Maoism in the Developed World

The CPM-L’s complete endorsement of the post-Mao leadership in China was evident at the time of the Chinese Party’s Eleventh Congress in August 1977. At that time, the CPM-L periodical The Call carried a front page article, “Victory and Unity at Eleventh Congress, China’s New Leap Forward.” It said that “the eleventh party congress is clearly a major development in the Chinese revolution and its decisions will be warmly supported by people all over the world. The utter repudiation of the ‘gang of four’ and the defeat of their efforts to make a counter-revolution in China are victories which belong to the revolutionary movement internally, because the cause of socialism has been advanced and the danger of capitalist restoration has been checked.“[74]

The CPM-L strongly attacked the Soviet invasion of Aighanistan. The January 7, 1980 issue of its party paper commented that “the strategic Russian plan for global domination … was brought closer to fruition when Soviet troops marched into Kabul.“ The CPM-L even attacked “The continuing compromise and vacillation of the U.S. imperialists in response to Soviet expansionism,” which was “evident in what Carter could have, but did not do, following the invasion.” It called for the Carter administration to “give direct aid to the Afghan rebels,” end its “ban on sales of sophisticated arms to China for that nation’s self-defense,” and impose a “total embargo of all strategic materials trade with the USSR.”[75]

The CPM-L also used the “Mariel” mass exodus from Cuba early in 1980 to attack the Soviet Union and its allies. It “viewed the mass departures from Cuba as further confirmation of the counter-revolutionary nature of the Soviet Union. By ‘mortgaging the Cuban revolution to Moscow,’ it charges, Castro was guilty of a ‘monumental betrayal’ Cubans were leaving their country, explained the party’s weekly, The Call … because the revolution had been betrayed.”[76]

After severe internal struggles, the CPM-L disappeared by the mid-1980s.[77]

Other Maoist Groups

There were several other groups, particularly originating with ethnically or racially based segments of the New Left that appeared in the 1970s which proclaimed themselves Maoists. Some of these supported the post-Mao regime in China and others proclaimed their adhesion to the Gang of Four. None of these received any kind of official recognition from the Chinese party or regime.

Among those which supported the post-Mao Chinese leadership was the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse-tung Thought). It was led by Amiri Baraka (the former Leroy Jones) and came out of the African Liberation Support Committee, organized in 1972 as a student group to support the liberation struggles in Africa.[78] From this there emerged under Baraka’s leadership the Congress of African People, which put particular stress on Black cultural nationalism. However, in February 1976 this group was converted into the Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M).[79]

The conversion of the Baraka group to Maoism was quite sudden. One leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party recalled attending a meeting at which the Baraka people spoke out strongly against the Maoist allegiance of the RCP; but when the meeting was resumed a week later, the Baraka representative suddenly proclaimed allegiance to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and asked the RCP representative for advice on what to read on the subject of Maoism.[80]

The Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M) proclaimed that Mao Tse-tung Thought was “the acme of Marxism-Leninism in the present era,” to be used in “struggles in all countries against imperialism, Soviet Social Imperialism, Modern Revisionism and all reaction.”[81]

It also said that “we recognize the 3 strategic tasks which must be accomplished if we are to make proletarian revolution in the U.S.A.: 1) Building a Vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party; 2) Building the United Front; 3) Armed Struggle.”[82]

Early in 1980, the Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M) merged into the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L) or LRS (M-L). That group had been set up in September 1978 by a merger of the August Twenty-ninth Movement, of Chicano origin, and the I Wor Kuen, an “Asian national movement.” The LRS (M-L) had proclaimed that The central task of the League is party building. The League will do its utmost to contribute to developing the conditions for the formation of a single, unified communist party in the U.S.”[83]

The LRS (M-L) absorbed several other radical racial or ethnic groups. These included the Seize the Time Collective, consisting of Chicano and Black elements in the San Francisco area, and the East Wind Collective, mainly made up of Japanese Americans in and around Los Angeles.[84]