I Wor Kuen
History of I Wor Kuen
Published: In the pamphlet, Statements on the Founding of the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist), 1978. Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
EROL Note: This history was written by IWK as part of the process of merging with the August 29th Movement to create the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist).
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I Wor Kuen (IWK) today is a multinational nationwide Marxist-Leninist organization in the U.S. IWK regularly publishes Getting Together, its political organ, which is distributed across the country. The organization has ties within the national movements, especially the Asian national movements, and in the industrial working class. IWK has also led a number of mass struggles in some of the key cities of the country. Along with other Marxist-Leninist organizations, IWK is moving ahead firmly in the struggle to forge a single, unified communist party.
IWK has a relatively long history in the contemporary revolutionary movement. Since the organization’s founding in 1969, IWK has been an integral part of the U.S. revolutionary movement. There have been weaknesses and errors in IWK’s history as well as contributions. Overall, the history of IWK is marked by a steady development in our understanding and application of the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the U.S. revolution.
This paper’s purpose is to review the history of IWK. We will try to do this by placing IWK’s history in the context of the objective situation at each stage of its history, the state of and struggles in the revolutionary movement, and the struggles that IWK was itself engaged in. The history is broken down into several periods: 1) The formation of IWK 2) The period of 1969-1972 3) The period of 1972-1975 4) The period of 1975-1978
We will try to run down the line and practice of IWK in each period and the key two-line struggles that occurred, as well as indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in its development.
Formation of IWK
IWK was one of the many revolutionary organizations that arose in the late 1960’s. These organizations were a tremendous step forward for the revolutionary movement, for they were a decisive break from revisionism and Trotskyism. The CPUSA had become revisionist in the 1950’s and had attempted to stifle the mass movement by channeling it into reformism. The Trotskyism of forces such as the Progressive Labor Party, too, sabotaged and attacked the mass movement. There was no genuine communist party to lead the mass movement forward.
But oppression breeds resistance, and the masses rose in militant struggle in the 1960’s. In particular, the Black liberation movement rose in an unprecedented storm and shook the capitalist system to its very foundation. The struggle of Black people inspired and set an example for other oppressed peoples, the Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, the Asian nationalities, Native Americans and others.
The 1960’s was also marked by a broad anti-war movement against U.S. aggression in Indochina. Hundreds of thousands of people actively took part in this movement.
It was from these great movements that IWK developed, in particular, out of the struggles of the Asian nationalities. It was not originally founded as a Marxist-Leninist organization, but like similar organizations from the oppressed nationalities such as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party, IWK consciously saw itself as a revolutionary organization dedicated to uniting with other revolutionary forces in leading the masses to overthrow U.S. imperialism. It drew great inspiration from the Chinese revolution, including the Cultural Revolution, and the national liberation struggles around the world. The organization stood for revolution, armed struggle, the unity of oppressed and exploited peoples, and solidarity with the Chinese, Vietnamese, and other people’s revolutionary struggles. In the absence of a genuine communist party, organizations like IWK played a leading role in reconstructing a revolutionary movement in the U.S. They were the first steps in breaking the chains of revisionism which had bound the working class movement.
1969-late 1971
IWK first formed as a revolutionary collective in New York City in late 1969. During that same year, the Red Guard Party in San Francisco also formed. Later, during the summer of 1971, IWK became a national organization as a product of the merger of these two groups.
IWK and the Red Guards played a vanguard role in the Asian national movements during the years between 1969 and 1971. Both organizations recognized that only revolution could solve the contradictions in capitalist society. They set out to build a genuine revolutionary movement in this country, to boldly challenge the oppressing forces, and to show that the everyday oppression and injustices that the masses face come from the system of imperialism.
The IWK collective in N.Y. was formed by Asian-American revolutionaries from diverse backgrounds, including students, workers and working class youth. During its first year and a half, IWK waged a number of mass campaigns against poor living conditions in the community as well as struggles against harassment and repression of the masses by the state. The organization also conducted a number of serve the people community programs, and conducted broad political agitation and educational work among the masses. IWK published Getting Together in Chinese and English, and used it to educate and organize, and to put forward the organization’s revolutionary views.
