Reproduced from the Revolutionary Study Network: “Announcement of the Project for a Revolutionary Study Network”

What follows is an unedited reproduction of a statement published by the RSN, comrades that have emerged as a leftist line from the division of one-into-two that ended the former body of the Maoist movement in the US (what they call the CLM), the dialectical division of a unity-of-opposites into parts owing to the intensification and antagonisticization of the contradictions between the Red and rightist camps therein, an ongoing struggle which we can only hope will purify and improve the ideological line driving the Maoist movement of this country in its quest for a guiding thought and a reconstituted, genuine, militant and ultimately militarized communist Party.

I believe that this document, and others (such as the IWWD Letter alluded to therein) from the final days of the CLM, make clear that its collapse into antagonistic struggle was the fault of the rightists, of a clique of leadership that descended into rightism and revisionism and destroyed it from within. If these documents are legitimate, and I believe they are, then the Red camp is blameless in the matter and to be cheered on in their efforts to move forward.

At the same time, my view of groups like the former Red Guards and CPUSA(CR) is perhaps not wholly in unity with theirs: I believe their criticisms of these groups for draconian political methods and for failing to practice democracy in the theory of democratic centralism, in over-centralizing and exercising tyrannical power from the high seat of a clique (in the manner of Bordiga). But these groups in their early forms brought together the Maoist movement and taught it to look to Gonzalo for lessons, and I think this was an important step. Their leadership cannot be forgiven for sinking into putschist clique-leadership, but these groups had a dual character, had important positive and negative aspects.

These comrades, though, are certainly more knowledgeable than me (my involvement with the CLM, while greater than I can discuss here, was limited), and so I must respect their view and thoughts. And of course figures who abused leadership positions to do such things as insufficiently investigate accusations of sexual assault (“Rico”) can only be condemned.

In any case, I am not yet in full unity with this group. The thoughts on my blog are mine and those on their site are theirs; at the same time, should this group have success in organizing a solid pre-Party movement and should I judge it solidly built on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, I would be happy to subordinate my ideological and political efforts to such a movement. I encourage anyone reading to similarly investigate these writings optimistically and with hope that those producing them will contribute positively to the future of our movement.

Now, the document:

Announcement of the Project for a Revolutionary Study Network

Written by the Preparatory Committee for the RSN

Introduction

We are the Preparatory Committee for a Revolutionary Network. We are composed of former members of the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party USA led Movement (CLM) and other revolutionary minded people. We formed back in August in response to the collapse of the ‘National Working Group’ and the general confused activities of ex-CLM members.

Due to a lack of any formal announcement or published statement from any of the previous CLM affiliated organizations or websites, we are announcing its dissolution.The main organizations of the CLM, including the Committee to Reconstitute the CPUSA (CR-CPUSA), Tribune of the People (TotP), Struggle Sessions (SS), and various other affiliated organizations claiming to represent the US Maoist movement, dissolved in March of this year. Despite the failures and ideological bankruptcy of these organizations, aspiring revolutionaries still exist from the wreckage of this movement who became involved for much the same reason we did; to advance the revolutionary movement in the US. Similarly, we recognize the rising tide of working class people in the US who are organizing in their interest and are ripe for politicization. We aim to unite with progressives(1) from the former CLM organizations, as well as all who recognize the need for a Maoist movement, as we do away with sectarianism and properly assess the errors of the past, and most crucially provide the necessary education so that we may develop our political consciousness and serve the people properly. Simultaneously, there is a clear need to assess the ideological and practical shortcomings which have allowed these errors to persist so consistently over multiple failed iterations and attempts at forming revolutionary organizations. More importantly, it is essential that those involved and all progressive people receive the appropriate political education that has either been consistently denied or neglected, so that we may be wholly capable of recognizing and responding to errors as they arise. If we can achieve this, we will have begun to fulfill our responsibilities to each other and the people.

Plan for a Revolutionary Network

Conditions in the US are rapidly worsening, and without a revolutionary movement the impulses of the masses and the resistance against fascist elements are scattered and lack any coherent, let alone correct, direction. As there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory, our highest priority must be the education of any and all progressive elements we can currently unite with, so that we can solve the pressing questions of the day, properly arm ourselves to combat revisionism, and serve the people.

