Proletarian Unity League

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The Proletarian Unity League was a Boston-based Maoist organization formed in 1975. Its founders were ex-Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) members who had been associated with the Revolutionary Youth Movement II: one of three factions (the others being Progressive Labor and the Weathermen) to emerge from the split in SDS that occurred at its June 1969 National Convention. [1] [2]

Contents

History

The Proletarian Unity League (PUL) arose as part of the New Communist Movement (NCM) in the early 1970s. [3] The PUL members rejected the Communist Party USA for its alleged revisionism; they also rejected the Socialist Workers Party and other Trotskyist sects for their opposition to Maoism and Chinese foreign policy. [4]

In surveying the proliferation of "self-proclaimed 'communist parties'" in the U.S., [5] the PUL criticized what it saw as a tendency toward ultra-leftism, a critique articulated in its 1977 book Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type? Against the Ultra-Left Line. [6] As Max Elbaum writes:

Two, Three, Many Parties went on to provide numerous examples of how sectarianism and infantile left tactics had afflicted the movement since its earliest days. Further, the book offered a comprehensive analysis of the roots of these problems in the voluntarist and semi-anarchist ideas prevalent in the late-1960s movements, and in the attraction of those ideas to the students and former students who disproportionately made up the Marxist-Leninist ranks. [7]

Throughout its ten-year span, the PUL differentiated itself from most other Maoist organizations by:

  1. Battling what it characterized as white supremacy in the American labor movement and its damaging effects on the development of class consciousness. [8]
  2. Advocating an anti-sectarian approach and arguing that there is not "one true party". [9] [10]
  3. Supporting gays and lesbians, [11] in contrast to the homophobia found in some NCM groups. [12] [13]

In February 1979, the PUL was one of six U.S. Maoist organizations [14] to send a representative in a delegation to China. The visit's stated purpose was to "strengthen the unity between the U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the Communist Party of China" and to "promote the prospects for unity among the U.S. Marxist-Leninists." [15] The delegation held a series of meetings with Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Vice-Premier Geng Biao. [15]

In 1985 the PUL merged with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (RWH) to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). The FRSO vowed to avoid the dogmatism that had been a defining feature of Maoism in the U.S. [16] Over the next decade, several more groups joined the FRSO, which renamed itself Liberation Road in April 2019. [3]

Publications

In addition to its Forward Motion newsletter—started in 1982 and published 4-6 times a year [17] —the PUL's publications included:

References

  1. ↑ McCormick, Anna Björnsson, ed. (February 2025). "Guide to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Printed Ephemera Collection on Students for a Democratic Society". NYU Special Collections Finding Aids. PE.035 – via Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
  2. ↑ PUL Unity Work Team (January 1982). "The Proletarian Unity League: Where We Came From, What We Look Like, What We Do". Forward Motion. No. 1. pp. 3–7.
  3. 1 2 "Our History". Liberation Road. 2010.
  4. ↑ Minami 2025: "the conundrum facing U.S. leftists: the CPUSA was 'Moscow's mouthpiece', with financial backing from the Soviets; the PLP and other 'Trotskyist' groups opposed China's new foreign policy".
  5. ↑ Mitchell & Weiss 1981, p. xii.
  6. ↑ Mitchell, Roxanne; Weiss, Frank (1977). "Introduction". Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type? Against the Ultra-Left Line (PDF). New York: United Labor Press. p. 8. "In the U.S., building unity means criticizing the 'Left-Wing' deviation, particularly 'left' opportunism.... The bankruptcy of the 'left' line has emerged more and more clearly in the past two years. The multiplication of 'Left-Wing Communist' parties, the accelerated fragmentation of a broad section of the Marxist-Leninist movement, and the failure to make significant advances among the working class have driven home to increasing numbers of communists the need for an all-out struggle against the ultra-left trend. A new tendency is emerging in opposition to 'left' sectarianism, adventurism, revolutionary phrase-mongering, and other 'left' errors."
  7. ↑ Elbaum, Max (2018) [2002]. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (3rd ed.). Verso Books. p. 273. ISBN   978-1786634597.
  8. ↑ Mitchell & Weiss 1981, p. xi.
  9. ↑ Leary, Elly (May–June 2022). "On-the-line in Auto — 1970s-1990". Against the Current (218).
  10. ↑ "It's Not the Bus! Busing and the Democratic Struggle in Boston, 1974-1975". September 1975. We do not think that the line or the practice of any single organization in the communist movement ... provides the basis at the present time for the construction of a genuine multinational communist party.
  11. ↑ Dubrovsky & Niles 1982. This pamphlet analyzes what it terms "gay-baiting" by the New Right at the start of the Reagan administration, and offers some possible defenses.
  12. ↑ O'Neil, Dennis (August 27, 2001). "Letter to the RCP on its document On the Position on Homosexuality in the New Draft Program" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  13. ↑ Leary 2022: In this retrospective essay, Leary says the PUL distinguished itself within the NCM by arguing that "'Queer' is not a bourgeois deviation."
  14. ↑ The other five groups in the 1979 delegation to China were the Bay Area Communist Union, Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist), Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, and Portland Red Star Unity Collective.
  15. 1 2 "U.S. Marxist-Leninists delegation returns from China". The Call. Vol. 8, no. 6. February 12, 1979.
  16. ↑ Minami, Kazushi (2025). "Unity and Struggle: The Twilight of Maoism in the United States" (PDF). Modern American History. 8. Cambridge University Press: 188–208. doi:10.1017/mah.2025.6.
  17. ↑ "Forward Motion: Index" . Retrieved May 8, 2024– via Marxists Internet Archive.
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