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]

History

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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 split in 1999.

Publications

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

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  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). First delivered as a speech at the National Lawyers Guild convention in Boston, August 1980.
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  • Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). The book's back matter includes "A Comment by Harry Haywood" and the authors' response.
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References

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  1. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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  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. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). "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. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  8. ^ Mitchell & Weiss 1981, p. xi.
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  10. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  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. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  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. ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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  17. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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