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112-472: Former parties Former parties Former parties The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (also known as RCP , The Revcoms , or Revcom ) is a new communist party in the United States founded in 1975 and led by its chairman, Bob Avakian . The party organizes for a revolution to overthrow the system of capitalism and replace it with a socialist state , with the final aim of world communism . The RCP

224-602: A Revolution Newspaper correspondent on the anniversary of the police shooting of Stephon Clark , after the correspondent got into an argument with Al Sharpton while urging attendees to organize for revolution rather than political reforms. On International Women's Day 2019, the Revolution Club joined supporters of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist) , to march through Westwood, California, calling for universal women's rights. On Independence Day 2019,

336-506: A correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy [...] herein lies his tragedy. Scholars outside China see this re-working of the definition of Maoism as providing an ideological justification for what they see as the restoration of the essentials of capitalism in China by Deng and his successors, who sought to "eradicate all ideological and physiological obstacles to economic reform". In 1978, this led to

448-465: A cult of personality around Avakian as part of the 1979 pivot catalyzed by the Deng Xiaoping protest trial. The goal was to both increase support for Avakian in the legal arena while also making RCP a more revolutionary organization, inspired by Joseph Stalin's cult of personality , Mao Zedong's cult of personality , and the more recent Free Huey! campaign in which Avakian had participated. Relying on

560-854: A flag-burning by the RCP outside the Republican National Convention before a crowd of thousands. The next week, the RCP staged another flag burning outside the Democratic National Convention after denouncing the United States. Later that year, in response to Donald Trump 's tweet calling for the criminalization of flag burning, RCP supporters burned another American flag outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City. In October 2016, RCP supporters were banned from

672-529: A frequent presence in protest movements. The RCP runs the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, which sends its newspaper and other political works from its publishing press to prisoners. As its aim, the fund "provides an educational opportunity for prisoners to engage with world events and key political, cultural, and philosophical questions from a unique communistic perspective, including discussions of morality, religion, science, and

784-575: A fundamental element of establishing socialism. The RCP releases daily updates online and a periodic print edition of its weekly newspaper, Revolution (formerly called Revolutionary Worker , 1979–2005), in English and Spanish. In December 2016, party members and others co-initiated Refuse Fascism, a coalition group aiming to "drive out" the Trump administration through sustained street protests. InfoWars and other far-right conspiracy theory websites claimed

896-673: A leader's political thinking in the Marxist tradition is important in establishing a leader's ideological legitimacy. Mao Zedong Thought is frequently described as the result of collaboration between the first-generation leaders of the Party and is principally based on Mao's analysis of Marxism and Chinese history. It is often also described as the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese context. Observing that concepts of both Marxism and Chinese culture were and are contested, academic Rebecca Karl writes that

1008-457: A loose-knit tendency in United States leftist politics, but never coalesced into a single organization. As time went on, the organizations became extremely competitive and increasingly denounced one another. Points of distinction were frequently founded on the attitude taken toward the successors of Mao and international disputes between the Soviet Union and China regarding such developments as

1120-468: A mass campaign for political, legal, and other support for the defendants, the charges were dropped in 1982, by which time Party leadership had decided to go into exile , with Avakian applying for political asylum in France, where he remained for many years. The RCP organized May Day 1980 rallies in 16 cities across the U.S., including Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Weeks before

1232-769: A national leader in SDS in the late 1960s, was the main leader of the CP(M-L). The October League came out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping in the SDS split. During the early 1970s the OL took positions that were at odds with most of the US Left, including opposition to gay liberation and support of the Shah of Iran , whose regime they saw as a bulwark against Soviet social-imperialism . The OL established influence within some of

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1344-425: A proportionately small yet socially significant cross-section of China's traditional elite (i.e., landlords and bureaucrats) found themselves increasingly sceptical of the efficacy and even the moral validity of Confucianism . These skeptical iconoclasts formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern intelligentsia whose arrival—or as the historian of China Maurice Meisner would label it, their defection—heralded

1456-406: A series of important theories for socialist construction." After the death of Mao in 1976 and the resulting power struggles in China that followed, the international Maoist movement was divided into three camps. One group, composed of various ideologically nonaligned groups, gave weak support to the new Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping. Another camp denounced the new leadership as traitors to

