I think we can all agree RCP takes the cake, right? After that, I'm not sure. WSP? I always hear weird rumors that their leader is some reclusive millionaire who refuses to be photographed.
It's not just RCP, Maoists in general are super wacky.
Leading Light Communist Organization argues that when we have global communism, everyone will make the equivalent of $9000 a year. They got that figure by just taking the world GDP and dividing it by 8 billion.
How can you leave out the Sparticists, or the US affiliates, if any, of ICC, ICG, ICT, IP, IMG, or Solidarity, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Action...?
I don't really know any of the others...but is Solidarity that nuts? From what I know of them they're just a non-sectarian socialist group with a strong Trotskyist streak.
One time when I was 14 I went to a PLP May Day thing. They sang songs like "you can't smash the bosses without passing the hat" while collecting money, it was hilarious
That's the only M-L party with a major presence in my area. In my experience a large percentage of them are newly-recruited working class people with only a vague understanding of the party line. They do love North Korea and any other nominally socialist state...a WWP member was the only person I've ever heard refer to China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and North Korea as "the five that survived"
Haha I wish they'd form an armed wing. Geriatric RAF.
the only violent attacks carried out by Sparts of which I do know were directed against former members who joined the IBT (they're also in a way nutty but generally really nice people)
the only violent attacks carried out by Sparts of which I do know were directed against former members who joined the IBT (they're also in a way nutty but generally really nice people)
Uh...I assume you don't mean International Brotherhood of Teamsters?
"For a Better World" (FABW) communist organization and newsletter
http://leftspot.com/blog/?q=taxonomy/term/109/9
Home of the "Free Saddam Hussein" campaign.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/282632.shtml
Honorable Mention: "The Spark" self-loathing Trots who really hate Petty Bourgeoisie Trots who aren't in the industrial proletariat. As near as I can figure, they were a split from the Sparticist League. As far as I know, this rare leftist organization can only be spotted in Baltimore.
Honorable Mention: "The Spark" self-loathing Trots who really hate Petty Bourgeoisie Trots who aren't in the industrial proletariat. As near as I can figure, they were a split from the Sparticist League. As far as I know, this rare leftist organization can only be spotted in Baltimore.
http://the-spark.net/founding.html
Spark is about as old as the Sparts. They are aligned internationally with one of the largest Trotskyist international tendancies Internationalist Communist Union, usually called Lutte Ouvrière after the French section, their largest. in 2002 their candidate got 5% of the vote for President of France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_Ouvri%C3%A8re
I've run across them in Chicago El stations and in Oakland, so not just Baltimore. Their focus is building support in workplaces and also against personality cults. Can't be that bad...
I've never seen evidence that the Spark is anyone else besides that one old guy who goes to the PPA demos. He likes to show off how up-to-date he is by bragging they were the only left party with a presence in Bethlehem Steel (which can't possibly be true, right?)
The Spark is generally focused on building cells in big plants of the car industry, their strongholds were the closed GM plant in Baltimore and some car factories in/around Detroit
the only violent attacks carried out by Sparts of which I do know were directed against former members who joined the IBT (they're also in a way nutty but generally really nice people)
Uh...I assume you don't mean International Brotherhood of Teamsters?
the Sparts would never attack "the Workers", unless you count paper sales and stalls as an attack in the class
their strongholds were the closed GM plant in Baltimore and some car factories in/around Detroit
All the over-60 lefties I know reminisce about the back-to-the-factories movement. Were all the grouplets like that, with a different industry as their focus? Old CPUSA guys tell stories about fighting it out with the John Birch Society in shipyards in the 1970s.
their strongholds were the closed GM plant in Baltimore and some car factories in/around Detroit
All the over-60 lefties I know reminisce about the back-to-the-factories movement. Were all the grouplets like that, with a different industry as their focus? Old CPUSA guys tell stories about fighting it out with the John Birch Society in shipyards in the 1970s.
Tankies or not, I'd love to hear those stories.
Anybody know if anarchist orgs got into the back-to-the-factories movement?
I've never heard of a anarchist group that moved into factories. When i was a baby anarchist in the mid-late 1970s, none of the US anarchist groups even were class oriented until ACF emerged.
Syndicalist and Syndicalistcat would be the people to ask.
I've never heard of a anarchist group that moved into factories. When i was a baby anarchist in the mid-late 1970s, none of the US anarchist groups even were class oriented until ACF emerged.
Syndicalist and Syndicalistcat would be the people to ask.
To a certain extent, yes, there were a small number of us who believed in and practiced this.
In NYC, we called it "industrial concentration".
Overall, our numbers were so small, we were mostly laughed at by many anarchists. And looked upon with aghast by the M-L's and Trots.
I don't remember anything very detailed, sorry. These were a couple of old guys in a labor history class I took. They'd talk about how the John Birchers used to sit outside the shipyards entrance with shotguns and follow home union activists who were suspected communists.
I've never heard of a anarchist group that moved into factories. When i was a baby anarchist in the mid-late 1970s, none of the US anarchist groups even were class oriented until ACF emerged.
