Maoist Orgs in US

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I would like to get into contact with some Maoist organizations and check them out as a part of my overall effort of research. Could you peoples please help me out? I want serious groups and active groups not just internet websites and zines. From what I've been reading, Maoism has had a lot of influence on the American Left so I assume it can't be too hard.

[Zoroaster]

Some links:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Road_Socialist_Organization

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA

All I could find.

[Deep Sea]

You might want to read Maoism in the Developed World (http://www.docdroid.net/g104/maoism-in-the-developed-world-0275961486.pdf.html) by Robert J. Alexander.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Some links:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Road_Socialist_Organization

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA

All I could find.

Yeah I've been looking into these. Idkk

[edwad]

there are actually 2 freedom road organizations so if you don't like one then look into the other, although i think they're roughly the same. they just split a few years back.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Please ignore the two above suggestions, the RCP USA has officially renounced Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in favor of the new synthesis and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in both of it's flavors have high opinions of Mao in the same way that Deng does, but neither groups have anything to do with the political tradition of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. If you are looking for a MLM organization in the U.S all I am aware of is the Maoist Communist Group which is the rump of the now defunct NCP(OC) after the MCG faction expelled the remainder of the organization for smoking weed amongst other concerns and doesn't do much outside of its (very praiseworthy) prison work. The NCP(LC) which was formed from the expelled faction and is the majority of the former NCP(OC). The party organization itself is very small but it's primarily active through it's mass organizations such as the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee and the Progressive Youth Organization amongst others.

[VivalaCuarta]

After shilling for Nixon, NATO and Pinochet where are the Maoists going next?

[cobrawolf_meiji]

My own small party, The Maoist Party of America (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1183) is one of the Maoist groups in the US:)

[RedHal]

After shilling for Nixon, NATO and Pinochet where are the Maoists going next?

I don't know, maybe being the only force capable of defending the most oppressed masses in the Phillipines and India? But I guess if they're not trendy middle class college trots, they don't matter... I don't know of any decent Maoists groups left in the US, the RCPUSA has degenerated into a cult around Avakian, and the splinter Kasama group has not progressed beyond a web blog. The only decent western Maoists group is the RCP (Canada), despite their name, they have no association with the RCPUSA and are hostile to the Avakian cult. http://www.pcr-rcp.ca/en/

[RedHal]

My own small party, The Maoist Party of America (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1183) is one of the Maoist groups in the US:)

aren't you some kind of weird dengist? I'm surprised you're still around peddling your GI JOE Maoist group

[Tim Cornelis]

My own small party, The Maoist Party of America (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1183) is one of the Maoist groups in the US:)

I'm sorry but this reeks of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game

[Art Vandelay]

The only decent western Maoists group is the RCP (Canada)

The RCP (Canada) calls for PPW in the first world. Hardly what I would call 'decent,' more like insane.

[Tim Cornelis]

^Decent by Maoist standards, insane by normal ones. Heeeyòòh.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The RCP (Canada) calls for PPW in the first world. Hardly what I would call 'decent,' more like insane.

The way you put that makes it sound like they're advocating taking up arms immediately: they're not. They see PPW (as implied by "protracted") as (part of) a long-game strategy for defeating the Canadian state.
The "insane" part of the left in Canada is the majority who think that there's no point in taking a serious strategic look at how to win. I don't share the RCP's strategy, but at least they have one.
As for what they're up to in the short term, their mass work (the Proletarian Feminist Front, the Revolutionary Student Movement, etc.) is actually pretty decent.
As far as I'm concerned, the PCR (most of us in know them by their French acronym, which is also useful as it prevents confusion with the Avakianites) are some of the only serious committed revolutionaries in the country. And I'm saying this as an anarchist, who has some key points of disagreement with them.

[Alexios]

The way you put that makes it sound like they're advocating taking up arms immediately: they're not.
That's not the way he put it, though. It's bonkers any way you look at it.



They see PPW (as implied by "protracted") as (part of) a long-game strategy for defeating the Canadian state.PPW is a strategy for agrarian economies, and we can debate the validity of it even in that context, but proposing it for an industrialized, urban nation like Canada is ridiculous. How such a movement would even start is beyond me.