1568-515: A two-year-reprieve, while others were sentenced to life imprisonment or imprisonment for 15 years. After the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre , Mao's influence continued to be weaker. Although not very influential, some radical Maoists, disgruntled by the injustices suffered by migrant workers, organized a number of protests and strikes, including the Jasic incident . In the 2020s, influenced by

1680-636: A wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in Shandong were—without consultation with the Chinese—transferred to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese sovereignty. The adverse reaction culminated in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, during which a protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of

1792-757: Is frequently described as a cult around Avakian. In early 1968, Avakian, Leibel Bergman , H. Bruce Franklin , Stephen Charles Hamilton and a score or so others—comprising both veterans of the Communist Party USA and Bay Area radicals based in Palo Alto , Berkeley, and San Francisco, formed the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU). Among the BARU's first tasks was to challenge the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) over its positions on

1904-547: Is regarded by today's CCP as an economic and political disaster. In Deng's day, support of radical Maoism was regarded as a form of "left deviationism" and based on a cult of personality , although these "errors" are officially attributed to the Gang of Four rather than Mao himself. Thousands of Maoists were arrested in the Hua Guofeng period after 1976. The prominent Maoists Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing were sentenced to death with

2016-524: Is that China has now reached an economic and political stage, known as the primary stage of socialism , in which China faces new and different problems completely unforeseen by Mao, and as such, the solutions that Mao advocated are no longer relevant to China's current conditions. The 1981 Resolution reads: Chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'cultural revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong [...] [and] far from making

2128-551: Is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout

2240-522: Is the keynote to Mao's intellectual orientation in the post-1949 period." Mao assertively revised the theory to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of On Contradiction . "In the 1930s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In Dialectal Materialism of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In

2352-686: The Texas v. Johnson case, which established the burning of the American flag as a constitutionally protected right. In 2011, RCP spokesperson Carl Dix and Cornel West co-initiated the campaigns to Stop "Stop and Frisk" and Stop Mass Incarceration . Dix and West appeared on Democracy Now ! to discuss the state of Black America in the age of Obama. RCP organized Rise Up October against racism and police brutality ; attendees included Quentin Tarantino . In July 2016, mass protest and police arrests erupted over

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2464-660: The Angolan Civil War . The Revolutionary Union organized the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA in 1975. The October League organized the founding congress of the Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) in 1977. During this period a few other new communist movement organizations also formed new communist parties . Unlike the majority of NCM groups, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), which evolved into

2576-624: The Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) , the Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran) , and the Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia . RIM published and distributed the magazine and news service A World to Win from 1981 to 2006. Since RIM's dissolution in the 2000s, the publication is updated only on its website. In 2017, A World to Win was restructured as "a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism." Flag-burning by RCP members led to

2688-406: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union each claimed to be the sole heir and successor to Joseph Stalin concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of world communism . At the turn of the 19th century, the contemporary Chinese intellectual tradition was defined by two central concepts: iconoclasm and nationalism . By the turn of the 20th century,

2800-660: The Long March , Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were headquartered in the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi . During this period, Mao established himself as a Marxist theoretician and produced most of the works that would later be canonised as the "Thought of Mao Zedong". The rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical treatises and

2912-982: The Marxist–Leninist Organizing Committee of San Francisco . They also had a youth group called the Communist Youth Organization. On November 3, 1979, four members of the Communist Workers' Party (CWP) and a male protester were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) during a Death to the Klan march, organized by the CWP. The event had been preceded by inflammatory rhetoric from both sides. The CWP had originally come to Greensboro to support workers' rights activism among mostly black textile industry workers in

3024-631: The Sino-Albanian split when Albanian leader Enver Hoxha denounced Deng as a revisionist and formed Hoxhaism as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism. The CCP officially regards Mao himself as a "great revolutionary leader" for his role in fighting against the Japanese fascist invasion during the Second World War and creating the People's Republic of China, but Maoism, as implemented between 1959 and 1976,

3136-631: The Smith Act , the Rosenberg Trial , etc.), as well as internal ideological schisms within the party. Members were often disillusioned by the party-leadership's official subordination to the USSR ideologically, with the party defending the numerous controversial actions by the Soviet state. This would be a key moment in the Marxist movement in the United States and the world, with numerous ranking party members leaving

3248-467: The University of Chicago for trespassing after encouraging students to get organized with the revolutionaries, with one activist arrested by police; the next day, they returned to defy the ban, while denouncing U.S. elections and America. In August 2016, the RCP led protesters in a two-day march on a barricaded police station after the fatal shooting of a black man by Milwaukee police; the police chief said

