RCP: On Farragos, May Day 1980 and the Echoes Today
Posted by Mike E on April 4, 2008
by Mike Ely
Linda D wrote a response to Andrei’s “It’s a Sin” (a discussion of why he left the RCP’s youth organization RCYB). In the course of that, Linda discusses episodes in RCP party history that have similarities to the RCP’s current, recent, final turn toward fantasy and self-isolation. Here are some notes of my own.
I think there is some value in studying the RCP in 1980 for its early signs of voluntarism. (And meanwhile, I need to insert some corrections where Linda’s memory of line struggles seems to get it wrong.)
By the late 1970s, the RCP had lost those forces committed to “economic struggle of the workers as the center of gravity” (Those leaving in the split went on to briefly form the “Revolutionary Workers Headquarters” and then largely fade as an organized force, including within the trade union movement.)
As a replacement strategy, Avakian envisioned a series of “bold” campaigns around explicitly revolutionary politics that would rapidly attract and rally forces interested in revolution — and jell them into a force around the RCP.
First came the Deng demo in DC where hundreds of revolutionaries faced off with police to create an international incident — as Deng Xiaoping sought to cement a military alliance with the U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Then forces were gathered from around the country to Washington DC for May First 1979 — where the focus of events was a major speech by Avakian that climaxed by calling for a one year campaign for a Revolutionary May Day 1980 — where thousands of people would be called into the streets in a historic outpouring of revolutionary sentiment. (described by Avakian in his memoir page 381)
As charges came down on Avakian there was a major political defense campaign — that led to the “Turn DC upside Down” effort (Fall 1979)– where revolutionary volunteers organized in DC neighborhoods to create a climate supportive of Avakian and the other Mao Defendants, as the court cases went forward there.
Then as January 1980 arrived, May Day Brigades fanned out across the country, holding highly aggressive actions at factories and neighborhoods, calling people to step out and build for May Day 1980. Many communists quit their jobs. Often there were sharp confrontations. A line came to the fore (including in the party press) of confronting backward workers as “flag-suckers,” “reactionary trolls,” etc, while calling on the advanced to “take history into our hands.” etc. These tactics led to large numbers of arrests — in the hundreds certainly, and perhaps over a thousand, as RCP supporters “stepped out” as models for others, and were arrested over and over. There was intense activity in many places as the RCP threw everything it had into the effort.
And in a number of spectacular events, the campaign also made its way into national coverage. In one event, a crew scaled the Alamo and put up the red flag. In another, a May Day brigade was run into hiding by a reactionary mobs in Beckley, West Virginia (one article appeared in the National Enquirer).
At a certain point, sharp conflict started to unfold within the RCP, and between local party organization and the May Day brigades. Some people were summing up that the whole campaign was not going to reach its goals, others were questioning the “war communism” atmosphere and the political costs of the arrests and confrontational tactics. They became targets of forces who claimed their doubts and line was to blame for the looming failure.
At a certain point, a line came to the fore that argued that the main obstacle and problem in the May Day 1980 campaign was the opposition by “rightists” within the party. And a “farrago” erupted (farrago mean a “mish mash” of things, but in party jargon it meant a big blowup). This farrago was a vicious turning inward — the launching of a “war on the right” within the movement for May Day 1980, that involved “pulling out rightists” (including leaders) for public criticism (not only in party meetings but in public meetings that included non-member activists .) This was, in other words, not something from the RCP’s internal life but something that spilled out into public view, and drew non-party people into itself.
Part of this heated mood was to insist that there was a small hard core within the communist movement that was especially loyal to Bob Avakian (”Us and the chairman”), and that the party structure and leadership was, in many places, standing exposed as opposing to Avakian’s big plan.
This farrago (this “war on the right”) almost pulled the party apart. The campaign for May Day 1980 was suddenly in danger of collapsing into a public and embarrassing free-for-all. And Avakian angrily called the farrago off — saying that it ran counter to the plans for a successful May Day event and that it had not been authorized.
Before May Day, one party member, Damian Garcia, was coldly murdered in Los Angeles under very suspicious circumstances — Damian had been one of the activists who had seized the Alamo shortly before, and he was knifed in an LA housing project agitating for May Day 1980. There was evidence that a police agent was there at the scene, and RCP has always, justifiably, demanded investigations of police involvement in this killing.