Syndicalist and Syndicalistcat would be the people to ask.
Didn't the Chicago IWW try to concentrate in steel production?
At the Mead plant in Atlanta, where the October League helped organize a wildcat, I've been told that many of the shop-stewards at the time were in the Klan.
IWW Chicago tried to organize at at least one smallish machine shop They also issued an ok health and safety pamphlet for metal workers. *
I do recall one anarchist Wob critiqued the practice, when we argued for it, as being akin to Marxist-Leninism. I'm not sure if they were inChicago at the time of the iu440 concentration or still in Maine at the time if that drive
I remember the Mead wildcat, don't recall klan being stewards, but that wouldn't be shocking
either
* "A Metal Workers' Guide: Health & Safety on the Job" --- General Production Workers Organizing Committee/ I.W.W. ---- Editorial: Chicago: G.P.W.O.C./I.W.W., 1976
Here's a partical on the IWW Metal Workers - http://libcom.org/history/iww-organising-1970s
Right quick on Mead: http://interferencearchive.org/wildcat-at-mead/
There was also a pamphlet that the OL produced (aside from press)
on the strike. I think there was also something on Mead in their pamphlet
"Communists and the Trade Unions" or something like that.
EDIT: "A Communist View: Building Class Struggle Trade Unions"
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-3/ol-tu/index.htm
"Interview: Mead Strike Leader"
First Published: The Call, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1972.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/ol-mead.htm
MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in humyn history.
As Marx, Engels and Lenin formulated and MIM has reiterated through materialist analysis, imperialism extracts super-profits from the Third World and in part uses this wealth to buy off whole populations of oppressor nation so-called workers. These so-called workers bought off by imperialism form a new petty-bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on imperialism. At this time, imperialist super-profits create this situation in Canada, Quebec, the United $tates, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark.
(Spain, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Russia, China, Norway, Finland, Austria, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and Monaco were spared. Quebec is apparently a country.)
both whom have websites hosted on earthlink.net lol...
LRNA isn't so nutty, they're pretty savvy for a Leninist sect. Not too long ago they operated a school for organizers which produced some of the founders of at least 2 well known workers' centers. (not naming the centers because that's a dick move)
The LRNA were/are "deep entry" Leninists. Over the years I knew a couple, suspected others.
I personally found them to be smart but creepy. Creepy in the sense that you knew they had an agenda and we're affiliated, but refused to show their hand so to speak. Like they were hiding something. But this goes along with creepy "deep entryism" anyway.
One of the more notable LRNA members was the respected General Baker, who came out of the DRUM movement. (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/detroit-s-radical-general-baker/)
dang, they took down my favorite part, which was that their mailing address was in Cambridge, MA - home to such proletarian concentrations as Harvard and MIT
Cambridge used to be a weird place. It had Harvard and MIT, then it had lots of factories. I know this was rapidly changing by the 1970s. I recall in the early mid-1970s there were at least two radical bookstores of note. I think one was called Red Ballon and was a general leftist one. The other was, I forget the name, but was also the home for the pro-Albanian Hoxaist Central Organization of US Marxist-Leninists (COUSML)....Nutters indeed.
both whom have websites hosted on earthlink.net lol...
I remember the LRP well....obnoxious and sectarian. This they kept up their transit work for years (probably just a couple of folks, still...)
"Revolutionary Transit Worker (RTW)" is a bulletin for TWU Local 100
supported by the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP)
http://www.lrp-cofi.org/TWU100/RTW/
Eastern Farm Workers Assn....... NY comrades (as anarchists and as wobs) had close and personal experiences with these folks in the early 1970s. I was not involved with them, but at least one currently close (and one formerly close) comrade did. The pages of the "IW" from like 1972ish-4ish should have some articles on comrades support for the EFWA activities on potato farms on Long Island, NY
The other was, I forget the name, but was also the home for the pro-Albanian Hoxaist Central Organization of US Marxist-Leninists (COUSML)....Nutters indeed.
Reminds me of visiting Vancouver in early 1980s and running into the CPC (ML) hall there. They were a pro-Albanian outfit and mainly Pakistani membership. Door was unlocked and no one was home. The really creepy thing was they managed to make the place look exactly like an Albanian/Stalin era USSR propaganda photo - including the odd, not of this world, washed out colors/hues. Huge pictures of the great leaders, especially Chairman Bains of the CPC(ML)
The LRNA were/are "deep entry" Leninists. Over the years I knew a couple, suspected others.
I personally found them to be smart but creepy. Creepy in the sense that you knew they had an agenda and we're affiliated, but refused to show their hand so to speak. Like they were hiding something. But this goes along with creepy "deep entryism" anyway.