3360-687: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War after it opened its membership to non-veterans and temporarily gained control when the national office voted to expel non RU chapters and members and voted to integrate into the Revolutionary Union although non Marxist members of the VVAW filed and won a lawsuit prohibiting the RU dominated group from using the VVAW name, logos and materials. Deep animosity still exists between

3472-478: The Young Lords . It was the first of several 20th century Black -led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept. As one of its last initiatives, SDS had begun to leave its campus base and organize in working-class neighborhoods. Radical militant groups such as Weather Underground are recognized as participants in the movement. Some former members subsequently developed local organizations that continued

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3584-692: The growing wealth gap and the 996 working hour system , Mao's thoughts are being revived in China's generation Z , as they question authority of the CCP. The Chinese government has censored some Maoist posts. The 2021 The Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century describes Mao Zedong Thought as "a summation of theories, principles, and experience on China's revolution and construction that has been proven correct through practice, and [having] put forward

3696-406: The "Marxist method of political and class analysis". Before this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy between knowledge and action. He was more concerned with the dichotomy between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective conditions. There was more correlation drawn between China and the Soviet model. Intellectually, this was Mao's most fruitful time. The orientation shift

3808-407: The 1940s, he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. In the 1951 version of On Contradiction , he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity." In 1956, Mao first fully theorized his view of continual revolution. Maoism and Marxism differ in how

3920-558: The 1970s and 1980s, the RCP called homosexuality "petty bourgeois" and prohibited LGBT people from joining the party. This outlook coexisted with a public line against gay-bashing and attacks on homosexuals by religious bigots and fundamentalists, and was consistent with numerous groups of the New Communist movement and the broader Marxist–Leninist movement of the period. The party's policy against homosexuality ended in 2001. The RCP platform now demands full recognition of LGBT rights as

4032-607: The Albanian communists. Many of these groups such as the Marxist–Leninist Organizing Committee and Sunrise Collective formed together in a joint statement against the end of Chinese aid to Albania. The U.S. Marxist–Leninist Party, previously the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, would become the primary recognized vanguard party in the United States supported by Albania, although Albanian aid to

4144-501: The American communists was minimal due to fears of CIA infiltration. Other groups such as the Red Dawn Organization and Pacific Collective (Marxist–Leninist) would meet with similarly pro-Albania groups in the 1979 in an attempt to unite and form a single communist party. The New Communist Movement as a whole became smaller in the 1980s. The militant May 19th Communist Organization was dissolved. Some organizations dissolved in

4256-791: The Black Panther Party, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the direction of Maoism. The early RU joined with the Revolutionary Youth Movement faction in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in opposing PLP's role in SDS at its national convention in Chicago in 1969. The resulting split led to PLP controlling the SDS name, while RYM split into two factions. The RU organized on a revolutionary anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist and Maoist party line, with emphasis on

4368-624: The Black Power Movement. Many of the early participants in the NCM were former members of the New Left student organization Students for a Democratic Society . The NCM emerged from numerous distinct movements in the United States during the late 1960s, with historian Max Elbaum, identifying Black Panther Party , Students for a Democratic Society , and the Progressive Labor Party . One of

4480-509: The Black liberation struggle and the liberation of all colonized peoples in and outside the United States. This political philosophy was elaborated in the 1969 pamphlet The Red Papers (later known as Red Papers I, after subsequent publications). In 1971, Franklin led a more militant faction of BARU out of the organization to join Venceremos . The RU continued to expand, uniting collectives across

4592-414: The Chinese intelligentsia. The Russian Revolution elicited great interest among Chinese intellectuals, although the socialist revolution in China was not considered a viable option until after the 4 May Incident. Afterward, "[t]o become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present." Immediately following

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4704-697: The Communist Party's Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China . The Resolution assesses the legacy of the Mao era, describing Mao as first among equals in the development of Mao Zedong Thought before 1949 and deeming Mao Zedong Thought as successful in establishing national independence, transforming China's social classes,

4816-411: The Communist Party's Constitution as Deng Xiaoping abolished most Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology called " socialism with Chinese characteristics ". Shortly after Mao died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping initiated socialist market reforms in 1978, thereby beginning the radical change in Mao's ideology in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although Mao Zedong Thought nominally remains