The "insane" part of the left in Canada is the majority who think that there's no point in taking a serious strategic look at how to win. I don't share the RCP's strategy, but at least they have one.This is stupid. Most other leftists have their own strategies; even 'ultra-left' groups like the Sparts can possibly be said to have strategies. It seems that you're railing against an imagined enemy here.


As far as I'm concerned, the PCR (most of us in know them by their French acronym, which is also useful as it prevents confusion with the Avakianites) are some of the only serious committed revolutionaries in the country. And I'm saying this as an anarchist, who has some key points of disagreement with them.I doubt it. What are your disagreements with them, specifically? I see leftists do this all the time without actually explaining where the disagreement lies - sort of like Ortho Trots who shill for Stalinism constantly while still claiming that they're against it.

[Art Vandelay]

The way you put that makes it sound like they're advocating taking up arms immediately: they're not. They see PPW (as implied by "protracted") as (part of) a long-game strategy for defeating the Canadian state.

I suppose if you choose to read that into it, that's your prerogative, but that's not what I said. I'm not sure how you read my post and came away thinking that I was claiming the RCP advocates taking up arms immediately. Regardless my point stands, advocating PPW in the 1st world is tantamount to insanity.


The "insane" part of the left in Canada is the majority who think that there's no point in taking a serious strategic look at how to win. I don't share the RCP's strategy, but at least they have one.

Sure, if you think the RCP's strategy of urban guerilla warfare has any potential as a vehicle for the revolutionary transformation of society, then yeah they have quite the 'strategy' on their hands. Regardless, your characterization of the rest of the Canadian left as having no serious strategic outlook on how to win, is simply dishonest.


As for what they're up to in the short term, their mass work (the Proletarian Feminist Front, the Revolutionary Student Movement, etc.) is actually pretty decent.

This I have no problem conceding. They have done some solid work from what I have read. This however does not make up for the glaring faults with the organization.


As far as I'm concerned, the PCR (most of us in know them by their French acronym, which is also useful as it prevents confusion with the Avakianites) are some of the only serious committed revolutionaries in the country. And I'm saying this as an anarchist, who has some key points of disagreement with them.


Some of the only serious revolutionaries in the country? Thanks for the laugh. This is actually quite telling, as to what you consider a 'serious revolutionary.' Hell I have problems and disagreements with all of the left in Canada (my own organization included), but to call the RCP some of the only serious revolutionaries is ridiculous. The RCP, like all Maoist organizations, fail to grasp one of the most elementary tenets of Marxism. The proletariat's political power doesn't 'grow from the barrel of a gun,' but from their collective relationship to the means of production.

[Grenzer]

The way you put that makes it sound like they're advocating taking up arms immediately: they're not. They see PPW (as implied by "protracted") as (part of) a long-game strategy for defeating the Canadian state.
The "insane" part of the left in Canada is the majority who think that there's no point in taking a serious strategic look at how to win. I don't share the RCP's strategy, but at least they have one.
As for what they're up to in the short term, their mass work (the Proletarian Feminist Front, the Revolutionary Student Movement, etc.) is actually pretty decent.
As far as I'm concerned, the PCR (most of us in know them by their French acronym, which is also useful as it prevents confusion with the Avakianites) are some of the only serious committed revolutionaries in the country. And I'm saying this as an anarchist, who has some key points of disagreement with them.

I think you are deliberately missing the point if you are characterizing Old Bull Lee's opinion of PPW as an opposition to an attempt to formulate strategy. There's nothing he said, here or in any other post, to imply that in the slightest. It's very dishonest to say otherwise, but this should come as no surprise. Your fetish for Maoism comes from your obsession with the aesthetics of voluntarism and the activist lifestyle.

I can't speak for him, but I imagine that his opposition to PPW stems from the fact that it is a strategy(which had little enough in common with a genuine proletarian political strategy form the outset) formulated from the context of early 20th century China being mechanistically applied to every other situation regardless of how it differs. Western Maoism, just as with the bulk of middle class leftism, can never take any form other than the classic leftist cult, locked in time, incapable of grasping the reality of any situation.

