"If we are to consider ourselves as revolutionaries, we must acknowledge that we have an obligation to succeed in pursuing revolution. Here, we must acknowledge not only the power of our enemies, but our own power as well. Realizing the nature of power, we must not deny ourselves the exercise of the options available to us; we must utilize surprise, cunning and flexibility; we must use the strength of our enemy to undo him, keeping him confused and off balance. We must organize with perfect clarity to be utterly unpredictable. When our enemies expect us to respond to provocation with violence, we must react calmly and peacefully; just as they anticipate our passivity, we must throw a grenade."
— Kwame Ture
3.1: Seize the Time!
3.1.1: The harbinger of the international union of socialist communes will be a world socialist revolution against capitalist-imperialism. While the peoples of each and every country must find their own path to socialism in light of the prevailing material conditions encountered—and the people's movement of each country must first settle accounts with "their" national ruling classes—the socialist transition to communism must be grasped as a fundamentally international project. Taking this historical reality into account, Marx and Engels argued that the members of a communist party distinguish themselves from other progressive parties in at least two ways:
(1.) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.
(2.) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.1
Communists assert that the victory of the socialist revolution in any one country is inextricably bound to the ultimate victory of the world socialist revolution. Should the people's movement for socialism emerge victorious within the territorial confines of a particular country—successfully conquering political power and embarking upon a process of socialist transformation—it must immediately mobilize all available resources and make whatever sacrifices necessary to assist comrades fighting the bourgeoisie in all other corners of the world. This will require the development of immense organizational infrastructure on the part of the international communist movement.
3.1.2: In their day-to-day organizational work, members of a communist party unwaveringly uphold the principle of revolutionary internationalism and the emancipatory horizon of world socialist revolution. This is achieved in practice by connecting the immediate material needs and social struggles of the working class and oppressed social groups of a particular country to the common material interests of the people as a whole, situating the particular social struggles waged within the territorial confines of a given national state within the international context of the liberation struggles of the exploited and oppressed masses of the whole world. In this way, the communists of a particular country merely constitute one fighting front in the army of the world socialist revolution.
3.1.3: In examining the historical development of capitalist-imperialism on a world scale, it is clear that the objective conditions necessary to effect a socialist transition to communism have come to fruition in most countries. Today, the labor process is socialized to an unprecedented degree, and the means of social production and reproduction are sufficiently developed to enable the satisfaction of humanity's basic material needs and support the all-round development of each individual. However, this latent potential can only be realized if the means of labor are transformed from the private property of capitalists into the social property of the whole people, and, on this basis, the labor process is placed under the democratic control of freely associated labor.
Such a revolutionary social transformation presupposes the existence of subjective forces capable of consciously intervening in history in order to make this possibility a reality: the source of these subjective forces is to be found in the social contradictions at the heart of the social structure of capitalist-imperialism itself, which compel the exploited and oppressed masses to organize and wage struggles in defense of their material interests and democratic rights. An immediate task for communists is to achieve the fusion of these mass struggles with the theory, ideology, and politics of scientific socialism.
At the moment of revolutionary crisis—when the masses can no longer live in the old way, the rulers can no longer rule in the old way, and a popular revolutionary uprising for socialism becomes objectively possible within a particular country—then the subjective forces of the working class and all oppressed social groups must be prepared (theoretically, ideologically, politically, and organizationally) to seize power at all levels of society and in all areas of social life, to collective the means of social production and reproduction, to transform the labor process in accordance with rational, democratic, and ecological principles, to revolutionize social relations, and to both defend and internationalize the socialist revolution at all costs.
3.1.4: In recent years, several trends have emerged which have greatly accelerated the development of objective conditions favorable to the reconstruction of the organized communist movement, to the recommencement of the protracted revolutionary struggle against capitalist-imperialism, and to carrying forward to victory the socialist transition to communism. These trends include:
(a) urbanization, which has led to the concentration of a majority of the global human population in cities and their surrounding hinterlands, thus assembling the exploited and oppressed masses in close proximity to the nerve centers of capitalist state power and an increasingly socialized labor process of global commodity production and circulation;
(b) proletarianization spurred by the capital accumulation process, which has led to the creation of a working-class majority on a world scale, and to a worsening of living and working conditions for many workers; and
(c) networked connectivity, facilitated by the rapid development and proliferation of information and communication technologies, which while increasing capital's domination of labor and the repressive capacities of the capitalist state has, in true dialectical fashion, also intensified the socialization of the labor process on a world scale, democratized people's access to certain technologies and scientific knowledge, and led to the formation of new cultures transcending national borders.2
3.1.5: Despite these broadly favorable objective conditions, the socialist transition to communism presupposes the development of subjective forces capable of guiding the revolutionary process. It is of special importance for communists today to concentrate on the development of revolutionary consciousness and the cultivation of capacities for self-organization and self-activity among the exploited and oppressed masses of the world, in parallel with the reconstruction and consolidation of an organized communist movement as the hegemonic tendency within the people's movement. Our historical conjuncture is characterized by the generalized decomposition of the international working class as a collective political subject and the corresponding decline of mass organizations (such as trade unions, neighborhood organizations, and cultural associations); the containment and suppression of anti-colonial national liberation movements (of which Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people is only the most recent example); the internal corruption, decay, and eventual destruction of the socialist bloc; the general decline and disorganization of the international communist movement; and the reversal of past gains made by the people's struggle.
While the structural crisis of capital accumulation and subsequent collapse of U.S. imperialism's unipolar global hegemony have generated objective conditions leading to intensified political polarization, the principal beneficiary of this world-systemic crisis and political polarization has not been a resurgent international communist movement, but the resuscitation of international fascism. At a subjective level, it is quite clear that the prevailing correlation of forces on a world scale and internal to most countries is broadly unfavorable to the world socialist revolution. It is, therefore, the most urgent responsibility of communists to reconstruct our movement, to regain the initiative, and to bring the fight to the enemy of humanity: capitalist-imperialism. Only then will we be positioned to shift the international balance of forces in our favor, and bring the subjective factor into alignment with the prevailing objective conditions.
3.1.6: When the subjective factor (i.e. a revolutionary united front led by an organized communist movement) converges with favorable objective conditions, there is one final feature required to bring about the development of a revolutionary situation: a revolutionary crisis. "To the Marxist," Lenin tells us, "it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation." However, "not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation?"3 Throughout his writings, Lenin closely links the question of a revolutionary situation to the emergence of a revolutionary crisis.4 The features of a revolutionary crisis—which must be nationwide in scope—are as follows:
(a) The exploited and oppressed masses have come to recognize that revolution is both possible and necessary, and they are willing to make any sacrifices necessary to secure its victory.
(b) The ruling class is internally divided, because it cannot maintain its social domination using the old methods. This change of policy on the part of at least a fraction of the ruling class leads to fissures in the social system and the shattering of liberal illusions, thrusting new masses into political life for the first time. In this way, the conditions are created in which the people's movement reaches a critical mass, and it becomes possible for the revolutionary united front to breach the fortifications of the state, and ultimately overthrow it.
(c) Large segments of the vacillating middle classes and contradictory middle strata are won to the side of the revolutionary movement of the people, however tentatively.
(d) The exploitation and oppression of the masses is intensified, and antagonistic social contradictions are greatly sharpened.
(e) The state's repressive apparatus is internally fractured, its repressive capacities are greatly weakened, and a significant fraction of the state's armed forces are won to the people's cause (or at least unwilling to repress the people's movement).
In order for a revolutionary crisis to be transformed into a revolutionary situation, the subjective factor must be present. There must exist a revolutionary movement of the people—with a revolutionary party organization at its core—embedded in the fabric of everyday life. Furthermore, a revolutionary situation will only develop into a process of socialist transformation if certain objective conditions are met. These include relatively advanced means of labor, a socialized labor process, and the sharpening of social contradictions that generate revolutionary consciousness, self-organization, and self-activity among the exploited and oppressed masses. If these criteria are present, it will be at that moment that the contours of a new social system—the socialist commune—begin to emerge. The people's seizure of political power through a popular revolutionary uprising will then become the central strategic task facing the organized communist movement.
3.1.7: From the Arab Spring to "the movement of the squares" (i.e. the Indignados, Occupy, Gezi Park, etc.), the ephemeral character of recent cycles of struggle has meant that no emancipatory communist vision, nor actionable program of revolutionary transitional measures, has become hegemonic within the people's movement in the various countries, let alone on a world scale. At best, these spontaneous mass rebellions and popular uprisings have expressed the people's outrage and militant opposition against certain symptoms of capitalist-imperialism, but the small communist organizations embedded within the people's struggle have not been sufficiently prepared to effectively deploy the mass line in order to articulate a relevant political program, develop stable mass organizations, and consolidate a revolutionary communist tendency within the people's movement.
3.1.8: Despite attempted historical falsifications, communist organizations have, in fact, been at the forefront of recent popular upsurges. For example, the cadres of illegal communist parties were among the leading catalysts of the Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2012 that sparked the Arab Spring. Communist cadres assembled coalitions, organized trade unions and student organizations, and led protests and strikes that culminated in the uprising against the Ben Ali regime.5 However, with the possible exception of the Rojava Revolution, these small communist parties and organizations were unable to exercise effective political leadership in recent uprisings sufficient to win the masses to an emancipatory political program and to transform the revolutionary crisis into a revolutionary situation.6
3.1.9: Yet as Mark R. Beissinger has pointed out, defeated armies (can) learn well: "For those who lose but survive, revolution is often an iterative affair, requiring multiple attempts before achieving success."7 It is for this reason that Lenin referred to the revolution of 1905 as "a dress rehearsal" for the revolution 1917, and why we designate the revolutionary process a protracted revolutionary struggle for communism. Our movement shall pass through many cycles of struggle and phases of development, and we must prepare ourselves for a long march. The revolutionary struggle is asymmetric in nature: we must be prepared to advance at one moment, and retreat at the next; to rapidly pivot from defensive action today, to offensive action tomorrow.8
3.1.10: In the context of spontaneous mass rebellions, strikes, and popular uprisings, it is the urgent task of communists to connect with the most politically advanced detachments engaged in the people's struggle, to nurture and develop stable forms of popular self-organization from within the surge of popular self-activity, and to articulate programs of struggle that are developed with and embraced by the broad masses of workers and oppressed social groups, which pose in no uncertain terms the question of political power and which can carry the people's movement forward into the next phase of struggle. All this can be achieved only if, at the moment of the popular upsurge, communists have already constructed durable organizations led by experienced cadres who have succeeded in cultivating organic connections with the masses in struggle, if bases of popular support have already been established in key strategic regions and sectors, and if the art of organizational agility and fitness have been honed to such a degree that communists are capable of selecting and sequencing tactics which correctly correspond to the historical demands and possibilities of the moment, and the prevailing correlation of forces.