4928-779: The Great Leap Forward, the Anti-rightist movement of the 1950s, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-1970s . The social upheavals that occurred from the New Culture Movement - as well as the May Fourth Movement that followed it - largely focused around the dismantling of traditional Han Chinese cultural norms in which the majority of the populace were illiterate and largely uneducated. This consequence of this social dynamic

5040-399: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), was formed by factory workers rather than student activists. The AFL–CIO leadership supported the Vietnam War and sought to avoid strikes, but union workers saw through this and independently organized a series of wildcat strikes . Radical Marxist and other African-American auto workers subsequently formed DRUM. From 1968 to 1971 DRUM and

5152-432: The May Day demonstrations, RCP member Damian Garcia and two others climbed the Alamo , tearing down the American flag from its pole, and raising the Red Flag in its place before being arrested. Shortly thereafter, on April 22, Garcia was stabbed to death while organizing in a Los Angeles housing project . At the time, police said that Garcia's murderer was gang-affiliated, while RCP insisted that he had been assassinated by

5264-411: The PLA sought to restrain the mass organizations that had developed during the early phase of the Cultural Revolution, and began reframing the movement as one to study Mao Zedong Thought rather than using it as a guide to immediate action. Mao drew from the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels , and Vladimir Lenin in elaborating his theory. Philosophically, his most important reflections emerge on

5376-637: The RCP and Refuse Fascism were organizing a military overthrow of the government on November 4, 2017. Several nationwide anti-Trump protest marches were organized for that day, numbering in the thousands. Refuse Fascism protesters were arrested in September 2017 after blocking four lanes of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles during rush hour, to "sound the alarm about fascism." RCP supporters Michael Slate and Sunsara Taylor have regularly aired shows on radio networks KPFK and WBAI , respectively, where they discuss news and politics with guests. RCP branches opened Revolution Books stores in major U.S. cities and became

5488-456: The RCP had incited violence toward police. RCP members handed out fliers outside the San Diego Levi's Stadium in support of Colin Kaepernick and NFL protests of the U.S. national anthem . In December 2016, in response to the election of Donald Trump , the RCP helped initiate and lead the ad-hoc coalition Refuse Fascism , which had as its goal the prevention of Trump's inauguration through mass political protest and civil disobedience. After

5600-432: The RCP organized a demonstration in Chicago's Daley Plaza on the 23rd Annual "National Day of Protest to STOP Police Brutality," in response to the police murder of Laquan McDonald and other black youth. During the Q&A at a February 2019 event at USC , RCP supporters sparked controversy after criticizing speaker Amanda Nguyen 's work in the U.S. government during the War on Terror . In March 2019, police detained

5712-416: The RCP staged flag burnings at the U.S.–Mexico border and the White House, the latter being a demonstration against the " Salute to America " military parade, which resulted in two RCP supporters being attacked by the Proud Boys and arrested by Secret Service officers. The RCP originated as a Maoist political organization with roots in the New Left of the 1970s. In the 1990s, its political ideology

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5824-426: The RU became a popular faction within the VVAW, and RU members gained influential positions in the VVAW, including in the national council. This reached its peak in 1975, when the RU-controlled national office voted to remove members, expel chapters and place the organization into ideological uniformity. They later voted to dissolve themselves into the Revolutionary Union. A reconstituted group of non-Marxist members of

5936-438: The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). After the death of Mao in 1976, the RCP split, with about 40% of its membership leaving, over which position to take in relation to the new Chinese leadership. Avakian led the majority of the party that rejected what it analyzed as a counterrevolutionary coup against Mao's allies . After this split, Avakian wrote and published the book Mao Tsetung's Immortal Contributions , which summarizes

6048-488: The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA now demands full recognition of LGBT rights as a fundamental element of establishing socialism. Maoism Maoism , officially Mao Zedong Thought , is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China . A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism

6160-410: The Soviet Union was similar to the New Culture and May Fourth movements experienced by China in that it also placed a great importance on mass education and the normalisation of challenging of traditional cultural norms in the realising of a socialist society. However, the movements occurring in the Soviet Union had a far more adversarial mindset towards proponents of traditional values, with leadership in

6272-422: The Soviet approach. Beginning in the Yan'an period, Mao Zedong Thought became the ideological guide for developing revolutionary culture and a long-term social movement. Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory. He continued to emphasise theory as practice-oriented knowledge. The most crucial topic of

