Changes
Spelling/Grammar Check, typos fixed: Marxist-Leninist → Marxist–Leninist, similiar → similar, four week → four-week (2)
The first known trip of significance to Cuba occurred in January, 1968 when [[Carl Davidson]], [[Todd Gitlin]], Gerry Long, Susan Sutheim and [[Tom Hayden]] traveled to Cuba to attend the International Cultural Congress. Long and Sutheim were to become [[Weathermen]], Davidson, Gitlin and Hayden later joined [[Progressives for Obama]]. [[David Dellinger]] of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC) also attended this conference, as did many communists and revolutionaries from around the world. The announced purpose of this conference was to obtain unity of action in Cuban anti-imperialism fights and to spread revolution and hatred of the U.S. The theme was the "Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism." At this conference delegates condemned the U.S. for what the communists alleged was U.S. aggression, and support was pledged to [[North Vietnam]]. The delegates also pledged to promote [[violence]] against the United States whenever it was deemed necessary. The attendees also met with representatives of [[Mao]]ist [[China]], [[North Korea]] and North Vietnam and visited the Viet Cong’s [[National Liberation Front]] (NLF) Mission in [[Havana]]. During this three and one half week trip, Davidson finalized arrangements for a visit of twenty SDS members to travel to Cuba.
Thereafter, in February, 1968, a group of approximately twenty-two people including future Weatherman [[Mark Rudd]] and approximately nineteen other SDS/Weatherman members, and two Cuban Government officials with diplomatic status traveled to Cuba via Mexico City at the request of the Cuban Government, which paid all of the expenses. One of the Cuban Government officials in the group was the former First Secretary at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations (CMUN) who was also a Cuban Intelligence Officer. While in Mexico City, the group stayed at the Cuban Consulate. Several of the SDS members had previously traveled to other foreign countries friendly to Cuba. The group was destined to the Instituto Cubano para Amistad entre los Pueblos (ICAP-Cuban Institute for Friendship between Peoples) although the ICAP operated as a cultural exchange organization on the surface, it was in fact the Cuban Government's School for Ideological Indoctrination and their chief instrumentality for providing training to foreign radicals in revolutionary and guerilla tactics. Rudd and others visited the ICAP on this trip. During their four -week visit, SDS members also talked with representatives of the NLF (the political arm of the [[Viet Cong]]) and with individuals from North Korea.
[[File:Ruddatthecolumbiainsurgency.jpg|thumb|190px|right|Mark Rudd addresses the rioters at the Columbia University insurgency, 1968.]]
=== Mark Rudd and the Columbia strike ===
===Carl Davidson meets with Castro===
SDS member [[Carl Davidson]] again visited Cuba in March. He and others had a three -hour discussion with [[Fidel Castro]], and reportedly met with representatives of North Korea, North Vietnam and the People's Republic of China. During the militant Labor Forum, held in April, Davidson reported on his meeting with Castro, stating that Castro now believed that a socialist revolution was possible in the United States. Davidson later was to become active in [[Progressives for Obama]].
During April, SDS activist [[Steven Halliwell]] visited North Vietnam; [[Ken Cloke]]<ref>In 1967, while CPUSA veteran Victor Rabinowitz served as the [[National Lawyers Guild]] (NLG) national president, Ken Cloke was hired as NLG national executive secretary at the sametime Bernardine Dohrn was hired as national student organizer. [http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/NLGWU2.pdf]</ref> later to become a Weatherman and Revolutionary Union (RU)<ref>The Revolutionary Union (RU), later to become the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCP), was a "Maoist offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society which sought a [[united front]] with other left-wing groups and had been infiltrating [[VVAW]] chapters around the country." [http://www.archive-news.net/Articles/FD041012.html Hanoi John: Kerry and the Antiwar Movement’s Communist Connections,] October 12, 2004. Retrieved from archive-news.net, March 2, 2010. The Revolutionary Union was an affiliate sponsor of Vietnam Veterans Against the War-Winter Soldier Organization demonstrations. FBI Memo, “Demonstration Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization (VVAW/WSO) at Washington, D.C., July 1–4, 1974,” FBI HQ 100-448092, Section 63, FBI HQ 100-448092 [http://web.archive.org/web/20061020164422/ice.he.net/~freepnet/fbifiles/100-HQ-448092/Section+63/Section+63.pdf Section 63, pp. 72-74] (pdf). Full index online at [http://web.archive.org/web/20070208160606/http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=VVAWFBI www.wintersolider.com,]</ref> member also met with a North Vietnamese delegation during this time in [[Sweden]].
