Progressive Labor Party (United States)

Progressive Labor Party
Founded	January 1962
Headquarters	Brooklyn, New York
Ideology	Marxism–Leninism; Anti-Revisionism
Political position	Far-left
Website
www.plp.org

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is a Marxist-Leninist political party based primarily in the United States. The organization was established in January 1962 as the Progressive Labor Movement following a split in the Communist Party, USA, donning its new name at a convention held in the spring of 1965. The organization played a vocal role in the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and early 1970s through its Worker Student Alliance faction of Students for Democratic Society. Following termination of American involvement in the Vietnam War, the PLP emerged as one of the leading anti-revisionist Communist organizations in the United States.

In the second decade of the 21st Century the PLP remains in existence, publishing a weekly newspaper called Challenge.

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) began as an organized faction called the "Progressive Labor Movement" in January 1962, formed in the aftermath of a Fall 1961 split in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) that saw the expulsion of left wing labor activists Milt Rosen (1926-2011) and Mortimer Scheer. Prior to his expulsion Rosen was a prominent CPUSA functionary, serving as District Organizer for upstate New York from 1957 and Industrial Organizer for all of New York state from 1959.

An initial organizational meeting was held in December 1961, attended by 12 of the approximately 50 current and former CPUSA members identifying themselves as the "Call group." Rosen delivered a political report to the Cuban Revolution-inspired group urging the establishment of a new Communist Party in the United States to replace the CPUSA, which was characterized as irredeemably "revisionist."

The organization remained amorphous in its first months, publishing Progressive Labor — initially a monthly newsletter — and engaging in small-scale discussions. An organizational conference was called by the editors of PL to be held in New York City in July 1962. This gathering, held at the Hotel Diplomat, was attended by 50 individuals from 11 different cities and served to launch itself as a formal organization, the Progressive Labor Movement. Milt Rosen again delivered the main political report to the gathering, calling for the writing of a program and development of a network of clubs and affiliated mass organizations in order to win supporters for a new revolutionary socialist movement. Given the small size of the fledgling organization, formation of a political party was deemed unpropitious with the name "Movement" selected to emphasize the early and transitional nature of the organization.

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