As such, study circles should be formed in every city among the remnants of the former organizations that associated with the CLM, as well as any other progressives interested in participating. For those ex-members or interested progressives which have no nearby organizations that they may link-up with and no existing study groups of their own, the Preparatory Committee will create regional virtual study groups so that they may participate in this process. Ideally, local study groups will grow out of these online circles.

It is imperative that in this post-collapse period that we guard against the tendency toward horizontalism and disorganization. It is in precisely such a state of disorganization that the clique emerged and was able to direct many well-meaning individuals away from education and instead into their subjective mire. Revolutionary organizing in this country and especially dealing with the CLM must be a coordinated affair involving as wide participation as possible. Therefore, a leading body must be constituted to accomplish this task. We propose that a network of study circles be formed by electing individuals from each circle to a representative general body of the network.

The study groups will form the backbone of the national network in order to coordinate their efforts, and elect representatives, proportional to their relative size, to attend general meetings of the network and report back to their locales on said meetings, etc. These people should be chosen based on their ability to carry out the necessary tasks, their trustworthiness, and their ability to faithfully and competently represent their locale and its positions. Electing people who were leaders in the CLM should be avoided wherever possible, and people who have any credible accusations against them should be disqualified from being representatives altogether.

We must begin from the beginning; these study circles are essential to developing the ex-members and supporters’ grasp of Marxism to a satisfactory degree in order to contribute to real communist organizing and a genuine party-building effort. An education committee will be established by the network in order to coordinate the development of a curriculum for the study circles to complete, after which (and at selected points throughout) assessments will be made on the degree of members’ political consciousness.

After developing the political knowledge of progressive elements, effort needs to be made to analyze the errors of the CLM, lest they continue to be repeated. As such, we aim to establish an ad-hoc committee for the purpose of concurrently investigating the former CLM and writing a historical report. Once the initial efforts of the education and ad hoc committees are completed, a new research committee will be established to produce a historical materialist analysis based on the report of the ad hoc committee. Details of all three committees will be addressed further on.

The Collapse of the CLM

The CR-CPUSA (CR for short) was formed out of the Red Guards in 2019 and was led by the Dallas clique based in Austin, TX. The CR tried to adopt the structure of a party with a central committee, and a politburo based within the central committee that ran the day to day. At no point in any of this did democracy play a key role; the main method of forming these groups was through Dallas hand selecting members and bringing them into these leadership positions.

Like the Red Guards, the CR-CPUSA had connections to its associated fronts. For example, the various Serve the People organizations were explicitly formed by Red Guards collectives or organizations that would become Red Guard collectives(2). We want to be clear that, with a few exceptions, most of the CLM mass organizations were only ever fronts for the CR and weren’t part of a genuine effort to serve the people. This does not mean that everyone in these organizations were members of the CR or the Red Guards that came before it. The fact is that the intent and purpose behind these groups was to act as a body for the CR to manipulate and not as genuine mass organizations.

We do not yet have a complete list of all of the organizations that were affiliated with the CR-CPUSA and all that have dissolved. Some of the existing organizations that were initially affiliated left either before or after the collapse. We can say that all of the STP’s have dissolved, most prior to the collapse of the CLM. A full accounting of what existed and how they ended is a task we must leave to the ad hoc committee. For now we can state that the following organizations no longer exist:

The CR-CPUSA (the party “embryo”), Tribune of the People (newspaper), Struggle Sessions (theory blog), Fourth Sword Publications (publishing group), United Neighborhood Defense Movement (tenant organization), Stonewall Militant Front (LGBT+ organization), Popular Women’s Movement (women’s organization), Women’s Militant Front (women’s organization), Fire the Abusers (student organization), and The Struggle (newspaper).

Aside from the rotten foundations of the CLM that made collapse inevitable, the history of the March collapse can most readily be traced back to last Winter. The contradictions had been sharpening in the CR, especially since 2020 when it received a large influx of members. That fall Dallas went to prison and chose clique member David Martinez (Rico/Rio) to become the new chairman of the CR and the Chief Editor of TotP. Despite this nominal change, Dallas still had a huge influence and did his best to maintain control from behind bars.