3.1.11: The time to reconstruct the organized communist movement and the subjective forces of the socialist revolution more broadly is not to be delayed until some future date. The time is now. If the prevailing objective conditions are indeed favorable to socialism, and if we can expect the appearance of new revolutionary crises in the near future, then we must not delay our organizational preparations, for the future will belong to those who are prepared to seize it. We must actively develop the people's capacities for self-organization and self-activity, and work to achieve the fusion of the people's struggle with the revolutionary theory, ideology, and politics of scientific socialism. While it is clear that we are living in a period of prolonged systemic crisis stemming from the structural contradictions of capitalist-imperialism (of which climate change, imperialist wars, and the new fascism are mere symptoms), there will continue to be recurring "crises within the crisis." As Antonio Gramsci said: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."9 For the new world to be born, we must systematically prepare for the next round of crises and clashes in such a fashion that we are strategically positioned to intervene forcefully and effectively to secure new victories for the world socialist revolution. We must seize the time.
3.2: Organizing for Socialism in Complex Urban Environments
3.2.1: With the notable exception of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, historical attempts by communist-led movements to seize countrywide political power by means of urban insurrection were brutally crushed by the capitalist state. In the historical context of Russia in 1917, after decades of waging a protracted revolutionary struggle, the Bolsheviks coordinated simultaneous uprisings in the cities of Petrograd and Moscow, resulting in the seizure of political power by the revolutionary forces. This set the stage for the establishment of a federative socialist council republic and, following the Red Army's victory in a brutal civil war, the territorial consolidation of this republic. Why didn't more urban revolutionary uprisings succeed in other countries such as Germany or Italy? Broadly speaking, while each historical case study is immensely complex and worthy of study in its own right, we can trace the defeat of these urban revolutionary uprisings to a few critical errors:
(a) the revolutionary forces overestimated their organizational strengths and capacities, while underestimating those of the state;
(b) the revolutionary forces incorrectly gauged the prevailing balance of forces at the local, national, and/or international levels;
(c) in the initial stages of the insurrection, a lack of organizational preparedness, operational planning and coordination, logistical infrastructure, adequate resources, tactical flexibility, and practical experience on the part of the revolutionary forces led to the swift containment and suppression of the uprising by the counterrevolution; or
(d) the revolutionary forces failed to develop the forms of political organization necessary to rapidly connect and consolidate liberated territories as a counterstate capable of securing a countrywide victory in the civil war and defending the new society in the face of the counterrevolutionary siege of imperialism.
As Frederick Engels cautioned, "never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may chance every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them, you are defeated and ruined."10
3.2.2: The Paris Commune of 1871, the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, the German Revolution of 1918-1923 (including notable urban battles such as the Spartacus Uprising in Berlin and the formation of the Bavarian Council Republic in 1919, the Ruhr Uprising of 1920, and Hamburg Uprising of 1923), Italy's Biennio Rosso of 1919-1920, the Asturias Uprising of 1934, and the revolutionary urban guerrilla insurgencies that swept across the Southern Cone countries of Latin America as well as Western Europe from the 1960s and into the 1980s were all crushed by the reactionary forces of capitalist-imperialism.
In the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, general strikes were combined with armed popular uprisings in major cities, leading to an initial victory for the revolutionary forces and the partial consolidation of the people's political power. However, in both cases the revolutionary forces were plagued by disunity and factionalism, and they failed to unite the people's movement around a coherent program for the socialist transformation of their countries. Ultimately, both the Popular Front in Spain and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were unable to break with certain bourgeois liberal illusions, and they suffered crushing defeats in the civil wars and imperialist interventions that followed their initial successes (leading to the physical destruction of the Spanish Republic by fascism in 1939, and the electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1990). While there are innumerable lessons to be learned from all of the aforementioned historical case studies, we shall focus on the conditions of success and failure for popular revolutionary uprisings in complex urban environments in more general terms, and examine how the operational terrain has changed in recent years.
3.2.3: The international communist movement of the last century learned many important lessons from the victories and defeats of the aforementioned historical experiences. This was especially true in the countries of the global peripheries and semi-peripheries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where the peasantry constituted the majority class (and indeed, a majority of the human population at this time belonged to the peasantry). Confronting the material realities of their conjuncture, revolutionaries in the semi-feudal and colonial countries questioned the wisdom and viability of strategies which narrowly focused on organizing the industrial proletariat for insurrection in major cities to the exclusion of other methods. Such approaches attempted to replicate, in a dogmatic and mechanical fashion, the Bolshevik experience of 1917.
3.2.4: From China to Cuba, new organizational strategies led to a wave of successful national democratic revolutions against semi-feudalism, colonialism, and capitalist-imperialism that peaked in the decades following World War II. In these countries, communist-led national democratic revolutions succeeded in defeating counterrevolutionary armies, overthrowing reactionary regimes, expelling foreign occupiers, gaining national independence, and advancing—however tentatively—the socialist transformation of their countries. This was achieved using a strategy of protracted people's war, which aimed to establish a guerrilla nucleus and build bases of popular support among the peasantry in relatively isolated rural areas over a prolonged period of time, with the aim of gradually surrounding the cities from the countryside.
Broadly conceived, this strategy sought to advance the revolutionary struggle through three phases: (1) strategic defensive (a phase in which a revolutionary party initiates a people's war, characterized by the progressive accumulation and strengthening of the revolutionary guerrilla forces, the gradual weakening the reactionary forces of the state, and the construction of revolutionary base areas in the liberated zones); (2) strategic equilibrium (a phase of dual power in which base areas are consolidated as the nuclei of a new state and the revolutionary forces are consolidated in preparation to lay siege to the strongholds of the reactionary state); and (3) strategic counteroffensive (a phase in which the revolutionary forces defeat the reactionary forces, culminating in the countrywide seizure of political power).11 This strategic framework should not be interpreted as linear. Rather, as Mao suggested, revolutionary struggles develop in a "jigsaw" pattern, in which there are strategic retreats and advancements, victories and defeats.12
3.2.5: By engaging and defeating the police and armed forces of the reactionary state in tandem with constructing mass organizations among the people and unleashing class struggle in guerrilla zones, communist-led people's wars were able to build base areas in which organs of counterpower (i.e. popular assemblies, councils, and committees) could be established and openly assume the functions of governance and administration in the liberated territories following the expulsion or destruction of the state's repressive forces. As multiple base areas were established, consolidated, and networked, a whole system of counterpower emerged that prefigured the new state, and furnished experienced cadres capable of ensuring political continuity and efficient administration in the initial phases of the transitional period. From these geographically isolated base areas, the revolutionary forces would eventually encircle and converge upon the cities. In the final phase of the people's war, in coordination with simultaneous strikes and actions launched by the urban underground movement, a popular revolutionary uprising was unleashed to capture nationwide political power and initiate the socialist transformation of the country.
3.2.6: In predominantly rural and agrarian countries such as China, Korea, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, variations of this people's war strategy proved effective in overthrowing reactionary states and winning national independence. Victorious national democratic revolutions produced concrete material improvements in the lives of workers and peasants, and there are many lessons to be learned from their socialist experiments. While there were several factors which made the strategy of protracted people's war viable in the mainly rural and agrarian context of the global peripheries and semi-peripheries in the twentieth century, perhaps the most important aspects were of a spatio-temporal character.
3.2.7: Spatially, revolutionary movements waging people's wars in the peripheries and semi-peripheries were able to accumulate forces and conduct operations at a relative distance from the watchful eye of the state, utilizing the rugged terrain afforded by certain geographic features common in rural regions (such as mountains, jungles, and forests) as cover for the construction of guerrilla zones and base areas. This relative geographic isolation compelled the base areas to develop in relatively self-sufficient ways, especially in the field of agriculture. This had the advantage of allowing revolutionary forces in the base areas to experiment with the partial implementation of the program of the national democratic revolution (i.e. agrarian reform), and prefigure certain aspects of socialism. This prefigurative component was exemplified by the political, economic, and cultural transformations undertaken by the communist movement in the Yan'an base area during the people's war in China, which would be a recurring reference point for revolutionary struggles in China post-1949. These factors were compounded by the fact that while the cities were the strongholds of the reactionaries, the state was relatively underdeveloped in the rural regions (if it was present at all). This meant that revolutionary forces could completely smash the apparatuses of the old state at the local level, and build the rudimentary infrastructure of a new state.
3.2.8: Temporally, these spatial factors gave revolutionary forces operating in predominantly rural societies with agrarian social structures significant advantages over their urban and industrial counterparts: in rural agricultural regions, a lower margin of error for politico-military operations translated into a more rapid recovery time for revolutionary forces when mistakes were made (as the state simply had less repressive capacities in these regions), making escape, evasion, and regroupment easier. In contrast, even the smallest mistakes made by urban revolutionary movements proved fatal, leading to the rapid and swift decimation of urban revolutionary networks by the state, as witnessed with the violent repression of the Shanghai Uprising of 1927, and the brutal destruction of urban guerrilla movements during Operation Condor in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s.
3.2.9: Despite the innumerable lessons to be learned from the aforementioned historical case studies (for example, the phases of strategic defense, equilibrium, and counteroffensive are broadly applicable to strategies for protracted revolutionary struggles in both rural and urban settings), we must come to terms with the sweeping transformation of both urban and rural social life today. From the United States to China, India to Indonesia, Nigeria to Mexico, Turkey to the Philippines, we live in a world that is increasingly urbanized, proletarianized, and networked to an unprecedented degree. The further acceleration of these historical trends has major implications for the development of revolutionary strategy and organization.
