Last week, the Maoist Communist Union (MCU), a pre-party organization based in New York City and headed by its chairman Ryan Costello, announced that it would be reviving its national online study series which it had initially ceased more than a year ago. This specific rendition will be over, yet again, Lenin’s What is to be done?, stretching over the months of October and November. In the announcement post, MCU states that “[g]iven the once-in-a-century openings that are now emerging, Marxists in the U.S. must get our act together so that we can rise to the occasion in the coming years, build a real Communist Party, and prepare to lead a socialist revolution.” They then finish by articulating:
"Therefore…participation is key to not only the success of the study itself, but also to the larger effort of building a real Communist movement which can eventually overthrow capitalism and put an end to the U.S. empire. While we are a long ways away from accomplishing these monumental tasks, our hope is that this study can lay a foundation for this movement through developing a nationwide network of Marxist circles working together for these common aims."
All well and good, many may surmise. But of what does this really reveal? Upon closer inspection, only a parody of genuine party-building efforts.
First and foremost, when the MCU speaks of a “nationwide network of Marxist circles,” they mean precisely a network of circles born exclusively out of their guidance and leadership, i.e. a national MCU network, not a national Maoist network. If it was truly the latter, if it truly sought to work together for “common aims,” opposing opinions and groupings would be included. Though, the leadership of MCU is not at all interested in ideas opposed to their own nor to the practice of two-line struggle across organizational boundaries, a practice which is integral towards any kind of party-building plan. As I said in point five of my “Proposal for the Principles of Unity of an Organized Maoist Party-Building Network,” for there to be an actual nationwide network “the subordination of one’s group to the interests of the party-building network is required; groups can (and should) be represented but cannot assume leadership nor influence arbitrarily.” MCU excludes all other pre-existing Maoist groupings and, instead, opts to create a network in its own name, subordinating not itself but other new and impressionable comrades to its political organization. This would be different if, for instance, MCU was already acknowledged as the ideological leaders of the American Maoist movement due to its diligent and correct theoretical and practical work. However, it is not. Since its inception in 2020, both MCU’s theory and practice has only ever tailed the primary intention of growing its organization and influence, even if at the cost of everything else. Therefore, the group vacillates between tactics as it can see only so far ahead, clinging onto strategies which work and work fast, and abandoning those which provide nothing immediately successful. Look no further than their mass organization Art for the People,1 now completely abandoned, their wreckage of Teamsters Mobilize, having turned the perhaps once militant grouping into a pitiful “left-opposition” sect within the old industrial union,2 or, in the same vein, their 180 degree switch from waging the economic struggle to the creation of online political exposures.3 Or take for example something like this online study, which is a practice the MCU began in 2024 after it had ceased another escapade, Revolutionary Marxist Students.4 When it initially ran a series of online studies, it connected hundreds of comrades across the country. However, it quickly faced a problem: many comrades who were in these studies were far from their branches, which were at this point located in several states. This made it difficult for the MCU to absorb these comrades into their fold, and, in reality, resulted in not much direct growth for the organization. So, of course, it abandoned these endeavors, forced all of its countrywide branches to pack up their bags and relocate to New York City, and furrowed its brow once more. Now, it has only come right back around, its goal again aimed at expanding back outwards across the country via a new online study (primarily—one can assume—due to their social media growth in the last year). What else it’ll throw at the wall, who knows? The point here is to dwell on the type of approach the MCU takes in all that it does so that comrades may really understand just what kind of “foundation” it intends on laying for a supposed nationwide network.
