view of actually existing socialism. In this context, Mick Kelly, a leading member of the FRSO, wrote Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party in 1989, which argued that the defeat of the Tiananmen Square protests marked an important defeat for counter-revolution and capitalist restoration in socialist countries and prevented the overthrow of socialism in China. To this day, Kelly's paper encapsulates the FRSO's basic line on the People's Republic of China, which it considers a socialist country. The internal ideological division continued to grow throughout the 1990s. The 1999 split In 1999, the FRSO split into two groups, each retaining the name and considering itself the only legitimate FRSO for several years. The two groups split principally over a proposal brought forward by a section of FRSO's membership that argued that the organization should adopt a strategy of "Left Refoundation". The Left Refoundation advocates saw Marxism as in deep crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of socialism in Eastern Europe and other regions. Their strategy received its clearest expression in a document called Theses on Left Refoundation, which outlined their views on the "crisis of socialism" and called for the construction of a "party of the dispossessed" based on "uniting in struggle with other forces in the progressive social movements." Their proposal prioritized establishing a "left-pole" in more mainstream liberal, left-wing and progressive political organizations rather than continuing to build a new communist party in the United States. The document expressed general pessimism about the remaining socialist countries and the prospect of socialist revolution in the U.S., looking instead to left-wing social-democratic formations for inspiration like the Workers Party (Brazil). At a December 1998 meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the FRSO, three Left Refoundation advocates presented their strategy as a proposal to the NEC. The proposal, "the longest single item at the December NEC meeting," called for a four-month "organization-wide discussion of party-building" along the lines of the Left Refoundation strategy outlined in the initial document. By a unanimous vote, the NEC rejected the Left Refoundation advocates' call for a four-month organization-wide discussion. In a written response published internally to members of the FRSO in January 1999, the NEC cited concerns that such a discussion would detract from ongoing mass organizing work. Beyond these immediate practical impacts, though, the NEC saw the particular proposals as effectively overturning the strategic and