WfJltllEItS ",1NfJlJ,1It' 25¢ No. 190 :~: )(-~:1J 27 January 1978 ~. \M~~l fll,~ '.!J 1f4# "".ft4. It il I ~ Ir .~• ~.~ .. ... t ._~.~,j lI-..... 4 The Call WV Pho·to Klonsky and Hua toast. "If the CCP elected a chimpanzee as chairman, Avakian at "Throw the Bum Out"rally. TheBum-Nlxon-wa8a Mao favorite. Klonsky would send him a telegram of support." r Gang of Four Purge Rip.s Ap'art Maoists I I. t • I~ What was once the largest Maoist East Coast but also key chunks of its invocation of bureaucratic privilege. practices of this organization, many organization in the u.s. is ripping apart Midwest industrial concentration and Unity of the warring leaders against the RCP members are ignorant of what at the seams over the China question. the entire youth operation outside the membership is as organic to the RCP as really is happening in their own party. ~ Long-simmering clique warfare in the West Coast. Consequentdemoralization it is to the Chinese Communist Party or They ought to get the story straight and Revolutionary Communist Party will certainly produce additional resig­ any other Stalinist formation. At all political~no Mao-talk, no phony­ l (RCP~formerlyRevolutionary Union) nations. The RCP has been split and costs, those on top must prevent a baloney, no moralizing nonsense. And exploded last weekend in Cincinnati as wrecked by bureaucratic cynicism and critical discussion of political questions. they'll only get it here. i club-wielding supporters ofthe"Gangof political incapacity. For the RCP, the immediate question is i China. And any serious examination of ~ News of the split has traveled in ~ that question raises the dangerous One Divides Into Two ,~ shock waves through the ranks of the spectre of the "Russian question": the • organization. And no wonder they're nature of the USSR and Stalinism vs. In its factional explosion the RCP f. WV Exclusive shocked. Their party has been blasted f Trotskyism. The RCP tops must avoid ludicrously aped its mentors, the Chi­ [ THE INSIDE STORY apart and they have only the fuzziest this issue like the plague. But burning nese Maoists: the split was the final l idea what it's all about. As a matter of questions sometimes burn out of explosion of a prolonged clique war marked by secret positions held for conscious policy, both wings of the control. Four" had it out with backers of the leadership have worked to keep the The chasm separating the RCP from years. Its characteristics were the exiling I current HuaJTeng regime in Peking. ranks in the dark, with hints and rumors Leninist norms of democratic central­ of oppositionists to the sticks; leader­ This is the largest and deepest split in their only clue to the crisis shaking the ism is evident in the fact that many ofthe ships reshuffled by bureaucratic fiat; probation~with New Left Maoism since SDSfractured in organization. RCP ranks will learn of the most whole branches put on I scarcely a word to the bewildered party 1969. But unlike that split, from which Even when the Jarvis faction, after a wrenching internal struggle in the l ranks. [ emerged a "pro-working-class" wing as long underground existence, surfaced history of their own organization in the well as a hardened petty-bourgeois within the leadership following the mid­ pages of Workers Vanguard. But more The issue was, ofcourse, the mantle of nationalist current, the RCP has divided December Central Committee plenum, importantly, this is also the only way Maoism. The Avakian supporters solid-. along well established clique lines with the membership was shut out from the they will learn the political meaning of arize with the "Gang of Four" and, of no political left wing. Followers of RCP desperate struggle at the top. There were the split. For when the "discussion" does course, Mao (the Gang of Five?) while Chairman Bob Avakian in Californiaare the frantic whispers about secret meet­ at last trickle down to the ranks, it will the forces around Jarvis opt for the certainly no less reformist than the ings and hidden positions: "Bob's for be drained ofpolitical content, obscured present Peking regime and (need we faction grouped around Mickey Jarvis in the Gang"; "Mickey's backing Hua." by a tradition of Stalinist lies, packed add) Mao. The spectacle recalls the 1969 New York. But the severity of the crisis was not for with self-serving bureaucratic cover-up. SDS split in form, where both sides As we go to press it appears that the the ranks' tender ears. The RCP split is a dramaticshift in the waved the Little Red Book and furious- RCPwill lose more than a third ofits 600­ The purpose of this conspiracy of political landscape of the U.S. left. But 700 members~not only the bulk of the silence was more than the simple given the ultra-bureaucratic, Stalinist continued on page 2 J that while the arrest