3.2.10: Compared to earlier historical periods, protracted people's wars concentrated in the rural agrarian regions of semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries have become increasingly difficult to sustain, let alone lead to victory. There are several reasons for this shift:
(a) Rural regions are increasingly integrated into the urban metabolic flows of capitalist- imperialism through the development of trade networks, industrial and commercial infrastructure, and new technologies spurred by neoliberal globalization and structural adjustment programs.
(b) Enclosures by multinational and transnational corporations have led to the privatization and commodification of land and other natural resources in rural regions, leading to the bankrupting of peasant farmers and the displacement and proletarianization of rural peasant populations. Members of this proletarianized rural peasantry are often forced to migrate to urban areas in search of means of subsistence, and are disproportionately concentrated in the impoverished periurban hinterlands, the slums and shantytowns, of the world's megacities.
(c) State repression in rural areas has become increasingly lethal and effective as a result of advancements in military hardware, the proliferation of information and communications technologies, and the development of remote surveillance capabilities. While this factor can be partially offset by the democratization of technology, this transformation is of such magnitude that it has effectively eliminated the main strategic advantages previously afforded to revolutionaries by the geography of rural agrarian zones: isolation and the element of surprise.13
3.2.11: In the course of recent and ongoing people's wars in the Philippines, Peru, Turkey, Nepal, and India, revolutionary parties have sought, each in their own way, to come to terms with these new realities. This is reflected in the open recognition by these organizations of the increasingly urbanized (and still urbanizing) character of peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, and the strategic centrality of revolutionary work in urban and periurban areas. Taking into account factors such as the effects of rural-to-urban migration, the technical recomposition of semi-feudal and semi-colonial social relations, the strategic centrality of cities both to the operations of the capitalist world-economy and the reproduction of capitalist state power, and the role of non-governmental organizations and trade union bureaucracies in co-opting and dissipating class struggle in urban and periurban areas, contemporary communist movements in the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries are adapting to the material realities of an increasingly urbanized, proletarianized, and networked world-system.14
3.2.12: We must recall that when Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1847, out of a total world population of approximately 1.2 billion people, only ~10-12% lived in urban areas, with ~2-5% could be classified as proletarians. If one of the basic hypotheses of Marxism is correct—that the process of capital accumulation creates its own gravediggers in the form of a proletarian majority overwhelmingly concentrated in urban and periurban areas—then we live in a historical conjuncture that could only be described as objectively favorable for the world socialist revolution. Indeed, it is now obvious that the triumphant pronouncements made by the ideologues of capital concerning the end of communism, the end of revolution, and even the end of history itself were rather naive, and the revolutionary struggles of previous centuries will be looked back upon by future generations as the dress rehearsals for the great battles that followed in their wake.
3.2.13: Developing a scientific understanding of the densely populated, hypercomplex, proletarianized, and networked cities of today is of immense strategic importance for communists. From the Caracazo insurrection against neoliberalism in Venezuela in 1989 to the anti-IMF uprisings in Argentina in 2001, from the Oaxaca Uprising of 2006 to the democratic uprisings of the Arab Spring and "movement of the squares" in 2010-2012, from the George Floyd Uprising of 2020-2021 to the ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler-colonialism, recent cycles of struggle have made it abundantly clear that the squares, streets, slums, industrial belts, intermodal logistics hubs, and campuses of modern cities have become the main arenas of struggle for the masses in rebellion internationally. Even prior to recent cycles of urban struggle, the Marxist urban revolutionary movements in Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil, as well as the national liberation struggle waged by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the north of Ireland, provide valuable historical lessons. Equipped with a scientific analysis of this terrain, we will be more prepared to determine the organizational forms needed to wage a protracted revolutionary struggle for communism in complex urban environments.
3.2.14: As of 2023, more than half of the world's total population (approximately 57% or 4.6 billion people) live in urban areas.15 The United Nations projects for this number to increase to more than 68% by 2050.16 Furthermore, a growing segment of this urban population now lives in less than 50 megacities of more than 10 million inhabitants (with one in eight people living in only 33 of the world's megacities); nearly half of the world's urban population is concentrated in urban and periurban areas of less than 500,000 inhabitants; and cities with fewer than 1 million inhabitants—mainly in Asia and Africa—are among the fasted growing in the world. We live in an urbanized (and still urbanizing) world. Of the world's total urban population, roughly 25% live in slums or informal settlements, and this number is projected to grow by an additional 360 million people by 2030.
3.2.15: While is undeniable that a large peasantry continues to wage revolutionary class struggles in defense of the peasant way of life, and semi-feudal, semi-colonial social relations persist throughout much of the world (albeit in reconfigured forms, reflecting broader changes in the social structure of the imperialist world-system), it is equally true that rural areas are subjected to the processes of privatization and commodification by monopoly-finance capital to an unprecedented degree. This has led to the massive displacement of peasant communities, deforestation, pollution, the industrialization and commercialization of agriculture, the creation of masses of impoverished landless workers, and the intensified militarization of rural life. Rural areas are themselves increasingly urbanized and agricultural production increasingly mechanized, and rural populations are subjected to processes of proletarianization leading to the recomposition of rural class structures and struggles.
3.2.16: This is not to suggest that class struggles waged by the rural proletariat and peasantry are unimportant. To the contrary, a revolutionary peasant movement in alliance with the revolutionary movement of the rural and urban proletariat will prove central to the realization of sustainable food systems, decolonization, and Indigenous sovereignty under socialism. Furthermore, the struggle to overcome the contradiction between town and country is part and parcel to the socialist transition to communism. Thus the construction of an international worker-peasant alliance will prove to be crucial in securing the world socialist revolution's ultimate victory, and we in no wish aim to denigrate nor depreciate the revolutionary political agency of the global peasantry, nor the importance of agricultural labor in rural regions.
However, when viewed from the perspective of revolutionary strategy and organization, and taking into account recent historical trends in global political economy, it is clear that cities and their impoverished hinterlands will serve as the primary centers of gravity for the protracted revolutionary struggle for communism in the twenty-first century. Modern urban and periurban areas, with their growing proletarian majorities, are the nerve centers of capitalist state power: it is here—especially in the impoverished periurban hinterlands of modern cities—that the organized communist movement must build its primary bases of popular support for the socialist revolution. In most countries of the world—especially those of the imperial core—it will be from such urban base areas that the people's countrywide conquest of political power can be secured. Political work in rural areas is, of course, strategically important in its own right: even in the imperial core countries, rural areas are crucial to regional food systems, they often concentrate large numbers of immigrant agricultural workers, and have the potential to serve as spaces of training and sanctuary for communist partisans (i.e. rearguard support bases for frontline operations in the cities).
3.2.17: These trends in global political economy (i.e. urbanization, proletarianization, and networked connectivity) present communists with new opportunities as well as dangers, and place new demands on revolutionary communist strategy and organization in light of recent historical experience. In the context of contemporary capitalist-imperialism, cities are not only where a majority of the human population now resides: they are the nerve centers of capitalist state power. Mark R. Beissinger has termed this the proximity dilemma. According to Beissinger, "cities are where the state is strongest, and therefore urban revolutionaries are more directly exposed than rural revolutionaries to the repressive capacities of the state. But cities are also where the nerve centers of government that revolutionaries seek to capture are located, and therefore where regimes are most directly vulnerable to disruption."17 This is, of course, nothing new. Writing in 1973, Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm identified the same trend: "Whatever else a city may be, it is at the same time a place inhabited by a concentration of poor people and, in most cases, the locus of political power which affects their lives."18
While the role of the city in processes of revolutionary social change has been further clarified in recent decades by the increasing frequency with which insurrections have erupted in urban and periurban areas (and, in many instances, these urban uprisings have succeeded in overthrowing autocratic regimes), what has yet to be seen is a popular revolutionary uprising led by an organized working class, united around a coherent socialist program, "that focuses on the real centers of power—the grain baskets, manufacturing centers, ports, power plants—with the aim and a plan to take them over."19 This is an essential aspect for any popular revolutionary movement intent on seizing control of the labor process and building a socialist commune, and which is capable of sustaining its self-reproduction beyond the initial stages of the uprising.
3.2.18: The proximity of revolutionary movements to both the nerve centers of capitalist state power and the full extent of that state's repressive capacities simply means that in developing revolutionary strategy and organization, we must carefully manage the trade-off between conducting revolutionary political work in urban environments on the one hand, and withstanding state repression on the other. However, the proximity dilemma takes on new importance in light of the acceleration of the aforementioned historical trends of urbanization, proletarianization, and networked connectivity, as well as the increased capacities of the capitalist state to conduct successful rural counterinsurgency operations. Keeping this spatial dimension in mind, the question of timing takes on the greatest importance for revolutionary processes unfolding in complex urban environments: wait too long to act, and victory will slip from our grasp and our enemies will regain the initiative; act too soon, and defeat becomes certain. We must take into account this space-time compression produced by capitalist-imperialism's processes of urbanization when formulating revolutionary strategies, building revolutionary organizations, and sequencing revolutionary actions. In the coming revolutionary struggles, it is likely that, once a revolutionary process has transitioned from a phase of strategic defensive to strategic equilibrium, the sequence of events will likely accelerate rapidly in both space and time. This will push the operational and tactical agility of revolutionary organizations to their absolute limits.
3.2.19: In complex urban environments that are geographically divided along lines of class and social group hierarchies (race, caste, etc.), and differentiated according to their overall position within the international division of labor, communists will be conducting organizational work in operational contexts where multiple political forces are contending for ideological hegemony, political power, and territorial control. Military strategist David Kilcullen has proposed a theory of competitive control as a theoretical framework for understanding the dialectic of struggle between competing organizational systems within complex urban ecologies.20 In summary, this theory posits that in the networked urban environments of the contemporary world, competition between state and nonstate actors presupposes each force making use of a comprehensive range of organizational approaches encompassing theoretical, ideological, and political dimensions.
Within such environments of social conflict, multiple battlespaces overlap due to the linkage of physical space with cyberspace, which is itself a product of the trend towards networked connectivity and the democratization of technology. This produces material conditions for the emergence of urban struggles that are synchronized in both time and space to an unprecedented degree, operating at local and global scales simultaneously. In turn, this presents the organized communist movement with the possibility of coordinating revolutionary struggles simultaneously across multiple cities nationally and even internationally, and to elevate their practical effectiveness and revolutionary internationalism to a higher level.
