First Published: Kasama, April 4, 2008.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Linda D wrote a response to Andrei’s “It’s a Sin” (a discussion of why he left the RCP’s youth organization RCYB). In the course of that, Linda discusses episodes in RCP party history that have similarities to the RCP’s current, recent, final turn toward fantasy and self-isolation. Here are some notes of my own.
I think there is some value in studying the RCP in 1980 for its early signs of voluntarism. (And meanwhile, I need to insert some corrections where Linda’s memory of line struggles seems to get it wrong.)
By the late 1970s, the RCP had lost those forces committed to “economic struggle of the workers as the center of gravity” (Those leaving in the split went on to briefly form the “Revolutionary Workers Headquarters” and then largely fade as an organized force, including within the trade union movement.)
As a replacement strategy, Avakian envisioned a series of “bold” campaigns around explicitly revolutionary politics that would rapidly attract and rally forces interested in revolution – and jell them into a force around the RCP.
First came the Deng demo in DC where hundreds of revolutionaries faced off with police to create an international incident – as Deng Xiaoping sought to cement a military alliance with the U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Then forces were gathered from around the country to Washington DC for May First 1979 – where the focus of events was a major speech by Avakian that climaxed by calling for a one year campaign for a Revolutionary May Day 1980 – where thousands of people would be called into the streets in a historic outpouring of revolutionary sentiment. (described by Avakian in his memoir page 381)
As charges came down on Avakian there was a major political defense campaign – that led to the “Turn DC upside Down” effort (Fall 1979) – where revolutionary volunteers organized in DC neighborhoods to create a climate supportive of Avakian and the other Mao Defendants, as the court cases went forward there.
Then as January 1980 arrived, May Day Brigades fanned out across the country, holding highly aggressive actions at factories and neighborhoods, calling people to step out and build for May Day 1980. Many communists quit their jobs. Often there were sharp confrontations. A line came to the fore (including in the party press) of confronting backward workers as “flag-suckers,” “reactionary trolls,” etc, while calling on the advanced to “take history into our hands.” etc. These tactics led to large numbers of arrests – in the hundreds certainly, and perhaps over a thousand, as RCP supporters “stepped out” as models for others, and were arrested over and over. There was intense activity in many places as the RCP threw everything it had into the effort.
And in a number of spectacular events, the campaign also made its way into national coverage. In one event, a crew scaled the Alamo and put up the red flag. In another, a May Day brigade was run into hiding by a reactionary mobs in Beckley, West Virginia (one article appeared in the National Enquirer).
At a certain point, sharp conflict started to unfold within the RCP, and between local party organization and the May Day brigades. Some people were summing up that the whole campaign was not going to reach its goals, others were questioning the “war communism” atmosphere and the political costs of the arrests and confrontational tactics. They became targets of forces who claimed their doubts and line was to blame for the looming failure.
At a certain point, a line came to the fore that argued that the main obstacle and problem in the May Day 1980 campaign was the opposition by “rightists” within the party. And a “farrago” erupted (farrago mean a “mish mash” of things, but in party jargon it meant a big blowup). This farrago was a vicious turning inward – the launching of a “war on the right” within the movement for May Day 1980, that involved “pulling out rightists” (including leaders) for public criticism (not only in party meetings but in public meetings that included non-member activists .) This was, in other words, not something from the RCP’s internal life but something that spilled out into public view, and drew non-party people into itself.
Part of this heated mood was to insist that there was a small hard core within the communist movement that was especially loyal to Bob Avakian (”Us and the chairman”), and that the party structure and leadership was, in many places, standing exposed as opposing to Avakian’s big plan.
This farrago (this “war on the right”) almost pulled the party apart. The campaign for May Day 1980 was suddenly in danger of collapsing into a public and embarrassing free-for-all. And Avakian angrily called the farrago off – saying that it ran counter to the plans for a successful May Day event and that it had not been authorized.
Before May Day, one party member, Damian Garcia, was coldly murdered in Los Angeles under very suspicious circumstances – Damian had been one of the activists who had seized the Alamo shortly before, and he was knifed in an LA housing project agitating for May Day 1980. There was evidence that a police agent was there at the scene, and RCP has always, justifiably, demanded investigations of police involvement in this killing.
On May Day 1980 itself, there were a number of sizable demonstrations (though no where were they on the scale imagined). In some places the movement was suppressed by police and reactionary mobs – and driven from the streets.
In a number of areas, the RCP lost membership – for example these events essentially marked the end of the RCP’s organization in the West Virginia coalfields.
It was overall a very politically-expensive experiment. Avakian’s plan had overestimated the ability to gather spontaneously revolutionary forces in the population. He had overestimated the ability to spark a revolutionary movement using the hyper-activity of a solid core. The party had gone over to attacking (and being attacked by) the more backward sections of people (outside factories and in a number of communities). The whole thing had come close to shattering the party in mutual recriminations. And, in the end, it was quite simply a spectacular failure (on its own terms and goals).
The RCP was never able (or willing) to make a public (unified!) summation of the whole 1980 May Day event, though Avakian’s personal summation is offered in his memoir. (p 381-2) Avakian acknowledges that “Although we mobilized thousands, we fell short of our goal of bringing out ten thousand or more, and we had put a lot of work into this.” He remarks out of this that it showed a shortcoming of strategic understanding – and mainly that the RCP needed to focus and base itself “mainly and most essentially among the lower and deeper sections of the proletariat.”
This summation is (to say the least) rather shallow and un-self-critical – and misses huge current of manic hype and self-deluding fantasy that played an important role in the whole project.
In the period that followed, there were a series of other, similar attempts at “bold” campaigns – including trying grow the readership of the party’s press from 15,000 to 100,000 in one intense outreach campaign. It too failed after intense hype, massive intensity of the core, and insistence that it was possible. Then to deal with financial crisis, there was a “million dollar fund-raising” campaign and so on...
After this series of failures, the party settled into a different groove – the kind of organizing work along major political fault lines and in proletarian communities that is now (generally but quietly) associated with “the revisionist package.”
* * *
One relevance of all this is that it is so similar in line and texture to the RCP’s politics of the last years. In the wake of a new period of inner party struggle, Avakian has again initiated a program of “bold” campaigns – to start to topple the government through the campaign to drive out the Bush regime and to rally people directly to communism (and to himself personally) using book promotion, DVD showings, synthesis events, half-million-dollar fundraising and more.
There is a familiar voluntarism, a familiar shrillness, a familiar hostility to both the cadre and masses, and similar failure – although now with a much smaller, older, more isolated and jaded core.
It is tempting to say “first time tragedy...”
And there has been a line in all this that is (to me) very reminiscent of the 1980 “farrago” – a line of assuming that the reason fantasy plans have failed, and the party has been withering so badly is because of “rightists” dominating the party apparatus have been opposing Avakian and getting in the way of his plans and methods.
There has been a low-moving farrago – this time with Avakian’s leadership and permission – and with it the familiar political hallmarks: massive hype for impossible plans, blaming of cadre for failure, a viciousness in internal relations, a cultivation of rudeness and elitism with an inner core, a calling out of people accused of forming a “get real” chorus, and targetting of the masses of people for “complicity” when they too don’t take up these plans.