One of the more notable LRNA members was the respected General Baker, who came out of the DRUM movement. (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/detroit-s-radical-general-baker/)
in one of the obituaries on General Baker last year, it was mentioned that he also had attended courses held by the Boggs ... the main issue for the CLP/LRNA was/is, to have comrades embedded in factories and communities who are trusted by the people they do work with and who can play a leading role when things evolve (either in a good or bad direction)
in one of the obituaries on General Baker last year, it was mentioned that he also had attended courses held by the Boggs ... the main issue for the CLP/LRNA was/is, to have comrades embedded in factories and communities who are trusted by the people they do work with and who can play a leading role when things evolve (either in a good or bad direction)
Glaberman was close to them in League of Revolutionary Black Workers days. So likely Boggs.
Continuing on the creepy side of Communist Labor Party (predicessor to LRNA) was they reprinted the complete works of Lavrentiy Beria and defended him as well. I remember seeing ads for these on the front cover of their paper The Tribune in mid 1980s.
are there any contemporary groups who like the SLA?
I've not seen any support. My guess is it would be found in anarchist groupings that support armed struggle, but they're not very common anymore (fortunately)
Glaberman was close to them in League of Revolutionary Black Workers days. So likely Boggs.
Continuing on the creepy side of Communist Labor Party (predicessor to LRNA) was they reprinted the complete works of Lavrentiy Beria and defended him as well. I remember seeing ads for these on the front cover of their paper The Tribune in mid 1980s.
to my perception, they also loved Stalin and his writings more than any other major NCM org
It was me involved with the potato farmers stuff, but later on (unless somebody else you are thinking of was some years earlier. Mitch Cohen was involved). Basically, the Marxists rode on the Chavez people for a while and then formed this initiative, mostly run by the Provisional Communist Party in Brooklyn. But I am happy to say that some years on some farm workers sort of broke with this and we were cooperating with them as a collective through our food coop. / The first labor thing I got involved with was with the Chavez people and at the time I thought that this project of the eastern farm workers was pretty good and it was working outside of the recognized union system, so that was the first time I saw something like that. As I got older and developed of course I thought more critically... but I don't think the labor organizing campaign is what we should criticize the PW CPUSA for.
About other organizations mentioned, yes, the one-person Albania Communist Party info center was nutty. The Sparts - they have some crazy points (ie about China) but I am lenient on them because they criticized what was happening in Poland very early on. :-)
About the Red Balloon, it was basically Mitch Cohen's collective and I think the different locations might have reflected Cohen's place of residence, no? Not sure.
I'm alright with Mitchel Cohen/Red Balloon Collective because he took Murray Bookchin to task for the dismissing the Iroquois polity as relevant to his own project of libertarian municipalism/communalism. Listen Bookchin!
I realize I'm probably one of the few people on the planet that cares.
Another nutter, this time from Anarchyland... "Kaiser" Bill White and the Utopian Anarchist Party (UAP) (overthrow dot com). He became an explicit nazis in the NSM. Then he went to jail. Still there.
They say this. Also that he was a cop
I was trying to walk lightly cause I don't have info at hand
I was plugged in WAP. I never met Red and glad I never did in some ways
Just fucked that I was fooled as a 20 year old
The other was, I forget the name, but was also the home for the pro-Albanian Hoxaist Central Organization of US Marxist-Leninists (COUSML)....Nutters indeed.
Reminds me of visiting Vancouver in early 1980s and running into the CPC (ML) hall there. They were a pro-Albanian outfit and mainly Pakistani membership. Door was unlocked and no one was home. The really creepy thing was they managed to make the place look exactly like an Albanian/Stalin era USSR propaganda photo - including the odd, not of this world, washed out colors/hues. Huge pictures of the great leaders, especially Chairman Bains of the CPC(ML)
color example:
I remember hearing about another group that became very pro North Korea to the point they had classes on it. Apparently they also turned the building they held this classes into a model of a North Korean school.
So apparently creating mini dictatorships was something of a fad.
Oh and there's the Communist Party USA (Marxist Leninist) that disbanded after a gunfight because the leader lost their funds in Las Vegas.
Perry "Red" Warthan (1942-1999), founder of the Woodstock Anarchist Party, was indeed a neo-Nazi, although he claimed to have been an anarchist for seven years. In 1982 he murdered a 17-year old member of his neo-Nazi group. It was not his first murder; when he was 14 he killed a 13-year-old and spent many years in institutions for the criminally insane. Warthan died in prison, but not before he "found Jesus".
Oh and there's the Communist Party USA (Marxist Leninist) that disbanded after a gunfight because the leader lost their funds in Las Vegas.
Legend! I wanna see the movie :-D
Sadly after looking into it further it isn't quite what it seems. By gunfight they didn't mean a shootout by the quarter slot machines*, they meant he would get into fights with other members and then threaten them with a gun. He also had a habit of destroying type writers and threatening to set things on fire.
Shockingly they felt they'd be better off giving him the sack
Though being Maoists they denounce him as a liberal and quote Mao Ze Dong first, and relegate the `he lost all our money on roulette and waved a loaded shotgun around` for point 4 in the list of reason why he sucks.
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/erol/1960-1970/laskiexpulsion.htm
*Though apparently in one meeting that wasn't going his way he did fire into the air.