3.2.20: Operating in complex urban environments where a situation of competitive control prevails, the organized communist movement will be tasked with building a system of counterpower in order to compete with—and eventually overcome—the organizational systems of capitalist state power, as well as those systems of power created by various criminal networks and reactionary political forces. Organized as a revolutionary party within the people's movement, it is the task of communists to build this system of counterpower by uniting the class struggle of the proletariat with the liberation struggles of all oppressed social groups; developing the revolutionary consciousness, self-organization, and self-activity of the masses through popular education, cultural work, and the accumulation of practical experience in struggle; uniting the people's movement around a common program of struggle and strategy for the conquest of power; constructing new social institutions that both meet immediate needs and prefigure aspects of socialism; and, ultimately, achieve fusion between the people's movement and the revolutionary theory, ideology, and politics of scientific socialism.
3.2.21: The ultimate organizational form to emerge from this process will be the revolutionary united front. We conceive of this united front organization as a center of convergence and coordination based on a triple combination of mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations. Under the banner of mass organizations, we include revolutionary unions of workers, tenants, immigrants, oppressed nationalities, women, LGBTQ+ people, students, as well as cultural associations, mutual aid and disaster relief initiatives, economic cooperatives, and revolutionary opposition groups formed within mass organizations under the hegemony and control of reformist or reactionary forces. Under the banner of defense organizations, we include workplace and community self-defense formations, people's militias, and the nuclei of a revolutionary people's army. Finally, under the banner of revolutionary party organizations, we include all parties affiliated with the organized communist movement. It must be emphasized that the revolutionary united front will not emerge spontaneously: it must be consciously constructed, and it is to the parties of the organized communist movement that this task will largely fall. Therefore, when faced with the absence of a revolutionary communist party, we view the construction of such a party through the formation of pre-party organizations as the central strategic task for communists.
3.2.22: The revolutionary united front can only emerge in the course of the protracted revolutionary struggle for socialism by consciously developing the organizational infrastructure needed for the establishment of a system of counterpower and for the coordination of a popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state. In turn, the organizational infrastructure of the united front provides the institutional scaffolding and broad political framework for the revolutionary counterstate to be established in the wake of the uprising, and consolidated in the period of socialist transition.
Throughout the socialist transition to communism, mass organizations will continue to mobilize and empower workers and oppressed social groups to participate in the governance and administration of the commune state at all levels, to continue the class struggle of the proletariat and the liberation struggles of all oppressed social groups, and to seize power in all areas of social life. Defense organizations will arm, train, and mobilize the masses to confront and defeat the armed counterrevolution, enforce the political program and protect the achievements of the socialist revolution, participate in the constructive tasks of the socialist transition, provide assistance to revolutionary movements internationally, and struggle against the bureaucratization of the commune state. Revolutionary party organizations will continue to accompany, struggle with, and learn from the masses in order to exercise effective theoretical, ideological, and political leadership, and thus ensure that the commune state does not stray from the revolutionary road to communism.
3.2.23: To lead a popular revolutionary uprising to victory against the capitalist state and successfully build a socialist commune in its wake, communists require more than a scientific analysis of the terrain of struggle and prevailing correlation of forces. In addition to this, we must master both the art and science of revolutionary strategy and organization. We must be prepared to forge new political instruments capable of articulating both the immediate needs and ultimate objectives of the people's movement, and uniting a complex organizational ecology around common programs of struggle. Within the interstices of the cities and their periurban hinterlands, we must facilitate the construction of systems of counterpower capable of contending with the capitalist state for political power, and ultimately establishing a revolutionary counterstate of the commune type.
3.2.24: Revolutionary political work in complex urban environments will require the patient and systematic development of not only a revolutionary united front of mass organizations and defense organizations led by an organized communist movement, but also an infrastructure capable of enabling, on a moment's notice, the rapid scaling-up of the united front organization, or the concentration of the people's forces against those of the enemy at key strategic points of action. The question of stockpiling resources, securing physical spaces, and accumulating a variety of tools and technical capabilities takes on special importance in the contemporary urban context and must not be delayed.
In the context of a developing revolutionary crisis, extensive infrastructure will be required to transform it into a revolutionary situation. Such infrastructure is necessary to enable the rapid and modular assembly of autonomous systems of communication, cooperation, and coordination within the people's movement; to provide the initial scaffolding for the construction, proliferation, consolidation, and defense of the people's organs of counterpower (including all manner of popular assemblies, councils, and committees); and to provision for the satisfaction of people's basic needs at a minimum level as the revolutionary struggle intensifies and the normal functioning of the capitalist economy is interrupted. The question of organizational infrastructure is especially important when we consider the absence of stable forms of revolutionary political organization in recent cycles of struggle: while urban social movements have assembled rapidly in this era of networked connectivity, they have also dispersed with equal rapidity. If we wish to go beyond ephemeral forms of resistance—if our aim is to arm the masses with a program for socialist revolution—then we must build organizational infrastructures capable of sustaining the revolutionary process and carrying the people forward to victory against the reactionary forces of capitalist-imperialism and fascism.
3.3: All Power to the Councils
3.3.1: Historical experience indicates that as the people's movement for socialism grows, develops, and ultimately culminates in a popular revolutionary uprising that overthrows the capitalist state and unleashes a process of socialist transformation, the masses will generate their own organs of counterpower, principally in the form of councils or soviets. By council, we mean an organization of delegates directly elected and recallable by popular democratic assemblies convened within a social institution (such as a workplace or school) or geographic area (i.e. neighborhoods, wards, cities, etc.). Through such councils, proletarians are united as a class, the class struggle of the proletariat is united with the liberation struggles of oppressed social groups, and scientific socialism is united with the people's movement. Within the councils, social functions that are today separated by bourgeois social organization are combined: the political is united with the economic, and the legislative with the executive. Through the councils, the revolutionary united front assumes a concrete local form capable of enlisting new masses in the revolutionary process.
3.3.2: At its core, the council form of organization should be understood as a popular democratic assembly of the masses that prefigures the basic political and economic structures of the socialist commune. From Russia to Germany, China to Spain, Mexico to Korea, council organizations have emerged in a diverse range of historical contexts, assuming various names. However, in recognizing the general character of this organizational form, we shall simply refer to these various instances as "councils."
3.3.3: There have been several historical variations of council organization. However, the two most common forms—and the forms which we anticipate to be central to the coming socialist revolution—have been workers' councils formed on an industrial basis, and communal councils formed on a territorial basis. When local councils are linked together through the election of delegates to higher-level councils—as in the example of neighborhood councils electing delegates to a ward council; ward councils to a district council; and district councils to a city council, all the way up to a central council for the whole country—this process is called federation. At all levels, council delegates are directly elected and immediately recallable by a vote of their sending constituencies. At the apex of this federative council system, delegates would be elected to a central council, which would function as the political and economic center of the socialist commune.
3.3.4: In the historical development of the first socialist experiments, we observe the initial creation of council organizations as organs of struggle. This was the case in the Russian Revolution of 1905, where the world's first workers' councils—the soviets—formed as citywide strike committees to centralize and coordinate the struggles of workers across multiple workplaces and industries: the conquest of political power by the people's movement was not on their agenda. However, as the people's struggle intensified and a revolutionary situation ripened, these strike committees were quickly transformed into general political bodies tasked with a broad range of functions, issuing the people's political demands and serving as centers of convergence and coordination for the revolutionary struggle as a whole. The councils of 1905 would serve as the main historical reference point for the subsequent reemergence of councils in the Russian Revolution of 1917, which assumed a real nationwide character with the convening of congresses of council delegates from across the country.
3.3.5: In a process of development mirroring that of the Russian soviets, Germany saw the emergence of a clandestine network of revolutionary shop stewards during World War I which culminated in the formation of workers' councils. The revolutionary shop stewards arose from the class struggle in the factories and within the trade unions themselves as workers struggled to end the inter-imperialist war and defend the living and working conditions of proletarians. Mainly concentrated in the metal industry, this network organized the first mass political strikes in German history to demand an end to political repression, hunger, and ultimately the war itself. Despite a relatively small membership, these revolutionary shop stewards were democratically elected by workers' assemblies, and were usually composed of experienced and trusted cadres steeled in class struggle.
While the revolutionary shop stewards were mainly composed of experienced trade unionists and members of the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party, they were organizationally autonomous from any specific party or trade union. In fact, the mass political strikes they led were directed not only against capital and the state, but also the official leadership of the reformist trade unions and Majority Social Democratic Party, both of whom supported the German bourgeoisie in the inter-imperialist war. The organizational core built by these shop stewards formed the nucleus of the workers' councils that would emerge in the German Revolution of 1918. Like their Russian counterparts, the workers' councils in Germany served as centers of coordination for the people's struggle. In recognition of this characteristic, in Latin America such organizations are typically called committees of struggle, which are broadly analogous to the initial configuration of the council organization as an organ of struggle.
3.3.6: As participants in these strike committees or committees of struggle become conscious of the necessity of uniting various sectors and fronts of the people's struggle on a countrywide basis, as the programmatic demands of the people's movement take on an increasingly revolutionary character, and as a revolutionary crisis materializes, the council organizations can make a qualitative leap from organs of struggle to organs of counterpower. It is at this moment that the councils become the highest expressions of the revolutionary united front, serving as the main centers of convergence and coordination for the various expressions of the people's struggle, and the organizational means for the rapid inclusion into the revolutionary process of new masses awakened to political life. At such a historical conjuncture, the strategic objective for the organized communist movement is nothing less than to win the masses to the immediate establishment of a socialist commune, based on the council system they have themselves begun to build, by means of a popular revolutionary uprising. Thus the councils themselves become the main deliberative forums through which communists struggle with the masses ideologically, ultimately winning them to the political program of the socialist revolution.