6384-424: The United States. These organizations addressed problems of sexism and racism , partly by voicing adamant support for self-determination and identity politics , and felt that they were dealing with problems they were of the opinion had not been addressed in the groups of the 1960s. However, different NCM groups came to this similar conclusion via quite different routes. In its early years, NCM organisations formed

6496-435: The Versailles Treaty's concessions to Japan. The protest turned violent as protesters began attacking the homes and offices of ministers who were seen as cooperating with or being in the direct pay of the Japanese. The popular movement which followed "catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant." Another international event would have a significant impact not only on Mao but also on

6608-412: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War filed and won a lawsuit prohibiting the RU-dominated group from using the VVAW name, logos and materials. Deep animosity persists between the two organizations. The RU organization was renamed Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist (VVAW-AI). In September 1975, after the integration of the Revolutionary Union's faction of the VVAW, RU reconstituted itself as

6720-470: The area. The march was a part of that larger effort. The Greensboro city police department had an informant within the KKK and ANP group who notified them that the Klan was prepared for armed violence. The Rainbow Coalition was a multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969 in Chicago , Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party , along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and Jose Cha Cha Jimenez founder of

6832-441: The arts centered around a positive socialist-light." New Communist movement Until the 1960s the largest and most influential organization to the left of the Democratic Party within the United States was the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA), which achieved peak influence during the Great Depression and World War II , before declining in the post war years due to a number of factors, including state-repression ( McCarthyism ,

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6944-425: The beginning of the destruction of the gentry as a social class in China. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 marked the final failure of the Confucian moral order, and it did much to make Confucianism synonymous with political and social conservatism in the minds of Chinese intellectuals. This association of conservatism and Confucianism lent to the iconoclastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during

7056-464: The capitalist system with a socialist system aiming for communism worldwide. Its goal is not to "make America socialist" but instead "a world without America and everything it stands for." Since the 2000s, Avakian's "new communism" is the RCP's ideological framework, which it considers a scientific advancement of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism. Before that, the party was a founding member of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement . The RCP began developing

7168-496: The cause of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought. The third camp sided with the Albanians in denouncing the Three Worlds Theory of the CCP (see the Sino-Albanian split ). The pro-Albanian camp would start to function as an international group as well (led by Enver Hoxha and the APL ) and was also able to amalgamate many of the communist groups in Latin America , including the Communist Party of Brazil . Later, Latin American Communists, such as Peru's Shining Path , also embraced

7280-437: The cities from the countryside". Maoism views the industrial-rural divide as a major division exploited by capitalism, identifying capitalism as involving industrial urban developed First World societies ruling over rural developing Third World societies. Maoism identifies peasant insurgencies in particular national contexts as part of a context of world revolution, in which Maoism views the global countryside as overwhelming

7392-423: The communists". Holding that " political power grows out of the barrel of a gun ", Maoism emphasises the "revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against the exploiting classes and their state structures", which Mao termed a " people's war ". Mobilizing large parts of rural populations to revolt against established institutions by engaging in guerrilla warfare , Maoist Thought focuses on "surrounding

7504-440: The concept of "contradiction" ( maodun ). In two major essays, On Contradiction and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People , he adopts the idea that contradiction is present in matter itself and thus also in the ideas of the brain. Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction: "The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine

7616-401: The country and becoming a national organization with the long-term goal to form a new communist party . The new nationwide structure induced BARU to change its name to simply the Revolutionary Union (RU). Avakian was elected to the central committee of the RU shortly thereafter. The RCP claims that of the various groups coming out of SDS, it was the first to seriously attempt to develop itself at

7728-464: The development of Mao Zedong Thought is best viewed as the result of Mao's mutual interpretation of these concepts producing Mao's view of theory and revolutionary practice. Mao Zedong Thought asserts that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the CCP itself. Maoism provided the CCP's first comprehensive theoretical guideline regarding how to continue

7840-479: The development of economic self-sufficiency, the expansion of education and health care, and China's leadership role in the Third World. The Resolution describes setbacks during the period 1957 to 1964 (although it generally affirms this period) and major mistakes beginning in 1965. The Resolution describes upholding the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism as among the Communist Party's cardinal principles. Contemporary Maoists in China criticise