On May Day 1980 itself, there were a number of sizable demonstrations (though no where were they on the scale imagined). In some places the movement was suppressed by police and reactionary mobs — and driven from the streets.
In a number of areas, the RCP lost membership — for example these events essentially marked the end of the RCP’s organization in the West Virginia coalfields.
It was overall a very politically-expensive experiment. Avakian’s plan had overestimated the ability to gather spontaneously revolutionary forces in the population. He had overestimated the ability to spark a revolutionary movement using the hyper-activity of a solid core. The party had gone over to attacking (and being attacked by) the more backward sections of people (outside factories and in a number of communities). The whole thing had come close to shattering the party in mutual recriminations. And, in the end, it was quite simply a spectacular failure (on its own terms and goals).
The RCP was never able (or willing) to make a public (unified!) summation of the whole 1980 May Day event, though Avakian’s personal summation is offered in his memoir. (p 381-2) Avakian acknowledges that “Although we mobilized thousands, we fell short of our goal of bringing out ten thousand or more, and we had put a lot of work into this.” He remarks out of this that it showed a shortcoming of strategic understanding — and mainly that the RCP needed to focus and base itself “mainly and most essentially among the lower and deeper sections of the proletariat.”
This summation is (to say the least) rather shallow and un-selfcritical — and misses huge current of manic hype and self-deluding fantasy that played an important role in the whole project.
In the period that followed, there were a series of other, similar attempts at “bold” campaigns — including trying grow the readership of the party’s press from 15,000 to 100,000 in one intense outreach campaign. It too failed after intense hype, massive intensity of the core, and insistence that it was possible. Then to deal with financial crisis, there was a “million dollar fund-raising” campaign and so on…
After this series of failures, the party settled into a different groove — the kind of organizing work along major political fault lines and in proletarian communities that is now (generally but quietly) associated with “the revisionist package.”
* * * * *
One relevance of all this is that it is so similar in line and texture to the RCP’s politics of the last years. In the wake of a new period of inner party struggle, Avakian has again initiated a program of “bold” campaigns — to start to topple the government through the campaign to drive out the Bush regime and to rally people directly to communism (and to himself personally) using book promotion, DVD showings, synthesis events, half-million-dollar fundraising and more.
There is a familiar voluntarism, a familiar shrillness, a familiar hostility to both the cadre and masses, and similar failure — although now with a much smaller, older, more isolated and jaded core.
It is tempting to say “first time tragedy…. “
And there has been a line in all this that is (to me) very reminiscent of the 1980 “farrago” — a line of assuming that the reason fantasy plans have failed, and the party has been withering so badly is because of “rightists” dominating the party apparatus have been opposing Avakian and getting in the way of his plans and methods.
There has been a low-moving farrago — this time with Avakian’s leadership and permission — and with it the familiar political hallmarks: massive hype for impossible plans, blaming of cadre for failure, a viciousness in internal relations, a cultivation of rudeness and elitism with an inner core, a calling out of people accused of forming a “get real” chorus, and targetting of the masses of people for “complicity” when they too don’t take up these plans.
Ka Frank said
Thanks, Mike and Linda, for writing up your recollections and summations of the May Day 1980 campaign. When you’re working in one niche in one city (as I was), it was hard to see the big picture of what was actually going on. The summation I got was filtered through the party leadership and it wasn’t until years later that I learned what a voluntarist disaster May Day 1980 had been.
I also learned later that a fairly large number of cadre left/were forced out of the RCP around that time–to be followed by more resignations as the RCP’s “world war or revolution” line kept the party on a war footing that made it nearly impossible to sink durable roots in proletarian communities.
I hope that Mike and other contributors to Kasama can examine the ways in which subjective idealism and voluntarism continued–in the wake of May Day 1980– to plague the RCP in various ways.
Linda D. said
Key Ka Frank and Ka Mike…I am on the fly right now so sorry, but I can’t respond in any kind of meaningful way to your more meaningful posts.
But did want to say two things: one, thank you Mike for laying out a much more accurate and historical description of the “farrago”, putting it in the proper context, etc. And while both you and Ka Frank had some very pertinent things to say re, e.g., voluntarism, etc. I have to disagree with you on something–I don’t think that May Day 1980 was necessarily a total failure; depends on what yardstick you’re using. While the RCP wasn’t willing to admit lots of their more underlying errors, (which errors obviously led to more profound errors both past and present), and to me we were on a “war communism” footing for years and thereafter, etc., think May Day 1980 had many positive effects on lots of people–just not 100,000 or 10,000. If I have time will definitely re-read what you both had to say, and try and respond in kind.
