- Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (RWH) was a
U.S. Marxist -Leninist organization that formed out of a split from theRevolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in 1977. AfterMao Zedong , leader of theCommunist Party of China , died in 1976, the majority of the RCP's leadership criticized the post-Mao Chinese leadership as 'revisionist' and 'capitalist-roaders', saying thatChina was no longer a socialist country.A sizeable minority of the RCP believed China was still a socialist country, and continued to support the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party under new leader
Hua Guofeng . They left the RCP to form the RWH. Aside from differences on how to assess the changes in China, the RWH also criticized the RCP for ultra-leftism, or left-idealism in their approach to political work in the U.S. After leaving the RCP, the RWH also did an extensive critique of the RCP's line on the national question, criticizing the RCP for being "white chauvinist".The RWH published this critique in a lengthy pamphlet titled "Build the Black Liberation Movement", which itself was subsequently criticized as having white chauvinist errors by
Amiri Baraka of theLeague of Revolutionary Struggle in a pamphlet titled "RWH on the BLM: Wrong Again!". The RWH made efforts to unite in the early 1980s with the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninst), but then the CP(M-L) dissolved. In 1985, the RWH merged with theProletarian Unity League and theOrganization for Revolutionary Unity to form theFreedom Road Socialist Organization .During its brief existence, RWH cadre were active in various movements, including the
labor movement , struggles of oppressed nationalities, thewomen's movement , thestudent movement , the struggle for divestiture from companies doing business in then-apartheid dominatedSouth Africa , and others. Through its cadres who worked in theRevolutionary Student Brigade , the RWH was directly involved with the founding of theProgressive Student Network .Initially, RWH activity was almost exclusively found in urban areas of the
Midwest and theEast ; it expanded to the West Coast when it absorbed theBay Area Communist Union in 1979. Fact|date=February 2007 While the RWH was structured according to the principles ofdemocratic centralism , it did not consider itself a Communist party "per se", but rather a "pre-party organization."ee also
New Communist Movement Further reading
* [http://www.leftspot.com/blog/?q=rwhq Revolutionary Workers Headquarters Online Archive]
RWH Publications
* Build the Black Liberation Movement. Pole Publications, Chicago, IL, June 1981, 77p.
* The Chicano struggle and the struggle for socialism. Revolutionary Union, Chicago. 1975, 68p.
* Red Papers 8: China Advances on the Socialist Road. Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, Chicago, IL, 200p.
* [http://freedomroad.org/content/view/358/63/ Central Committee Statement on the merger of the Bay Area Communist Union into the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters.] Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, n.pl.. 1979, 7p.
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