School of Communism

Our International has made huge advances in the past year. From our tremendously successful ‘Are You A Communist’ campaign, to our bold work in the Palestine solidarity movement, to comrade Fiona Lali’s massively successful election campaign in Britain. 

On top of that, we have swelled our ranks, and are founding Revolutionary Communist Parties all over the world. We can truly say that the communists have arrived!

In this episode, the culmination of our founding conference, Hamid Alizadeh from our global leadership gives an inspiring report of our work in the last period, before formally announcing the founding of the Revolutionary Communist International!

Communists place a great deal of importance on education and theoretical study, but that doesn’t mean we confine ourselves to small reading groups.

The question of building the revolutionary party is central. Once a small revolutionary organisation has grown to the size necessary to become a factor in the class struggle, how can the revolutionary party win over the most advanced layer of the youth and the working class? Furthermore, what is a revolutionary crisis, and how can the party conquer the leadership of the working class? Above all, in order to lead the revolution to victory, how can it conquer the support of the masses?

The Revolutionary Communist International aims to organise the most advanced, revolutionary-oriented youth and workers, and train them as communist cadres. While we do so we need to steel all our members with an understanding of how to approach these questions. 

If we succeed in this task, we will be building powerful communist parties around the world.

As Francesco Merli from our international leadership explains in this talk, we must understand the method of Lenin and the Bolsheviks if we want to find a route to the working class, in order to offer direction and a programme when revolutionary struggles eventually, inevitably erupt.

Ever since the days of Marx and Engels, communists have understood that the struggle to overthrow capitalism is inherently international.

This reflects the fact that capitalism is a global system, and that the power of the world market can only be overthrown by the planned cooperation of at least several countries, operating on the basis of the most advanced productive forces developed under capitalism.

It was with this in mind that Lenin describes the Russian Revolution as only the start of the world proletarian revolution.

However, after Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin put forward the idea of ‘socialism in one country’, which marked a fundamental departure not only from the internationalism of Lenin, but from Marxism itself.

In this talk, Josh Holroyd from the RCI’s international leadership will explain why socialism in one country is impossible, and how the adoption of this false idea contributed to some of the worst catastrophes ever suffered by the world workers’ movement.

We communists have set ourselves the task of changing the course of world history. For that we need a theory of history, how it develops and changes and what role we, as communists, can play in bringing about that change. 

The saying popularly attributed to Henry Ford, that history is “just one damn thing after another” sums up the bourgeois attitude to historical events. Rather than any process or logic, things simply ‘happen’ randomly, or at the whim of a handful of ‘Great Men’. 

By contrast, communists are historical materialists. We see history as driven by the struggle between classes, progressing to higher stages as production methods, culture and thought become increasingly sophisticated. When senile and stagnant societies refuse to change, revolution becomes necessary to break the impasse and move humanity to the next rung. 

As Marie Fredericksen, a leading Danish communist, explains in this talk, we need a scientific understanding of history to draw lessons from the past that can be applied to our struggle for a socialist future. 

As capitalism developed, rich and powerful nations rushed to plunder and carve up the world into markets, colonies, and spheres of influence. In the process, they subjected countless billions to war, enslavement and misery that continues to this day.

Lenin wrote the defining work on the subject, explaining that imperialism represents the highest stage of capitalist development, with the rise of monopolies, finance capital, and the export of capital as defining features.

With a special focus on the rise and relative of decline of US imperialism, John Peterson, a leading communist from the USA, explains these and other features of imperialism – and how it can be dismantled through revolutionary struggle.

In the last analysis, economics – the means by which men and women produce and reproduce the means of existence – are the driving force of any society. 

Marx’s analysis of capitalism is one of his most important contributions. In the pages of Capital, one finds a scientific explanation of how capitalism functions, why it enriches a few and impoverishes the majority, and why it inevitably goes into crisis.
Listen as Adam Booth, a leading British communist who has co-written a readers’ guide to Das Capital, offers an introduction to Marxist economic theory and its relevance to today.

Growing support for reactionary politicians like Trump and Le Pen, and parties like the AfD in Germany, have led to panic from the ‘serious’ bourgeois and reformists about the ‘crisis of democracy’, the rise of ‘right populism’ – even ‘fascism’. In reality, these phenomena represent a distorted rejection of the capitalist establishment. 

As leading Austrian comrade Yola Kipcak explains, the collapse of the so-called political centre, the failure of the liberals and the reformists to provide any sort of solution to the problems of working people, and general disgust with the status quo have allowed demagogues on the right to gain support. 

Of course, none of these gangsters has any solutions either. What is needed is a radical alternative on the left, attacking the bosses, bankers and capitalists while offering a programme for the total transformation of society to the benefit of the masses. 

War is inevitable under capitalism. In fact, it is the direct consequence of imperialism. The struggle between competing nations for markets, fields of investment, and spheres of influence always results in clashes where workers fight and die to protect the profits of their ruling classes. In Lenin’s day, the capitalist rulers of Europe sent millions to slaughter one another in the trenches of WWI, with the treacherous support of the leaders of the mass workers’ organisations. 

As Jorge Martin from our international leadership explains in this talk, Lenin did not bend an inch to nationalist pressures to set aside class differences and fight to ‘defend the fatherland’, nor did he preach impotent pacifism. Instead, he insisted on workers struggling independently for their interests, against the machinations of their warmongering ruling classes. 

Ultimately, the only way to end capitalist war is by fighting a revolutionary class war against the system responsible for armed conflict.

Identity politics professes to unite oppressed people against their oppressors. But in reality, it merely distracts from the root cause of society’s ills, including racism, sexism, homophobia and every other form of bigotry.

Capitalism could not survive without dividing the working class along the lines of race, gender and sexuality to prevent a common struggle against the real foe: the rich bosses and the exploitative system they represent.

As Ylva Vinberg, a leading Swedish communist, explains in this episode, we need united class struggle to strike at the heart of all the rotten and reactionary ideas that poison human relations.

The October Revolution of 1917 was the first time in history that workers and peasants had taken on the bosses, landlords and capitalists and not only won, but held onto power.

For this, communists today recognise the Russian Revolution as the greatest event in human history. It is for the same reason that today’s capitalists and their cronies seek to pour slander and scorn on the real history of the revolution. 

As Alessio Marconi, a leading comrade in Italy explains, it is our duty today to defend the legacy of the Russian Revolution, which is a beacon to all class fighters. It remains proof in practice that the ruling class can be defeated, and that a new form of society is possible.