3.3.7: While communists should always engage in agitation and education in favor of a socialist council democracy, it is crucial that the drive to organize councils not be made prematurely. As Anton Pannekoek pointed out, "the council system is the appropriate form of organization only for a revolutionary working class."21 For an emerging council movement to be successful, the masses of people must be prepared ideologically and organizationally to seize political power, implement a program of revolutionary transitional measures, and defend the socialist revolution by force of arms against the counterrevolutionary reaction. The geographic proliferation of councils must be sufficient to enable the seizure of power in multiple cities simultaneously and the subsequent consolidation of a revolutionary people's government in as large a territory as possible. The councils must awaken new masses to political life, mobilizing their participation in the revolutionary process. Absent these factors, an incipient council system would surely fail, resulting in either crushing defeats by the counterrevolutionary forces (as was the case in the aftermath of the Biennio Rosso of 1919-1920 in Italy, which resulted in the fascist seizure of power), or the voluntary capitulation to one or another faction of the bourgeoisie and the assimilation of the council system by the bourgeois state (as was the fate of the workers' councils formed in the German Revolution of 1918).
3.3.8: If the construction of a revolutionary united front converges with the accelerating systemic crises and decay of capitalist-imperialism (exemplified by climate change, pandemics, recurring economic recessions and depressions, imperialist wars, etc.), it will become possible for the communist movement to win the battle of ideas and consolidate a system of counterpower in strategic urban and periurban areas across the country. As organs of counterpower (i.e. councils) proliferate throughout the fabric of society, a situation of dual power will arise in which the system of counterpower generated by the people's movement must struggle for hegemony against the system of capitalist state power. In this asymmetric struggle for power, we can expect multiple political forces to emerge with conflicting theories, ideologies, and politics. If our goal is to build a system of counterpower based on federative council democracy, and if we want the emerging council movement to identify with and uphold the programmatic aims of the world socialist revolution, this will require immense organizational work on the part of communists.
3.3.9: In the context of social formations in which the trends of urbanization, proletarianization, and networked connectivity have come to predominate (as is the case in a majority of the world today), the arrival of a dual power situation presents communists with the following tasks: (a) to secure the victory of coordinated popular revolutionary uprisings against the capitalist state in key strategic cities before extending the uprising to the country as a whole; (b) to establish and consolidate a socialist commune on the basis of the organs of counterpower generated by the people's movement throughout as much of the territory as possible; and (c) to unleash a revolutionary process of socialist transformation. These tasks can only be realized if the organized communist movement exercises political leadership from a stable position within the people's movement, winning the masses to a revolutionary program and strategy. How is this to be achieved?
3.4: The Mass Perspective and the Mass Line
3.4.1: It is through processes of political organization that classes and social groups are recomposed as collective political subjects. To organize is to develop and coordinate the collective capacities of people to act upon and change the world. When a collectivity begins to act, organizations are formed, understood as a collective of people sharing a common purpose, objectives, and decision-making structures. The basis of an organization is solidarity, which provides the necessary level of social cohesion and cooperation for a collective to realize its purpose and achieve its objectives. In contrast, the basis of disorganization is individualism, in which everyone does their own thing. In addition to solidarity, the construction of an effective organization requires planning, accountability, shared responsibilities, discipline, and an internal division of labor. There can be no serious discussion of a socialist transition to communism without a serious discussion of political organization.
3.4.2: The communist approach to political organization can be summarized with the four-part slogan: Unite the Advanced, Win the Intermediate, Develop the Backwards, Isolate and Defeat the Reactionaries. In other words, we must aim to immediately unite those sections of the people who are in broad agreement with the organized communist movement's political platform and program. These advanced political detachments should be recruited to participate directly in building the people's mass organizations and defense organizations—such as trade unions, tenant unions, student groups, cultural associations, and self-defense formations—and to join the ranks of a communist party or pre-party organization. Without uniting the advanced on the basis of a shared platform and program, and through the voluntary acceptance of collective responsibility and discipline, no further progress along the road to socialist revolution can be made. However, communists cannot limit ourselves to uniting the advanced. In order for the gospel of liberation to reach beyond the choir, we must win over those segments of the people who are in only partial agreement with our platform and program.
3.4.3: Within a given social formation, there exist popular social sectors who will agree with certain aspects of a communist platform and program (such as the necessity to wage class struggle, defend the democratic rights of the oppressed, or even expropriate the capitalist class), but who do not yet share sufficient theoretical, ideological, and political agreement to join a communist party or identify openly with the communist project. However, these intermediate sectors can be united around practical struggles for the improvement of material conditions which objectively move society closer to socialist revolution, and which strengthen the organized communist movement as a tendency within the people's movement. By working diligently alongside the intermediate sectors and earning their trust, revolutionaries can eventually win them to a revolutionary communist platform and program.
3.4.4: There are also popular social sectors who may share in common with the communist movement certain progressive standpoints on specific issues (such as the urgent necessity of winning material improvements in people's living and working conditions), but who generally uphold backwards political views on other questions (such as gender, sexuality, race, caste, religion, science, ecology, immigration, education, the right of oppressed peoples and nations to self-determination, the role of the state in class society, and so on). The backwards sectors of the people have a higher propensity to engage in anti-people behavior, such as preying upon and exploiting their own working-class communities for personal gain, or aligning with the local comprador bourgeoisie. However, the backwards social sectors must not be written off: communists must struggle with and alongside them in order to develop them politically and break them away from their backwards views and behaviors. At the same time, under no circumstances should the organized communist movement accommodate the views of the most backwards sectors of the people.
3.4.5: Finally, there are those segments of the population who are outright reactionaries. This includes fascists, racists, white nationalists, anticommunists, religious fundamentalists, mobsters, and members drug cartels. While certain reactionary opinions and perspectives may be shared by more progressive segments of the population (i.e. the intermediate and backwards sectors), what distinguishes the reactionaries is that they are politically organized around a common right-wing, counter-revolutionary, and/or anti-people project. Therefore, the struggle within the people's movement, within the revolutionary movement of the working class and all oppressed social groups, must never accommodate these sectors. Instead, the organized communist movement must seek to politically isolate, contain, and suppress the reactionaries and their organizations, and to win over their social base whenever possible. With the victory of the socialist revolution, all reactionary organizations and movements will be immediately banned and their assets confiscated, and any attempts by such organizations and movements to sabotage socialism will be decisively broken.
3.4.6: The process of uniting the advanced, winning the intermediate, developing the backwards, and isolating and defeating the reactionaries is not straightforward. A coworker can be advanced on questions concerning racism and anti-racist struggle, but quite backwards on questions concerning capitalism and class struggle. A neighbor can be advanced on questions concerning gentrification and the housing struggle, yet quite backwards on questions of patriarchy and the struggle for gender liberation and reproductive freedom.
It is therefore necessary to return to the theory and practice of social investigation and compositional analysis. Specifically, we must concern ourselves with the development and application of a dialogic pedagogy to the revolutionary process, or what the communist movement has historically referred to as the mass line method of political leadership.22 The mass line proposes that communists accompany the masses in struggle, listening to their ideas and learning from their experiences. The organizers then collect these scattered ideas and experiences. Then, in light of dialectical and historical materialism, synthesize a program of action. This program is then shared with the masses. If adopted and embraced as their own, this program will inform the political aims and activities of the people's movement. Through struggle, the correctness of a particular program is systematically determined in practice.
3.4.7: The mass line is an iterative method of political leadership, applied repeatedly in a continuously expanding spiral. Using a dialogic pedagogy, the mass line seeks neither to impose a communist platform and program upon the people (as is the case with commandism), nor trail behind them by pandering to the lowest common denominator (as is the case with tailism). Rather, it seeks humble, honest, and authentic dialogue concerning the questions posed to all those who seek liberation from the horrors of capitalist-imperialism, and to bolster the autonomous capacities of those forces capable of leading a socialist transition to communism.
3.4.8: The mass line bases itself on a mass perspective, asserting that: (a) the masses are the real makers of history, (b) the emancipation of the exploited and oppressed masses of the world can only be an act of self-emancipation, (c) the masses must learn through their own practical experience that socialist revolution is both possible and necessary, and (d) the masses must achieve ever-greater levels of revolutionary consciousness, self-organization, and capacities for self-activity through participation in struggle. A revolutionary people develops from a non-revolutionary people, and it is through the dialectical unity of theory and practice in the form of revolutionary praxis that the latter is transformed into the former.
3.4.9: The mass line and the educational process corresponding to it can be summarized with the slogan: Unity→Struggle→Synthesis→Unity. At any given level of society, the participants of an organization—be it a communist party or a mass organization such as a trade union, student group, or cultural association—must achieve a certain level of initial unity in order to act. This could be a comprehensive unity arising from a common platform and program establishing the theoretical, ideological, and political framework and objectives shared by all members of that organization. Alternatively, it could be a more limited unity formed on the basis of tactical agreement in relation to a specific objective or campaign, such as the struggle to increase wages, lower the cost of living, defend academic freedom, or grow people's scientific knowledge. In the course of applying the mass line method of political leadership to ongoing political practice, in combination with the self-critical assessment and summation of lessons learned through this practice, contradictions inevitably emerge around which there will be struggle. Through struggle, these contradictions are resolved or the path is identified for their future resolution, and a synthesis is achieved. Armed with this synthesis, a new and expanded level of unity is established, and a new cycle of struggle is subsequently unleashed on a higher level.
3.4.10: The mass line incorporates three core principles:
(a) Have faith in the masses, trust the masses, and on this basis win their support for socialist revolution.
(b) A revolutionary political program must come directly from the masses and return to the masses for discussion and debate.
(c) Become a student of the masses before becoming a teacher.
In general, we can summarize this method of political leadership as one of accompaniment: communists must accompany the masses in their day-to-day life and struggles, learning with them and earning their trust through direct participation and concrete practice, prior to making programmatic proposals.
3.5: Networking and Consolidating Mass Vanguards
3.5.1: In the course of combative social struggles waged by the exploited and oppressed masses, there emerge advanced political detachments, or mass vanguards, which have the capacity to organize, unite, and lead the people's movement in the direction of socialism. The concept of a mass vanguard should not be confused with a self-selecting elite who, by virtue of holding the "correct" ideology, are endowed by history with the exclusive right to lead the masses (even in the absence of a mass social base!). Against such misconceptions, we assert that a mass vanguard does not exist separate from the masses from which it emerges, but instead forms an organic component of it: thus the vanguard of the working class is internal to the class, arising organically from the development of the class struggle itself.
