Open Letter to Pipsqueak Avakian
Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Revolutionary Student Brigade

Open Letter to Pipsqueak Avakian 1/24/78: What You Couldn’t Organize, You Can’t Steal!


First Published: Young Communist, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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This short person’s got no reason to live

We condemn your attempts to split our organization. We condemn your attempts to hijack our organization for your own purposes. We condemn your cowardly attacks on our members and our national office.

Our membership has recently become aware that a severe crisis has shaken the Revolutionary Communist Party. We are aware that nearly half of the Party, including half the leadership, have rebelled against your decision to support the Gang of Four and to conclude that China is on the revisionist, capitalist road. We are also aware that there are substantial differences on how to apply Marxism-Leninism to the U.S. Out of these two lines and as a product of the rebellion there have emerged two headquarters in the Party (your own and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters).

This line struggle is important. It is a struggle between Marxism and opportunism and between revolution and counter revolution. Those who take the wrong position are on the road to hell. Since we are a communist youth organization that stands with the RCP, that has been developed by the RCP and acknowledges the leadership of the RCP, this struggle has great implications for our organization. We as an organization that openly applies Marxism-Leninism are capable of determining right from wrong. As an organization that has for a number of years stood with the People’s Republic of China, we are capable of determining the class nature of the Chinese Party and State. In short, the political differences in the Party could have been brought into the Brigade and struggled out.

This however has not been your approach. Brigade members under your influence attempted to organize secret Brigade meetings. Individuals representing your Central Committee have come to our meetings and declared them “illegal.” We had tried to resolve this struggle in a principled way. A national meeting was called in Baltimore the same weekend as the benefits demonstration. A debate was proposed between the two headquarters. Instead you went ahead and organized a scab national Brigade meeting that only a sixth of the Brigade membership attended. Most chapters and areas were excluded. It was not called by our National Political Committee and in fact was in opposition to the decisions of two thirds of our NPC and the meeting it called. You defended this scab meeting from the Brigade membership itself with a paramilitary force of thirty goons in Cincinnati. They came complete with chains, bats, blackjacks and attacked our members – particularly the National Office of the Brigade. Six foot six goons wielding baseball-bats clubbed women. Our members had come armed with nothing but Marxism-Leninism. It seems it was this weapon that you feared the most.

Since then you have released a pamphlet that claims the majority of the Brigade and the Brigade as an organization supports you. This is an outright lie! There is not one chapter on the East Coast that supports you. In the Midwest the majority of the chapters oppose you. The entire National Office and two thirds of the National Political Committee oppose you.

Bob Avakian – who the fuck do you think you are. You don’t own our organization. Nor will you be allowed to steal it. We are the proud inheritors of the traditions of the RSB and the Youth in Actions, not the sixty who met in Cincinnati. Our organization has fought the rulers from Wall St. to Kent State. We have withstood the various political assaults of the bourgeoisie. We have fought the perversion of Marxism-Leninism by opportunists, we will certainly roll over a pipsqueak like you.