Albanians saying they never organized a mass organization until “after the party was built.” Some comrades in RCL then wanted to turn this vibrant mass organization into a study circle. The host of mass work that had always been a CAP/RCL tradition began to be liquidated. The police review board work, the Stop Killer Cops campaign, work in the ALSC, NBA and BWUF all came to an end based on the increasing ultra-leftism of the “Wing’s” influence. This error had a serious impact in cutting off the ties of RCL from many of the mass elements it had historically influenced.
The “Wing’s” mechanicalness and dogmatism also increased the tendency in RCL to look at its own history one-sidedly. The organization had already made the mistake of one-sidedly putting down its whole history. The “Wing” served to make RCL feel even more “guilty” about its nationalist past.
By May of 1976, as the “Wing” was breaking apart, most of RCL’s time was taken up waging polemics or bearing the brunt of polemics from the “Wing.” And even though the leadership of RCL confronted the “Wing” in polemics, the organization was still influenced by their line.
Finally, as a result of this “leftism,” some comrades wanted to liquidate everything the organization had ever done, liquidate the organization’s basically correct line on the national question, and said that all of the organization’s lines were incorrect. Some thought that they could solve the organization’s problems by tailing after other Marxist-Leninist forces. As a result of this “leftism” people ceased to have initiative, and under a barrage of “left” phrasemongering did little or nothing. Participation in mass work and programs dried up.
Most of the organization’s time at this point was taken up in meetings discussing the paper on party building that had still not been completed. Meeting after meeting was given over to this, dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s.” BWUF meetings, mass work around housing, Stop Killer Cops work – all were postponed and actually eliminated “until the organization came to a correct line around party building.”
And so while a core of the organization fought the “Wing” line in its most obvious manifestations and also criticized other deviations in the Marxist-Leninist movement, the organizational processes were patterned more and more as a “left” study circle growing isolated from the masses.
During the 1976 period of discussion and struggle around party building, Unity and Struggle ceased to come out regularly.
Finally, after a long series of meetings, RCL’s paper on party building did appear. And though there were still obvious traces of influence by the “Wing,” sections of the paper were the basis for a pamphlet criticizing the “leftism” of the “Wing.” This was outlined in September 1976 and entitled, “PRRWO and RWL: Not a Revolutionary Wing, but a Dangerous Duo.” This marked RCL’s formal break with the “Wing’s” “leftism,” even though aspects of it were to last for some time to come. But this was a break and a commitment by RCL to fight against the negative effects of the “Wing’s” “leftism,” sectarianism and dogmatism.
This paper in particular criticized the view that all participation in mass struggles was “bowing to spontaneity” and detracted from party building. It also criticized the line that mass organizations should be turned into study circles and forums for “communist polemics” divorced from the real life issues facing the masses of people. The paper criticized the view that ideological struggle and development of a correct political line are two “separate stages” in party building. It concretely stated that the struggle for a correct line meant integrating the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought with the concrete conditions in the U.S. – to answer the concrete questions posed by the revolutionary struggle.
Later, the organization further elaborated its line on party building, the international and domestic situation, the Afro-American national question and trade union question. Over the next two years, as the organization tried to criticize and make a deeper break with various “left” lines it held, more correct views were clarified and adopted.
One important struggle that took place was to analyze the “gang of four” in China and uphold and defend the Communist Party of China (CPC) under the leadership of Chairman Hua Guofeng. The RCL leadership correctly opposed the “gang of four” and supported the CPC and Chairman Hua, but there was some struggle to unite the organization around this due to the remaining influences of the “Wing.”
This was an important struggle for the organization because it aided in defeating the influence of the “Wing.” RCL recognized that the “gang of four” held a similar ultra-left line as the “Wing.” It recognized similarities in the “gang of four’s” and the “Wing’s” metaphysics and idealism, sectarianism, and dogmatism.