Historical materialist analysis reveals that, within a particular historical conjuncture, there emerge such advanced political detachments from within the working class and oppressed social groups who exercise political leadership by identifying key strategic tasks for the people's movement, ultimately leading it in a revolutionary direction. It is precisely the imperialist bourgeoisie who seek to separate the vanguard from the masses, thus depriving the people's movement of an advanced political leadership capable of organizing, uniting, and coordinating the revolutionary struggle against capitalist-imperialism. This is precisely why U.S. imperialism's repression of the national liberation movements of its internal colonies—especially the Black Liberation movement—has been so extreme, for such movements have historically constituted the most politically advanced sections of U.S. society.
3.5.2: A mass vanguard is not synonymous with a specific party organization. While a genuine revolutionary party must strive to unite and achieve fusion with the most politically advanced detachments to emerge from the masses in the course of the protracted revolutionary struggle, and such a party may perform a vanguard-function at a specific historical conjuncture, there is no point at which a revolutionary party completely and permanently merges with the mass vanguards of the people's struggle. Rather, a revolutionary party must be grasped as one specific type of political instrument, whereas mass vanguards are formed organically through the historical development of mass social struggles. Thus a mass vanguard may refer to a specific organized fraction of the working class (such as workers concentrated in a particular industry, workplace, geographic region, or mass organization with its own histories and traditions of revolutionary struggle), or to the liberation struggle of a specific oppressed social group (such as oppressed nationalities, prisoners, women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, etc.) which sharpens particular social contradictions to their breaking point and brings new masses into struggle.
3.5.3: Historically, we can locate the emergence of mass vanguards among the first soviets formed in the industrial districts of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1905 Revolution, the soldiers and sailors of the Kronstadt military garrison in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Peasants' Association of Hunan in the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927, the defense committees and barrio unions formed in Barcelona by the National Confederation of Labor in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Black autoworkers of the Revolutionary Union Movement in Detroit in 1968, the autonomous assemblies formed by southern migrant workers in the factories of northern Italy in the 1960s-1970s, or the striking teachers from Section 22 of Mexico's National Coordination of Education Workers who sparked the Oaxaca Uprising and led the formation of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca in 2006. In each of these historical case studies, the mass vanguard raise programmatic demands, developed forms of organization, and deployed tactics which advanced the people's movement forward to the next logical phase of revolutionary struggle.
3.5.4: Thus the task of a communist party is to identify and achieve the maximum degree of fusion with these mass vanguards by using the mass line method of political leadership. Communists can only establish an organic connection with these mass vanguard layers if we are willing to learn from, listen to, defend, and participate in the mass social struggles they lead, and on this basis synthesize a more general political program. Once united with the organized communist movement, consolidated mass vanguards have the potential to lead the people's movement to victory in the struggle against the capitalist state, and articulate for the broad masses of people the programmatic objectives and ultimate aims of the world socialist revolution. As history has shown, it is often the mass vanguards who lead, and the communist revolutionaries who must race to catch-up with them.
3.6: Mass Organizations
3.6.1: It is through their direct participation in mass organizations that workers and oppressed social groups develop revolutionary consciousness and build their capacities for self-organization and self-activity. Mass organizations unite fractions of the exploited and oppressed masses in struggles against the exploiters and oppressors to defend their common material interests and basic democratic rights. Formed in response to a particular social issue, arising from the immediate demands of a sector of struggle, or developing in response to the sharpening of a particular social contradiction, mass organizations can include tenant unions struggling against rising rents, decrepit living conditions, and evictions; trade unions struggling to improve working conditions, raise wages, and expand workers' control of the labor process; women's organizations struggling to defend reproductive rights; immigrant rights organizations struggling against deportations and for full equality; unions of prisoners struggling for universal suffrage, an end to unpaid prison labor, and abolition of torture and the death penalty; national liberation organizations struggling to defend the basic democratic rights of oppressed nationalities and win self-determination for oppressed nations; and student unions struggling against tuition hikes, student debt, corporatization, militarization, and the criminalization of political dissent on college and university campuses.
3.6.2: Mass organizations should be as open as objective conditions permit, and their membership as broad as possible. Mass organizations unite fractions of the exploited and oppressed masses on the basis of immediate needs, in defense of common material interests and basic democratic rights, not on the basis of a comprehensive theoretical, ideological, and political platform and program (i.e. revolutionary Marxism). However, it is the case that all mass organizations—as is the case with all social organizations—are guided by definite theoretical, ideological, and political lines, reflected in their programs, campaigns, and slogans. It is therefore inevitable that, within the mass organizations of the people's movement, different schools of thought will contend for hegemony. In recognition of this reality, it is imperative for communists to defend pluralism and democracy within the people's movement, and, in combination with direct participation in the people's struggle, win the masses to the protracted revolutionary struggle for communism through dialogue, debate, and political education.
3.6.3: While a hard separation between social or economic and political struggles should be avoided (and indeed, every chance to raise political questions, politicize social or economic struggles, and develop the people's revolutionary consciousness must be seized), it is nonetheless the case that, in the absence of a revolutionary crisis, the majority of mass organizations will not typically pursue explicitly revolutionary aims or adopt explicitly revolutionary programs. While the struggles waged by mass organizations to win reforms are often progressive in the sense that they have the potential to develop the people's revolutionary consciousness and capacities for self-organization and self-activity (which are among the objective preconditions for the socialist revolution), organized revolutionary tendencies within the mass organizations will form a militant minority in most circumstances.
3.6.4: If it is true that the masses are the real makers of history, and that communist revolutionaries must move among the people as fish swim in the sea, then it is only with the proliferation of mass organizations in all areas of social life that the potential arises for the people's movement to advance from partial struggles for the defense of the common material interests and democratic rights of the exploited and oppressed masses, to a revolutionary struggle for political power. It it is through the development of mass organizations that the masses of people learn today the skills and lessons needed to assume responsibility for the governance and administration of the socialist commune tomorrow.
3.6.5: In the course of the protracted revolutionary struggle—and with the development of a revolutionary situation—mass organizations must demonstrate to the general population that not only can the masses competently and efficiently assume direct responsibility for the political, economic, and cultural affairs of society, but that the destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of the socialist commune will bring with it a better way of life for the overwhelming majority of people. Therefore, mass organizations can be understood as both instruments of struggle against capitalist-imperialism, and schools of communism through which the masses are prepared for the revolutionary tasks of the socialist transition.
3.6.6: Through the growth and development of the people's movement, through the conscious intervention of the organized communist movement, and with the maturation of a revolutionary crisis, mass organizations can be transformed into genuine organs of counterpower. As the revolutionary process develops and the contradictions of capitalist-imperialism are sharpened, it becomes objectively possible for mass organizations to make the leap from economic struggle to political struggle, from reform to revolution. For example, in the context of a sharpening revolutionary crisis, tenant unions might pivot from waging campaigns for rent control to seizing and collectivizing unoccupied housing, or a trade union might pivot from organizing strikes for the improvement of working and living conditions to seizing control of agriculture, industry, and social reproduction.
3.6.7: No matter how favorable all other objective conditions may be, it will be impossible to transform a revolutionary crisis into a revolutionary situation if, prior to such a crisis, certain organizational tasks have not been completed. Extensive organizational infrastructure to facilitate communication, cooperation, and coordination must be constructed within the people's struggle in the form of a revolutionary media ecosystem (e.g., a people's news service with its own network of journalists and correspondents to provide real-time analysis of the people's struggle and issue calls to action; theoretical publications to facilitate debate on revolutionary strategy and tactics; forums and conferences to self-critically assess and sum-up lessons learned within and across different sectors of struggle; broadcast media to mobilize the masses; etc.). Within the mass organizations of the people's movement, organized revolutionary tendencies must be developed, consolidated, and networked at various scales, both within and across industries, sectors, and territories.
The unity of the people's movement must be tested in practice through tactical and strategic united fronts. Perhaps most importantly, a revolutionary party—armed with a coherent analysis, vision, and strategy, and steeled in revolutionary struggle against the exploiters and oppressors in key strategic industries and workplaces, in every proletarian neighborhood and inside the state's jails and prisons, and on campuses of colleges and universities—must be patiently organized. Such a party must successfully forge an organic connection with the masses and their organizations, synthesizing lessons learned from their struggles through the application of the mass line, earning the people's trust through the social insertion and mass work of its cadre, and making its political program known to all. Only with the completion of these organizational tasks will it become possible to transform a revolutionary crisis into a revolutionary situation.
3.6.8: In contexts where mass organizations exist but they are dominated by reformist or reactionary ideologies, where the leadership of the organization is controlled by an opportunist bureaucracy, where democratic processes are underdeveloped or entirely absent, or where the mass organization has been effectively integrated with the capitalist state (i.e. corporatism), an intermediate organization can be formed as special type of mass organization to wage the battle of ideas within the people's movement, advancing the people's struggle in a socialist direction. Serving as an instrument for the growth, development, and consolidation of a revolutionary tendency within a specific mass organization or sector of struggle, the basis of unity for an intermediate organization should be more programmatic than ideological, making it broader in scope than a party organization (for which theoretical, ideological, and political coherence is especially important), yet more focused than the mass organization or sector of struggle from which it emerges and in which it operates (for which there will always be a plurality of contending ideas and perspectives, reflecting the diversity of the masses themselves).
3.6.9: The development of an intermediate organization is a fluid process. Such organizations should be broad enough to unite those fractions of the people's movement who want to struggle around a specific demand or social question (especially when the established mass organizations refuse to do so), yet focused enough to enable their eventual consolidation around a coherent revolutionary program. For example, an intermediate organization might be formed by the rank-and-file members of a trade union to demand the right to strike in a workplace or industry where striking is prohibited, but evolve into a rank-and-file caucus united around a broad program of class struggle unionism. Members of a progressive religious organization might launch a campaign to adopt a position in support of the liberation of Palestine, and from this could develop a new mass organization united around liberation theology and serving the people.