IWK took up problems such as the horrible health care facilities in Chinatown as a way of organizing the masses in the community to take up collective political struggle against those conditions. In March 1970, IWK launched an extensive campaign of door-to-door TB testing in Chinatown. The organization realized that Chinatown had the highest TB rate in the country because of the extremely overcrowded, decaying living conditions caused by capitalism and bad health care services. In New York Chinatown, there were no hospital facilities, TB clinics or hospital staff who spoke Chinese. The door-to-door campaign helped arouse the community to fight for better services and to join with Puerto Ricans, Blacks and working class whites in the Lower East Side community of New York to fight for the new Gouverneur Hospital, and to force the city government to provide a TB X-ray and testing center.
The struggle around Gouverneur Hospital continues to be a focal point of health struggles to the present day. In 1972, IWK helped wage a mass struggle and held several important demonstrations resulting in the hiring of more Chinese-speaking workers at the new Gouverneur Hospital.
Simultaneous to the health campaign, IWK initiated Chinatown’s first draft counseling service. Many young Asians were being drafted to fight against the Indochinese people. In Chinatown, many young men did not want to go, but they had no organization to fight for them and no way to find out about possible draft exemptions. IWK took the service right into the streets of Chinatown to seek out youth facing the draft and convince them to resist the draft. It was an important part of revolutionary work among the youth sector.
Another basic serve the people program was the childcare school program, which was a way of organizing Chinese working mothers and taking up their concerns for their children’s education. Besides trying to deal with the critical lack of childcare services, the program was important because it was conducted bilingually, upholding the equality of languages and the importance of teaching Chinese to the children. It was important in developing progressive educational materials which mothers supported. Many progressive community women despised and worried about the education their children received in the Chinese after-school programs which had long been monopolized by the KMT reactionaries.
The same attitude of serving the people, of promoting revolution, and of waging mass struggle was the basis for the active and often leading role that IWK played in many community struggles. In early 1970, IWK played a major role in the “We Won’t Move” campaign in New York Chinatown, in which residents and community organizations united to defend housing which the Bell Telephone Co. wanted to tear down to build a telephone switching station. IWK helped to physically move many Chinese families – some recently arrived immigrants – into abandoned apartments on the block, to strengthen the tenants’ forces and show the seriousness of the struggle. The block of housing still stands today because of this mass resistance.
In late 1970, IWK waged a militant struggle against the government’s attempts to close down small Chinese grocery stores selling Chinese produce and roasted and preserved meats. The government branded these traditional Chinese foods as “violating health codes.” IWK was approached by Chinese store owners to help fight this government attack because IWK had become known as an organization that stood on the side of the masses. Through taking direct action and confronting the government inspectors right inside the stores, the state’s attempt to wipe out small Chinese-owned grocery stores was halted. The government health ordinances on Chinese produce were changed as a result of this successful struggle.
IWK also joined with many youths to directly confront the Chinatown reactionaries in the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), demanding access of city youth to the CCBA gym facilities. The CCBA reactionaries used the money from the pockets of community people to build their offices and the gym, but didn’t even allow the young people to play in it after it was built. Demonstrations were held in protest. These were the first demonstrations ever to publicly challenge the CCBA in New York Chinatown.
IWK was also the first organization since the early 1950’s to openly declare its support within the Chinese community for the People’s Republic of China. For twenty years no one had openly campaigned in support of socialist China. The reactionaries had brutally persecuted and even murdered progressives who had supported China. IWK showed films from China which drew thousands of people. IWK worked with a broad range of forces and individuals to organize October 1st mass programs, annually celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic of China. IWK played a leading role in organizing demonstrations at the United Nations to fight for China’s rightful seat in the U.N. and for the ousting of the illegal Taiwan KMT clique from the U.N.