Similarly, some comrades still under the influence of the “Wing” opposed Chairman Mao’s theory of three worlds, and this too had to be struggled out. RCL correctly supported the theory of three worlds, recognizing that it is based on the actual concrete realities of the current international situation. RCL recognized that the opponents of the three worlds theory, which included the “Wing” (or what was left of it), held to a metaphysical view, proceeding “from abstraction to abstraction denying the obvious real life situation in the world today.”
RCL defended the theory of three worlds from attacks by both the ultra-leftists as well as centrists and revisionists. RCL pointed out that the three worlds theory “sets the basis for a world united front against imperialism, showing who are the proletariat’s friends and who are the enemies, who is the main danger and what the strategy and tactics are for the world proletarian revolution,” and that the third world is the main force in the struggle against the two superpowers. RCL criticized the ultra-left view that refused to support efforts by the second world countries to strengthen their independence from the superpowers or the struggles on the part of third world countries for independence – even those third world countries ruled by “reactionaries.”
RCL pointed out that steps towards independence from the superpowers, “like all reforms and the national democratic revolution itself, clears the arena for the final showdown between the . . . proletariat and the domestic reactionaries. Not to see elimination of imperialism and hegemonism as a prerequisite for socialist revolution is akin to the thinking of Trotskyites!”
One major contribution RCL made to the communist movement and the Black Liberation Movement was the publication in 1977 of a paper on the Afro-American national question called The Black Nation. This paper attempted to integrate Marxism with the concrete conditions of the Black Liberation Movement historically and in the present period. It made a concrete analysis of the development of the Black nation and the Black liberation struggle, including an analysis of classes and their role and impact on the Black movement.
The RCL position paper on the Afro-American national question gave a concrete and scientific analysis to the basic stand that the organization had been raising for the past decade – as CAP and before it as CFUN. This was the basic stand for self-determination and equal rights, for revolution and political power – the fundamental issues of the Black national question. By making a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the Afro-American national question, RCL placed these questions in the context of the entire U.S. and world revolution, and gave clarity as to how Black liberation could actually be fought for and won.
The Black Nation stated that Black people in the U.S. are at once an oppressed nation whose land base is the Black-belt South, and at the same time, an oppressed nationality in other areas of the U.S. These other areas where Blacks live in concentrations exist in about 26 major cities with populations over 100,000. There, Black people are redeposited in ghetto versions of the Black-belt, reinforcing or extending the national character of their lives throughout the U.S.
RCL correctly stressed that the heart of the Afro-American national question was the struggle for self-determination and equal rights. It is a struggle for political power – for Black political power. Thus, RCL stressed “we are anti the bogus line of imperialist assimilation or ’integration’ as pushed by the bourgeoisie; because these are used to oppose the democratic rights and political ’control’ of Black people . . . .” In addition to fighting for self-determination for the Afro-American nation in the Black-belt South, RCL put forth that the struggle of Blacks living outside of the Black nation was one for political control of those areas where they are a majority, i.e., some form of regional or administrative autonomy.
The RCL paper outlined the development of the Black nation historically and attempted to trace the development of classes economically. The paper linked these to the role of various classes in the Black Liberation Movement. This was a contribution towards a Marxist-Leninist class analysis of the Afro-American people. It showed that the democratic sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie formed a basis for a united front and helped to concretely show why only the working class is capable of leading the Black liberation struggle through to a revolutionary conclusion.
Another important contribution of the RCL paper was its understanding of the relationship between the demand for self-determination and the struggle for socialism. RCL recognized that a common error by some Marxists on the national question was to belittle or negate the struggle for self-determination and against national oppression, with the view that everything was a struggle for socialism. RCL put forth a correct view which saw the distinct character of the national movement as being a democratic struggle for self-determination, but also recognizing the revolutionary character of this struggle in the era of imperialism. The struggle for self-determination furthermore must be a component part of the struggle of the proletariat for socialist revolution because national oppression is a pillar of imperialist rule and oppression, and because the struggles of the oppressed peoples are a powerful ally of the working class. The struggles are aimed at a common enemy, the monopoly capitalist class. RCL stated that “our slogans must touch the thrust for equal rights and self-determination, but seek to join the Black Liberation Movement with the movement for proletarian revolution. But we should not make Black liberation appear that it is an ’automaton of socialism,’ rather that the struggle for Black liberation is a part of the struggle for socialist revolution.”