3.6.10: In addition to facilitating the political transformation of mass organizations, intermediate organizations can also facilitate the development of cooperation, communication, and coordination among the various revolutionary party organizations within the people's movement. By fostering a non-sectarian organizational culture grounded in fidelity to a concrete program of struggle and democratic processes, intermediate organizations can provide spaces for the members of revolutionary parties—who might otherwise approach one another as competitors or even enemies—to view the people's movement as a complex organizational ecology and recognize the strategic imperative of building inter-organizational unity and solidarity. In this way, intermediate organizations can set the stage for the eventual formation of a union of revolutionary parties, or their fusion as a unified party organization.
3.6.11: Broadly conceived, the aim of communists in building intermediate organizations should be the consolidation of a revolutionary tendency within the mass organizations of the people's movement. This is achieved by circulating the intermediate organization's analysis and program among the mass organization's membership or among the masses participating in a specific sector of struggle, by making demands upon the official leadership of the mass organization and democratizing its internal processes and culture, by facilitating political education and debate on a range of questions, and ultimately by winning layers of the mass organization's popular social base to the revolutionary platform and program of scientific socialism. Through such a process, intermediate organizations can be used to successfully transform mass organizations into genuine organs of counterpower with the arrival of a revolutionary crisis. Alternatively, in the absence of an established mass organization within a sector of struggle around which there is significant popular self-activity, an intermediate organization could lay the groundwork for its eventual self-transformation into a new mass organization.
3.6.12: The capture and control of mass organizations by all stripes of opportunists and the structural integration of mass organizations with the capitalist state will remain perennial challenges for the organized communist movement. However, we are today faced with a more general dilemma: the widespread decline of mass organizations and the deterioration of civic life itself. While there has been no lack of self-organization and self-activity among the broad masses of people in recent cycles of struggle (as evidenced by the multiple waves of spontaneous mass rebellions and popular uprisings), our conjuncture is defined by the absence of stable mass organizations embedded throughout the fabric of society. If participation of cadre in mass organizations is the principal means through which a revolutionary party is constructed and through which it establishes an organic connection with the masses, how is this to be achieved in the absence of mass organizations? The most obvious answer is: we must build them anew without delay and, while accounting for objective conditions, do so on a maximally revolutionary basis.
3.6.13: Such an answer, however, is far too simple. Not only is our historical conjuncture defined by patterns of urbanization, proletarianization, and networked connectivity: our age is also defined by a profound restructuring of social life and human behavior itself, leading to a complete recomposition of the terrain of struggle upon which mass organizations have traditionally been constructed. Neoliberalism not only led to the destruction of the old socialist bloc and national liberation movements, the dismantling of social welfare programs and the privatization of the public sector, and a decline in people's membership and participation in mass organizations. The neoliberal project also produced new algorithmic technologies, advancements in artificial intelligence, improvements in the surveillance capabilities of corporations and the capitalist state, the acceleration of the ecological crisis, and the spread of new diseases. Masses of people feel increasingly anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, and hopeless. When combined with capitalist-imperialism's new strategy of using digital technologies to spread disinformation and reactionary ideology among the masses, it is no surprise that confusion, fear, and paranoia often reign supreme.
3.6.14: To break free of this impasse, the construction of a new type of revolutionary party may itself be a necessary precondition for the reconstruction of stable mass organizations, the development of their defensive capacities, and the creation of a revolutionary united front. Only a durable form of political organization can withstand the repression of the capitalist state while supporting and sustaining those revolutionary cadre engaged in the arduous task of organizing popular resistance, building a system of counterpower, and rallying humanity to the banner of freedom. While it remains true that any such party must be forged in the fire of struggle, and under the supervision of the masses, it is equally true that, in our present historical conjuncture, the absence of such a party has stalled the forward movement of the people's struggle and the historical development of the revolutionary process.
3.7: Defense Organizations
3.7.1: The imperialist bourgeoisie and the forces of reaction will never allow the people's movement to peacefully dismantle the imperialist world-system, nor will they stand idly by as organs of counterpower proliferate and coalesce as a countrywide system of counterpower in preparation for the conquest of political power. While the political organization and mobilization of the masses is primary, an organized communist movement must consciously develop the defensive military capacities of the working class and all oppressed social groups in order to resist and defeat the armed counterrevolution; to prepare, sustain, and lead to victory a popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state; and to defend the socialist commune from the inevitable counterrevolutionary siege and civil war.
3.7.2: It is through the formation of people's defense organizations in every workplace and neighborhood that the masses can consolidate and defend past gains while advancing the construction of a system of counterpower, centralizing diffuse sites of struggle into base areas, and ultimately establishing a genuine people's army capable of securing the people's conquest of political power, defeating the armed forces of the counterrevolution, and participating in the construction and defense of the socialist commune during the period of transition to communism. Only a revolutionary uprising of the people—which presupposes the internal fracturing of the repressive state apparatus and the defection of a significant section of the capitalist state's armed forces to the side of the people's movement—can secure the socialist revolution's ultimate victory. As the armed forces of the capitalist state are overwhelmingly proletarian in terms of class composition—and increasingly include women, LGBTQ+ people, and oppressed nationalities—the people's movement cannot overlook this strategic sector of struggle. Communists must take special measures to secure the mass participation of rank-and-file soldiers and veterans in the people's movement. This can be achieved through the recruitment of soldiers and veterans into the people's defense organizations (through which they can share their knowledge and expertise with the masses), through the formation of progressive veteran organizations, and, in the context of a revolutionary situation, the formation of soldiers' councils.
3.7.3: Always and everywhere, the actions and conduct of the people's defense organizations should be directly accountable to the people's movement. To the greatest extent possible, the social composition of these defense organizations should reflect the working class and oppressed social groups from which the people's movement arises, and their activities should rooted in local realities, the everyday life and social struggles of the masses, and the practical tasks confronting the socialist revolution. In addition to protecting the people's movement from the reactionary forces of the counterrevolutionary, they should assume responsibility for leading popular self-defense trainings, mutual aid and disaster relief initiatives, and social reconstruction efforts, as well as participating in social production alongside ordinary workers.
3.7.4: While a specific defense organization may initially emerge as the military arm of a specific revolutionary party or mass organization, the aim should be to unite all of the people's defense organizations under the banner of a revolutionary people's army, accountable to and coordinated by the revolutionary united front. With the eventual establishment of a socialist commune, the central council of the commune should immediately assume direct responsibility for all military affairs.
Interlude 3a: Arming the People
In the midst of World War I and on the eve of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies established a Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) to serve as the operational center for an armed uprising against the reactionary Provisional Government. Under its command, the Petrograd Soviet's MRC had at its disposal the clandestine military organizations of the revolutionary parties, the Red Guard workers' militia, as well as units of the Russian Army who had mutinied against the Provisional Government to join the ranks of the socialist revolution. In response to the Provisional Government's orders that members of the Petrograd garrison be transferred to the front, the Petrograd MRC was created. It soon dispatched its own commissars who, with the popular support of the rank-and-file soldiers and sailors, took command of the city's garrison units. Under the authority of the Petrograd MRC, the Provisional Government was dissolved, and power was officially transferred to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As news of the uprising spread throughout the territory of the former Russian Empire, local MRCs were created to secure the establishment of soviet power on a countrywide basis.
This popular military force was made possible because the military organizations of the revolutionary parties (especially the Military and Combat Organizations of the Bolshevik Party) were able to: (1) provide organizational scaffolding for the popular militias created by workers and peasants, and (2) successfully agitate within the military for soldiers and sailors to refuse orders to fight in the inter-imperialist war and to participate in a revolutionary uprising. The task of winning over members of the armed forces to the revolutionary struggle was achieved through the work of clandestine party cells operating within the units of the army and navy in garrisons and on the front. With regards to the development of the military infrastructure of the people's movement, the Red Guard workers' militias formed in factories across Petrograd—and which would serve as the backbone of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War—received their initial military and technical training from members of the Military and Combat Organizations of the Bolshevik Party. Originally formed in course of the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907 to defend the people's movement from attacks by the ultra-nationalist and proto-fascist Black Hundreds, the Bolshevik Military and Combat Organizations had from the outset aimed to achieve their party's long-term goal of arming the people and building a revolutionary army capable of securing a victory for the people's organs of counterpower in the context of an armed uprising and civil war.23
3.8: Revolutionary Party Organizations
3.8.1: The people's movement is best conceptualized as a complex organizational ecology, in which each component part—mass organization, defense organization, party organization, and the united front organization—is both necessary and complementary. However, historical experience shows that the presence of a revolutionary party is especially necessary if the people's movement is develop a revolutionary character, if it is to wage a revolutionary struggle for political power, and if it is to unleash a revolutionary process to build a new society. More concretely, a specifically communist party is indispensable if this movement is to pursue the socialist road to communism, for only such a party can achieve the fusion of scientific socialism with the class movement of the proletariat and the liberation movements of the oppressed. In the absence of a revolutionary party organization, the construction of such a party becomes the central task towards which all communists must orient their immediate work.
3.8.2: Some comrades may stop us here and ask, "Why is a communist party necessary at all? Why can't the people's movement achieve communism without a party?" However, the historical consequence of "missing the party" can be observed in the tragic results of the Arab Spring, during which spontaneous mass rebellions were transformed into popular uprisings and even armed struggles in multiple countries, yet these events did not result in the people's conquest of political power and the revolutionary transformation of society, but in the establishment of new reactionary regimes. The one exception—the Rojava Revolution—was the direct result of decades of organizational groundwork, political interventions, and personal sacrifices made by cadres of the Kurdistan Workers Party and allied revolutionary communist parties from Turkey.
3.8.3: As an organization, our aim is to build a fighting communist party capable of leading the construction, defense, and generalization of a system of counterpower; coordinating the revolutionary united front's strategic offensive against the capitalist state; securing the formation of a socialist commune based on federative council democracy; and advancing the world socialist revolution by continuing the struggle until the socialist transition to communism has been successfully achieved. A fighting communist party must strive to become a party of the proletariat and all oppressed social groups through the direct participation of its cadre in the everyday struggles of the people. It must work tirelessly to fuse theory with practice, its cadre with the masses, and scientific socialism with the people's movement, thus becoming a party of revolutionary workers, of oppressed nations and nationalities, of immigrants, of LGBTQ+ people, of women, of rank-and-file soldiers and veterans, of youth and students, of the sick and the elderly, in a word: a revolutionary party of the people.