IWK’s bold stand infuriated the KMT fascist reactionaries and anti-communists. They tried to intimidate the masses by firebombing IWK’s storefront several times, slandering IWK in their Chinese language newspapers and physically assaulting IWK members and street vendors selling Getting Together. The FBI and police kept IWK programs under surveillance and frequently tried to frighten the masses by posting special FBI notices against communists and revolutionaries.
The reactionaries’ attempts to separate IWK from the masses and stop the organization’s work were not successful. More and more people came out in support of the programs and mass campaigns led by IWK. Because of IWK’s consistent stands in the interests of the masses, the organization gained widespread respect and support in the community. Thousands of people from the Chinese community attended IWK sponsored or initiated programs.
Getting Together was an important part of the organization’s work. The newspaper was used in a mass way to get the views of IWK out in a broad way – Getting Together was sold openly in the streets, an act which itself challenged the reactionaries. From its very beginning, Getting Together carried extensive coverage on the struggles of Asians in the U.S. There were many articles exposing the exploitation and oppression of the Asian nationalities. Getting Together was the first revolutionary newspaper regularly published in the contemporary Asian national movement.
At the same time, the newspaper wrote about the conditions and struggles of other oppressed peoples in the U.S. The coverage of international events and developments in China were also an important part of the newspaper. Overall, the newspaper played an important role in propagating revolutionary ideas among the masses of people. The Red Guard Party
The Red Guard Party started doing revolutionary work in San Francisco Chinatown in the Spring of 1969. It was formed primarily by Asian-American youth who had been active in fighting against police harassment in Chinatown, in various community struggles against national oppression and in the San Francisco State College Third World student strike of 1968.
The Red Guards opened a storefront office in the community. They began to conduct serve the people programs and weekly showing of films from China and other third world struggles. They also took up a number of mass struggles in the community. They were the first political force in San Francisco Chinatown which came out openly to challenge the local reactionary forces of the KMT. They took the lead in advocating a forthright revolutionary stand against the imperialist system as the source of the oppression Chinese have faced in the U.S. for over a century.
One of the most important struggles was to stop the destruction of the San Francisco Chinese community by redevelopment.
The Red Guards played an active role in the struggle to save the International Hotel. The Hotel occupies the last remaining block of the San Francisco Manilatown community. The other nine blocks have been destroyed and replaced with office buildings and luxury hotels. The Red Guards and other community youth and Asian-American students mobilized mass support and actions against the first attempts to evict the I-Hotel tenants in 1968-69. The tenants’ resistance and these mass actions won the tenants a lease in 1969. Although the landlord set fire to the Hotel the night before the lease was to be signed, killing 3 tenants and destroying a wing of the Hotel, continuous mass organizing and community outrage forced the landlord to sign a lease. Over the next year, the Red Guards and hundreds of people from the community and Bay Area college campuses worked to rebuild the fire-damaged portions of the Hotel. This mass collective effort brought the Hotel up to code and defeated the landlord’s attempts to evict the tenants by using housing code violations.
Throughout these first years of the I-Hotel struggle, the Red Guards played an instrumental role in the struggle against various liberal-reformist elements in the community. These reformists preached reliance on legal tactics and the good graces of city politicians, red-baited the revolutionaries, and discouraged any militant mass struggle.
Throughout this work and struggle, many people became involved in the revolutionary and progressive movement in the Chinatown-Manilatown area. The I-Hotel became a center for this growing movement, housing community organizations and revolutionary groups which took up a broad range of activity including serve the people programs, struggles against national oppression, U.S.-China people’s friendship work and anti-war activity.
The Red Guards also took up a struggle to stop one of the few public playgrounds in Chinatown from being torn down by big business to build a garage. The organization did massive leafletting to build community support for this struggle, organized picket lines at the site of the playground, and worked directly with other progressive forces to hold a demonstration confronting the city government. The struggle was successful, and the Chinese playground still stands today in the community.
