Avoiding the Red Closet: The RCP’s Witch Hunts Against Queer Cadre
As a Maoist in the United States, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its history, both good and bad, is something that I have to reckon with. Part of being a Communist is summing up the errors of our revolutionary predecessors and discovering where exactly they went wrong in terms of relationships to the masses and organisms generated by the masses, development of cadre and why cadre eventually left this organization, where splits came from, etc. During this Pride Month and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, I’ve been investigating the history of the Maoist movement in the United States in regards to queer people. The Kasama collection “Out of the Red Closet” is an important collection of primary source accounts from former cadre and former mass organizers involved with RCP projects and I highly advise reading it for yourself.
The line of the RCP for a very long time, throughout the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the struggles for basic dignity and healthcare rights for queer people that it generated, particularly those who were colonized, was that one could not be simultaneously queer (focus was usually on males who are attracted to other males) and a Communist. Male homosexuality was seen as being a conscious choice, and a misogynistic one at that, and gay supporters were forced to either enter into heterosexual relationships or leave the Party. This was an extreme manifestation of dogmatic stupidity and unbecoming of a party that wore (and still wears) the name “Communist”. A sect that is trapped in dogma, disconnected from the masses, and doesn’t engage in a thorough SICA (Social Investigation and Class Analysis) process will end up taking ridiculous positions such as this and alienating a potential base of support. Queer people were developing politically throughout the 1970s and 80s and there was a thriving liberation movement that, despite flaws due to the failure of many to embrace revolutionary Communism, generated a semblance of revolutionary consciousness that any Communist worth their salt would see as being worthy of engagement. This was not done by the RCP and it subsequently threw away its opportunity to develop cadre from the heat of the queer liberation struggle. There was no real reason that ACTUP! and similar organizations couldn’t have been included in United Front or similar work, they engaged in several substantial actions such as shutting down the New York Stock Exchange that could have been synthesized, broadened, and sharpened through a Maoist analysis and style of work. The militancy was already there. The masses usually don’t need militancy imported to their movements and struggles, they already know what the problem is and are ready to move against it. The need is for Communist style discipline and the development of professional revolutionaries out of these militant struggles and the channeling of the massive amounts of energy that are put into these struggles towards revolution and the overthrow of the existing order of things.
The treatment of queer RCP cadre is another despicable and shameful blot on the history of the Maoist movement in the United States. Under no circumstances should cadre or anyone else be tormented and harassed for sexual orientation until they leave the party. The RCP’s position on queerness was inspired by junk science and showed a clear lack of engagement or day to day contact with queer people, leading them to take such a ridiculous position in the first place. We need every cadre that we can get. Our comrades come in all orientations, genders, and backgrounds. What matters is whether or not they adhere to the Party’s determined and correct line faithfully, whether they serve the people in word and deed, and whether they are ready to even give up their lives for Communism. While backgrounds of cadre should be investigated, personal things such as sexual orientation should not be dredged up and used to harass them into oblivion or even suicidal tendencies. Anti-Communists love to portray us as soulless conformists and cannibalizers who like to squabble and purge each other. This sort of dreadful behavior does nothing to dispel that notion. Communists should be people who our communities trust and love and have no issue with telling everything to so that we can help them solve their problems. Communists do not harass or attack comrades for their personal lives unless they are contrary to building the Party, making revolution, and struggling through to Communism. Having a gambling addiction that leads one to embezzle party funds, or having an alcohol problem that leads to you missing important functions is the Party’s business. Being a current or former sex worker or being in a same-sex relationship is not. If anything, these allow you to develop and sharpen your ties to segments of the masses that the communist movement has little to no impact in.
If we are serious about uniting all that can be united and avoiding the capture of key strata of the masses that will be essential for party-building and revolution making by various opportunist and revisionist formations, we can’t afford to repeat dogmatic mistakes of the past. Furthermore, we can’t act as if we already have a legal apparatus or state power at this point and just start rattling off proclamations about things that many of the lowest and deepest masses hold quite near and dear to their hearts. What will happen is that queer comrades will end up in the clutches of the revisionist WWP or the social-democratic hamster wheel that is DSA and their talents will be wasted. We need queer Communists and we need them in the forefront. A party that the people that popped Stonewall off would be expelled from for being sex workers, or queer, or trans, is not a party that can claim to lead any revolution in the United States, or anywhere else. The current status of the RCP-USA as a sad cult debasing itself with horrible freestyle rap performances, getting run out of Black neighborhoods, and defending James Comey and the FBI (which spent the ’70s trying to build a case against it) is more than enough proof of this.