Added note on another subject: Mumia. Being so far removed from the RCP, I had no idea (along with many of their cadre apparently) that they had dropped this campaign. This is nothing short of a total outrage!!! Just as I was starting to reel myself in, after reeling at their silence about Nepal, read about their shut-down around freeing Mumia. In a very pragmatic way, almost makes me think…finer points about “the farrago”–who cares? Luckily for Mumia, he has touched and amassed thousands of supporters around the world, who will continue to fight for his freedom, and don’t have to depend on the RCP.
Mike E said
Linda: I don’t think anyone is arguing that May Day 1980 was “a total failure” — if by that we mean that it had no positive side. Clearly you are right to suggest a dialectical view of this.
May Day 1980 was a major and highly energetic agitational campaign for revolution — that escalated over a year. It reached a large number of people (directly and even through the bourgeois press) with the understanding that there remained a revolutionary movement after the decline of the 60s upsurge, and it stirred a great deal of debate (and often brought forward revolutionary sentiments).
But its weaknesses are:
1) On its own terms, it fell far short of widely announced and hyped plans — i.e. on the RCP’s own terms and goals. If you plan to ignite a “prairie fire” you have acknowledge when what you get is smouldering and scorched bushes.
2) It had a particularly intense effect on the party itself — which risked quite a bit to carry out this campaign. It is not for nothing that Avakian (with some grandiosity) compared his situation (post 1980) to Mao’s position within his party after the setbacks associated with the Great Leap Forward.
3) It is particularly important to identify is lack of long term impact of this campaign (and others like it).
Throughout its history the RCP has been able to grab the attention of a few thousand people when it put its back into it: from the days of the 1976 Battle of the Bicentennial, to the Mao Memorials, to May Day 1980, to the Soviet Debates, and so on.
But we talk (in the 9 Letters) about how the RCP’s efforts repeatedly take the form of “forays” — mobilizing the same “usual suspects” around their shrinking apparatus, and leaving little lasting connection to the people. Each time the RCP launches something like this, it has little consolidated from its last efforts (other than the trickle of individuals coming into its ranks or periphery). Things don’t “build on each other.”
Even if 1980 fell short (quantitatively), even if it had been a costly gamble in other ways, it would have been a far more positive event if it had (in some way) meant an advance in the revolutionary movement (its size, visibility, ongoing connections).
It is no accident that the RCP emerged from this experience talked about the need for “organized ties” and that Avakian himself (in his memoirs) talks about the need to go deeper in a more organized way into the lower sections of the proletariat. And how THAT sentiment unfolded (and how those projects are summed up — or not summed up) is discussed in the 9 Letters as well.
Letter 3 on “Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People” makes a point relevant to this whole arc of experience, including but hardly limited to May Day 1980:
In some ways, this lack of lasting impact, this failure to consolidate much of anything from a campaign of this kind, is what needs to be understood — not just about the strategic approach that Avakian advocates, but also about the specific conditions within the U.S. and the general nature of the communist mass line.
orinda said
Gangbox, Jimmy, and Redflags: Could you please not substitute your entire websites as relevant comments to this discussion or others? If you want us to check out your websites please supply them as a link within your message here and hey! maybe even let us know if there’s a particular post on your site that has direct bearing on the topic at hand. Am I the only one who finds it annoying to expect a contination of a discussion but just get a new website instead?
orinda said
Ooops my bad. All apologies. I was clicking on your names instead of your responses, thus got your websites. Still learning about this high tech world.
Saoirse said
orinda. what are you referring to I dont even see there posts.
Nando said
orinda: if you click on people’s names in the comment column (on the left) you get their websites.
Orinda made a mistake (an understandable one) that she clicked on names (instead of the comment link) in the left column. So instead of going to the comment, she ended up on people’s websites.
And she thought the commentors had (all, serially!) substituted their websites (in a spammish way) instead of real commments.
It is a rosanne rosannadana moment: “Oh, never mind.”
Saoirse said
It is a rosanne rosannadana moment: “Oh, never mind
nice reference, how old are you, wink.
Nando said
oh never mind.
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