Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Encyclopedia : R : RE : REV : Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Formed by former member of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II) faction of the Students for a Democratic Society after the latter fell apart in 1969, the party is principally led by its National Chairman and primary theoretical spokesperson, Bob Avakian, and is one of the few surviving direct descendants of the New Left of the Civil Rights Movement. It is by far the biggest, most active, and most widely-recognized Maoist group in the U.S.
More generally, RCP members and supporters have been very active in the groups Refuse and Resist (founded by C. Clark Kissinger) and the [October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation]. More recently, RCP members were the forefront in establishing the anti-war groups Not in Our Name and The World Can't Wait. The party is often said to be the behind the scenes leader of all four of these organizations. Other associated organizations have included La Resistencia and No Business As Usual..
Young supporters join the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB). Prior affiliated youth groups included the Attica Brigades and the Revolutionary Student Brigades.
Historically, one of the group's most notable actions was raising the Red Flag over the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. This was done by Damian Garcia, who was killed days later in a Los Angeles housing project. The RCP claims his murder was a result of his actions at the Alamo,[link] and alleges LAPD involvement. Another notable action was when a member of the RCP's youth organization, the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, burned a United States flag at the Republican National Convention in 1984, leading to the Supreme Court case known as Texas v. Johnson.
The RCP upheld the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles and nationally as a "rebellion" in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts. Then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates alleged that the RCP was involved in the riots. Los Angeles has long been one of the RCP's larger and more active branches. William "Mobile" Shaw was a local leader who recently passed and received public commendation from the party.
As a result of criminal indictments stemming from a protest against Deng Xiaoping at the White House in 1981, Bob Avakian and other RCP leaders fled the United States and have been living in France and England ever since. Mostly as a result of this development, the RCP is active in both the United States and Western Europe. The protest, known colloquially as the Deng Demo, was part of re-alligning the international communist movement to recognize that socialism had been defeated in China, and that a capitalist-oriented leadership had seized power.
The RCP helped found the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, an association of revolutionary communist parties and oraganizations from Afghanistan to Italy. The RCP is the main voice of support in the United States for fellow RIM participants leading People's War, including the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The RIM is a significant fraction of the international communist movement that sees the socialist period as one of continuing class struggle, with the role of a vanguard party in government to bring the lower classes increasingly into the administration of society as a whole. Major RIM parties, including the RCP and the CPN-M argue that while the Soviet Union was essentially socialist under Stalin's government, that "absolutism" hindered the ability of the masses to rule, and to replentish the revolutionary ranks over time. Avakian in particular says that communists must acknowledge the real history, and "do better."
The RCP has been active in a wide variety of social struggles, including but not limited to: the fight against police brutality and mass incarceration of African-Americans, women's reproductive rights, defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, opposition to the Bush "regime", and government authoritarianism.
Origins
Robert Avakian was one of many activists in The Sixties who turned to Maoist (then referred to by adherents as Marxist-Leninist) ideas and began organizing in the Bay Area of California. H. Bruce Franklin, Stephen Charles Hamilton, and Bob Avakian together formed the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, or BARU, which was subsequently able to absorb a series of similar local collectives which had developed out of Students for a Democratic Society. The new nationwide structure allowed BARU to change its name to simply the Revolutionary Union. The RCP claims that of the various groups coming out of SDS, it was the first to seriously attempt to develop itself both at the theoretical level, with the publication of "Red Papers 1", and at the practical level, by sinking roots into working class communities and struggles. Notable was Avakian's organizing work at Chevron plant in the Bay Area as an organizing model to link the insurgent student movements with working people in struggle. This turn to 1970s "point of production" organizing was a broader phenomenon which was expanded throughout the Midwest and into the Appalachian coal fields during the wildcat upsurges through 1980.
Such rapid expansion was not without its problems, however, and in 1971 H. Bruce Franklin led a section of the RU to fuse with the Venceremos Organization, advocating immediate urban guerrilla warfare and dissolving shortly thereafter.
After a series of unsuccessful unity meetings with nationality-based communist organizations called the National Liaison Committee, including the BWC and Maoist-inspired Young Lords, the RU jumped ahead to form the Revolutionary Communsit Party in 1975. The new organization was deeply involved in point of production organizing, as well as theoretical work on building a "party of a new type." The organization had a strong "workerist" orientation, with many members joining into various trade union struggles limited to economic demands. Tensions between the pragmatists and the followers of Avakian exploded, and in 1977, Vice Chairman Mickey Jarvis along with around one third of the membership and most of the Revolutionary Student Brigades formally left the RCP to form the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters.
Among older members of the RCP, there is a high proportion of Vietnam War-era veterans. Joe Veale, the spokesperson for the Los Angeles area branch was a former member of the Black Panther Party. C. Clark Kissinger, a writer for Revolution and prominent activist associated with the RCP, was a national secretary of SDS.
RCP today
Following the re-election of George W. Bush, the RCP released a statement called "The Battle for the Future". It calls Bush a Christian Fascist and calls on the masses to resist. The document also puts forward Bob Avakian as a their party's leader.
In 2005, the RCP changed the name of its newspaper from "Revolutionary Worker" to "Revolution." According to [their website], the May 1, 2005 issue of RW newspaper signaled "the end of 25 years of Revolutionary Worker/Obrero Revolucionario — and the beginning of Revolution/Revolución. [W]e believe that the new name more fully reflects our revolutionary communist ideology and politics, and the enriched vision of a tribune of the people that has been pioneered by RCP Chairman Bob Avakian."