They're committed revolutionaries. Sure, if your idea of being a revolutionary involves. singing paeans to the old gods, parachuting impotently from one movement to the next. You're seriously delusional if you think these people have any capability to effect political change in the long run.

There are no revolutionaries today, if we are to understand revolution as the politically transformative act in which the rule of one class is supplanted with the rule of another, as no revolutionaries could possibly exist divorced from this act or the movement by which this act is effected. It is the peak of absurdity to try to claim the mantle of revolution in the present situation. Any attempt to do so amounts to nothing more than infantile posturing.

For any serious-minded person, activism is a means to an end; to you, it's an end itself. Of course you're just going to straight back to waving your fliers, attending your meetings, and pretending that somehow any of this quixotic nonsense has something to do with political change.

Your conception of what politics are and how political change will be achieved is a joke, any criticism of which you hand wave away with third rate sophistry or shallow appeals to mindless activism. It speaks volumes of your bankruptcy that you claim Maoism is somehow paying attention to merely because it offers a perspective. Merit is derived through the lucidity and efficacy of its political program, the quality and depth of its analysis, and its basis in the proletarian class. On this basis, Maoism, along with the entirety of the old left, comes up entirely empty.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

There is really nothing in the way of serious Maoist organizations in the United States. Really, when you boil it down, you have two options: Left-Maoism as offered by the Pan-Leftist Kasama Project OR, one of the (Right-wing Maoist) New Communist Party groups (either the MCG or the NCP-LC). There are numerous small (by Leftist standards) outfits but these are suspect and I would caution against joining any so small group unless you are willing to take it from the ground up and really commit. In short: your options are limited.

[Sasha]

yeah if you are into maoism try and take the kasama project further while reading about french ultra-left maoism/la gauche prolatariane, the rest is really a waste of time...

[Roach]

The way you put that makes it sound like they're advocating taking up arms immediately: they're not. They see PPW (as implied by "protracted") as (part of) a long-game strategy for defeating the Canadian state.
The "insane" part of the left in Canada is the majority who think that there's no point in taking a serious strategic look at how to win. I don't share the RCP's strategy, but at least they have one.
As for what they're up to in the short term, their mass work (the Proletarian Feminist Front, the Revolutionary Student Movement, etc.) is actually pretty decent.
As far as I'm concerned, the PCR (most of us in know them by their French acronym, which is also useful as it prevents confusion with the Avakianites) are some of the only serious committed revolutionaries in the country. And I'm saying this as an anarchist, who has some key points of disagreement with them.

This is a common trend over the world, where anarchists and maoists in urban centers work together for an actual militant and fighting left, whereas revisionists and opportunists further dwelve into their own rotten academicism and reformism. The fact that the PCR-RCP has been able to earn the respect of those with a completely different political tendency just shows how solid and serious they are. Just to further prove that, the RCP-PCR realeses statements with organizations on terrorist watch lists (TKP-ML, PCE-Red Sun) and that, while security wise doesn't seem very smart, shows much commitment to the cause on PCR-RCP side, and a lot of respect to that organization on the side of the TKP-ML, the Red Sun, the New Democratic Association of Peru, etc all of which have huge political and security standarts for that kind of thing. Also the rather vague and generic, mostly theoretical approach of the PCR-RCP on the people's war is expected, I mean I actually would be more suspect of them if they puted those things more cleary on paper.


PCR-RCP follows the line Maoism that was developed by the RIM in the 90s that considers that the main point of wheater an organization is Maoist or not is the acceptance and adoption of the People's War strategy, thus being able to unify the Maoism of Kaypakkaya, Gonzalo, and the Naxalites into one single camp as opposed to two others, the more common in the 60s position of making the Cultural Revolution as the turning point of Maoism, as it is done by the RCPUSA, Kasama, the PCR of Argentina and other mostly first world or urban Maoist organizations and the more conservative Marxist-Leninist Mao Tse Tung Thought which is very vague in its differanciation with common Marxism-Leninism, bordering close similarities with Enver Hoxha's thought.