Oh and there's the Communist Party USA (Marxist Leninist) that disbanded after a gunfight because the leader lost their funds in Las Vegas.
Legend! I wanna see the movie :-D
Sadly after looking into it further it isn't quite what it seems. By gunfight they didn't mean a shootout by the quarter slot machines*, they meant he would get into fights with other members and then threaten them with a gun. He also had a habit of destroying type writers and threatening to set things on fire.
Shockingly they felt they'd be better off giving him the sack
Though being Maoists they denounce him as a liberal and quote Mao Ze Dong first, and relegate the `he lost all our money on roulette and waved a loaded shotgun around` for point 4 in the list of reason why he sucks.
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/erol/1960-1970/laskiexpulsion.htm
*Though apparently in one meeting that wasn't going his way he did fire into the air.
He was indeed, the books here, http://bookzz.org/s/?q=Slouching+Toward+Bethlehem&t=0
He also used the pseudonym Joseph Steele.
Fnordie
fnbrilll
iexist
What does degenerate mean?
http://bfy.tw/19Wl
I don't think it's a stupid question, especially when you consider the Maoist history of regarding homosexuality as a "bourgeois deviation"
Yeah I thought that was it at first but then I remembered that degenerate has been used as `academicky` way of making anything the person using it doesn't like as twisted and rotten. Base purely on inference though I think they were accusing him of having cronies or of just ignoring the parties rules and chain of command. Which seems to be the case. Which makes it even more ludicrous that they'd put that above the time he waved a shotgun in other members faces or threw gasoline all over an office.
Really there is a lot of crazy in this Rev footnote.
In the mid-70's I think it was there was nearly a shoot-out between the RCP and the CP (ML) in Atlanta. RCP had a tagging crew out one night in a public housing project, back when we had such things, and a resident called a friend who was a CP (ML) member to complain. CP(ML) send a carload of folks with guns to see wtf was going on. The RCP crew was packing too. Now I should mention I heard this story like third hand but from reliable sources.
In the mid-70's I think it was there was nearly a shoot-out between the RCP and the CP (ML) in Atlanta. RCP had a tagging crew out one night in a public housing project, back when we had such things, and a resident called a friend who was a CP (ML) member to complain. CP(ML) send a carload of folks with guns to see wtf was going on. The RCP crew was packing too. Now I should mention I heard this story like third hand but from reliable sources.
according to Max Elbaum's website: https://revolutionintheair.org/chronology-part-four-1975-1980/
March 25: According to the SCEF newspaper Southern Struggle, a shoot-out takes place on this date when members of the RCP allegedly fire on SCEF members and tenants at the Capitol Homes housing site in Atlanta. (Southern Struggle, March-April 1979)
Re Dave in Atlanta's post on the Sparts. Do you have a reference/s for that?
I've heard that Larouche systematically attacked the SWP (& others) in the early 1970s but never heard of the Sparts physically attacking anyone. Were they trying to teach 'Daddy' a lesson?
I remember stuff like this happening "frequently" enough. But not SL outright attacks on SWP. But I trust ole David's memory more than my own on this.
An example from anti-Viet Nam wars days ....
"The SWP in the NPAC Conference"....
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/spartacist-us/1964-1971/The%20SWP%20in%20the%20NPAC%20Conference_07-03-1971.pdf
Re Dave in Atlanta's post on the Sparts. Do you have a reference/s for that?
I've heard that Larouche systematically attacked the SWP (& others) in the early 1970s but never heard of the Sparts physically attacking anyone. Were they trying to teach 'Daddy' a lesson?
I've heard that there was even an ambush by Sparts at an ISO conference ~12 years ago.
Found this tidbit on the RCP attempting to confront the staff of the Guardian (the Maoist one) in the 70s:
On my first day at the Guardian office, the staff assembled for a meeting on armed struggle and overthrowing the state. Oh my god, I inwardly trembled, armed struggle. This wasn’t college games anymore, it was the real thing! Suddenly I was overcome with this sinking feeling that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a revolutionary after all. In fact, the closest we ever came to armed combat was when an ultra-Maoist sect unimpressed by the Guardian’s revolutionary credentials sought a showdown. Leaving work one evening I noticed a grim-faced mob all wearing the trademark lumberjack boots, blue jeans and work shirts of the Revolutionary Union approach our building. I quickly rang up Fred at the front desk, who, I was later told, braced for the worst with wrench and crowbar in hand. (At the time he was eighty years old.) The RU’s plot was foiled, however, when they crowded into the elevator and it sank to the basement. It seems that they hadn’t read the bourgeois warning about maximum elevator capacity.
according to https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/nazi-satanists-promoting-extreme-violence-and-terrorism/
In the US, perhaps the most extreme of ONA’s nexions is the Tempel ov Blood (ToB). ToB’s literature encourages sadism and sexual violence, glorifies mass-murderers and terrorists, and calls for adherents to engage in racially motivated violence depicted as a holy war.
