The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) was founded in 1975 as the successor to the Revolutionary Union (founded in 1968). It was the first explicitly Maoist organization in the United States. The Party has been led by Bob Avakian since it's founding. The RCP has supported the domestic and foreign policies of The People's Republic of China until Mao's death in 1976 and opposed what they saw as revisionist, social imperialist policies of the Soviet Union.

Two years after the 1976 overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in China, the RCP split. The majority, led by Avakian, felt that the Chinese government had adopted revisionist policies, while the minority, which supported the present regime of the CCP, established the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. The RWHq remained in the RCP for one year, then merged with the Bay Area Communist Union, the League of Revolutionary Struggle, and other organizations to form the Committee to Unite Marxists-Leninists. In the late 1970's, the RCP shifted it's concentration from heavy industry toward youth and immigrant workers.

In the mid-1970's, the Party opposed busing, affirmative action, and Black Nationalism, believing them to be non-revolutionary policies. To demonstrate against U.S. expansionist policies they briefly occupied the Alamo. They were instrumental in the organization of the National United Workers Organization and the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee. In 1982, after a three-year court battle, 17 members, the "Mao Tse Tung defendants", were acquitted of felony charges for allegedly violent activity at a demonstration in Washington, D.C. In 1989 the RCP won a supreme court ruling that flag burning falls under protection of the first amendment. Since 1975, they have published The Worker.