During 1977 and 1978, the organization resumed its mass work as a result of criticizing the “Wing’s” influence, and struggle within the organization.
An important area of mass work was in the Black community and in the Black Liberation Movement.
RCL began to work in the Black United Front (BUF) in New York City in 1978. The Black United Front was a mass organization led by the Reverend Herbert Daughtry, a progressive Black minister from Brooklyn. The BUF brought together a broad cross section of forces in the Black community and the Black movement against national oppression, and in particular in the struggle against police brutality in New York. The BUF led demonstrations of tens of thousands of people protesting the police murders of Blacks throughout the city. It grew in just a few years to wield enormous influence in the Black movement in New York.
RCL joined Black United Front chapters in several boroughs in New York and did mass work around police brutality as well as other issues the BUF was involved in, such as housing. The organization attempted to build greater unity with various other class forces and nationalist forces working in the BUF. At the same time RCL criticized incorrect views such as narrow nationalism and put forth its own independent line on why it upheld Marxism-Leninism and multinational unity. Although there were twists and turns, RCL was able to establish a principled relationship with other forces and gain the respect of activists and masses because of the consistent work it did. RCL’s stand and practice distinguished itself from sham Marxist-Leninists like the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO) who both tried to wreck and split the BUF in 1979. This caused some confusion about the nature of communism and multinational unity since the RCP and WVO both mouthed these concepts. RCL pointed out that RCP and WVO were not genuine communists as they attacked the BUF and the mass movement. RCL pointed out that neither RCP nor WVO stood for the unity of all oppressed peoples as each has a long history of chauvinism towards the struggles of oppressed nationality peoples.
RCL also participated in other mass struggles against Black national oppression. One important struggle was around the education crisis in Newark.
In 1977, RCL had developed some work in the strike of cafeteria and maintenance workers in the Newark schools. In 1978, their work in the schools escalated and RCL successfully organized a People’s Committee on Education. This committee led a militant movement opposing budget cutbacks and the removal of art, music, physical education, recreation programs, and library services from the Newark elementary schools. RCL also waged struggle with the WVO which consistently undermined the struggle by taking anti-communist stands, splitting the committee, and opposing putting out any militant propaganda from the committee.
In Pittsburgh, RCL participated in a struggle protesting the police murder of a Black youth, Richard Hayes. It also participated in the Anti-Bakke Decision Coalition around organizing the East Coast tour of the United League, a fighting Black mass organization in Mississippi.
During the summer of 1979, RCL played a leading role in a defense committee for Amiri Baraka who was beaten by police and then arrested on phony charges. The Baraka Defense Committee linked this case with the issue of Black national oppression and drew mass support in Newark and New York.
In addition to getting involved in these mass struggles, RCL also held a number of activities in the Black Liberation Movement aimed at propagating a communist line on the Afro-American national question. RCL held conferences on the Afro-American national question in Detroit, Harlem, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. It also worked on commemorative programs on the rebellions in Newark and Detroit.
During this period RCL also did work in the labor movement. The organization took up the day-to-day struggles of the workers on the shop floor and in various movements for greater union democracy, particularly in the auto and steel industries in the Midwest and East. It also developed some work in the coal mines.
RCL participated in the formation and building of rank and file caucuses that fought for workers’ demands like affirmative action. In auto, RCL participated in struggles around discrimination, job conditions, the 1979 auto contracts, and some local union elections.