The ToB is reportedly run by Joshua Caleb Sutter, an alleged neo-Nazi occultist activist who converted to militant Hinduism; and who is said to have founded an astonishing pro-North Korea group in South Carolina named the Rural People’s Party.
openDemocracy has attempted to contact Sutter about these allegations but has been unable to reach him.
Actually, I meant the
Actually, I meant the Socialist Equality Party, not WSP. Was getting their name confused with their website.
It's not just RCP, Maoists in
It's not just RCP, Maoists in general are super wacky.
Leading Light Communist Organization argues that when we have global communism, everyone will make the equivalent of $9000 a year. They got that figure by just taking the world GDP and dividing it by 8 billion.
Rural People's Party models itself after Jim Jones and the People's Temple. Seriously.
Oooh, those are good ones.
Oooh, those are good ones. Never even heard of them.
How can you leave out the
How can you leave out the Sparticists, or the US affiliates, if any, of ICC, ICG, ICT, IP, IMG, or Solidarity, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Action...?
I don't really know any of
I don't really know any of the others...but is Solidarity that nuts? From what I know of them they're just a non-sectarian socialist group with a strong Trotskyist streak.
well the WWP sent election
well the WWP sent election observers to Syria a few years ago, to make sure the imperialist pig-dogs did not interfere with Assad's free elections
edit: thanks to fnordie's good eyes
you mean WWP
you mean WWP
libcom.org? No.1
libcom.org?
No.1
Ray O. Light and Progressive
Ray O. Light and Progressive Labor?
this group does not exist
this group does not exist anymore: Youth for Stalin – Stalinist Workers Group for Afro-American National Liberation and a New Communist International
Entdinglichung
Entdinglichung
One time when I was 14 I went to a PLP May Day thing. They sang songs like "you can't smash the bosses without passing the hat" while collecting money, it was hilarious
I mean, the Sparts take it
I mean, the Sparts take it obviously, but I always thought Worker's World was a good one, too.
That's the only M-L party
That's the only M-L party with a major presence in my area. In my experience a large percentage of them are newly-recruited working class people with only a vague understanding of the party line. They do love North Korea and any other nominally socialist state...a WWP member was the only person I've ever heard refer to China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and North Korea as "the five that survived"
Fnordie wrote: China,
Fnordie
not so much different from the Sparts who "defend" them ("militarily, not politically") as "deformed workers' states"
Entdinglichung
Entdinglichung
Haha I wish they'd form an armed wing. Geriatric RAF.
Fnordie wrote: ...a WWP
Fnordie
Survive??? We're working on stopping that!
jahbread
jahbread
5 down votes? Christ, there's some po-faced fuckers round here.
DP
DP
Fnordie
Fnordie
the only violent attacks carried out by Sparts of which I do know were directed against former members who joined the IBT (they're also in a way nutty but generally really nice people)
Fnordie wrote: Rural
Fnordie
are they real?
definitely also the Communist
definitely also the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional)/National Labor Federation
Entdinglichung wrote: are
Entdinglichung
It's not a joke, but it might be like 2 people
Entdinglichung
Uh...I assume you don't mean International Brotherhood of Teamsters?
Deep Green Resistance
Deep Green Resistance (DGR)
"For a Better World" (FABW) communist organization and newsletter
http://leftspot.com/blog/?q=taxonomy/term/109/9
Home of the "Free Saddam Hussein" campaign.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/282632.shtml
Honorable Mention: "The Spark" self-loathing Trots who really hate Petty Bourgeoisie Trots who aren't in the industrial proletariat. As near as I can figure, they were a split from the Sparticist League. As far as I know, this rare leftist organization can only be spotted in Baltimore.
http://the-spark.net/founding.html
Fnordie wrote: Uh...I assume
Fnordie
International Bolshevik Tendency
http://www.bolshevik.org/
Flint wrote: Honorable
Flint
Spark is about as old as the Sparts. They are aligned internationally with one of the largest Trotskyist international tendancies Internationalist Communist Union, usually called Lutte Ouvrière after the French section, their largest. in 2002 their candidate got 5% of the vote for President of France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutte_Ouvri%C3%A8re
I've run across them in Chicago El stations and in Oakland, so not just Baltimore. Their focus is building support in workplaces and also against personality cults. Can't be that bad...
Flint wrote: The Spark I've
Flint
I've never seen evidence that the Spark is anyone else besides that one old guy who goes to the PPA demos. He likes to show off how up-to-date he is by bragging they were the only left party with a presence in Bethlehem Steel (which can't possibly be true, right?)
The Spark is generally
The Spark is generally focused on building cells in big plants of the car industry, their strongholds were the closed GM plant in Baltimore and some car factories in/around Detroit
Fnordie
Fnordie
the Sparts would never attack "the Workers", unless you count paper sales and stalls as an attack in the class
Flint wrote: Fnordie
Flint
they did ambushed and beat up a former member in Hamburg despite that guy being quite old and frail
Entdinglichung wrote: their
Entdinglichung
All the over-60 lefties I know reminisce about the back-to-the-factories movement. Were all the grouplets like that, with a different industry as their focus? Old CPUSA guys tell stories about fighting it out with the John Birch Society in shipyards in the 1970s.