Another mass struggle the Red Guards took up was to prevent the federal government from closing a vital TB treatment and testing center in Chinatown. The Red Guards initiated a struggle encompassing a broad range of forces in the community to petition against the closing of the center, and to demand federal funds and a Chinese-speaking staff for the center. The Red Guards, together with other community groups, succeeded in maintaining the program.
The Red Guards conducted various serve the people programs, including a free lunch program and a draft help center. The free lunch program was directed particularly at elderly Chinese residents of the community who are forced to live in dilapidated apartments with no facilities for cooking. The organization tried to serve the needs of these elderly Chinese and in the course of carrying out this work, expose the injustices of the system, and why it was necessary to wage a revolutionary struggle against the system.
A draft help center was opened in 1969 and was the only such center in the community. Its purpose was the same as the draft center opened by IWK in New York, and it provided draft counseling services and education around the Vietnam war.
The Red Guards also led in the rebirth of a mass movement to build U.S.-China people’s friendship and learn from the People’s Republic of China. The local KMT had suppressed this movement for 20 years. In May, 1969, the Red Guards played the leadership role in uniting with other forces to sponsor an open rally in Chinatown to commemorate the 50th anniversary of China’s May 4th Movement, a great anti-imperialist movement which directly preceded the formation of the Chinese Communist Party. During this rally, they took the unprecedented step of unfurling China’s five-star flag and playing revolutionary music in defiance of the local KMT reactionaries. On October 1, 1969, the Red Guards organized the first mass celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in twenty years in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Simultaneous to the demonstrations which IWK helped to organize in New York, the Red Guards held a mass demonstration in San Francisco Chinatown drawing 800 people and demanding the restoration of China’s seat in the U.N. In addition to this work in the Asian national movements, both IWK and the Red Guards played a leading role in the anti-imperialist movement and worked to unite with other revolutionary forces in the U.S.
The Red Guards and IWK fought for the anti-war movement to take a firm stand of support for the liberation forces in Indochina, and this stand brought them into sharp battle with the revisionist Communist Party, U.S.A. (CPUSA) and Trotskyite Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The Red Guards and IWK mobilized the masses into concrete action against the war, initiating many militant mass protests, participating in and helping lead major anti-war demonstrations on the East and West Coasts. They conducted extensive education among the masses to show how the national liberation movements are at the forefront of the worldwide struggle against imperialism and how they are an ally of the working and oppressed masses in the U.S.
The two groups also rallied support for revolutionary struggles taking place in the U.S., including the Black liberation movement and the national movements of Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and other oppressed peoples. IWK worked together with revolutionary organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party around struggles against national oppression and for the independence of Puerto Rico. In San Francisco, the Red Guards worked with the Black Panther Party in struggles against police repression. The Red Guards also worked closely with Los Siete de la Raza around anti-police repression struggles and in other community struggles and serve the people programs.
In the course of carrying out all of this work, the Red Guards and IWK had to combat social-reformist, cultural nationalist and narrow nationalist tendencies within the Asian movement.
One of the major struggles was against a reformist tendency that consolidated into an organization called Wei Min She. This organization linked up with the RU in 1971 and afterwards was promoted by the RU as their model of a so-called “mass anti-imperialist organization” in the national movements. The Wei Min She consistently opposed raising political issues in the Chinese community, claiming the masses were “too backward” to take up political struggle. For example, they opposed organizing demonstrations in Chinatown against the Viet Nam War, saying the masses could not support the Vietnamese people, but could only grasp issues which “affected their pocketbook;” they opposed doing mass agitation and propaganda around the revolutionary significance of the Black liberation movement, claiming that Chinese were too “racist” to support the Black movement; and they opposed public rallies and celebrations of October 1st.
There were also struggles against petty-bourgeois tendencies in the Asian movement, such as those which equated the revolution to finding one’s identity and advocated that this should be done through “culture” devoid of politics. Another incorrect tendency was a narrow nationalist view which opposed Asians working with other nationalities.[1] IWK and the Red Guards consistently upheld the principle of uniting all working and oppressed people and seeing the struggles of Asian peoples not as separate, but as an integral part of the revolutionary movement as a whole.