Secondly, this plan conforms around a study-first, or rationalist, orientation which attempts at conjuring up a unified political line from theory alone, trapping petty-bourgeois radical intellectuals and some workers into the former’s class machinations. In other words, young Marxist study circles are driven with the intention of an idealist mastery of Marxism, which only ever, in practice, results in inexperienced comrades tailing those oh so great theoretical masters of the day like comrade Costello. Theoretically, this stunts any kind of scientific application of Marxism as it trains comrades not to think for themselves, but to leave the thinking to a select few while they “catch up on the classics,” so to speak. Lenin, in the earlier stages of the Russian Revolution, wrote in his 1893 book What the “Friends of the People are” and How they Fight the Social Democrats that due to the pressing task of theoretical work, ideological efforts among all Russian Marxists “must be directed towards the concrete study of all forms of economic antagonism in Russia, the study of their connections and successive development; [revealing] this antagonism wherever it has been concealed by political history, by the peculiarities of legal systems or by established theoretical prejudice.”5 How does the long and dreadful study of one single Marxist text over the course of multiple months figure to the method Lenin speaks of? The truth is it doesn’t. Comrades in these national studies will learn, but they will learn exclusively of MCU’s way. And such a way would not be half-bad if it pushed inexperienced comrades to engage not only in the book-learning of Marxist theory but simultaneously in the concerted study of the economic and social relations of American class society, of the antagonisms which permeate across our own country. But again, it doesn’t. Instead, this method dangles the forever unachievable goal of the mastery of Marxism—already possessed, of course, by the MCU cadre facilitating the studies—in front of spirited participants, condemning them to either fall in line or fall out of favor.6
More consequentially, this strategy further isolates the already insular Maoist movement from the working class as comrades remain estranged, both ideologically and physically, from the very workers they claim to be organizing. They move from theory to practice in the most literal way, leaving room for all kinds of errors and missteps, for all sorts of sectarian and dogmatic schemas that alienate workers from Maoist politics. Lenin, in the same 1893 book, noted how the required ideological work could not be separate from or take precedence over practical work (in the form of agitation and propaganda). He outlined how it was solely
"the admirers of the “subjective method in sociology,” or the followers of utopian socialism, [that] could arrive at such a conclusion. Of course, if it is presumed that the task of the socialists is to seek “different” (from actual) “paths of development” for the country, then, naturally, practical work becomes possible only when philosophical geniuses discover and indicate these “different paths”; and conversely, once these paths are discovered and indicated theoretical work ends, and the work of those who are to direct the “fatherland” along the “newly-discovered” “different paths” begins."
He further argued in a footnote that “[o]n the contrary, the practical work of propaganda and agitation must always take precedence, because…theoretical work only supplies answers to the problems raised by practical work…” Given this, what good is a network which is isolated from the working class and which does not explicitly outline the crucial practical tasks of our day? Is it not imperative that we must not only build ties with the working class (primarily the industrial proletariat, of which the MCU agrees with theoretically but does not carry out practically)7 in every locale we find ourselves in, but also, more importantly, raise from it the revolutionary leaders we need in order to found any kind of Communist vanguard party? Or is it merely enough to post short-form videos online which siphons interested comrades into endless studies? For posing such questions, we are told we are pragmatists. Yet, if one truly does take the time to study the history and theory of the international Communist movement, one will see how all of its greatest teachers (who were proven correct not because of any innate prophetic genius on their part, but because their theory correctly reflected the objective development of society—the kind of thing which disregards any set of self-proclaimed leaders) made it very clear that links must always be made with the masses on an explicitly political basis at every point along the revolutionary movement; that practical tasks cannot be subordinated even in a period of theoretical disarray. On the contrary, an actual study of Marxism forms in its application to concrete conditions. Such a thing forces comrades to think creatively, to apply abstract lessons to material processes, to place their trust not in what one or a few masters of theory have to say, but in their own ability to understand and use the theory itself. What we need at this very moment are dedicated revolutionaries willing to move away from comfortable activism, from leisurely study clubs, cook-outs, and dinner parties, and towards the diligent construction of a Maoist workers movement.
The purpose of this article, however, is not to dwell on the errors of rationalism in the modern Maoist movement, as has been done elsewhere.8 The main idea to get across is that the MCU, in all it bluster, provides an ill-fated organizational line towards party-building efforts. A network only works if actual, not symbolic, two-line struggle across current groupings is carried out. A network only works if concerted, not convenient, practical activity is done by all supposed Maoists. What the MCU proposes includes neither.
We need not solely examine the history of Russia, nor even of China, to come to this conclusion. By examining certain historical particularities of our own movement, the MCU’s seemingly well-dressed veneer slips off and falls down towards the dirt. The MCU is, to reiterate, a pre-party organization. What is a pre-party? To newer comrades, it may appear to be a rational kind of grouping. Something serious and revolutionary, yet something obviously not the party. What it is in reality, however, is only pre-mature and an erroneous formulation of Communist organization. As T. Kobayashi in their article “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce…” notes: “No Communist party has been successfully constituted with the idea of a ‘pre-party formation’…The idea of ‘pre-party formation’ attempts to force together a revolutionary organization with a mass organization in the hopes of commanding underdeveloped cadre into the revolutionary organization.” In other words, pre-parties are the snake oil salesman of the American Maoist movement, and have been for a long time, promising young or inexperienced Communists the life of a hardcore revolutionary at the cost of their own initiative and, more importantly, at the cost of the movement as a whole.