Fnordie
Fnordie
They did offer to send an international brigade to fight alongside the PDPA in Afghanistan. I am not making that up. The PDPA said no thanks.
Entdinglichung
Entdinglichung
No. They were the work of an internet crank.
removed
removed
Fnordie
Fnordie
Tankies or not, I'd love to hear those stories.
Anybody know if anarchist orgs got into the back-to-the-factories movement?
I've never heard of a
I've never heard of a anarchist group that moved into factories. When i was a baby anarchist in the mid-late 1970s, none of the US anarchist groups even were class oriented until ACF emerged.
Syndicalist and Syndicalistcat would be the people to ask.
fnbrilll wrote: I've never
fnbrilll
To a certain extent, yes, there were a small number of us who believed in and practiced this.
In NYC, we called it "industrial concentration".
Overall, our numbers were so small, we were mostly laughed at by many anarchists. And looked upon with aghast by the M-L's and Trots.
Chilli Sauce wrote: Tankies
Chilli Sauce
I don't remember anything very detailed, sorry. These were a couple of old guys in a labor history class I took. They'd talk about how the John Birchers used to sit outside the shipyards entrance with shotguns and follow home union activists who were suspected communists.
fnbrilll wrote: I've never
fnbrilll
Didn't the Chicago IWW try to concentrate in steel production?
At the Mead plant in Atlanta, where the October League helped organize a wildcat, I've been told that many of the shop-stewards at the time were in the Klan.
IWW Chicago tried to organize
IWW Chicago tried to organize at at least one smallish machine shop They also issued an ok health and safety pamphlet for metal workers. *
I do recall one anarchist Wob critiqued the practice, when we argued for it, as being akin to Marxist-Leninism. I'm not sure if they were inChicago at the time of the iu440 concentration or still in Maine at the time if that drive
I remember the Mead wildcat, don't recall klan being stewards, but that wouldn't be shocking
either
* "A Metal Workers' Guide: Health & Safety on the Job" --- General Production Workers Organizing Committee/ I.W.W. ---- Editorial: Chicago: G.P.W.O.C./I.W.W., 1976
Regarding above #40 post
Regarding above #40 post -
Here's a partical on the IWW Metal Workers - http://libcom.org/history/iww-organising-1970s
Right quick on Mead: http://interferencearchive.org/wildcat-at-mead/
There was also a pamphlet that the OL produced (aside from press)
on the strike. I think there was also something on Mead in their pamphlet
"Communists and the Trade Unions" or something like that.
EDIT: "A Communist View: Building Class Struggle Trade Unions"
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-3/ol-tu/index.htm
"Interview: Mead Strike Leader"
First Published: The Call, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1972.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/ol-mead.htm
ahhh spark... also of
ahhh spark...
also of note:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_the_Revolutionary_Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionaries_for_a_New_America
both whom have websites hosted on earthlink.net lol...
Entdinglichung
Entdinglichung
damn this group is crazy interesting...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA_(Provisional)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2931700/Essential-Organizer-1973
The defunct Maoist
The defunct Maoist International Movement (MIM)
(Spain, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Russia, China, Norway, Finland, Austria, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and Monaco were spared. Quebec is apparently a country.)
They live on through their unintentionally hilarious movie reviews.
klas batalo wrote: ahhh
klas batalo
LRNA isn't so nutty, they're pretty savvy for a Leninist sect. Not too long ago they operated a school for organizers which produced some of the founders of at least 2 well known workers' centers. (not naming the centers because that's a dick move)
The LRNA were/are "deep
The LRNA were/are "deep entry" Leninists. Over the years I knew a couple, suspected others.
I personally found them to be smart but creepy. Creepy in the sense that you knew they had an agenda and we're affiliated, but refused to show their hand so to speak. Like they were hiding something. But this goes along with creepy "deep entryism" anyway.
One of the more notable LRNA members was the respected General Baker, who came out of the DRUM movement. (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/detroit-s-radical-general-baker/)
Flint wrote: The defunct
Flint
dang, they took down my favorite part, which was that their mailing address was in Cambridge, MA - home to such proletarian concentrations as Harvard and MIT
Cambridge used to be a weird
Cambridge used to be a weird place. It had Harvard and MIT, then it had lots of factories. I know this was rapidly changing by the 1970s. I recall in the early mid-1970s there were at least two radical bookstores of note. I think one was called Red Ballon and was a general leftist one. The other was, I forget the name, but was also the home for the pro-Albanian Hoxaist Central Organization of US Marxist-Leninists (COUSML)....Nutters indeed.
klas batalo wrote: ahhh
klas batalo
I remember the LRP well....obnoxious and sectarian. This they kept up their transit work for years (probably just a couple of folks, still...)
