First Published: Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism, July 2023.
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In the fall of 1971, a student organization at Columbia University in New York City called the Columbia Anti-Imperialist Movement (CAIM) held a number of events on campus to recruit students. I was one of those students. The primary focus of CAIM was to protest U.S. imperialism including in regards to the Vietnam War. In April 1972, members of CAIM and other campus left-oriented groups participated in nationwide student protests at colleges and universities around the country in opposition to President Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi and mining of Haiphong harbor. At Columbia, this protest took the form of occupying a number of campus buildings and holding marches down Broadway in which several thousand people participated.
At some point later in 1972 or 1973 (and it may have been as late as 1974), the Attica Brigade (AB), which was the student wing of the Revolutionary Union (RU) established a presence in New York City and CAIM affiliated with them as the Barnard-Columbia Attica Brigade (BCAB). Through that affiliation, I believe that the Columbia/Barnard participants met students from other NYC Colleges, in particular the City University of New York. At some point during this period, the Attica Brigade (and its members), which had either no position or supported gay rights, took an anti-homosexual position at the behest of the RU. This brought about a split within the New York City AB, and some of the former members including some from BCAB formed a new organization called the Radical Student Caucus (RSC). The members of the RSC were mostly not gay, but they could not accept the RU’s position on homosexuality and gay rights.
While this was going on in New York City, in the fall of 1973, I transferred from Columbia University to McGill University in Montreal, Canada for a number of reasons, mostly personal, but also because I had become friendly with a student there who had become radicalized. Montreal generally was more politically active due to the French Canadian (Quebecois) nationalist movement. At McGill, shortly after I arrived in September 1973, blue-collar employees held the first strike in the history of the university, and I supported the strike along with hundreds of other students and employees. In the aftermath of the strike, which was successful in getting the employees their first contract, some of us formed an organization called something like the McGill Workers Support Committee, and we published a pamphlet called “Four Days That Shook McGill,” which was a chronicle of the strike. The McGill group was primarily organized and directed by a Montreal-wide Marxist-Leninist student organization called (in English) the Revolutionary Student Movement of Montreal (or MREQ, the French acronym). MREQ was based at the two French-speaking universities in Montreal (Universite de Montreal, and the Universite de Quebec au Montreal, but it also had a sizeable group at McGill University. McGill University also had a number of Marxist professors at the time, the most noted of whom were Immanuel Wallerstein and Marlene Dixon. Wallerstein was not an activist, but he recruited radical faculty and graduate students and supported them within the university. Dixon was charismatic, and had a following among students, especially female students. I got to know her pretty well in the period from fall 1973 to spring 1975. During those two years, between the influence of MREQ and Dixon, it would fair to say that Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought proliferated among student activists on the McGill campus. There was also a very active and militant labor movement in and around Montreal at the time. In May of 1975, however, I graduated from McGill and my student visa expired, so I moved back to New York City as an avowed Marxist-Leninist, and renewed my acquaintance with my friends from the former CAIM, now calling themselves the RSC. Parenthetically, the MREQ attempted to transform itself into a vanguard party at some point, probably around 1976 or 1977. That was necessary in part, because most of their members graduated or left university and were therefore no longer students. They became a kind of parallel organization to the October League in the United States. For some reason that I have forgotten, they preferred Klonsky over Avakian.
Similarly, the RSC in New York City could no longer call itself a student organization. By 1975, many of the members had graduated or otherwise left college, and the rest graduated by summer of 1976. The RSC was unable to recruit more students at that point, and in fact did not try. The members of the RSC recognized that they were transitioning from school to not-school, and therefore, they had to come up with a new name and focus. Thus, the Worker-Student Organizing Collective came into being, although no student organizing took place after the summer of 1975. The new organization had three types of activities that it would engage in for the next several years: 1) workplace organizing; 2) non-sectarian mass-movement coalition building, and 3) development of non-dogmatic Marxist-Leninist theory and strategy with the eventual goal of participating in building a viable Marxist-Leninist party in the United States.
Structurally, WSOC consisted of a Steering Committee (SC) with three members as its nominal leadership, and everyone else as ordinary members with equal standing. The SC was responsible for scheduling meetings of the WSOC, setting the agenda for the meetings, collecting dues and making payments as needed. The membership of the SC changed over time, although one of the original members stayed on the SC for the duration of the WSOC’s existence. Although there was no formal rotation of SC members and no elections, any ordinary member of WSOC could be on the SC at one time or another. The SC was not a Central Committee with superior decision-making authority. Most organizational decisions were made by consensus or votes of the entire organization. In terms of work assignments, it was typically solicitation of volunteers, not assignment, although for practical reasons, the members who were already active in a workplace or mass organization were expected to carry out the work assignments for that entity. Most of the agenda at WSOC meetings was taken up by reports from the members about what was going on with their assignments and discussions of how to proceed with the work. There was very little monitoring of work assignments by WSOC as a whole, except if the assigned member requested assistance. In summary, WSOC did not practice democratic centralism to any great extent, and criticism/self-criticism in the form of self-denigration was almost unheard of. I cannot recall any member of WSOC being expelled for any reason. Members sometimes simply stopped coming to meetings and dropped out of sight. The only time that members left the organization over political differences was when the majority of the organization decided to no longer participate in the OCIC party-building process, and the two members who wanted to stay with the OCIC resigned from the WSOC at that time. Though there was generally ideological unity within WSOC, perhaps the strongest bond for many of the members was personal friendship forged through long acquaintanceship. That’s why it was possible for the WSOC to have a couple of reunions years after the dissolution.
