Maoism in the Developed World

Particularly in its early years, the WVOCWP was also notably for its resort to violence. Thus, the 1980 election campaign, “On hundred fifty CWP’ers tried to storm a Democratic fundraising, event at the New York Plaza Hotel, injuring six police. That nigh there were four attempted firebombs; at each site CWP slogan were found. … In 1976, as Workers Viewpoint Organization, the group broke up rival communist groups’ meetings, throwing chairs on stage and attacking enemies with baseball bats and hammers. … A Southern Regional Party Bulletin urged member: to break the bond of legality and advised that each member should be ‘self-sufficient’; it suggested military training and drilling with guns.”[93]

The CWP disappeared in the late 1980s, after it had supported Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency.[94]

Finally, note should be taken of the Workers World Part? (WWP), which for some time was attracted to Maoism, but became disillusioned in the 1970s. The WWP had originated as a split in the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party in 1959. With the Sino-Soviet split, it largely abandoned Trotskyism and supported the Chinese. One of its leaders, Key Martin, explained in 1976 that “We are Leninists, are careful to study the works of all the great revolutionary leaders of our era. … It was our party which in this country first raised and defended the polemics of the Chinese comrades criticizing the revisionism of the Soviet Party in the sixties. We also immediately understood and explained the revolutionary significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as it began and unfolded, not several years after the fact as with many others. … We do not, however, necessarily agree with every aspect of China’s present foreign policy and certainly disagree with their … theory of ‘social imperialism’ which they have propounded in recent years.”[95]

With the death of Mao, the WWP strongly opposed the post-Mao Chinese leadership. Sam Marcy, the party’s principal leader, wrote that “A great mistake was made in the Communist movement … in assessing the significance of the ouster of Chiang Ching, Chang Chun-chiao, Wang Hung-wen and Yao Wen-yuan. … The view … was that a small group of ultra-left Maoists was turned out and that a new, more reasonable grouping … was taking over. … But this was a mistaken view.”

Marcy went on, “The coming to power of Teng and Hua represented the victory of the New Right. … The New Right … has moved from diplomat maneuvering to action. … It has moved headlong towards a Sino-U.S. alliance. The New Right is propelled to do so by its assault on the progressive social achievements of the Chinese Revolution.”[96]

The “Albanians”

With the splintering of International Maoism after the death of Mao, two groups in the United States took the side of the Albanians. These were the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist) or CPUSA (M-L) and the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.

The CPUSA (M-L) traced its origins to a small split in the pro-Moscow Communist Party of the USA in 1958, establishing the Provisional Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of a Marxist-Leninist Party. In 1965, the majority of that group proclaimed the establishment of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist). It held its second convention in 1969. With the break of the Albanians with the Chinese, the CPUSA (M-L) proclaimed its support of the former. At its Fifth Plenum, held in May 1980, the party proclaimed that “The immediate concern for all those who cherish freedom, peace and democracy is to unite to fight against fascism and imperialist world war.” The party supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.[97]

The other pro-Albanian group had its origins in the New Left of the 1960s, specifically in the Cleveland Draft Resistance Union, set up early in 1967 and made up principally of Blacks. In 1968 it became the Cleveland Workers Action Committee, which proclaimed its support of Maoism.

The Workers Action Committee took part in May 1979 in a meeting in Regina, Canada, which was called “The First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists,” which established the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) or ACWM. That meeting “denounced both U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism and set forth the tasks of the American proletariat as building its own party, defeating opportunism, overthrowing its ‘own’ bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.”[98]