"Revolutionary Transit Worker (RTW)" is a bulletin for TWU Local 100
supported by the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP)
http://www.lrp-cofi.org/TWU100/RTW/
klas batalo
klas batalo
Eastern Farm Workers Assn....... NY comrades (as anarchists and as wobs) had close and personal experiences with these folks in the early 1970s. I was not involved with them, but at least one currently close (and one formerly close) comrade did. The pages of the "IW" from like 1972ish-4ish should have some articles on comrades support for the EFWA activities on potato farms on Long Island, NY
syndicalist wrote: The other
syndicalist
Reminds me of visiting Vancouver in early 1980s and running into the CPC (ML) hall there. They were a pro-Albanian outfit and mainly Pakistani membership. Door was unlocked and no one was home. The really creepy thing was they managed to make the place look exactly like an Albanian/Stalin era USSR propaganda photo - including the odd, not of this world, washed out colors/hues. Huge pictures of the great leaders, especially Chairman Bains of the CPC(ML)
color example:
syndicalist wrote: I think
syndicalist
Wasn't this connected to the Red Balloon Collective, but on Long Island near State University of New York at Stony Brook?
Hieronymous
Hieronymous
Oh yeah, I forgot about them. No they were not connected. Again, I'm going on 40 year recollections at the mo.
syndicalist wrote: The LRNA
syndicalist
in one of the obituaries on General Baker last year, it was mentioned that he also had attended courses held by the Boggs ... the main issue for the CLP/LRNA was/is, to have comrades embedded in factories and communities who are trusted by the people they do work with and who can play a leading role when things evolve (either in a good or bad direction)
are there any contemporary
are there any contemporary groups who like the SLA?
Entdinglichung wrote: in one
Entdinglichung
Glaberman was close to them in League of Revolutionary Black Workers days. So likely Boggs.
Continuing on the creepy side of Communist Labor Party (predicessor to LRNA) was they reprinted the complete works of Lavrentiy Beria and defended him as well. I remember seeing ads for these on the front cover of their paper The Tribune in mid 1980s.
Entdinglichung wrote: are
Entdinglichung
I've not seen any support. My guess is it would be found in anarchist groupings that support armed struggle, but they're not very common anymore (fortunately)
fnbrilll wrote: Glaberman
fnbrilll
to my perception, they also loved Stalin and his writings more than any other major NCM org
fnbrilll wrote: they
fnbrilll
wow
It was me involved with the
It was me involved with the potato farmers stuff, but later on (unless somebody else you are thinking of was some years earlier. Mitch Cohen was involved). Basically, the Marxists rode on the Chavez people for a while and then formed this initiative, mostly run by the Provisional Communist Party in Brooklyn. But I am happy to say that some years on some farm workers sort of broke with this and we were cooperating with them as a collective through our food coop. / The first labor thing I got involved with was with the Chavez people and at the time I thought that this project of the eastern farm workers was pretty good and it was working outside of the recognized union system, so that was the first time I saw something like that. As I got older and developed of course I thought more critically... but I don't think the labor organizing campaign is what we should criticize the PW CPUSA for.
About other organizations mentioned, yes, the one-person Albania Communist Party info center was nutty. The Sparts - they have some crazy points (ie about China) but I am lenient on them because they criticized what was happening in Poland very early on. :-)
About the Red Balloon, it was basically Mitch Cohen's collective and I think the different locations might have reflected Cohen's place of residence, no? Not sure.
I'm alright with Mitchel
I'm alright with Mitchel Cohen/Red Balloon Collective because he took Murray Bookchin to task for the dismissing the Iroquois polity as relevant to his own project of libertarian municipalism/communalism. Listen Bookchin!
I realize I'm probably one of the few people on the planet that cares.
Another nutter, this time from Anarchyland... "Kaiser" Bill White and the Utopian Anarchist Party (UAP) (overthrow dot com). He became an explicit nazis in the NSM. Then he went to jail. Still there.
"Woodstock Anarchist
"Woodstock Anarchist Party"...Red Wharton....later turned out to be a right wing biker and possibly worse
Wharton also became a nazi of
Wharton also became a nazi of some sort.
akai wrote: Wharton also
akai
They say this. Also that he was a cop
I was trying to walk lightly cause I don't have info at hand
I was plugged in WAP. I never met Red and glad I never did in some ways
Just fucked that I was fooled as a 20 year old
fnbrilll wrote: syndicalist
fnbrilll
I remember hearing about another group that became very pro North Korea to the point they had classes on it. Apparently they also turned the building they held this classes into a model of a North Korean school.
So apparently creating mini dictatorships was something of a fad.
Oh and there's the Communist Party USA (Marxist Leninist) that disbanded after a gunfight because the leader lost their funds in Las Vegas.
Perry "Red" Warthan
Perry "Red" Warthan (1942-1999), founder of the Woodstock Anarchist Party, was indeed a neo-Nazi, although he claimed to have been an anarchist for seven years. In 1982 he murdered a 17-year old member of his neo-Nazi group. It was not his first murder; when he was 14 he killed a 13-year-old and spent many years in institutions for the criminally insane. Warthan died in prison, but not before he "found Jesus".