These first few years of the histories of IWK and the Red Guard’s histories were also marked by sharp internal struggles against incorrect political views and tendencies. The two groups were young and inexperienced in revolutionary work, and had not taken up Marxism- Leninism as a guiding ideology. Nevertheless, they struggled to develop a correct political orientation and line for their work, and this process of internal struggle pushed forward their development towards Marxism.
As soon as the IWK collective formed in New York, a struggle broke out over the basic orientation of the collective. One line, which was the more correct line, emphasized the importance of the collective taking up mass work, carrying out political agitation and propaganda work among the masses and striving to lead and organize the masses. The other line was a terrorist line, similar to that of the Weathermen terrorist organization. It saw the revolution occurring through the actions of a small handful of revolutionaries who would take terrorist actions to “excite” the masses. This line negated the fact that it is the masses who make history and the revolution, not just a few individuals.
The correct tendency advocated building a revolutionary political organization to help lead the mass movement and work to unite with other revolutionary groups. The terrorist tendency, on the other hand, called for IWK to create an apparatus to carry out terrorist activity alongside of mass work in a “two tier” approach which objectively advocated a retreat from doing mass revolutionary work. It even went to the extreme of attacking all who opposed this line as being “afraid to die.”
Those who adhered to the terrorist line left the collective soon after its formation for various reasons, as it became clear that the majority of members of IWK could not be consolidated around a terrorist line. Although this terrorist view was not thoroughly exposed and defeated due to the immaturity of the collective at that time, it was rejected and the correct line became the dominant one guiding the collective’s work.
Starting in 1970, IWK and the Red Guards began to have discussions to share experiences and lessons from their work and seek unity between the two groups. In the Red Guards, a line was present similar to the terrorist tendency which had existed in IWK. It took the form of an ultra-militarist line. Through these discussions, both groups were able to draw lessons from the earlier struggle that had taken place in IWK, and a struggle began to sharpen within the Red Guards against the ultra-militarist line.
Within the Red Guards, the ultra-militarist line promoted an incorrect view on the question of armed revolutionary struggle, placing military questions primary over politics. It called for building the Red Guards as a revolutionary “army,” and mass work was seen only as a means of building support for this “army.” While upholding correctly that it was necessary to wage an armed struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie, this line failed to see that the masses must be won ideologically and politically to the side of the revolution and organized to carry out the revolution. Thus, it downplayed the importance of the organization participating in and leading mass struggles.
The ultra-militarist line had a strong influence in the Red Guards. As a result, while the Red Guards played a vanguard role in the Asian movement, it did not always carry out its mass work in a sustained and systematic way with clear political objectives in mind. It did not develop as deep roots among the masses as it should have.
In both IWK and the Red Guards the struggle against the terrorist and ultra-militarist lines were closely interconnected with a struggle around the role of women in the revolutionary movement. The same individuals who advocated terrorism and an ultra-military line also promoted blatant chauvinist views toward women and denied the role women must play in the revolutionary struggle.
The terrorist tendency in IWK, for example, advocated sexual degeneracy along the same lines that the Weathermen organization did. The Weathermen and this tendency in IWK argued that “breaking up monogamy” would develop “collective” relations and “liberate” relations between men and women. It was actually a cover for degeneracy and the most blatant forms of male supremacy and the oppression of women.
In the Red Guards, there was also struggle against the view that women’s worth is only in the home and in producing children. Certain individuals advocated that women should stay home, have babies and raise the children while the men went out and took part in political struggle. In certain cases, the individuals promoting the ultra-militarist views felt the role of women was to produce “their children” since they thought they were going to die tomorrow. The women also had to struggle against their own thinking, influenced by capitalist society, that having children and being mothers was the center of their lives and their only function.
Around family relationships, struggle also took place for men to take up equal and shared responsibilities for raising children and household work. Women had to go through struggle to understand that they could raise their children and also remain active in revolutionary work.
It was through these struggles against male supremacist tendencies and incorrect ideas on