To explain, after the initial anti-revisionist periods stalled out following the collapse of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), green forces arising out of the anti-war and civil rights movements coalesced into the New Communist Movement (NCM) of the late 60s and early 70s. It is in this period where many incorrect ideas of today took root, as the following decade of “party-building” and “anti-revisionism” failed to culminate into a genuine vanguard party that would have filled the void the CPUSA left. In particular was the popularity of these so-called pre-party formations, formations that practiced democratic centralism, engaged in the outrageous discipline of its own cadre (manifesting in physical and mental violence), and organizational sectarianism, alienating itself from the workers and the rest of the Maoist movement. Out of the many several that existed, the one to note here was also by far the largest at the time: the Revolutionary Union (RU), founded in 1968. The RU, progressively dominated by Bob Avakian (one of its founders), epitomized the failures of the pre-party formation. Theoretical and practical work that was done by the organization, even if correct (which oftentimes wasn’t—e.g. the strategy of a united front, the creation of intermediate workers organizations, etc.)9 was done first and foremost at the behest of the RU’s interests, not the movement as a whole. It thought solely for itself and how it could grow its own influence, whether it was among radical students in Berkeley or mining workers in Appalachia. Obviously, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with winning, or attempting to win, over those unsure and skeptical to one’s line—of what else is the purpose of revolutionary socialism? However, if the purpose for persuasion is purely for the success and growth of one’s sect and one’s sect alone, then this form of persuasion is nothing more than sly coercion; the class character behind such ambitions is not proletarian but petty-bourgeois. And unfortunately, these ambitions remained terribly influential on the NCM where groups like the RU dominated, alongside the October League (OL) headed by one Mike Klonsky, and other pre-party formations. Each time an attempt at unity across organizational bounds was made, it was completely farcical as each consolidated pre-party was unwilling to relinquish their control over a section of the movement—however minuscule it was. If any of these groups were worth their salt, they would have welcomed anything that put their leadership to the test, anything that forced Avakian, Klonsky, or whoever else, to demonstrate exactly why it was they who were the chairmen of their respective organizations and not someone else. But they didn’t. And so the NCM came and went, the RU later arbitrarily declaring itself the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in 1975 and the OL declaring itself the Communist Party (M-L) in 1977. Ex-RU member Steve Hamilton, as noted by Aaron Leonard in his book Heavy Radicals, could see right through it: “‘we should avoid mystifying what “party building” actually meant,’ [Hamilton said]. ‘The RU already functioned effectively as a party.’” For the RU, same as the OL, if they merely spoke like the party, dressed like the party, and lived like the party, then they were bound to become the party. So the petty-bourgeois mentality goes. Ultimately, despite a late effort to try and rally the independent circles outside these existing parties to work towards that of a really real party-building network, as summed up by Pacific Collective Marxist Leninist in their 1979 book From Circles to the Party, the NCM had lost most of its steam. The only Maoist group which persisted through the demise was the RCP itself, which turned into the very thing it was already foreshadowed to become: a raging cult around Avakian.
There is much more history to examine here, not just in the NCM itself but afterwards during the height of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), which the RCP had significant influence in, and the upsurge of Maoism in the early to mid 2010s, an upsurge much more pitiable than the NCM (of which the MCU’s former group, Mass Proletariat, was founded in). Regardless, it is abundantly clear that this kind of strategy, of consolidating around isolated groupings, of creating ready-made revolutionary organizations (i.e. pre-party, collective, etc.) and not daring to cross its boundaries, has failed time and time again—a fact we will continue to pester our self-important comrades with, as it is doubly clear how the MCU intends on repeating these same mistakes, either out of sheer ignorance or spite. Nevermind the fact that the MCU cites Bob Avakian, and other RCP members Lenny Wolf and Raymond Lotta on its online reading list, nevermind the fact that the MCU in all of its literature only refers to the RU/RCP’s role when mentioning the NCM, nevermind the fact that the RU’s theoretical journal was called Red Papers and MCU’s present journal is called Red Pages; the MCU upholds, in essence, the same erroneous organizational line the RU did.10 This line stunts the movement, sows unnecessary division among Maoists, and further alienates Maoism from American workers.
Many may be quick to point out that I too am a part of a very obscure and small grouping, the Maoist Labor Group of Austin (MLGA). That is true. But the difference between ourselves and the MCU is that we are frank with admitting such a reality. We do not delude ourselves into thinking that merely because we are Maoists, merely because we organize ourselves into a circle of like-minded comrades, we thereby deserve to be the leaders of any supposed revolutionary movement. That, on the contrary, can only be proven in the test of battle, only when it is seen and judged by the workers themselves, when trust and ties are not just sown but made indestructible. The end goal of our grouping is not that it grows in size and influence, but that it’s use becomes superfluous, giving way towards a higher form of organization which consists of the working class’ most steadfast, most revolutionary elements—who cares what becomes of the oh so sacred MLGA in that process?
