Proletarian Unity League


The Proletarian Unity League was a Boston-based Maoist organization formed in 1975. Its founders were ex-Students for a Democratic Society members who had been associated with the Revolutionary Youth Movement II: one of three factions to emerge from the split in SDS that occurred at its June 1969 National Convention.

History

The Proletarian Unity League arose as part of the New Communist Movement in the early 1970s. The PUL members rejected the Communist Party USA for its alleged revisionism; they also rejected the Socialist Workers Party and other Trotskyist sects for their opposition to Maoism and Chinese foreign policy.
In surveying the proliferation of "self-proclaimed 'communist parties'" in the U.S., the PUL criticized what it saw as a tendency toward ultra-leftism, a critique articulated in its 1977 book Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type? Against the Ultra-Left Line. As Max Elbaum writes:
Throughout its ten-year span, the PUL differentiated itself from most other Maoist organizations by:
  1. Battling what it characterized as white supremacy in the American labor movement and its damaging effects on the development of class consciousness.
  2. Advocating an anti-sectarian approach and arguing that there is not "one true party".
  3. Supporting gays and lesbians, in contrast to the homophobia found in some NCM groups.
In February 1979, the PUL was one of six U.S. Maoist organizations to send a representative in a delegation to China. The visit's stated purpose was to "strengthen the unity between the U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the Communist Party of China" and to "promote the prospects for unity among the U.S. Marxist-Leninists." The delegation held a series of meetings with Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Vice-Premier Geng Biao.
In 1985 the PUL merged with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The FRSO vowed to avoid the dogmatism that had been a defining feature of Maoism in the U.S. Over the next decade, several more groups joined the FRSO, which split in 1999.

Publications

In addition to its Forward Motion newsletter—started in 1982 and published 4-6 times a year—the PUL's publications included:
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