By 2021, the state of the CLM had gotten much worse, with many organizations folding and various members leaving the movement altogether. With the declining state of the movement, struggle began to erupt. The initial center point was in Pittsburgh. At the end of last year, they had identified the national leadership of the CR, and particularly Martinez, as rightists and had stopped following party orders for which they were then criticized. However, they were able to convince a majority of other comrades that Martinez was in the wrong, and it was resolved that in March a special conference would be called for his removal. Parallel to this various Tribune committees were set to meet in March and a separate call was made to remove Martinez from the Tribune editorial board. It should be understood that the editorial board of Tribune and the politburo were the same people.

Initially, at the CR meeting the politburo planned to simply remove Martinez and carry-on business as usual. However, the membership that was allowed to attend criticized this and called for a thorough rectification movement. Dallas’ wife, Avanti, was the only leader seen in good standing and was elected to head the rectification effort. The failure of this move would bring about the collapse within a week. Immediately Avanti contacted Dallas, still in Federal prison, and he instructed her to take action against those in Pittsburgh and to reverse the decisions made at the meeting. In response, there were mass desertions from the CLM first in Austin and then in Pittsburgh. At the International Working Women’s Day (IWWD) event in Pittsburgh, this was brought to light to not only others in Pittsburgh, but some of the Tribune members who attended from around the country. After the IWWD event, the former Pittsburgh Tribune released the attached statement to all of the Tribune members they could get in contact with. Within the week, all semblances of the CLM were dead.

The Ad Hoc Committee

Despite all of this, we believe that it is important to take account of this movement and to subject it to critical analysis. We cannot move on in a meaningful way until we have made an account of the past and truly exposed the errors and abuses of the CLM. Burying the past, deliberately or through negligence, only serves revisionists like Dallas. Why is it that in the recent history of attempts at communist organizing that cults like these proliferate? Why is it that there is rarely a serious account or summation given after the fact? These questions must be answered. What good would it serve to have this practice continue? In order to thoroughly root out this tendency and guard against it, we must investigate it and share our findings. We must all engage in serious self-reflection and take responsibility for our mistakes. In this process we will have ground to struggle for greater unity among ourselves. The specific abuses and errors of the Dallas cult have their origin not merely in simple corrupt personalities, but in political line and practice. We have to speak to and get accounts from everyone that we can from each stage of the process. We have to understand what errors were made along the way and why things weren’t rectified. Of course we know the answer mainly lies in a poverty of political education, but it is worth going deeper and getting into the specifics. Those of us who participated in this effort seek to contribute to the revolutionary movement by first exposing the errors of our past and to do our part to prevent others from following in our footsteps.

For dealing with the exposure of the CLM, an ad hoc committee will be elected by the network representatives to draft an account of the CLM’s history based on compiled physical evidence, and reports/first-hand accounts by: ex-organizations, former members, masses who interacted with the movement, supporters, and adjacent victims. Electing an ad hoc committee will resolve the issues that plagued the previous exposure effort, the National Working Group (see below), with bureaucracy and horizontalism, by ensuring a democratic process, the right of recall, and transparency upheld by the network. The ad hoc committee will make regular reports on its progress and its actions can be disputed or reversed by the network.

The ad hoc committee’s tasks will be to lead the drafting of a history of the CLM by:

a) Compiling reports sent in from locales on their experience and summarizing them for presentation during general meetings;

b) Gathering physical evidence and investigating matters that have remained unclear;

c) Revising material according to decisions made during general meetings that clarified conflicting/unclear reports.

The Education Committee

In addition to the ad hoc committee, in order to coordinate the study effort being carried out in parallel with the investigation, the network will also conduct elections to form a centralized education committee, whose role is to:

a) Draft a curriculum and study circle structure based on the experiences and contributions of the individual study groups, and to make adjustments to them based on reports from locales on the outcomes of studies and assessments;

b) Review studies/assessments prepared by study circles to ensure content quality;

c) Prior to the passing of a curriculum, it will suggest to the network a number of texts for study circles to cover in the meantime.

