The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a communist political party in the United States. FRSO formed in 1985 as a merger of several Maoist-oriented New Communist movement organizations.

In 1985, the Proletarian Unity League and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters merged to create FRSO. In 1986, FRSO fused with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity. In 1988, FRSO absorbed the Amílcar Cabral-Paul Robeson Collective.

FRSO’s component groups believed that ultraleftism was the US New Communist movement’s main error. Merging under the FRSO banner, these groups hoped to consolidate the movement’s remnants in a single organization and move beyond the sectarianism that marked the previous decades.

1999 split

In response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, FRSO began to develop two distinct positions on socialist countries. The “Left Refoundation” group, aligned with democratic socialism, argued that these events resulted from a deep crisis of Marxism. The “Fight Back!” group, aligned with Marxism-Leninism, argued that these events resulted from revisionism rather than failures within Marxism. These divisions grew during the 1990s. In 1998, the Left Refoundation group wrote an internal document, “Theses on Left Refoundation”, and requested an organization-wide discussion.

Both factions claimed the name “Freedom Road Socialist Organization”. In 2006, the Left Refoundation group renamed itself to “FRSO/OSCL”, combining the English and Spanish acronym. In 2019, the Left Refoundation group renamed itself to Liberation Road.

Publications

FRSO’s main publication is the website and monthly paper Fight Back! News (FB!N) and its Spanish section Lucha y Resiste.

Congress

The 9th Congress of FRSO, held in spring 2022, came at a critical juncture in the development of the people’s struggle and the accelerating decline of monopoly capitalism in the U.S. As the call to the congress states, in the recent period “we have seen a level of struggle that is unprecedented since the 1960s. The great rebellion following the murder of George Floyd, which was both broad and militant, signals the shape of things to come. It can be said the burning police stations helped illuminate the road to freedom. The fight against police crimes led to a resurgence of the African American national movement.”

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  • GiorgioBoymoder [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    8 days ago

    I’m p sure calling it “Lunar” New Year erases the fact that it’s the Chinese calendar setting the date of Feb 19th (Vietnamese calendar is based on Chinese), and erases the other lunar calendars used throughout the world today (Muslim calendar is most prominent of those). Both of those erasures are really convenient within the western propaganda symbology.

    • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      8 days ago

      Interesting notion. However we don’t call our New Year tradition the “Italian New Year” even though both Caesar and Gregory were Italian. or the “Roman new year” or the “Papal new year”. It’s just the New Year. If you are celebrating it in the Chinese way sure you can call it Chinese New Year, however if you’re doing it with Vietnamese tradition or Mongolian traditions, etc calling it Chinese would just be a bit odd. Hence Lunar New Year.

      Edit: Technically it should be the Lunisolar New Year anyway, since the calendar is lunisolar not just lunar. Really the islamic calendar is the only calendar i can think of off the top of my dome that is actually lunar.