Democratic Workers Party

Marlene Dixon had earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the mid-1960s. She taught sociology at the University of Chicago and then McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She was an admirer of the works of Robert Jay Lifton, Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank, but as the party began to unravel in 1984 she criticized the latter two as anti-communists. Tensions escalated, and on January 30, a group of 400 students occupied the university's administration building in what would be a thirteen-day sit-in. The university administration responded with the expulsion of 42 students. While nominally in support of Dixon, students used the sit-in as an opportunity to air many grievances against the university: its lack of opposition to the Vietnam War, its weak support for the women's movement and the hiring of female professors, and its spearheading of "urban renewal" and early gentrification efforts in Chicago. A statement on the University of Chicago sit-in for Marlene Dixon was included in the 1970 anthology ''Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement'', edited by Robin Morgan. While serving at McGill University she once again built up a following among students, and began organizing meetings with them. Relations between her and the staff of McGill University had begun falling in the early 1970s, and by 1974 she had decided to stop teaching. By the time of the formation of the DWP she was politically a Marxist feminist with Maoist sympathies, also a proponent of gay liberation and anti-racism. ==Foundation==

In the summer of 1974, Dixon (now in the San Francisco Bay Area, California) pushed for the creation of a radical group which would evolve into a party with Leninist guidelines. This resulted in an initial group of thirteen women led by Dixon, who formed the original core of the party. In that same period a Central Committee was elected via secret ballot and Dixon wrote an 18-page work known as the Principles of Dialectical Leadership, which constituted the nascent party's first internal document. The party's constitution was then written soon after along with a position paper known as On the World Situation. The party encouraged recruitment efforts by both men and women, regardless of sexual orientation. Recruits took on new names within the organization, pooled together their income and resources, worked at assigned tasks for ten hours or more, and other activities meant to reinforce a collective culture. ==Influence==

Throughout the 1970s, study groups were formed and recruits grew steadily. Though the party itself operated in a paramilitary and clandestine manner, members participated in activities among Leftist groups and supporting strikes while keeping their membership and party secret. From 1978–1981 the party operated via front groups such as the Grass Roots Alliance which rallied against Proposition 13 and sought to raise public awareness on various social issues through reformism. On November 6, 1979, the Party's existence was formally acknowledged through a public document issued by the Party itself. The party grew from 125 to 175 full-time militants. The party developed its own print shop (first called Greenleaf Press, then Synthex Press), which grew into a full-service printing and publishing operation that serviced mainstream clients such as banks, catalog companies, and publishers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The press produced numerous materials for the Party: books, journals, newspapers, pamphlets, fliers, bulletins, direct mail solicitations and buttons among other things. The Party developed its own newspaper; the Rebel Worker (later known as Plain Speaking) along with theoretical journals such as Our Socialism. and the physical intimidation of rival Communist parties. ==Downfall==

As the 1970s drew to a close, Dixon felt that the party was becoming too reformist and had lost its revolutionary ambitions. Once a strong critic of the petite bourgeoisie class and purging many members of the party over their alleged "petite-bourgeois" activities and ways of thinking, she had begun to see the United States working class as increasingly unable to bring about crucial change and instead began supporting progressive elements of the petite bourgeoisie. This alienated many who had struggled against alleged "PB" (petite-bourgeois) influence within the party and saw this as an about-face. The party also began focusing on foreign affairs while moving away from Maoism (though in the process gravitating towards Maoist-inspired third-worldism and adherence to labor aristocracy) in favor of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact states, Bulgaria in particular, while stressing the importance of the Soviet Union and the belief that the development of the world socialist movement was impossible without the existence of the USSR. Dixon began traveling to Western Europe, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria with the eventual goal of receiving an invitation from the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1985 Dixon began supporting the idea of leaving the party and setting up a think tank in Washington, D.C. Many in the party at this point became increasingly irate at Dixon's behavior, citing her alcoholism and paranoia making her increasingly erratic and too unstable to speak to. She encouraged her lieutenants to launch a "Quality of Life" campaign within the party so that party members could assess their own lives. Lieutenants took this at face value and in late October members of the party began talking to each other on various party issues and their own lives regardless of party rules and regulations, this being made possible by Dixon's absence from the country while on a trip to Eastern Europe. The party's lieutenants called together various members and began speaking out against aspects of the party while discussing its "real nature." Party sessions continued for some few weeks more, until the night before Dixon was scheduled to return. On that night party members convened and unanimously voted to expel the General Secretary (Dixon) from the party, and then to dissolve it. A vote by mail was held in April 1986 amid heated discussions on the future of the party and a majority voted to confirm the party's dissolution and to liquidate its assets, to be shared among former cadres (which was achieved in August 1987). One of the party's former members, Janja Lalich, went on to become a professor of sociology and a leading expert on cults. ==References==