The Communist Workers' Party (CWP) was a far-leftMaoist group in the United States. It had its origin in 1973 as the Asian Study Group (renamed the Workers' Viewpoint Organization in 1976) established by Jerry Tung, a former member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)[2] who had grown disenchanted with the group and disagreed with changes taking place in the party line. The party is mainly remembered as being associated with victims of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979.
The CWP enjoyed some success in textile cities of North Carolina. The new party established branches in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Greensboro, West Virginia, Colorado and other locations. Before forming itself into a party in October 1979 (the founding congress was held in the backroom of a discothèque in New York City), the group was known as the Workers Viewpoint Organization. Under its umbrella, it directed groups as the Revolutionary Youth League, the African Liberation Support Committee, and the Trade Union Education League.
Confrontations with the Ku Klux Klan ("Klan" or "KKK") were particularly acute in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the Klan sought to disrupt the CWP's effort to unionize poor, black mill workers in the Greensboro area. In July 1979, the Klan held a rally and viewing of The Birth of a Nation in China Grove, near Charlotte, which was disrupted by CWP members who burned a Confederate flag and taunted members of the KKK. CWP leader Paul Bermanzohn taunted the Klan in the press, saying "The KKK is one of the most treacherous scum elements produced by the dying system of capitalism" and inviting further confrontation with "We challenge you to attend our rally in Greensboro."
On November 3, 1979, members of the KKK, including a police informant, and the American Nazi Party drove up to the "Death to the Klan" rally organized by the CWP.[4] Members of both the Klan and the CWP were armed, and an exchange of gunfire soon ensued.[citation needed] Four members of the CWP and one rally participant were killed by the KKK.[4] These deaths became known as the "Greensboro Massacre."[4] Two subsequent trials of KKK and ANP members resulted in acquittals.[5] In response to the acquittals of the accused killers, the CWP attempted to storm the 1980 Democratic National Convention and succeeded in setting off firecrackers in Madison Square Garden.[6]
Ideology
From its earliest phase as the Workers' Viewpoint Organization, the CWP had considered itself as Maoist and supported the so-called Gang of Four after Mao's death. Following the line of Mao, it considered the Soviet Union and its bloc as restored capitalist countries. For some time after the arrest of the Gang of Four, the group remained silent about the events in China but later accused China also of having taken the capitalist road.
An article published in the Workers Viewpoint in 1976 criticised a social liberal and libertine view of sexuality as "the bourgeoisie’s attempts to dope us with degenerate culture and fascist ideology." The article opposed pornography as representing anti-woman American bourgeois hedonism (it singled out the film Snuff) and argued that homosexuality "is a form of social sickness, a form of social perversion. It is a form of bourgeois ideology which appeals especially to the petty bourgeoisie because of its appearance as sexual freedom."[7]
In 1980, there was a dramatic reversal of this line. In his book The Socialist Road, CWP Chairman Jerry Tung announced that both the Soviet Union and China were socialist, although an unhealthy bureaucracy had taken shape in the governments of both countries.
Demise
Subsequent to the Greensboro massacre, the group gave up its Leninist structure and moved towards a social democratic formation that would work for peaceful transition to socialism; it dissolved the Communist Workers' Party and formed the New Democratic Movement in 1985. The New Democratic Movement lasted only a few years. The most important remnant of the CWP/NDM can be found in the Greensboro Justice Fund, which continues to this day and promotes groups struggling for social justice.
↑ Kwong, Peter and Dušanka Miščević. Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community. New York: New Press. 2005. ISBN1-56584-962-0. pp. 293-296.
↑ "Maoists Planning Protest". The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina). November 22, 1979. p. 63.
Preliminary Draft on the Asian national question in America: Part 1, The Chinese National Question. n.c.: Asian Study Group, 1973.
Build Marxist-Leninist Leadership of the Women's Movement: Women and Men Unite Against Sexism, Racism, and Imperialism. New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1975.
Eternal Glory to Chairman Mao, Greatest Marxist of the Contemporary Era New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1976.
The African Peoples' Struggle Will Surely Triumph!: Build the Communist Leadership of the African Liberation Support Committee!. New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1977.
Fight for the Real Emancipation of Women!: Smash the Double Yoke of Capitalism and Domestic Slavery = Luchen por la Verdadera Liberación de Mujeres!: Aplaste el Doble Yugo del Capitalismo y Esclavitud Domestica. New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1977.
Communists Should Be the Advanced Elements of the Proletariat. New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1978.
Whip Weber now! New York: Workers Viewpoint Organization, 1979.
Turn the Country Upside Down to Beat Back the Renewed Wave of Attacks from the Capitalists' tools: KKK, Nazis, Pigs, and FBI. New York: Committee to Avenge the Murder of the Communist Workers Party (WV) 5, 1980.
The Current Revolutionary Situation: Our Tasks.Phil Thompson New York: Communist Workers Party, 1980s.
Jerry Tung, The Socialist Road: Character of Revolution in the U.S. and Problems of Socialism in the Soviet Union and China. New York: Cesar Cauce Publishers, 1981.
The Afro-American National Question. New York: The Party, 1981.
