The following article was excerpted and from PLP
history, a five part essay published in PL Magazine Spring 2018 Vol. 15 No. For the full article visit www.plp.org.
In the early 1960s, class struggle was heating up. The U.S. bosses embarked on a genocidal war in Vietnam. The leadership shown by the working class in Vietnam after decades of resistance to French imperialism inspired millions of workers worldwide. Black workers led rebellions in almost every major U.S. city and rocked the capitalist class back on its heels. In the midst of intensifying class struggle in March 1964, a Yale University conference on socialism was attended by many pseudo-left organizations, including the “Communist” Party USA and various Trotskyite groups.
The conference was geared for a scholarly debate on theory. Only Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) broke through this nonsense to advocate building a militant anti-imperialist movement! PLM leader Milt Rosen electrified the audience of 500 students and faculty by focusing on opposing U.S. imperialism’s efforts to crush the revolutionary movement in Vietnam. He called for a nation-wide mobilization on May 2 to protest U.S. aggression there. The proposal was approved overwhelmingly and a May 2nd Committee was organized under PLM’s leadership.
PLP launches anti-war movement
On May 2, thousands of workers and students marched and rallied in cities nationwide. In New York City, 1,000 heard PLP speeches about the necessity for communist revolution. They broke a police ban on demonstrations in midtown Manhattan, winding their way through Times Square to the United Nations, demanding: “U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!” It was the first national demonstration against the U.S. imperialist invasion and the forerunner of countless protests against U.S. rulers in the years ahead.
The Committee became a national organization called the May 2nd Movement (M2M). Hundreds joined. They played a major role in popularizing the struggle against U.S. imperialism’s war against workers and peasants in Vietnam. They issued hundreds of thousands of leaflets, buttons and pamphlets; initiated numerous university teach-ins; organized rallies and marches; and developed “Free Universities” as an off-campus alternative to the rulers’ educational system.
PLP steers anti-war movement in a militant, communist direction
Following a massive Washington, D.C. anti-war rally of 25,000 organized by Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) in the spring of 1965, PLM’s leadership fought inside M2M to dissolve it and join SDS, a move supported by the overwhelming majority within M2M.
M2M did play a vanguard role in opposing U.S. imperialist aggression in Vietnam and successfully broke with the old pacifist “peace movement” dominated by the Communist Party USA. That movement was never anti-imperialist but rather championed ruling-class collaboration behind slogans like “Ban the Bomb”; “Peaceful Co-existence”; and “For A Sane Nuclear Policy” — as if the working class could ever make peace with imperialist rulers! PL’s slogan--“U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!”—was eventually adopted by millions.
M2M helped move the emerging anti-war forces to the left and toward anti-imperialism. Many youthful fighters joined PLM, having learned from their mass struggles in the M2M. It was youth of this and many mighty struggles against racism and imperialism that our Party— Progressive Labor Party (PLP) was born.
Fast forward 60 years, once again youthful fighters around the world are lifting their fists and voices in defiance against the imperialist war machine which sacrificed tens of thousands of working class lives in Palestine to its deadly meat grinder in less than a year. Students are hungry for an alternative to this racist genocide system and are searching for solutions that can never be found in nationalist movement or the rulers’ blood soaked ballot box. The solution to genocide can only be found in joining the only Party with 60+ years of experience, steeped in the working class, who continues to learn from the lessons and mistakes of the past, evolving through struggle and theory. Together students, workers, and PL’ers, united under the red flag, have the power to smash this system and create the world our class deserves from Congo, Gaza, to the U.S.A. Until then read and spread CHALLENGE widely, join a study group, become a member of PLP. We have a world to win!
