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ORIGINS In the 1960s Student Radicals gathered into the Students For A Democratic Society . The SDS grew to over 100,000 members before dissolving in 1969. The AFL-CIO leadership supported the Vietnam War and sought to avoid strikes, but union workers saw through this and independently organized a series of Wildcat Strikes . Radical Marxist and other African-American auto workers subsequently formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), which later became the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement . For a few years DRUM acted as a Dual Union , with black leadership, within the United Auto Workers . DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 1970S AND 1980S As one if its last iniatives, SDS had begun to leave its campus base and organize in Working Class neighborhoods. Some former members subsequently developed local organizations that continued the trend, and they attempted to find theoretical backing for their work in the writings of Lenin , Mao and Stalin . Maoism was then highly regarded as being more actively revolutionary than the brand of communism supported by the post-Stalin Soviet Union (see the definition of the American version of the New Left for more on this). As a result, most NCM organizations referred to themselves as Maoist . Similar to the New Left's general direction in the late 1960s, these new organizations rejected the post- 1956 Communist Party USA as Revisionist , or anti-revolutionary, and also rejected Trotskyism and the Socialist Workers Party for its theoretical opposition to Maoism. The groups, formed of ex-students, attempted to establish links with the working class through finding work in factories and heavy industry, but they also supported National Liberation Front s of various kinds, including the Black Panther Party (which was by then on the decline due to COINTELPRO tactics) the Cuban Revolution , and the National Front For The Liberation Of Vietnam . The New Communist Movement organizations supported national Self-determination for most ethnic groups, especially blacks and those of latino origin, in the United States. These organizations addressed problems of Sexism and Racism , partly by voicing adamant support for self-determination and Identity Politics , and felt that they were dealing with problems they were of the opinion had not been addressed in the groups of the 1960s. However, different NCM groups came to this similar conclusion via quite different routes. In its early years, NCM organisations formed a loose-knit tendency in United States Leftist politics, but never coalesced into a single organization. As time went on, the organizations became extremely competitive and increasingly dennounced one another. Points of distiction were frequently founded on the attitude taken toward the Successors Of Mao and international disputes between the Soviet Union and China regarding such developments as the Angolan Civil War . The Revolutionary Union declared itself to be the Revolutionary Communist Party USA in 1975 . The other national organizations swiftly formed themselves into party organizations — the October League became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) , and nearly all other such groupings, no matter how small, began calling themselves " Party ", adopting Manifesto s and Programme s, and electing Central Committee s. The New Communist Movement as a whole became increasingly isolated in the 1980s. Some organizations dissolved; others merged. The Revolutionary Communist Party USA remains as an original product of the New Left. Many smaller organisations combined to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization during the 1980s. Subsequently, FRSO split into two organizations, both of which continue to use the same name. In 2003 Max Elbaum, a former member of the organization Line of March published Revolution in the Air a history of the New Communist Movement. SEE ALSO
Predecessors
NCM Organizations of the 1970s and 1980s
Current Organizations Decended from NCM
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