Once the education committee passes the draft curriculum, representatives will then bring it back to the locales for it to be voted upon. If a locale rejects the curriculum presented by the network, they will have to present a counter-proposed curriculum that they will utilize in the meantime, until (after its presentation in the network) a consensus is made regarding the curriculum.

This committee will be run by a secretary elected by the representatives with a super-majority vote, whose role consists of:

a) Logging progress of studies across the network;

b) Compiling completed studies and reviews/reports of their execution;

c) Presenting a summary of reports during meetings;

d) Facilitating for the portion of meetings relevant to the study circles.

Any member of the committee can be recalled by majority vote, and new elections can be made upon request by a majority vote.

The members of the Education committee will be elected from the pool of network representatives. However, if a region has individuals they would like to be considered for the education committee that aren’t from among their representatives, they can suggest someone other than their representative(s) be considered, called an advisor. If elected, they would be a full member of the committee, and would be expected to work with the other representative(s) from their city to communicate information and prepare reports on the study group to the education committee. These advisors should be considered for the committee based on their comparatively advanced grasp of Marxism, in cases where the city’s general network representative(s) wouldn’t be able to perform the duties. Like all other members of the education committee, these advisors must be agreed upon by a majority vote of the network.

The Research Committee

After the completion of the curriculum in which former members have developed their understanding of Marxism, and the basic account of the cult has been completed by the Ad hoc committee, the network would then dissolve the education and ad hoc committees and form a research committee whose first task is to analyze the compiled summation of the cult’s history (which by that point would already be published by the ad hoc committee), as well as any additional relevant documents. We estimate this process to take around 1 year.

The Fundamental Questions

Concurrent to the research committee’s work, the network will aim towards developing ideological positions regarding the three fundamental questions of the revolutionary movement in the US: a) The definition of MLM; b) The nature of party construction; c) A class analysis of the United States.

Some former members may arrogantly dismiss one or more of these tasks, but based on the practices of the CLM it should be absolutely clear that those of us in the CLM project had very little knowledge about the answers to these three fundamental questions.

The National Working Group (NWG)

The main reason we have been tasked with exposing the CLM and the Dallas clique is that those who were involved in the CLM at the very end have thus far failed to do so. We believe a statement like this one should’ve been published back in March after the collapse. For our part, many of us were not involved in the previous attempt to deal with the collapse of the CLM, which called itself the National Working Group, and as such we were unable to perform this task until now.

The now-dissolved National Working Group (NWG) was a representative group of ex-CLM members from various sites and organizations that were active in the collapse. It was tasked with compiling a report on the revisionist clique, publishing a statement, and overall laying out the next steps for the former CLM members. The NWG failed in these tasks and dissolved back in May. Emulating some errors of the past revisionist clique, the former NWG was neither transparent nor particularly forthcoming regarding its formation, its purpose, or the results of their work. In fact, regarding transparency with the public, it was even worse than the CLM; we only have private email chains and the limited accounts of individuals involved to prove it ever even existed at all. The NWG failed to publish any account, report, or exposure of the Dallas clique. This is a serious error as the necessary and immediate tasks that lay before us remain neglected and a genuine network of revolutionaries must take its place to fulfill those tasks. A few of us working to form this network had involvement in the NWG process, but the vast majority of us have not. While some of us criticized the NWG from the beginning, it is not the place for us to analyze that process here, that is best left to the ad hoc committee. We seek unity with the former members and supporters of the NWG in the aforementioned tasks of the network. We invite all to struggle alongside us to build a genuine Maoist movement in the US.

The Jared/Dallas Clique

These individuals should not be organized with or otherwise trusted. They are very dangerous.

