Misplaced Pages

National Caucus of Labor Committees: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 06:12, 7 November 2007 edit130.64.110.57 (talk)No edit summary← Previous edit Revision as of 07:56, 7 November 2007 edit undoWill Beback (talk | contribs)112,162 edits rv unexplained deletion by anonNext edit →
Line 31: Line 31:


* provides a statement of the philosophical principles of the NCLC * provides a statement of the philosophical principles of the NCLC
* tracks the evolution of the NCLC in the 1970s
* includes full text of ''Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism'' with history of NCLC/ICLC through late 1980s.


] ]

Revision as of 07:56, 7 November 2007

LaRouche movement
History
Active organizations
Defunct organizations
Members
Members who separated
from the movement
Critics
Related persons

The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association." It originated as the Labor Caucus of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society, and became the NCLC in January 1969 after the group was expelled from SDS. By 1972 the NCLC had approximately 1,000 members.

LaRouche is the NCLC's founder and, since the expulsion of oppositional factions in 1973-74, the political views of the NCLC are virtually indistinguishable from those of LaRouche. For more information on these views see the article "Political views of Lyndon LaRouche" as well as the main article titled "Lyndon LaRouche".

The NCLC was originally a New Left organization influenced by Trotskyist ideas as well as those of other Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg. The NCLC became embroiled in conflicts with other leftist groups, culminating in "Operation Mop-Up" which, according to the Village Voice, the Washington Post and various former members of the NCLC, consisted of a series of physical attacks on members of rival left wing groups.

By the late 1970s, the NCLC had abandoned Marxism altogether, in favor of what its members described as an American System approach. Critics such as Chip Berlet, Russ Bellant and Dennis King accused it of adopting an essentially neo-fascist world view.

Some NCLC members, in addition to their fundraising and political duties, carry out research in areas such as science, history, classical music, etc. NCLC members who have produced research that has been published in book form by LaRouche movement publishing houses, include:

  • Allen Salisbury, author of The Civil War and the American System.
  • Jonathan Tennenbaum, Ph.D., author of Kernenergie: das weibliche Technik (Nuclear Energy: the feminine technology,) about the female scientists who pioneered nuclear research.
  • Michael Billington, wrote the book Reflections of an American Political Prisoner (ISBN 0-943235-17-0) He is now the Asia editor for the LaRouche publication Executive Intelligence Review.

Electoral politics

The NCLC launched the U.S. Labor Party (USLP), a registered political party, as its electoral arm and ran LaRouche for President of the United States on the Labor Party ticket in 1976. The USLP was described by its founders as "an independent political association committed to the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Henry C. Carey, and President Abraham Lincoln."

In 1979 LaRouche changed his political strategy to one of running in Democratic primaries rather than as a third party candidate. This resulted in the USLP being disbanded.

International work

The International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC) was founded as the philosophical nucleus for LaRouche movement operations worldwide.

For a number of years the ICLC operated in Canada as first the North American Labour Party and then the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada. The ICLC has affiliates in France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, along with Mexico and several South American countries. In Australia LaRouche operatives took over an older extreme-right group (formally Australian League of Rights), the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC), introducing traditional left ideals such as; repeal of anti-union laws and establishment Banks loans at 2% or less for family farms and now they regularly contest elections. The most recent significant addition to the network of active ICLC affiliates is in the Philippines. Until 2007, the LaRouche organisation published a weekly newspaper, The New Federalist. Its weekly newsmagazine, Executive Intelligence Review, has been converted mostly into a web publication although continuing to print a small number of copies per issue. The real membership of LaRouche's organisation is not known.

External links

Category: