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.

History

The Proletarian Unity League (PUL) arose as part of the New Communist Movement (NCM) in the early 1970s. 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.

In surveying the proliferation of "self-proclaimed 'communist parties'" in the U.S., 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. 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.

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.
  2. Advocating an anti-sectarian approach and arguing that there is not "one true party".
  3. Supporting gays and lesbians, in contrast to the homophobia found in some NCM groups.

In February 1979, the PUL was one of six U.S. Maoist organizations 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." The delegation held a series of meetings with Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Vice-Premier Geng Biao.

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. Over the next decade, several more groups joined the FRSO, which split in 1999.

Publications

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

  • . September 1975.
  • . New York: United Labor Press. 1976. OCLC .
  • . New York: United Labor Press. November 1977.
  • Mitchell, Roxanne; Weiss, Frank (1977). . New York: United Labor Press. LCCN .
  • . January 1978.
  • . September 1978.
  • . 1978.
  • (PDF). January 1980.
  • – via Bibliomania. First delivered as a speech at the National Lawyers Guild convention in Boston, August 1980.
  • . 1980 – via Bibliomania.
  • Mitchell, Roxanne; Weiss, Frank (1981). . New York: United Labor Press. OCLC . The book's back matter includes "A Comment by Harry Haywood" and the authors' response.
  • A False Orthodoxy: Some Disagreements with the League of Revolutionary Struggle. New York: United Labor Press. 1981. OCLC .
  • . January 1982.
  • Dubrovsky, Ruth; Niles, Lorna (1982). Lesbian and Gay Exclusion: The Policy That Dares Not Speak Its Name. New York: United Labor Press. OCLC .
  • Cummings, Susan; Hoffman, Jonathan, eds. (1982). . New York: United Labor Press. OCLC .
  • Sarkis, Charles, ed. (1982). . New York: United Labor Press. LCCN .

External links