Quote: Oh and there's the
Legend! I wanna see the movie :-D
more of their stuff:
more of their stuff: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1960-1970/index.htm#cpusaml
he's the one joan didion
he's the one joan didion wrote about
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-slouching-towards-bethlehem/chapanal004.html#gsc.tab=0
boozemonarchy
boozemonarchy
Sadly after looking into it further it isn't quite what it seems. By gunfight they didn't mean a shootout by the quarter slot machines*, they meant he would get into fights with other members and then threaten them with a gun. He also had a habit of destroying type writers and threatening to set things on fire.
Shockingly they felt they'd be better off giving him the sack
Though being Maoists they denounce him as a liberal and quote Mao Ze Dong first, and relegate the `he lost all our money on roulette and waved a loaded shotgun around` for point 4 in the list of reason why he sucks.
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/erol/1960-1970/laskiexpulsion.htm
*Though apparently in one meeting that wasn't going his way he did fire into the air.
iexist wrote: What does
iexist
http://bfy.tw/19Wl
Reddebrek wrote: Sadly after
Reddebrek
Regardless, I plan on embellishing the script to the point that it starts looking like Reservoir Dogs.
Reddebrek
Reddebrek
Well, I think we found the winner.
fnbrilll wrote: iexist
fnbrilll
I don't think it's a stupid question, especially when you consider the Maoist history of regarding homosexuality as a "bourgeois deviation"
Fnordie wrote: fnbrilll
Fnordie
It's a private joke between us.
petey wrote: he's the one
petey
He was indeed, the books here, http://bookzz.org/s/?q=Slouching+Toward+Bethlehem&t=0
He also used the pseudonym Joseph Steele.
Fnordie
Yeah I thought that was it at first but then I remembered that degenerate has been used as `academicky` way of making anything the person using it doesn't like as twisted and rotten. Base purely on inference though I think they were accusing him of having cronies or of just ignoring the parties rules and chain of command. Which seems to be the case. Which makes it even more ludicrous that they'd put that above the time he waved a shotgun in other members faces or threw gasoline all over an office.
Really there is a lot of crazy in this Rev footnote.
Reddebrek wrote: petey
Reddebrek
thanks!!
iexist wrote: I found these
iexist
managed to listen to the song :-(
try this:
[youtube]juFdTpVh288[/youtube]
or this: makes my physically
or this:
[youtube]wnauDrzdOiQ[/youtube]
[youtube]UXEDZy4Z8os[/youtube]
makes my physically sick listening to this even without following the crappy lyrics
Quote: Karetelnik--Woodstock
I actually "belonged" to the WAP. I'm assuming this was during his anarchist phase. or hoping it was at least.
Note: This was mid-1970s. All pre-internet and easy ways to find out someone's past.
merciless as enver
merciless as enver hoxha
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kOZKpRmqCU
The Sparts used to attack the
The Sparts used to attack the American SWP back in the day. SWP is a bit daft themselves these days come to think of it.
In the mid-70's I think it
In the mid-70's I think it was there was nearly a shoot-out between the RCP and the CP (ML) in Atlanta. RCP had a tagging crew out one night in a public housing project, back when we had such things, and a resident called a friend who was a CP (ML) member to complain. CP(ML) send a carload of folks with guns to see wtf was going on. The RCP crew was packing too. Now I should mention I heard this story like third hand but from reliable sources.
That is fucking wild.
That is fucking wild.
David in Atlanta wrote: In
David in Atlanta
according to Max Elbaum's website: https://revolutionintheair.org/chronology-part-four-1975-1980/
Re Dave in Atlanta's post on
Re Dave in Atlanta's post on the Sparts. Do you have a reference/s for that?
I've heard that Larouche systematically attacked the SWP (& others) in the early 1970s but never heard of the Sparts physically attacking anyone. Were they trying to teach 'Daddy' a lesson?
I remember stuff like this
I remember stuff like this happening "frequently" enough. But not SL outright attacks on SWP. But I trust ole David's memory more than my own on this.
An example from anti-Viet Nam wars days ....
"The SWP in the NPAC Conference"....
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/spartacist-us/1964-1971/The%20SWP%20in%20the%20NPAC%20Conference_07-03-1971.pdf
Against Violence within the
Against Violence within the Workers Movement (1974). Articles by Ernest Mandel, Leon Trotsky and subjects such as violence in the Anti-Vietnam War Movement by the (US) SWP
Re: Spart violence... During
Re: Spart violence...
During the year I spent in the Bay Area, I heard about a dozen rumors or references to spart cross-sect-ional violence. About 15 years ago now...
morven wrote: Re Dave in
morven
I've heard that there was even an ambush by Sparts at an ISO conference ~12 years ago.
Found this tidbit on the RCP
Found this tidbit on the RCP attempting to confront the staff of the Guardian (the Maoist one) in the 70s:
From Misadventures in the Class Struggle, a short autobiographical article by Norman Finkelstein.
Fnordie wrote: Rural
Fnordie
according to https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/nazi-satanists-promoting-extreme-violence-and-terrorism/