7952-404: The developments of Maoism . In January 1979, Avakian and 78 other Party members and supporters were arrested and charged with various crimes in connection to a militant protest against Deng Xiaoping 's visit to the White House. Seventeen demonstrators, including Avakian, were charged with multiple felonies that carried a combined sentence of up to 241 years. After the RCP and its supporters waged

8064-479: The devolution of socialism in the contemporary Soviet Union. Similar to the New Left's general direction in the late 1960s, these new organizations rejected the post-1956 Communist Party USA as revisionist , or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected Trotskyism and the Socialist Workers Party for its theoretical opposition to Maoism. The groups, formed of ex-students, attempted to establish links with

8176-572: The early 1980s, such as the Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) . The Revolutionary Communist Party USA remains as an original product of the New Left. The Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and Proletarian Unity League joined forces to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in 1985, and various other new communist movement collectives and organizations later merged into FRSO. Subsequently, in 1999, FRSO split into two organizations, both of which until 2019 continued to use

8288-768: The established civil rights organizations , including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Southern Conference Educational Fund , which had been under the influence of the Moscow-oriented Communist Party USA . In late 1975 they organized a "National Fight Back Conference," which drew 1,000 participants and was attended by representatives of the August 29th Movement , the Congress of Afrikan People and

8400-565: The first decades of the 20th century. Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture Movement , which occurred between 1915 and 1919. Proposing the "total destruction of the traditions and values of the past", the New Culture Movement, spearheaded by the New Youth , a periodical published by Chen Duxiu, profoundly influenced the young Mao Zedong, whose first published work appeared in

8512-484: The global cities. Due to this imperialism by the capitalist urban First World toward the rural Third World, Maoism has endorsed national liberation movements in the Third World. Building on the theory of the vanguard party by Vladimir Lenin , the theory of the mass line outlines a strategy for the revolutionary leadership of the masses, consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat , and strengthening of

8624-444: The government, with the goal of reinstating traditionalism and capitalism in China. Leaning more on the example of the Soviet Union, which involved the silencing and subjugation of adversarial political forces to help bring about a cultural change, Mao called for his followers to speak openly and critically about revisionist forces that they were observing in society and to expel them, assuring them that their actions would be endorsed by

8736-470: The inauguration, the organization adjusted to a mission of launching sustained mass protests aimed at forcing the removal of the Trump administration before the scheduled election of 2020. In July 2018, Refuse Fascism and RCP organized 100 handmaids to protest U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in New York City, saying "[he] is a Christian fascist theocrat for whom the handmaid's tale is a model." In October 2018,

8848-473: The international Maoist movement evolved out of the second camp—the parties that opposed Deng and said they upheld the true legacy of Mao. The theory of the New Democracy was known to the Chinese revolutionaries from the late 1940s. This thesis held that for most people, the "long road to socialism " could only be opened by a "national, popular, democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution, run by

8960-589: The league acted as a dual union , with black leadership, within the United Auto Workers . In the late 1970s a group labeled the May 19th Communist Organization was created, going on a bombing campaign. In 1979, after the publishing of Enver Hoxha's Imperialism and the Revolution and other criticisms of Maoism from Albania, some groups renounced Maoism in favour of an "orthodox Marxist–Leninist" line similar to that of

9072-430: The left, in organized labor, and in protest movements have called RCP a cult. In 2016, former USLAW national coordinator Michael Eisenscher called RCP primarily "a cult around Avakian". In June 2022, a coalition of 23 abortion rights, feminist, and mutual-aid groups released a statement denouncing RCP and the affiliated organization Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights , including a description of RCP as a cult. RCP members celebrate

9184-466: The magazine's pages. Along with iconoclasm, radical anti-imperialism dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a fierce nationalist fervor which influenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model. Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles , which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused

9296-565: The most prominent groups of the New Communist Movement was the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (later, shortened to Revolutionary Union), formed by activists led by Bob Avakian which gained most of its membership from the Students for a Democratic Society . Its anti-revisionist line emphasized the Black liberation struggle and the liberation of colonized peoples within and outside the United States. They became active in

9408-530: The name Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The groups and individuals representing the movement were persistently hostile towards homosexuality and homosexuals, reflecting both the homophobia within the United States, as well as homophobic tendencies within the larger international Marxist–Leninist movement, although gay rights activism was an early component of the New Left. The Revolutionary Union considered homosexuality as "an individual response to male supremacy and male chauvinism." The successor organization,

