Revolutionary Youth Movement II
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In the United States, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) is the section of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that opposed the
Worker Student Alliance The Worker Student Alliance (WSA) in the United States was the section of Students for a Democratic Society led by the Progressive Labor Party. The WSA argued that the best way to build a movement in the working class, like SDS wanted, was for st ...
of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Most of the national leadership of SDS joined the RYM in order to oppose PLP's party line and what they alleged to be its attempted takeover of the SDS leadership structure, particularly at the 1969 SDS convention in Chicago.


History

The theoretical basis of the Revolutionary Youth Movement was an understanding that most of the American population, including both students and the so-called "middle class," comprised, due to their relationship to the instruments of production, the working class; thus the organizational basis of the SDS, which had begun in the elite colleges and had been extended to public institutions as the organization grew, could be extended to youth as a whole, including students, those serving in the military, and the unemployed. Students could be viewed as workers gaining skills prior to employment. This contrasted to the Progressive Labor Party view which saw students and workers as being in separate categories which could ally, but should not jointly organize. Politically, the RYM took issue with what they alleged was PLP's opposition to the right of
self-determination The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a ''jus cogens'' rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. It stat ...
for oppressed nations and
ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
s. The RYM also criticized PLP's attacks on the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, whom PLP had accused of " selling out" to the U.S. during the Paris Peace Talks, as well as other criticisms. But most of all, the RYM opposed what it considered to be PLP's unfounded attacks on the
Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
. In the 1969 fragmentation of SDS, RYM departed the convention hall and declared itself the "real SDS" in a new space across the street. In splitting the SDS, the RYM itself also split. One section of the RYM (referred to as RYM I), containing most of the SDS leadership including
Bernardine Dohrn Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) is a retired law professor and a former leader of the left-wing radical group Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn w ...
, David Gilbert and Mark Rudd, became Weathermen. Weathermen briefly retained control of the SDS National Office and membership lists before dissolving SDS and closing its headquarters in 1970, in favor of pursuing underground activities that it believed would help to spark revolution in the short term. The other major section of the RYM, referred to as Revolutionary Youth Movement II, were Maoist-oriented and rejected the Weathermen's line of immediate armed struggle in the U.S., advocating building a new revolutionary vanguard party instead. RYM II, which was presided by the former national secretary of the SDS, Michael Klonsky, quickly gave way to various new revolutionary organizations and collectives. This milieu became known as the New Communist Movement. The largest of the RYM II groups was the
Bay Area Revolutionary Union The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (also known as RCP and The Revcoms) is a communist party in the United States founded in 1975 and led by its chairman, Bob Avakian. The party organizes for a revolution to overthrow the system of capitalis ...
, which soon absorbed some other groups and became the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA in 1975. The Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) also evolved out of these disputes. Other members of RYM II joined in the
Sojourner Truth Organization Sojourner Truth Organization was a new communist group formed in the winter of 1969, prominent in the Midwest through 1985. Oriented towards organization in the workplace, and named after African American activist Sojourner Truth, the organizati ...
, formed in 1969 and active in workplace struggles in the Chicago area. Sojourner Truth Organization, active mostly in the mid-west until its dissolution in 1985, differed from other groups in the New Communist Movement by the initial influence of C. L. R. James and its combination of industrial placement with the struggle against white supremacy, developing a theory of the key role of the "white-skin privilege system" in the white US working class.Staudenmaier, Michael (2012). ''Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986.'' Chicago: AK Press. .


See also

* Michael Klonsky * Revolutionary Student Brigade


References

{{Weather Underground Anti-fascist organizations in the United States COINTELPRO targets Communist organizations in the United States Direct action Far-left politics in the United States Defunct Maoist organizations in the United States New Left Political movements Social movement organizations Socialist organizations in the United States Student political organizations in the United States Youth rights organizations based in the United States