The main perpetrators and core at the top of the clique were:

Jared Patton Roark Aka Dallas /Ed Dalton/Kavga (Mugshot from 2016)

Chris Ledesma Aka Rico/Rio /David Martinez

Lisa Hogan aka Avanti, current age 29 (Mugshot 2020)

Their Offenses:

We’ll begin by quoting excerpts from the IWWD letter, Death to the Revisionist Paper:

“Ed is accused of mistreating and abusing his comrade and wife [Lisa], and organizing a struggle session for her when she wanted to end their relationship, in order to change her mind. Rico is accused of being present for this, and fully uniting with Ed. Rico is accused of not intervening when he received a report that a man organized under him [Sidney] had attempted to sexually assault [another comrade], his ex; this man [Sidney] went on to rape and manipulate two other young people.(3)”

“A woman comrade was recruited to do necessary reproductive labor that Ed became unable to do, and was promised payment; both Ed and Rico are accused of not ensuring she was paid.”

“There are further accusations, mostly regarding callousness, lack of concern for comrades, commandism, and dogmatism. Both [Ed and Rico] are accused of demanding bizarre tasks of comrades for “rectification” that are more like punishments, where the aim was to shame rather than reform through struggle or labor, and some of these were dangerous to comrades’ health, safety, and freedom from imprisonment. They are both accused of ignoring objective conditions like disabilities, inadequate sleep, insufficient income, etc that prevented comrades from following orders. They are both accused of demanding that a comrade conduct work during the May Uprisings [aka the George Floyd protests] when his wife was severely immunocompromised and she did not support him being around crowds. Rico is accused of transphobic remarks.”

“Ed and Rico are both accused, on multiple occasions, of intervening in comrades’ personal lives only when it was convenient for them to push their lines or demand things, and not intervening with supports when it was desired and necessary. They are both accused of having a lumpen attitude towards retribution against former comrades, believing that these people should be attacked clandestinely rather than seek to unite the people against them.”

In Tribune, members were treated as mere tools for the irrational aims of the clique. Comrades were given increasingly greater responsibilities and strict demands were placed on them until they were kicked out or burned out and left. The well-being of members was at times given lip-service, but it was never actually prioritized.

Jared is also accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the various CLM organizations’ funds, most of which were supposed to support the Tribune of the People Newspaper, the work of mass organizations, and legal defense funds.

While we recognize Avanti as a victim of Jared’s abuse, she is not herself innocent. She was an active and willing participant in the movement’s activities and its abuses. At the very end, just before the movement collapsed she sabotaged the last proposed rectification effort by conspiring under Jared’s direction to expel the leftmost members of the organization that had drafted and supported the rectification plan. Additionally, she has continued to throw in her lot with Jared and defend him.

Jared lied to the organizations members directly and indirectly about who he was and frequently adopted new pseudonyms or sent anonymous letters to disguise his role and participation in the organization’s errors. Other times the clique would gaslight members by claiming events didn’t happen or that the person(s) responsible were ‘somebody else.’

The whole movement was structured from the top down to stifle democracy and to keep members isolated from one another and to shut down discussion. When comrades violated these isolation taboos they were usually expelled.

The clique deceived many people by masquerading and LARPing as “Maoists,” but their actual political practice reveals that their ideology was not Maoist in any sense. We believe the ideology of Jared’s clique should be characterized as Putschist at its core. As Mao explains, the manifestations of Putschism are “(1) blind action regardless of subjective and objective conditions; (2) inadequate and irresolute application of the Party’s policies for the cities; (3) slack military discipline, especially in moments of defeat; (4) acts of house-burning by some units; and (5) the practices of shooting deserters and of inflicting corporal punishment, both of which smack of putschism.(4)”

This is what was done by the CLM. Blind obedience was required. The policies that were actually enforced were often arbitrary and divorced of any sort of uniform standard. The discipline of the militant comrades was often slack, especially in moments of defeat, While we know of no instances of house-burning, surely that was due to cowardice alone. No one was shot to our knowledge, but there was certainly many instances of inflicting corporal punishment(5). Commandism and deceit were the methods of “leadership” utilized by Jared’s clique, not the mass line. In Jared’s grandiose political philosophy, he was the great leader of a movement that would organize these units and develop a small army of foot soldiers that would some how overthrow the government. His strategy for ‘people’s war’ ultimately failed to attract people and was doomed to failure from the beginning.

“In its social origins, putschism is a combination of lumpen-proletarian and petty- bourgeois ideology.(4)” This is precisely the vat in which Dallas and the Red Guards arose. A combination of lumpen and petty bourgeois elements donning a Maoist cloak.

