Ern Sha

The most important and long-lasting of the Maoist groups that emerged from the New Left was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), formally established in 1975. Its origins were principally in the SDS, although it also drew some of its membership and leadership from the ethnically and racially oriented groups that appeared during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The predecessor of the RCP was the Revolutionary Union (RU). Bill Kingel and Joanne Psihountas have described the origins of the RU. They...

More serious were the expulsions of 1969-1970. In November 1969, the PLP decided to “reorganize” its leadership. As a consequence, Jared Israel, PLP Boston organizer; Jake Rosen, New York City Organizer; and William Epton, Vice Chairman of the PLP and head of its Harlem branch, were removed from the eight-member National Committee. They were subsequently expelled from the party. Later, Juan and Helena Farinas, editors of Desafio, were expelled also, and Charles Rosen was forced to resign. So was Steve Martinot, one of the leading figures in the Party since its inception...

The PLP effort to orient SDS toward the working class centered at first on a Student Labor Action Project (SLAP). According to the PLP newspaper Challenge, at the time, “SLAP argued that SDS must organize masses of students who can be reached because Imperialism screws them. They must be won to clear, anti-imperialist politics and a pro-working class outlook. We must try to ally students with working people in the struggle. Fights around ‘purely’ student demands must be made pro—not anti-working class...

Aside from such routine party work, members of the PLM carried out several more publicity-worthy projects. Two activities of the PLM that gained most public attention during the nearly two and a half years before it was converted into the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were the organization of two tour groups to Cuba in defiance of U.S. government dictate, and participation in the Harlem riot of the summer of 1964. According to Luce, “The operations for the Cuban trips were like a mixture of Mission Impossible and Jonathan Winters...

As was the case in many other countries, the followers of “Mao Tse-tung Thought” in the United States and Canada lacked unity among themselves. Various competing groups appeared in both countries!—in Canada, in large degree because they originated in different parts of the country, in the United States because they emerged from New Left groups of different racial and ethnic origins. There were few attempts to establish unity among the competing Maoist sects. With the alterations of Chinese Communist...

There also developed basic differences of opinion concerning relations between the Marxist-Leninist-controlled countries of the world and the West. The Chinese rejected the so-called peaceful coexistence policy expounded by Khrushchev and dismissed his emphasis on the dangers of a nuclear war, advocating instead confrontation with the United States and the rest of the West. Until 1960, these disagreements took place behind closed doors, so to speak. But in July of that year the Soviet government...

International Maoism had its origins in the split that developed in the 1950s, after the death of Stalin, between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties (and regimes). The schism was perhaps as near to being inevitable as anything in human affairs. Given the nature of Marxist-Leninist ideology, particularly as it developed after the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, there could be only one center from which the “correct” interpretation of that ideology came. So long as the Soviet Union remained...