The gender make-up of the WSOC was roughly equally divided between men and women. The SC membership was always of mixed gender. Over the course of its history, there were no more than two members who were non-white. There were at least two gay members of the organization. The age range of the organization was from about 20 to 40.
There were approximately 20 members of the WSOC during its history, perhaps a few more. It was hard to keep track of who was a member because for many, the relationship was fairly loose, and some members would disappear after a while. The core group was probably about 12 and there were a group of “friends” that was probably twice that size who came to WSOC events, hung out with WSOC members, participated in study groups, and socialized, etc. As a non-dogmatic, non-sectarian organization, WSOC was welcome in a number of organizations, where others, for example, members of the Spartacist League, were not. The WSOC had very few resources. We met in members’ apartments, and our one piece of office equipment was a mimeograph machine that we purchased in order to print flyers and our several pamphlets. None of us had computers–we used typewriters. Fortunately, some of us had worked on school newspapers so we knew something about press type and layouts.
In 1975, New York City was in the midst of the worst fiscal crisis in its history up until that time. It was difficult to find any job, but a number of WSOC members eventually had factory jobs, drove taxis, had civil service jobs, health care jobs, were teachers, worked in publishing, etc. Eventually after the organization fell apart, some of the former WSOC members and friends got union staff or elected positions, became college professors, leaders of non-profits, and other more conventional jobs in government or the private sector.
One of our members was a CETA worker. CETA stands for Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a federally funded program. CETA workers were supposed to be trained in their jobs and then ultimately transitioned to permanent employment as part of the regular workforce. In New York City, however, thousands of CETA workers were non-permanent but long-term employees of the City government, working for less pay than civil service employees and for much worse benefits. The WSOC member who was a CETA worker was a founder and leader of the CETA Workers Organizing Committee whose primary mission was to organize CETA workers to pressure the City to give these workers permanent employment as regular city employees. During the fiscal crisis of 1975 to 1978, when New York City was laying off thousands of civil servants, one of its schemes was to get rid of the CETA workers and use those slots that were funded by the Federal government to find jobs for permanent workers, who otherwise would be laid off. It was a divide and conquer strategy. The CETA Workers Organizing Committee had a fair measure of success in its fight to save CETA workers’ jobs, at least for several years. The CETA member was an excellent organizer and this effort was WSOC’s most successful effort from the standpoint of Alinsky-style organizing, but it could not be said to have furthered the WSOC’s Marxist-Leninist objectives.
Other members participated in union organizing in their workplaces, became active in rank and file opposition within existing unions that we considered corrupt or ineffectual, or became stewards and activists in some of the more progressive unions in the area such as 1199 or OCAW. Although in these progressive unions, there were remnants of “the old Left” or in other words, the CPUSA or Socialist Workers Party (or some other “Trotskyist” organization), as well as some other new communist activists, it can’t be said that the Marxist-Leninist program was advanced through this work. At best, some of the WSOC members and friends used this experience to get staff or elected positions in Unions and/or become labor educators, occupational safety and health specialists and the like. Several members and friends had gone to medical school or other professional schools and became doctors, lawyers, etc., generally doing progressive work through their careers.
In the mid-1970s, there were a considerable number of progressive, anti-imperialist organizations in the New York City area that were populated by members of old and new left organizations, community activists, intellectuals, etc. WSOC participated in a number of these groups including the Puerto Rico Solidarity Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Committee (the one in existence from about 1975 to 1980), and others. In addition to these organizations that functioned on an ongoing basis, there were also those that came together for a specific event such as the mass mobilization in support of Joann Little. In addition to participating in the work of these organizations, WSOC viewed them as sources of potential recruits. Some members of the local progressive groups were sympathetic to the WSOC, and of those, a few joined the organization. Work within the progressive organizations also helped to build links with other Marxist-Leninist organizations in New York such as El Comite. It is most likely that WSOC became involved with PWOC and OCIC, aka “the Trend” through the relationship with El Comite.