In late 2005 and early 2006 the RCP launched the [Revolutionary Communist Speaking Tour], designed to, in the words of its [its blog header], "build a communist movement among the people locked on the bottom of society in the current era of Bushite Christian-fascism." The Tour's cities so far have been Los Angeles, California, Oakland, California, Chicago, Illinois, Houston, Texas, and New York City. It is chiefly composed of four supporters of the RCP: national spokesperson Carl Dix; Clyde Young, a "writer for the revolutionary press"; Akil Bomani, a Revolution newspaper correspondent; and Joe Veale, Los Angeles RCP branch spokesperson.
Revolution Books distributes materials related to the RCP, and the revolutionary movement in general. They operate stores nationally, with a large store in New York City.
After many years spent in Europe, Bob Avakian released a 4-disk DVD set of speeches given on the "East Coast" and the "West Coast," presumably within the United States. Avakian had not been seen in the country for over 20 years. This is a noteworthy change. Aside from continuing his advocacy of communism, Avakian has sharpened his critique of dogmatism within the movement, and placed a strong emphasis on thinking and learning while engaging in political struggle.
Criticism of RCP
The RCP is obviously subject to general criticisms made against Marxism-Leninism in general and to the idea of the vanguard party in particular. Other than accusations that the many organizations in which it has a heavy presence are its front groups, critics have claimed its contributions to the organization of mass leftist rallies amounts to [engaging in lesser-evil politics] (also discussed [here]), particularly with the World Can't Wait campaign. The RCP has had an often stormy relationship with the broader political left. From the initial publication of the Red Papers that formed the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, and their highly controversial (and qualified) inclusion of Joseph Stalin as a historical leader, the RCP has cut against the dominant anti-communist political discourse in the United States with particular gusto. Highly critical of the former Soviet Union, which they viewed as "state capitalist" and "social-imperialist," they were subject to particularly sharp attack from Soviet partisans within the USA.As the RCP firmed up as an organization, they rejected electoral politics. According to Max Elbaum's "Revolution in the Air," they were among the very few self-identified Marxist-Leninst parties in the 1980s who rejected work inside the Democratic Party during Jesse Jackson's two bids for the presidency. Many of the other groups dissolved after working in the Jackson campaign, with many of them giving up on the goal of communism and equating open advocacy of revolution with "ultra-leftism." The RCP's critique of what they call the "voting trap" led many earstwhile socialist groups to label them "sectarian" for not subordinating their movement to the needs of liberals.
The RCP does not generally attempt to maneuver inside leftist coalitions, preferring to launch independent initiatives to "repolarize" political movements on a more radical basis. Unlike many activist groupings, the RCP expects members acting as members to uphold their organization positions, refuse illegal drugs and habits, and maintain exceptional standards of personal morality.
Much of the criticism of Avakian's leadership steers clear of engaging the set of ideas that he's responsible for, particularly regarding class struggle under socialism, the need for a "solid core" of revolutionaries even in non-revolutionary times, the insistence that political line is "decisive" and their openly stated goal of world revolution leading to communism. Instead, the main point of criticism is formal: that the RCP exists, promotes its leadership core and doesn't triangulate their objectives to the needs of every locality in which they operate.
Competing communist and socialist groups have labeled the RCP as a cult of personality around the leadership of Bob Avakian. Those opposing such a cult of personality question whether it is necessary or desirable to build one up at all, and particularly whether it is justified to build one up around a leader that may or may not eventually gain the credibility and respect to have one. Such critics say that it is presumptuous of the RCP to put forward Bob Avakian as an exceptional leader when he is nowhere near the "status" of Marx, Lenin or Mao Zedong, from whom their "Marxist-Leninst-Maoist" ideology takes its name. Others additionally allege that personality cults were a weakness, not a strength, of the old communist movement, and that as such, these mistakes do not need to be repeated in a new revolutionary communist society. This debate has taken on renewed life since the Nepalese Maoists have disassociated themselves from this method of promoting leaders.
External links
Archives- [Guide to the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Collection 1975-1979]. 46 folders. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Bobst Library. New York University. Retrieved August 12, 2005.
- Evans, Christopher. [He Says He Wants A Revolution]. Cleveland Plain Dealer. Sunday, April 17, 2005. Retrieved April 19, 2005. Print page retrieved May 31, 2005.
- DelVecchio, Rick. [Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to communism]. San Francisco Examiner. Page F 5. Friday, April 29, 2005. Retrieved April 29, 2005.
- [Revolution: Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA] relaunched newspaper.
- [Revolutionary Worker - archive newspaper site]
- [Audio speeches by Bob Avakian - Chairman of the RCP]
- ["Battle for the Future" Statement]
- [New Draft Programme of the RCP]
- [Revolution Books Outlet Atlanta]
- [Marxist criticisms against the RCP]
- [Red Flags: News & Views from the Revolutinary Left] Open commenting on the RCP, from a generally communist perspective
- [The Maoist cultism of the RCP is anti-Marxist] from Communist Voice
- [FOX & Friends "Michael's Supporters" Microsoft Player link] RCP supporter [Sunsara Taylor] interviewed regarding Terri Schiavo case. Edited version archived on [Overspun.com]. Retrieved April 12, 2005.
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