Scott Van Valkenburg, Central America: Communist Threat? New York: Communist Workers Party, 1984.
Signe Waller, Love And Revolution: A Political Memoir: People’s History Of The Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting And Aftermath. London: Rowman & Littlefield. 2002.
Archives
Workers Viewpoint. New York, NY. Publisher: Communist Workers Party. 1983-1986. Box: 252a, current.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Since then, the CCP has governed China and has had sole control over the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Successive leaders of the CCP have added their own theories to the party's constitution, which outlines the party's ideology, collectively referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics. As of 2023, the CCP has more than 98 million members, making it the second largest political party by membership in the world after India's Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets at various times have been African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics.
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Communist Party of China (CPC), is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. The philosophical difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism 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 the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
Socialism in New Zealand had little traction in early colonial New Zealand but developed as a political movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Much of socialism's early growth was found in the labour movement.
The Chinese New Left is a term used in the People's Republic of China to describe a diverse range of left-wing political philosophies that emerged in the 1990s that are critical of the economic reforms instituted under Deng Xiaoping, which emphasized policies of market liberalization and privatization to promote economic growth and modernization.
The Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece, mostly known by its acronym OAKKE, is a minor Greek political party known for its strong anti-Russian positions. The Secretary of the Central Committee of OAKKE is Ilias Zafiropoulos.
The Greensboro massacre was a deadly confrontation which occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) shot and killed five participants in a "Death to the Klan" march which was organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP).
The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.
In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, and bourgeois nationalism.
In the People's Republic of China since 1967, the terms "ultra-left" and "left communist" refers to political theory and practice self-defined as further "left" than that of the central Maoist leaders at the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). The terms are also used retroactively to describe some early 20th century Chinese anarchist orientations. As a slur, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used the term "ultra-left" more broadly to denounce any orientation it considers further "left" than the party line. According to the latter usage, the CCP Central Committee denounced in 1978 as "ultra-left" the line of Mao Zedong from 1956 until his death in 1976. This article refers only to 1) the self-defined ultra-left of the GPCR; and 2) more recent theoretical trends drawing inspiration from the GPCR ultra-left, China's anarchist legacy and international "left communist" traditions.
Mark "Mordechai" Levy is a U.S.-based political activist and founder of the militant Jewish Defense Organization (JDO), a breakaway faction of the Jewish Defense League. David Tell of the Weekly Standard wrote that the group is "located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life." Levy has organized a paramilitary training camp located in Upstate New York, named after Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky.
Virgil Lee Griffin was a leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in North Carolina who was involved in the November 3, 1979, Greensboro massacre, a violent clash by the KKK and American Nazi Party with labor organizers and activists from the Communist Workers Party at a legal march in the county seat of Guilford County. It resulted in the deaths of five marchers, including a woman.
The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.
In Maoism, a capitalist roader is a person or group who demonstrates a marked tendency to bow to pressure from bourgeois forces and subsequently attempts to pull the Chinese Communist Revolution in a capitalist direction. If allowed to do so, these forces would eventually restore the political and economic rule of capitalism; in other words, these forces would lead a society down a "capitalist road".
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA 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 is frequently described as a cult around Avakian.
Hardial Bains was an Indo-Canadian microbiology lecturer, but was primarily known as the founder of a series of left-wing movements and parties foremost of which was the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist). Presenting himself as staunchly anti-revisionist and pro-Stalinist, until his death, Bains acted as the spokesperson and ideological leader of the CPC (ML) — known in elections as the Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada. During his lifetime, Bains' outlook swung from supporting the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, to Mao Zedong's China, then later to Enver Hoxha's Albania. Shortly before he died, and abandoning his previous sharp criticisms of the country, Bains turned to Fidel Castro's Cuba for inspiration. Spending most of his life in Canada, Bains was also politically active in England, Ireland, United States and India.
The Workers' Party of New Zealand was a minor political party in New Zealand.
The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain was a Maoist political party in Great Britain, formed in 1977.
The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2004 based on the violent events of November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina. On that date, the Communist Workers Party (CWP) led by Nelson Johnson gathered at the Morningside Homes to protest for social and economic justice along with protesting against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The chant that united the 40–50 protesters was “death to the Klan”. Shortly after 11 am, a nine-vehicle convoy that contained 37 members of the KKK and the American Nazi Party arrived. After a short skirmish, the KKK and American Nazis retrieved their firearms and moments later, five protesters lay dead and ten others were wounded.
The United States faced multiple waves of political violence during the Cold War. The first would occur as a result of the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in 1950, in opposition to the growing civil rights movement, which sought an end to racial segregation and other forms of institutional racism. The new Klan also gained a new anti-communist and neo-fascist element, in response to the rise of anti-communist ideas in American society as a result of the Red Scare. Other white supremacist organizations would arise at the same time, such as the American Nazi Party. In Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party would launch a series of revolts throughout the 50s, including an attempted assassination of Harry S. Truman. In the early 60s, standoffs between federal and state governments would result in events such as the Little Rock Crisis and the Ole Miss riot of 1962.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
