The Sojourner Truth Organization: Notes Toward a History

One of the defining characteristics of STO was its consistent opposition to Stalinism, but for the most part the group didn’t write extensively on this subject.  However, during a brief period in the mid-seventies, STO participated in something called the Federation of Independent Marxist-Leninist Collectives.  Another participant in this short-lived group was a then-nameless grouping from Boston, which eventually became the core of the Proletarian Unity League, which in turn was one of the founding elements of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the mid-1980s.  Whether rightly or wrongly, STO identified the Boston group as a proponent of what STO sometimes referred to as the "Stalin-model" of party-building.  In the course of a series of polemics with the Boston group in 1975, STO produced (from the pen of Don Hamerquist) two of the better articulations of anti-Stalinist Leninism that I have encountered.  (more…)