WSOC’s work within the larger progressive organizations was non-sectarian and non-dogmatic. In that regard we were seen as the “nice” Marxist-Leninists as opposed to the RU, OL, I Wor Kuen and other M-L organizations, which became increasingly sectarian and dismissive of other new communist movement activists, whom they could not recruit or were in competition with, as the drive to create a new vanguard party accelerated. In New York City, many of the activists in the mass movements had personal and family connections to the Old Left, especially the CPUSA and the SWP, but were able and willing to work with the less dogmatic new communist movement groups around specific issues. Although most of the WSOC members were familiar with the concept of revisionism, and we did not align ourselves with the Soviet Union (or any other country per se), we worked closely with other activists who did. Instead, we were more sympathetic to liberation movements in Latin America, Africa, the Middle-east, and Asia, some of which were aligned with and supported by the Soviet Union, and others by China, etc. I don’t recall ever having a discussion about revisionism, but I think it’s fair to say that we were more interested in Marx’s, Lenin’s and Mao’s ideas as they could be applied to the United States rather than what the Soviet Union or China was doing.
The WSOC was conscious that the primary distinction between a Marxist-Leninist organization and both the labor movement and the mass progressive organizations is the foundational understanding of the need for a revolutionary transition to a socialist society. We understood that in order to initiate a revolutionary transition, there had to be both the objective conditions for the transition, and the conscious element or revolutionary organization leading the revolutionary movement. As an organization, we were familiar with the successful revolutions of the 20th Century including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, and a number of African countries as well. We were also aware of failed revolutionary attempts such as in Chile, Iran, and elsewhere.
Despite our study of successful and unsuccessful revolutions, we were unable to find a model that would fit the situation in the United States. While the Civil Rights, anti-war, Women’s and other mass movements as well as the trade union struggles earlier in the 20th Century had inspired us, especially by their ability to mobilize large numbers of people, we saw all of them as ultimately reform rather than revolutionary movements. That was in keeping with Leninist theory. Even in the most radical periods of the CPUSA, it never had a strategy for bringing about a transition to socialism. The new Vietnam war era communist organizations also never had the numbers or a coherent plan for initiating a revolution, and the relative prosperity of the United States and the modest successes of the reform movements of the 1930s through the 1960s and into the 1970s, had in a number of ways created objective conditions that might or might not lead to further reforms, but certainly undercut the level of oppression and exploitation that might have provided fuel for a revolution, even in an advanced capitalist country such as the United States. While the WSOC was born in the anti-war and student movements, with the end of the draft in 1971 and the Vietnam War in 1975, those movements began to dissipate. That was WSOC’s understanding of the objective reality facing the new communist movement.
On the ideological front, of course, after its short-lived setback following the US defeat in the Vietnam war, the capitalist-dominated state in the US and elsewhere reasserted itself, and capitalism itself was never seriously challenged either economically or ideologically. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China and other socialist countries into state-dominated, capitalist regimes made it difficult for WSOC to look to them as role models for our own revolution. Within the Marxist-Leninist movement in the United States (excluding the remnants of the CPUSA, SWP and other Trotskyist or Social Democratic organizations), there was a clear tendency for these groups to declare themselves to be communist parties and then self-destruct in a dogmatic and sectarian manner. At the time, one hopeful exception was the OCIC, known to WSOC as the “Trend.” As stated above, WSOC’s initial contact with the Trend was most likely through El Comite. The leading organization of the Trend was the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). The PWOC leaders that WSOC met with were Clay Newlin, Rosemari Mealy and Ron Whitehorne. Prior to the PWOC-led attempt to transition the participants in the Trend into a single organization as a precursor to forming a new M-L party, WSOC maintained a friendly relationship with the PWOC leadership. When the OCIC tried to force centralism on the member organizations, and failing that, accused non-compliant organizations and individuals of white chauvinism, WSOC, with the exception of two members, simply walked away. (About a year later, those two individuals left the OCIC as it self-destructed.)
Like every other new communist organization, WSOC had no plan for directly engaging in revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state. (The one exception to this would be the Weather Underground and its affiliated organization Prairie Fire, which carried out several attacks against ruling class businesses or symbols. Most new communist organizations viewed that as ultra-leftist posturing.) As the mass movements of the 1960s and early 1970s subsided, the WSOC increasingly began to question whether the objective circumstances existed to sustain the new communist movement. When no viable national new communist organization was created, the WSOC could no longer justify its existence and the organization disbanded by the end of 1980.
The remaining members of the WSOC went their own ways when the organization disbanded. The funds in the treasury and the mimeograph machine were most likely donated. Some started families (some had already done so).The members who were in factory jobs continued working in those jobs in order to support themselves and their families. Over time, some of them became union leaders or staff. Some became labor educators or leaders of organizations that were adjuncts of organized labor such as occupational safety and health organizations. Others, with medical training became educators in those fields, worked in community-based health organizations, or simply got jobs in the field. Some went to law school and have worked in areas such as labor law and immigration law. Most of the original members have left New York City for other parts of the country. It’s not possible to know to what extent the former members retain any revolutionary goals, but it’s very unlikely that any of them see a pathway to revolution in the United States in the near future.