This contrasted sharply with the traditional orthodox view of [[Moscow]] which relied heavily on a dialectical "force of history" that would inevitably bring about the "objective conditions" necessary for a proletarian revolution to succeed. Traditional Soviet theoreticians regarded any concept that skipped stages of historic development as dangerous and "counter revolutionary."<ref>Foreign Influence - Weather Underground Organization (WUO). FBI Chicago Field Office Report, August 20, 1976. Section I. Ideology D. ''Influence of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought'', Pages 56-57 in original (pp. 19-20 pdf).</ref>
The main point of contention centered on the role of the [[Black Panther Party]] (BPP) in the revolutionary process in the United States. Many held the view that a Vietnam style war with the Black Panthers assuming the role similiar similar to the [[Viet Cong]] as the [[Revolutionary Vanguard|vanguard]] Marxist armed [[national liberation movement]] within the United States against "the white imperialist super-structure." Many were fond of quoting Chairman Mao who wrote, "In the final analysis a national struggle is a [[class struggle]]." There was a great deal of competition among the warring factions to portray themselves as the main purveyors of [[Mao Zedong]] Thought in the United States revolutionary movement.
The PLP was pushing as a strategy the Worker Student Alliance (WSA) which postulated that students should unite with the traditional Marxist revolutionary power in the U.S., 'the workers,' to make revolution. The Ayers/Dohrn faction and RYM II, according to Mark Rudd, considered the fixation on 'the workers' as "[[racist]] in that the the PLP didn't want to see non-white people as the revolutionary agents." The Black Panthers demanded that SDS expel the PLP "for its racism in not supporting national liberation."<ref>[http://www.markrudd.com/?sds-and-weather/the-death-of-sds.html ''The Death of SDS,''] Mark Rudd. Retieved from markrudd.com, March 6, 2010.</ref>
Klonsky's faction held the view that black self-determination, the establishment of a black nation-state in the South called the Republic of New Africa,<ref>[http://marxists.architexturez.net/history/erol/1960-1970/h&ssds.htm Purge the Ranks! Clarify the Program!] Pamphlet distributed at the 1969 SDS Convention in Chicago, June 18, 1969. Retrieved from Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line, Marxist Internet Archive, March 16, 2010.</ref> would constitute the first stage followed by a white working class alliance which together would complete the second stage of the socialist revolution.<ref>Foreign Influence - Weather Underground Organization (WUO). FBI Chicago Field Office Report, August 20, 1976, ''Mao Tse-tung Influence on SDS Factions at the June 1969 National Convention'', Page 58-62 in original (pp. 21-25 pdf).</ref>
After the election of officers, Bernardine Dohrn declared that the National Office of the SDS was responsible for development of a correct Marxist-Leninist Marxist–Leninist line and called for "the future exclusion of [[deviationist]] forces such as the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the [[CPUSA]] from the SDS." The debate within SDS leadership between the Klonsky and Dohrn factions, however, was far from over. Both factions were committed to a socialist revolution through armed struggle, their differences centered on strategy and tactics.
The newly elected leaders of SDS, [[Mark Rudd]], [[Jeff Jones]] and [[Bill Ayers]], sent the following letter to [[Anna Louise Strong]] in China immediately after the Convention:
