Revolutionary Youth Movement
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The Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) was the section of Students for a Democratic Society that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party. Most of the national leadership of SDS joined the RYM in order to oppose what they alleged to be PLP's attempted takeover of the SDS leadership structure, particularly at the 1969 SDS convention in Chicago.
Politically, the RYM took issue with what they alleged was PL's opposition to the right of self-determination for oppressed nations and ethnic groups. The publication in 1969 of PL's seminal anti-nationalism document was RYM's pivotal evidence of this. The RYM also criticized PL's attacks on the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, whom PL 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 PL's totally unfounded attacks on the Black Panther Party.
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 RYM itself also split. One section of the RYM (referred to as RYM I), containing most of the SDS leadership including Bernardine Dohrn, David Gilbert and Mark Rudd, became Weatherman. Weatherman briefly retained control of the SDS National Office and membership lists before dissolving SDS and closing its headquarters in 1970, in favor of instead 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 Revolutioanry Youth Movement II, were Maoist-oriented and saw the immediate task as building Marxist-Leninist organization, rather than engaging in armed struggle immediately like Weatherman advocated. RYM II rejected the Weathermen's line of immediate armed struggle in the U.S. and advocating building a new revolutionary vanguard party, since they considered the existing Communist Party, USA to be hopelessly reformist and revisionist.
RYM II 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, which soon absorbed some other groups and became the Revolutionary Communist Party USA in 1975. The Communist Party Marxist-Leninist also evolved out of the disputes within RYM II. In 1985, faced with shrinking or collapsing organizations, many of these offshoot "parties", including the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, Proletarian Unity League, Organization for Revolutionary Unity, and later the Amilcar Cabral-Paul Robeson Collective, consolidated themselves into the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
[edit] See also
- Worker Student Alliance
- New Communist Movement
- "Shut It Down!" Includes "SDS: The Last Hurrah", an account of Chicago 1969 written by an undercover federal agent, and the Revolutionary Youth Movement mission statement.
- Revolution in the Air book and reference website about the New Communist Movement