For the past fifty years, American Maoism has wallowed in the mud, unable to see past the mistakes of its forefathers. Thus, it is vital for us Maoists at present to come to terms with these basic failures and work together despite looming theoretical differences. To struggle with one another in advancing the revolutionary movement, in rearing leaders from the working class, in fighting for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the guiding science of the proletariat, and in establishing the correct set of strategy and tactics for the revolutionary road in the United States. Does the Maoist Communist Union (as well as other sectarian groupings of our day) dare to step out of the comfort of its own organizational boundaries to test its leadership in the field of ideological and practical combat? Does it dare to prove its worth to the workers not merely in words but in the content of its activity? Or, as we have seen, does it prefer to go at it alone at the cost of everything else?
To conclude, my reply to the original question: “Does the Maoist Communist Union really know what is to be done?” can be put briefly: Yes, but only for itself.
- https://www.instagram.com/artforthepeople.nyc/
- https://www.instagram.com/teamsters_mobilize/ Over the course of the last two years, Teamsters Mobilize members have been routinely barred from conventions and faced suspensions, as indicated by posts on their social media. Though, what appears to be the silencing of “militant” unionists is only the consequence of dealing in sectarianism, as the group only acts as a funnel for recruitment into MCU. The vast majority of workers within the Teamsters, as they have demonstrated, care little about the plight of annoying Maoists-in-disguise too preoccupied with growing its own organization’s ranks.
- In its 2023 document “MCU and the Working-Class Movement,” they say, “if we are to become part of the working-class movement in this country and consolidate the most advanced workers in our current conditions, we have to make the focus of our practical work be the economic, labor union struggles where these struggles exist and have some promise.” Well, three years later, as their exploits among the unions have largely stalled (due to their own mistakes), the group has now shifted their focus towards their online work of long and short-form videos, passing without care and without patience to broad political exposures, preaching along the way that this is what it meant the whole time.
- RMS was the organization’s student front group. It tasked cadre at the time to set up study circles run by MCU cadre in college campuses.
- All emphasis by Lenin.
- The MCU, beyond our criticisms here, has engaged in childish behavior typical of sects. See the following for accounts by ex-MCU cadre and affiliates: “Statement by former MCU contacts,” “Statement by Former Members and Former Members of Affiliate Organizations of the MCU," and “Externalizing Proletarian Feminism: Against Ryan Costello of the Maoist Communist Union.” There is, however, one crucial aspect to note here. What oftentimes happens to the forces which make these “exposés” and thereafter split off is that they do not learn the lessons laid out in front of them (i.e. the erroneous organizational line taken by the MCU) and go on to form yet another isolated sect (either a study circle or “direct action cell,” take your pick), further splintering the movement. Misogyny, sexual exploitation and abuse, etc., are spurred on by the petty-bourgeois class character of the sectarian pre-party line, not the other way around.
- In “MCU and the Working-Class Movement,” the MCU mentions the importance of organizing primarily among the industrial proletariat. It seems as though it has all but abandoned that assessment, in favor of exclusively organizing around its online content and studies. I want to note here, however, that whenever work was done, it was only ever workerist, i.e. having cadres intentionally get jobs in industrial sectors (thus, how its members gained control of Teamsters Mobilize). Why is the latter a poor strategy? Because 1) workers are, again, organized on the basis of filling MCU’s (or any other organization’s) ranks, and 2) it attempts to, out of impatience, under-cut the genuine construction of revolutionary ties between the Maoist intelligentsia and the working class by just having petty-bourgeois radicals dress up as and become the workers themselves. Did it require Lenin to get a job at the Russian factories in order to organize among the industrial factory workers? Or did he and others take their time, never doubting for a second the revolutionary potential of the masses, instead self-critically analyzing what they needed to do better in order to reach them?
- See my articles “Concerning the Rationalist Trend in American Maoism,” and “No Country for Old Men: How ‘Veterans’ of the Maoist Movement Hold it Back,” and Comrade Abundio’s article, “Lessons from Early Russian Marxism: From Secluded Activity to Parallel Propaganda and Agitation,” for a detailed criticism against rationalism and its proponents.
- See the following for criticism against the Revolutionary Union (as well as other similar groupings) within the NCM: “Imperialism Today: An Economic Analysis,” and “Revolutionary Strategy in the U.S.,” by The New Voice, “A Party or a Sect?" by the New York Communist Workers’ Organization, and The Struggle for the Party and Classes in the United States by Charles Loren. Visit The Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-line for hundreds and thousands more primary and secondary sources regarding the debates within the NCM.
- This is precisely why T. Kobayashi, beyond the -ism pertaining exclusively to the nonsensical “New Synthesis,” correctly labeled this trend Avakianism in his already cited article.