League of Revolutionary Struggle

LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE. Founded in 1979, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) was one of relatively few, somewhat successful experiments in the New Communist Movement. It was also unique as a movement formed through successful merger of several New Communist Movement organizations. And it was unique in its advocacy of the right of self-determination, including secession, for both African Americans and Chicanos.

The LRS merger between a Chicano communist collective, the August 29th Movement (ATM); I Wor Kuen, a predominantly Chinese and Asian/Pacific Islander group; and the Revolutionary Communist League, formerly the Congress of African People, further attracted to itself the East Wind Collective of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, the Seize the Time Collective of Chicanos and African Americans in San Francisco and the New York Collective of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. With an estimated membership of 1,000 hardened cadre, LRS had by far the greatest prospect for longevity among the surviving New Communist Movement entities.

The LRS leadership had a long history of struggle in mass movements, a history that continued after its dissolution in 1990. Amiri Baraka, a founder of the Black Arts Movement and Spirit House, formed the Congress of African People, chaired the 1972 National Black Political Convention, and remained a hugely influential poet and outspoken communist for the rest of his life. Joe Navarro, prominent in the Chicano movement, had helped to form ATM, became president of the Molders Union, and continued to be an influential anti-imperialist poet. Eric Mann, a field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and national officer of Students for a Democratic Society, went into ATM and LRS where he became the coordinator of the successful United Auto Workers (UAW) Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open. Mann went on to become an elected leader of the UAW New Directions Movement and director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in South Central Los Angeles. Mark Masaoka, a member of the East Wind collective and a worker leader at the Ford Pico Rivera Plant, moved to GM Van Nuys where he helped lead the movement. He was elected UAW delegate and became a prominent member of the New Directions movement. Reese Erlich helped lead Stop the Draft Week in Oakland in 1967, later became the editor of the LRS newspaper Unity, and went on to notability as prominent foreign affairs journalist. Fred Ho, a celebrated baritone saxophone player, founded the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and initiated the Scientific Soul Sessions where he continued to integrate Marxism-Leninism, art, culture and experimental forms of music and organization.

The LRS also had many prominent women leaders. Pam Tau Lee, a co-founder of the Chinese Progressive Association, a prominent IWK and LRS cadre, and a leader in Local #2 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers in San Francisco, was also co-founder of the Just Transition Alliance and a contributor to the Principles of Environmental Justice. Several other women LRS cadre, such as Lian Hurst Mann, entered the auto industry in the mid-1970s and provided strong leadership in the efforts to reform the UAW. LRS believed that women should be encouraged to be in the workforce and relieved of the oppressive responsibilities of the nuclear family, a belief put into practice through an extensive childcare system in which all members, regardless of whether they had children, had once a week childcare-responsibility, allowing all parents, but especially women members, to fully participate in the life of the organization. It also built strong multi-national relationships among the children.

LRS cadre played critical roles in some of the most prominent labor struggles in the 1980s and 1990s. Al Lumpkins and Richard “Doc” Dockett, Revolutionary Communist League and LRS cadre, organized militant Black caucuses of the UAW in St. Louis. LRS cadre helped provide leadership to the famed Watsonville Cannery strike (1985-1987), captured in Song of the Stubborn 1,000 by LRS cadre Peter Shapiro. The LRS helped to lead successful struggles in the auto industry, Black movement, International Hotel, UAW Network, Molders Union, and the Japanese American Redress and Reparations Movement. The LRS newspaper, Unity, a professionally produced, openly communist tabloid, was distributed and read for years by some thousands of people including factory workers.

One of the most active groups within the Rainbow Coalition, the LRS provided leading cadres in his 1984 and 1988 campaigns, especially in administrative roles. They helped Jesse Jackson attain nine million votes in the 1988 presidential primaries.

During the early stages of the polemical debates among new communist groups, one of the most frequent internecine criticisms was that a group focused on “leading the mass movement” nevertheless failed to build a communist party. In trying but failing to build a party, its greatest achievement became the training of communists who provided discipline, strategy, and tactics to major social movements from 1979 to 1990. “Leading the mass movements” became, after all, the LRS central legacy. LRS might also be seen as the last significant organization that, as late as 1990, tried to keep the vision of a socialist revolution in the United States alive. The conditions of the times overwhelmed members who no longer felt a communist form to be the best way to carry out anti-imperialist work. More than 500 LRS “graduates” nevertheless benefitted from their experience, and many remained among the senior leaders in social movements decades later.

Fan the Flames: A Revolutionary Position on the Chicano National Question, www.marxistleninistwordpress.com

Mann, Eric. Taking on General Motors: A Case Study of the UAW Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute for Industrial Relations, 1987.

Patterson, William L. The Man Who Cried Genocide: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 1971