Progressive Labor Party

The Progressive Labor Party (originally the Progressive Labor Movement) is a minor communist political party in the United States. It was formed by members of the Communist Party USA who felt that the Soviet Union had betrayed Communism and become "revisionist". They also felt that the CPUSA was adopting too compromising a position: for instance, the CPUSA supported John F. Kennedy in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. Based on the East Coast, the PLP was at first a very small grouping nostalgic for the time of Stalin. Nevertheless, it began to recruit when, after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, many of its members travelled to that country in order to break the embargo. This resulted in a congressional investigation but also a certain expansion of its membership. The group founded the campus-based May 2 Movement, which organized the first significant march against the Vietnam War in New York City in 1964. The PLP then forced the dissolution of M2M and entered the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as the latter began to grow rapidly into the primary vehicle for campus protest against the Vietnam War. The PLP also rapidly recruited party members on the campuses and became the largest communist faction within SDS. As factional politics within SDS assumed an ever more heated atmosphere and as the contending factions adopted a vocabulary drawn from the communist movement, the PLP organised its supporters into the Worker Student Alliance. Its main opponent was the Revolutionary Youth Movement, and the clash between the two would reduce SDS to a rump very rapidly, as most students were unable to comprehend the seemingly esoteric disputes between the two. This dispute became ever more confusing when the PLP began developing positions, which they claimed were Marxist, that to many seemed to have more in common with anarchism. They argued that socialism, the historical transition phase between capitalism and communism in Marxist theory, was not needed. The PLP seemed at first to be the representative of Maoism within SDS, but its leaders never regarded themselves as followers of Mao. Indeed, the PLP's political line, as described above, sharply differed from Maoism on fundamental points. They reacted harshly against Mao Zedong when he met with Richard Nixon, denouncing him as revisionist. The "franchise" of Maoism in the United States then passed to other groups. One major cause of friction between the PLP and other factions within SDS was its denunciation of the Black Panther Party, claiming that all nationalism, even among oppressed minorities, was reactionary. This was to lead to the dramatic fights in SDS that were to tear it apart very rapidly once started. Although the PLP continued, it was never to regain the influence it briefly had through SDS. Perhaps more importantly for its future, many of its most talented members drifted away in the next few years, and some of them founded new groups. Two of its top youth leaders became wealthy businessmen after leaving the party. The PLP advocated "base-building," meaning that members should get stable jobs that keep them in touch with the working class, get married, raise families, attempt to gradually win their co-workers, friends and family to the party—and not expect revolution in their lifetime. This led the PLP to gradually take on over the years many of the surface characteristics of a small church awaiting the Rapture. Up through the early 1970s it was only moderately authoritarian in its internal life and did not attempt to overly control the lives of its members. Later the degree of open discussion and dissent in the party declined sharply, but it never developed a reputation as a political "cult" and was never accused of "brainwashing" anyone. It has no known history of harassing or threatening ex-members, but its campus members frequently engaged in mutual provocations and fisticuffs with members of rival groups during the 1960s and 1970s. Occasionally even today it joins anti-Klan rallies in various cities to encourage violent confrontation with both Klansmen and police officers, utilizing rhetoric that is in bizarre contrast to the sedate, family-oriented life styles of most of its remaining members. Although it is primarily based in the U.S., it has tiny sections in various countries, such as Colombia and Mexico. The PLP upholds a purist vision of a mass-based communism, which it claims was the true spirit of the Cultural Revolution and was sabotaged by Mao's cult of personality. PLP members are critical of Stalin's bureaucratism and lack of emphasis on political education of the masses; however, they also deny the generally accepted view of Stalin's rule, claiming that the numbers killed were far fewer than the many millions that are widely believed. New America, the newspaper of the Social Democrats USA, has called the PLP's position on Stalin "gulag revisionism" (an ironic riff on "historical revisionism", the term used by Holocaust deniers to refer to themselves). The PLP publishes a newspaper called Challenge, as well as a Spanish version called Desafío.

External links

• Progressive Labor Party Website
• Newspaper Challenge-Desafío
• Ludo Martens: "Another view of Stalin"

Category:Communist parties Category:United States political parties

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