of the Gang of Four factionalizing was reaching epidemic Avakian put down the youth revolt only RCP... by Hua "looked like a bad thing," it proportions. A hot issue was the by putting the fear of Mao into the dual required "further investigation." This question of changing the name of the members about what would happen to (continued from page 1) enabled the center to publish its one and youth organization. Things had gone so them if they did not fight for the center's only statement on the Chinese events, far that while Avakian was pushing for a line at the mid-November youth confer­ Iy quoted Mao at one another. But in the 15 October 1976 Revolution article "communist" youth group, Jarvis was ence. This tactic was to eventually substance, the connection is that of which while, in Avakian's words, actively lining up the non-party youth backfire on Avakian. His heavy-handed tragedy and farce. The deepening "upholding socialist China had a clear against the center in favor of a "mass" approach to the youth members marked radicalization of the Vietnam war 'till' in the direction of the line of the organization. The real issue was power a watershed in Jarvis' decision to surface period propelled many thousands of Four." But with the rehabilitation of politics: the Jarvis clique's challenge to the faction and was to cause Avakian to impressionistic petty-bourgeois youth Teng Hsiao-ping and the 11th Party the Avakian Ieader-eult, as a document lose much of the RCYB in the split. toward New Left "anti-imperialism," Congress Jarvis became increasingly by "the Chairman" makes clear: but in the absence of a forceful Trotsky­ restive over the "tilt" and a "compro­ "... in many ways the Party as a whole "Rectification" ist alternative to discredited Communist mise even-handed" stance had to be has been effectively split for a year or Party (CP) reformism, they overwhelm­ taken. more. This has come out around ingly embraced Stalinism in its "Third various issues. including the questions Following the youth name-ehange With their only public statement involved in forming a young communist World"/ Maoist variant. Ten years later, confrontation, the Central Committee rendered moot by Teng's rehabilitation league. This went so far that some and other leading members were called the once-idealistic student youth who comrades took a factional attitude and Avakian and Jarvis unable to reach to Chicago in mid-December for a passed from collectives to "party­ a further "compromise," the RCPers toward the Party as a whole and a building" have become the demoralized hostile attitude toward the Chair. This meeting, ostensibly to set guidelines for spent the next year and a half crawling was objectively encouraged by Com- opening a discussion within the RCP on pawns of maneuverers like RCPers pink-faced through their public work. In Avakian and Jarvis, and Mike Klonsky, November of that year they managed to head of the "official" pro-Maoist organi­ get themselves in the ridiculous situa­ zation, the Communist Party (Marxist­ tion of holding a "Conference on the Leninist) [CP(ML}]. International Situation" where they The present RCP factional line-up were baited on all sides for having no reflects the RCP's origins in the New line on China. Left. A series of scattered Revolution­ For a while they could fake it. ary Union collectives was amalgamated Avakian was happy to say nothing in 1975 primarily through the patch­ which could make things worse for him work merger of Avakian's Bay Area in China. Jarvis, in his inimitable clique stronghold with the East Coast opera­ style, was sticking to the compromise tion built by Jarvis out of the crumbling whenever Avakian's agents were in remains of SDS's R YM II faction. earshot, while whispering his dissatis­ Avakian's RU was New Left Maoist factions on his own turf. This had the pure and simple. The clot headed by effect of landing some of the more naive Jarvis--a red-diaper baby who left the Jarvisites in periodic hot water as they CP in 1969 with a pro-China line-has occasionally tried to raise criticisms always tended toward a more classic through regular RCP "channels" only to Stalinist coloration based on sycophan­ get smashed by the Bob/ Mickey comboo cy toward the "one country" in which Avakian describes this period in a "socialism" was presumably being built. document: Hence the Jarvis clique is terrified of "It often happened that when things 'got "isolation" from the Peking regime, out of hand' and the Party center while the Avakian wing is more respon­ stepped in to struggle with these lines sive to the old "anti-imperialist" milieu and forces that Comrade Jarvis would then take part, even vigorously take whose admiration for China was badly part, in the struggle along with the shaken by Peking's role in Angola and center.