During this same period, RCL made fresh contributions to building revolutionary culture in the U.S. movement. It developed and encouraged revolutionary cultural work in a number of cities, linking the newly revitalized cultural movement with the working class and oppressed nationality peoples’ struggles. RCL stressed the important role of revolutionary culture for the mass movement and the dangers of allowing bourgeois art and culture – which poison the minds of the masses by spreading individualism, pessimism and chauvinism, and apologies for capitalism and imperialism – to thrive with only scattered and spontaneous opposition. Based on this view, RCL organized numerous cultural activities and groups.
One of the most successful cultural activities that was held as part of this work was a Black Writers Conference sponsored by Unity and Struggle in February 1978, at the Rutgers University, Newark campus. Featured were four Black writers, Nathan Heard, author of Howard Street; Amiri Baraka, poet and playwright; Claude Brown, author of Manchild in a Promised Land; and Richard Wesley, screen writer of two well-known Sidney Poitier films, Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again. The four writers led writers’ workshops, a forum, and read from their writings to a capacity audience of 400 people.
The Black Writers Conference concretely addressed questions facing progressive and revolutionary Black writers today. A central part of the discussion was the question of self-determination of the Afro-American nation in the Black-belt South, how the Black Arts movement had historically reflected the Black liberation struggle, and how the struggle of Black writers is directly connected to the Black Liberation Movement as a whole. The Conference also took up questions like the nature of the publishing business, how it operates like any other capitalist enterprise, and how it is impossible for the majority of writers, especially Black writers and certainly revolutionary writers, to make a living from writing.
RCL helped form the Anti-Imperialist Cultural Union (AICU) in New York, as a multinational cultural worker’s organization. RCL strived to build AICU as a cultural organization that would be linked to the mass movements of the working class and oppressed nationalities. AICU sponsored a successful Festival of People’s Culture in November 1978, where 500 people came to hear poets like Askia Toure, Yusef Iman, Miguel Algarin and Sylvia Jones; singers and musicians like the Proletarian Ensemble; and revolutionary films and drama.
The most active group in the AICU was the Yenan Theater Workshop, which produced the play by Amiri Baraka, What was the Lone Ranger’s Relationship to the Means of Production? and the collectively written Images of Struggle and Revolution. The Yenan Workshop was able to involve many cultural workers and helped them see their cultural work in the context of the progressive and revolutionary movement.
RCL also made contributions to the cultural movement in other areas. In Detroit, RCL was active in the Detroit Black Arts movement. In July 1978, Unity and Struggle sponsored a cultural event called “Hard Facts – an evening of Revolutionary Culture” which featured local poets, actors and actresses. There was also a dramatic presentation of combined scenes from two of Amiri Baraka’s recent plays, S-1 and The Motion of History, as well as musical performances.
In 1979, RCL worked with local actors in Detroit and produced the play by N.M. Davidson, El Hajj Malik, about the life of Malcolm X. Activities like these helped lay the basis for forging the People’s Theater Movement in Detroit.
In St. Louis, RCL participated in founding and building the Proletarian Ensemble, a dynamic musical group which performs revolutionary songs in a popular style. The Advanced Workers was another musical group active in Newark.
Unity and Struggle also continued to run many articles and features on revolutionary culture including reviews, original work, and news of the cultural movement.
Through these various efforts, RCL made important contributions in both developing and spreading progressive and revolutionary culture, as well as in bringing cultural workers into the people’s movement.
In 1978 and 1979, RCL began to carry out more systematic relations and discussions with other Marxist-Leninist organizations, seeking to determine areas of unity, and struggling over areas of difference. RCL held as its central task the construction of a genuine, vanguard communist party and in this context saw the struggle for Marxist-Leninist unity as an essential component of party building. During this period, RCL established systematic relations with the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L), and went through a successful process of forging Marxist-Leninist unity on all major points of political line and summing up each organization’s history. In September 1979, the RCL and LRS merged into one organization, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L).