9520-412: The organization as a cult of personality around Avakian. RCP publications say that the RCP and Avakian have encouraged controversy and serious debate over their views and a wide range of issues, engaging in numerous debates and polemics, while also taking a strong stand against destructive allegations in place of principled dialogue and building unity for what they term "the emancipation of humanity". In

9632-634: The organization due to Krushchev's perceived revisionism in pursuing the policy of peaceful coexistence with the Capitalist West, which was perceived as a fundamental departure from the revolutionary socialism and anti-imperialist elements of Marxism–Leninism. The New Communist Movement was influenced by world events of the time, specifically the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Chinese Cultural Revolution , The French May-Day Uprising, and

9744-523: The party and that their efforts would in no way be interfered with. This warrant granted to the public ultimately lead to roughly ten years in which those seen as "Revisionist" forces - largely understood to mean landlords, rich peasants, and the so-called "bourgeoise academic" - were publicly criticised and denounced in places of gathering, and in more extreme examples had physical violence inflicted on them, including being beaten, tortured, and/or killed for their perceived crimes. Beginning in 1967, Mao and

9856-471: The party and the building of socialism . The mass line can be summarised as "from the masses, to the masses". It has three components or stages: These three steps should be applied repeatedly, reiteratively uplifting practice and knowledge to higher and higher stages. The theory of cultural revolution - rooted in Marxism-Leninism thought - states that the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of

9968-533: The party taking action to censor and exile these "enemies of change" on over 200 occasions, rather than exclusively putting pressure on these forces by enacting additive social changes such as education campaigns. The most prominent example of a Maoist application of cultural revolution can be seen in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s wherein Mao claimed that "Revisionist" forces had entered society and infiltrated

10080-413: The proletariat do not wipe out bourgeois ideology; the class struggle continues and even intensifies during socialism. Therefore, a constant struggle against bourgeois ideology, traditional cultural values, and the social roots that encourage both of them must be conducted in order to create and maintain a society in which socialism can succeed. Practical examples of this theory's application can be seen in

10192-570: The proletariat is defined and in which political and economic conditions would start a communist revolution . The CCP's ideological framework distinguishes between political ideas described as "Thought" (as in Mao Zedong Thought) or as "Theory" (as in Deng Xiaoping Theory ). Thought carries more weight than Theory and conveys the greater relative importance of a leader's ideological and historical influence. The process of formalizing

10304-457: The rapid social changes underwent by post-revolution Soviet Union in the late 1920s -1930s as well as pre-revolution China in the New Culture and May Fourth movements of the 1910s-1920s. Both of these sociocultural movements can be seen as shaping Maoist theory on the need for and goals of Cultural Revolution, and subsequently the mass cultural movements enacted by the CCP under Mao, which include

10416-459: The rulers must be overthrown by the people; (3) "the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact." These reasons do not provide socioeconomic explanations, which usually form the core of Marxist ideology. In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of Marxist category thought. His writings in this period failed to elaborate on what he meant by

10528-477: The social inequalities created by the revisionist Communist Party. Some Maoists say that Deng's Reform and Opening economic policies that introduced market principles spelled the end of Maoism in China. However, Deng asserted that his reforms were upholding Mao Zedong Thought in accelerating the output of the country's productive forces. A recent example of a Chinese politician regarded as neo-Maoist in terms of political strategies and mass mobilisation via red songs

10640-399: The socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, and socialist military construction and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". While it continues to be lauded to be the major force that defeated "imperialism and feudalism" and created a "New China" by the Chinese Communist Party, the ideology survives only in name on

10752-454: The state ideology, Deng's admonition to " seek truth from facts " means that state policies are judged on their practical consequences, and in many areas, the role of ideology in determining policy has thus been considerably reduced. Deng also separated Mao from Maoism, making it clear that Mao was fallible, and hence the truth of Maoism comes from observing social consequences rather than by using Mao's quotations dogmatically. On June 27, 1981,

10864-653: The state in retaliation for his action at the Alamo. Avakian remarked in his memoir that Garcia's murder was "very clearly tied in with police agents ... it was an attack on our Party." In 1984 Avakian and other members of the RCP co-founded the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), a now-defunct international grouping of Maoist parties, which were united by a founding declaration upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism . Other participating parties in RIM included

