Maoism in the Developed World

In spite of their eulogies for “Mao Tse-tung Thought,” the Progressive Labor Party broke with the source of that “thought” over President Richard Nixon’s trip to China early in 1972 and the rapprochement between the Chinese regime and the United States that it reflected. The PLP’s denunciations of the Chinese leaders become as strident as those they were accustomed to direct toward the leaders of the Soviet party and state.

Topical of the PLP’s repudiation of Mao and the Chinese leadership was an article entitled “Progressive Labor Party says: Nixon-Mao Plot Hurts U.S. & Chinese Workers,” which appeared in March 1972. It said that “A few short years ago, Mao, Chou & Co. were correctly saying that Nixon was ‘worse than Hitler,’ while U.S. bosses called Mao a ‘tyrant.’ Now they are falling into each other’s arms.”

The article continued, “The Chinese opportunists have given Nixon a grandiose welcome as a gauge of the ‘good faith’ they now intend to show toward U.S. imperialism. … They would justify their present actions in this way: ‘The U.S. and Soviet imperialists are our biggest enemies, along with Japan. The Soviets are the worst, because they have an enormous border with us, and because their economic and political power is growing rapidly. U.S. imperialism is weakening internationally in relation to its chief competitors, especially Japan. We have a good opportunity to split the enemy camp by allying with our secondary enemy, the U.S., against our main enemies, the Soviets and Japanese.’”

But PLP didn’t accept this reasoning. It wrote that “In terms of ‘pure’ logic, this argument has a lot going for it—but in class terms, it makes sense only from the point of view of power politics and nationalism—in other words, from a boss’s point of view. Historically, this type of maneuvering has never brought anything but defeat to the working class.”

The PLP drew a parallel between the Mao-Nixon rapprochement and Chinese Communist policy during World War II. The article said that “In China during the 1940s, the same policy the Chinese Communist Party is now applying to U.S. imperialism was applied by Mao to the nationalist bosses led by Chiang Kai-shek. The reasoning; since Japanese imperialists were the ‘main enemy,’ Chiang could be an ally against them. This policy was called New Democracy. It led to deals with ‘patriotic’ landlords, businessmen and bankers and to the creation of a new ‘red’ ruling class that called itself ‘socialist’ but that led the Chinese workers and peasants right back to the mire of capitalist oppression soon after the revolution. Millions in China fought to get rid of this ‘red’ ruling class during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.”

The article continued, “China’s ‘red’ bosses are still in power and are making a deal with U.S. bosses. This is a defeat for workers, oppressed people and revolutionaries around the world. Nothing can come from such a deal except more profits for the bosses and more exploitation for the people. … Workers in the U.S., China and everywhere need revolution. No deal between bosses, no betrayal, no temporary defeat can stop the international working class from fighting for and winning socialism.”[43]

Clearly, from 1972 on, the Progressive Labor Party can no longer be counted as part of International Maoism. After that date, they no longer constitute a part of that schism in the world Communist movement.

U.S. Maoists Originating in the New Left of the 1960s

After the repudiation of Maoism by the Progressive Labor Party, Maoism in the United States was represented by a group of parties which had their origin principally in the New Left of the 1960s. They emerged from the splintering of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), as well as from the Black Nationalists, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and other groups that had constituted the New Left. However, these self-proclaimed Maoists fought extensively among themselves and tended to take different sides as Chinese policies evolved and changed during the 1970s.

Origins Of The Revolutionary Communist Party

The most important and long-lasting of the Maoist groups that emerged from the New Left was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), formally established in 1975. Its origins were principally in the SDS, although it also drew some of its membership and leadership from the ethnically and racially oriented groups that appeared during the late 1960s and early 1970s.