Not very poetic, I´m afraid

A review of "PRRWO and RWL: Not a `Revolutionary Wing´, but a Dangerous Duo!" 

Amiri Baraka may have been a good poet (I wouldn't know, never reading his poetry), but this little work – attributed to the very same Baraka – isn't very poetic. In fact, it's hardly even readable, being one of those interminable and very “in house” Maoist polemics. Yes, during this period Amiri Baraka was a Maoist. His Maoist group was called the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tsetung Thought). Note the Wade-Giles spelling! Later, the RCL (M-L-M) merged into the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist), a group I know relatively little about, except that they supported Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

The “Dangerous Duo” is Baraka's derogatory term for two competing Maoist groups, the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization and the Revolutionary Workers League (not to be confused with various Trotskyist or Trotskyist-derived groups using the same name). The RCL (M-L-M) regarded the PRRWO-RWL alliance (a.k.a. the Revolutionary Wing) as hopelessly sectarian, but that's about the only thing an outsider can make out from this badly written polemic (although, admittedly, I've seen even worse).

At one point, the RCL (M-L-M) accuses the Duo of “Dogmatism and Empiricism, Mechanical Materialism, Idealism, Subjectivism, Onesidedness, Sectarianism [and] Character Assassination”. Baraka's group emphasized work in the “mass movements”, while the Duo wanted pure propaganda, an orientation to “the most advanced” only, etc. A familiar-sounding conflict, all things considered!

Eventually, I decided to give this peculiar pamphlet, presumably mostly directed at members and supporters of the PRRWO and the RWL, two stars.