10976-410: The tenets of Maoism. The new Chinese leadership showed little interest in the foreign groups supporting Mao's China. Many of the foreign parties that were fraternal parties aligned with the Chinese government before 1975 either disbanded, abandoned the new Chinese government entirely, or even renounced Marxism–Leninism and developed into non-communist, social democratic parties. What is today called

11088-489: The theoretical level, with the publication of Red Papers 1 . In 1974, RU started publication of its newspaper Revolution (renamed Revolutionary Worker, and adopting a weekly format in 1979). In 1973, the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) entered into reforms after the end of the Vietnam War , including an explicitly anti-imperialist stance and opening its membership to civilians. During this period,

11200-452: The theory he delved into was in connection with the Cheng Feng movement of 1942. Here, Mao summarised the correlation between Marxist theory and Chinese practice: "The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism–Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution and the revolution of the east." The only new emphasis

11312-495: The theory of Georgy Plekhanov and framing the development of a cult as a scientific organizational strategy, Avakian was put forward as a larger-than-life figure to revitalize the group. Members of both the left and the broader public often see the RCP as a small cult around Avakian. This perception was noted in The Indypendent in 2014, Harper's in 2016, Mic in 2017, and Vice magazine in 2022. Members and groups on

11424-517: The trend, and they attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of Vladimir Lenin , Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin . Maoism was then highly regarded as more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin Soviet Union ( see New Left: New Left in the United States ). As a result, most NCM organizations referred to their ideology as Marxism–Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and rejected what they saw as

11536-520: The two organizations. In September 1975 the RU officially voted to dissolve and reestablish itself into the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA . The Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist)'s predecessor organization, the October League (Marxist–Leninist), was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when SDS split apart in 1969. Michael Klonsky , who had been

11648-421: The urban sphere. Mao's intellectual development can be divided into five significant periods, namely: Marxist thinking employs immanent socioeconomic explanations, whereas Mao's reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would transition from capitalism to communism for three main reasons. (1) the capitalists would not repent and turn towards communism on their own; (2)

11760-694: The working class through finding work in factories and heavy industry, but they also tended toward Third-worldism , supporting National Liberation Fronts of various kinds, including the Black Panther Party (then on the decline), the Cuban Revolution , and the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam . The New Communist Movement organizations supported national self-determination for most ethnic groups, especially blacks and those of Latino origin, in

11872-589: The world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao. From the 1950s until the Chinese economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, Maoism was the political and military ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoist revolutionary movements worldwide. After the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party and

11984-581: Was Bo Xilai in Chongqing . Although Mao Zedong Thought is still listed as one of the Four Cardinal Principles of the People's Republic of China, its historical role has been re-assessed. The Communist Party now says that Maoism was necessary to break China free from its feudal past, but it also says that the actions of Mao led to excesses during the Cultural Revolution. The official view

12096-435: Was Mao's concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: (1) dogmatism , the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; (2) empiricism , excessive dependence on experience. In 1945, the party's first historical resolution put forward Mao Zedong Thought as the party's unified ideology. It was also incorporated into the party's constitution . To Mao, the victory of 1949 was a confirmation of theory and practice. "Optimism

12208-522: Was Marxism–Leninism–Maoism. Today, the framework for its political ideology is Avakian's "New Synthesis" (or "New Communism"), which it sees as an advancement of revolutionary theory; this has been debated among Maoists internationally, most of whom do not take it seriously. The RCP is atheist and claim to stress the scientific method . RCP leadership says "the system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown," and does not participate in charity or elections, instead organizing for total revolution, to replace

12320-451: Was apparent in his pamphlet Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War (December 1936). This pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice. Mao started to separate from the Soviet model since it was not automatically applicable to China. China's unique set of historical circumstances demanded a correspondingly unique application of Marxist theory, an application that would have to diverge from

12432-541: Was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CCP. Although the Yan'an period did answer some of the ideological and theoretical questions raised by the Chinese Communist Revolution , it left many crucial questions unresolved, including how the Chinese Communist Party was supposed to launch a socialist revolution while wholly separated from

12544-680: Was that political and economic power largely resided in the hands of a small group of educated elites, and Han Chinese culture formed around principles of respect and reverence for these educated and powerful authority figures. The aforementioned movements sought to combat these social norms through grassroots educational campaigns which were focused primarily around giving educational opportunities towards to people from traditionally uneducated families and normalising all people to be comfortable making challenges towards traditional figures of authority in Confucian society. The cultural revolution experienced by

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