Beyond these ideological roots there was extreme subjectivism that was deliberately cultivated among the rank and file. Anything that contradicted the “official” narrative had to be ignored and must’ve been a pure fabrication. Members should dogmatically accept whatever Gonzalo said and however Jared’s clique had interpreted things. Dogmatism stifled critical thought amongst the members, and toward all questions which couldn’t be answered with the holy scripture, ridiculous lines were concocted that were later disseminated through Tribune and Struggle Sessions(6). Political education was virtually non-existent and this was done deliberately to keep members towing the clique’s lines and to maintain their blind faith in the movement.

We believe Jared, Rico, and Avanti are the individuals most responsible for the movement and its abuses. While others have committed reprehensible actions, it was most often under the supervision of or orders of the clique, or not of the same magnitude as the three mentioned here.

Conclusion

Our project has 4 main goals: to expose the Jared/Dallas clique, to investigate and then analyze/summate the CLM, to form study circles and an associated education committee, and to prepare ourselves to develop lines on the 3 fundamental questions for the US revolutionary movement.

In our plan to achieve these goals we have integrated the dual tasks of the network (the ad hoc and education committees) because we cannot sincerely take-up the task of studying the fundamentals of Marxism without using it to analyze our past experiences. We must apply what we learn to our previous and contemporary practice. The network is best suited for these tasks as they require democracy, a wide participation of progressives, and the effective organization of information that the network can facilitate. The previous attempt of the NWG lacked many things but importantly it did not have a cohesive plan and suitable structure for achieving its aims. For this project to succeed, people must organize themselves into study circles and must coordinate with the preparatory committee in the process of forming the network.

Presently, we are made-up of both ex-CLM members and those who have never had the misfortune of interacting with the CLM. We are committed to the above mentioned tasks and moving forward in an open and above board fashion. The CLM was dogmatic, sectarian, and secretive. These are errors that we repudiate. In contrast to the CLM, we seek to “unite with all who can be united with.”

To all former members of the CLM and anyone that has interacted with the CLM, we are asking that you share your criticisms, testimonies, and abuses to the ad hoc committee once it is established.

In order to avoid these errors in the future, and to help prevent others from walking a similar path, we aim to share the truth of what happened far and wide! As aspiring communists we understand that, “if we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people. Anyone, no matter who, may point out our shortcomings. If he is right, we will correct them. If what he proposes will benefit the people, we will act upon it” (Mao Zedong). It is in this spirit that we publish this document and begin exposing the CLM. We see this statement as only our first step in rectifying the errors of the CLM and taking our place in a genuine party-building movement.

To consider whether to join this project, you have to ask yourself 3 questions:

1. Do you want to sum up the CLM?
2. Do you want to study Maoism?
3. Do you understand the importance of doing these activities collectively, and are you willing to participate with others?

If you answered yes to these 3 questions, then we encourage you to contact the preparatory committee about joining our network of study circles!

“The work of organizing has little, if any, permanent value unless the work of education, the right kind of education, goes hand in hand with it. There is no cohesiveness in ignorance.” — Eugene V. Debs

Footnotes

1. Progressives- By progressives we mean those that are actually organizing in the interests of the working class or are sympathetic to that effort (in the case of the unorganized). To be more specific would go beyond the scope of the paper as that is something that must be discussed and developed through practice and depends on a given concrete situation.

2. “For the past year Red Guards Austin has been engaged in mass work via Serve the People — Austin (STP-A). STP started out as a program initiated and run by RGA.” Condemned to Win https://redguardsaustin.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/condemned-to-win-position-paper-from-red-guards-austin-2016/

3. Testimony that came out after IWWD places the other instances of rape and abuse as occurring prior to the sexual assault attempt.

4. From Mao Zedong’s On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party

5. One example can be found here: https://twitter.com/mlmvirtuesignal/status/1553113133081890822?s=21&t=D2m_y6lq-YKDaixpRkO2zg

6. For example, the position that queer people aren’t oppressed in the US was expressed by the clique in the correspondence between Struggle Sessions, Tribune of the People, and the Swiss organization The Red Flag.