3.8.4: The protracted revolutionary struggle for communism demands the construction of "a revolutionary organization capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in name alone, that is, an organization ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak and use it to build up and consolidate the fighting forces suitable for the decisive struggle."24
A fighting communist party must establish itself as a tribune of the people, "able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects" and "able to generalize all these manifestations to produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation."25 Taking its position on the frontlines of the people's struggle, it must organize campaigns to improve the working and living conditions of the masses and defend their democratic rights while raising their revolutionary consciousness, building their capacities for revolutionary self-organization and self-activity, and mobilizing their direct participation in the revolutionary process.
3.8.5: A fighting communist party is, to use Michael Lebowitz's expression, "a party of a different type."26 It is a party that leads by listening, engaging the masses in dialogue through social investigation and compositional analysis, upholding the mass perspective and applying the mass line in the formulation of its platform and program, and accompanying the exploited and oppressed masses in struggle through the social insertion and mass work of its cadre. We need a party composed of comrades occupying key strategic social positions, embedded in workplaces and neighborhoods, who understand "that, rather than coming to grassroots movements with preconceived plans, the point is to learn from them and to spread that understanding."27 This is not a call for the local to supersede the global, or to reject organization in favor of spontaneity, or for immediate aims to take the place of the communist program; it is, to the contrary, about reestablishing and maintaining the dialectical unity of theory and practice, consciousness and action, the party and the masses. It is a question of "walking on two legs."
3.8.6: A communist party must earn for itself a reputation as a defender of democracy within every mass organization in which its cadre participate, developing the people's capacities to self-manage the revolutionary struggle itself in preparation for the people's participation in the governance and administration of the socialist commune. A communist party must prove itself to be a party of autonomy, never imposing its will upon the masses but earning their trust through dialogue and common participation in struggle. Such a party must serve always and everywhere to develop and expand the people's revolutionary consciousness and capacities for self-determination, as exercised directly through organs of revolutionary people's power—principally in the form of popular democratic councils.
3.8.7: Only as a tribune of the people and defender of popular democracy can a communist party establish an organic link with the masses, and only with this organic link established will a revolutionary people be prepared to challenge the imperialist world-system and capitalist state, sustain a protracted revolutionary struggle against capitalist-imperialism, seize countrywide political power, and lead the socialist transition to communism.
3.8.8: Through the participation of a party's cadre in the people's movement—including the construction of mass organizations, defense organizations, and the revolutionary united front—it proves itself to be an effective leader by guiding local, regional, national, and international struggles for immediate demands to victory. In this way, the party proves in practice that it is the champion of the people's cause, winning concrete material improvements in their living and working conditions, defending and consolidating these gains, and strengthening the autonomous organization of the masses. Only in this way will the masses be won to the platform and program of the organized communist movement and to the world socialist revolution of which it is a historical expression.
3.8.9: We are against the substitution of any party organization for the autonomous initiative of the masses. A fighting communist party must develop strong organic links with the people, upholding the mass perspective and using the mass line to formulate its program and facilitate the development of revolutionary consciousness and capacities for self-organization and self-activity among the proletariat and all oppressed social groups, deepening collective self-awareness of the historical tasks of the people's movement for socialism. The party must never see itself as existing above and acting for the masses. Instead, the party must make its home among the people and subject itself to mass supervision and constructive criticism from below.
3.8.10: A revolutionary party engages in social investigation and compositional analysis among the people in order to synthesize a revolutionary program based on the emancipatory content which emerges organically from the social struggles of the masses. It scaffolds mass organizations and defense organizations through which the working class and oppressed social groups advance and defend their collective material interests while simultaneously learning to govern society.
3.8.11: A communist party can serve as the key link connecting disparate sectors of struggle into a revolutionary united front. Through its work in the united front, the party constitutes itself as a leading organ in the popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, and a crucial instrument for the construction and defense of the socialist commune.
3.8.12: Pre-party organizations are transformed into communist parties by gathering, training, and coordinating frontline organizers, or cadre, from among the people; by concentrating the party's forces at key strategic chokepoints and faultlines throughout society; and by successfully building an organizational network that spans the whole country. Embedding themselves within the people's struggle, these cadre must strive to exhibit those traits befitting members of a revolutionary party: ethical conduct, personal responsibility and initiative, collective discipline, and theoretical, ideological, and political coherence. These communist cadre constitute a core of experienced personnel around which the various components of the people's movement—mass organizations, defense organizations, and the united front—can be concentrically constructed.
3.8.13: The party organization serves as a center of collective learning and development through ongoing political education, technical training, and self-critical assessment and summation of experience. The results of party work must be continuously analyzed, evaluated, and verified through dialogue with the masses, accompanying them in their everyday lives, participating in their everyday struggles, and ultimately becoming one with them. A revolutionary party builds the people's movement, which in turn shapes and transforms the revolutionary party.
3.8.14: Prospective members of the party should be required to apply for admission, pay dues in accordance with prevailing financial policies, and participate in both mass political work and party-building work on a regular basis. The work of party members should be conducted through working collectives, such as a party branch in a city or town, or a cluster composed of party members concentrated in a common sector of struggle. Until a dense network of party branches and clusters permeates all sectors of struggle and all major geographic locations of a country, in regular communication with and assisted by the central coordinating bodies of the party, it cannot be said that a party exists.
3.8.15: A fighting communist party must synthesize and internalize lessons learned through past and present experiences of revolutionary struggle, systematizing them in the form of a coherent platform and program which can inform the ongoing work of the party. Internal discussion and debate on all questions should never be stifled, and a plurality of revolutionary perspectives should be welcomed within the parameters established by the organization's general political line. To advance these goals, the organization should be self-managed by the party membership, not a bureaucratic party elite. Technical knowledge and competencies should be well-developed and generalized among the party rank and file in order to enable an effective division of labor and equitable rotation of tasks. The party should strive for the active participation of all members in the administration of the party organization, and uphold the most rigorous democratic processes for internal decision-making and organizational planning. At the same time, members should be bound by a disciplined commitment to implementing and defending the platform, program, and policies of the party.
3.8.16: Starting from the assumption that the masses are the real makers of history, a communist party must root itself in the everyday realities and day-to-day struggles of the exploited and oppressed masses. Using the tools of social investigation and compositional analysis, the party must identify social locations where antagonistic social contradictions are sharpening, and concentrate its organizational activities accordingly. Through the process of social insertion and mass work, the party establishes an organic link with the people's struggle. By concentrating its cadre in strategic social locations (e.g., specific industries, workplaces, neighborhoods, campuses, etc.), the party positions itself to facilitate the political recomposition of the class movement of the proletariat and the liberation movements of oppressed social groups; build and lead mass organizations in struggles for the defense of the common material interests and democratic rights of the masses; construct tactical and strategic united fronts; and ultimately build a system of counterpower capable of sustaining a popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, lead the establishment and defense of the socialist commune, and continue the revolutionary process until the emergence of communism. Through the process of social insertion and mass work, the party achieves a degree of fusion with the people, and successfully merges scientific socialism with the movement of the people.
3.8.17: In order to build and consolidate a mass base for socialist revolution, the communist party should construct a popular education network as a means of equipping the masses with the tools of scientific socialism. In this way, the party can assist the self-emancipation of the working class and all oppressed social groups by developing people's understanding of the historical development of nature and society. Through courses, workshops, forums, and conferences, the party's popular education network can improve the effectiveness of its social insertion and mass work; recruit and train new cadre from among the ranks of the masses; develop revolutionary culture; solicit constructive criticism from the masses; and build theoretical, ideological, and political cohesion and programmatic unity among the mass vanguards of the people's movement. Through various educational organizations, the party can prepare the masses for the protracted revolutionary struggle against capitalist-imperialism, as well as for the exercise of political leadership over the revolutionary process. The party should also develop cadre schools as a means of teaching and training—and constantly expanding—the organized leadership core of the party from among the rank-and-file party membership.
3.8.18: Organized in accordance with the principle of democratic centralism, a communist party should strive to combine strategic centralization with operational and tactical decentralization. The central organs of the party—its political and organizational centers of coordination—should, following extensive discussion and debate among the rank and file, democratically adopt a strategic plan for the organization, corresponding to the general strategic orientation established in the party's platform and program. On the basis of both the general strategic orientation and strategic plan, the regional and local units of the party should further elaborate operational and tactical plans. These units are best positioned to actually assess the conditions in their region, city, neighborhood, workplace, or campus, and thereby formulate the most effective operational and tactical plans.
3.8.19: The ranks of a revolutionary party organization should be sufficiently closed in order to ensure theoretical, ideological, and political coherence, consolidating cadre around a common analysis, vision, strategy, and program. Yet such a party must also remain sufficiently open to continuously recruit new members, cultivate and deepen its organic connections with the masses, and adapt itself to new situations. We should strive to unite all those who can be united under the banner of communism, bringing together all who accept the platform, program, and policies of the party. We should strive to permanently improve the revolutionary work of the party by conducting social investigations and practicing constructive criticism, self-criticism, and summation. Utilizing these methods, the party organization can continually deepen its organic connections with the masses, and improve its practice.
3.8.20: Within a revolutionary party organization, struggle must be waged over the party's theoretical, ideological, and political line, as well as the party's positions and policies on the various questions facing the world socialist revolution and the people's movement within the party's respective country. Thus the proletarian class struggle and the liberation struggles of oppressed social groups must continue within the revolutionary party itself. There are two main aspects to intra-party unity and struggle. On the one hand, we must guard against factionalism, defined as the formation of organized groups which separate themselves from the collective life of the party and undermine party unity by adopting competing platforms, programs, policies, and internal discipline in opposition to the democratic processes of the party organization.
On the other hand, we must also "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." This means space must be created for the formation of tendencies within the party, and comradely debate among tendencies should be encouraged. In contrast to a faction, the aim of a tendency must always to be to establish unity on a new basis through comradely struggle, operating within the parameters established by the party's constitution. When struggling over the party's theory, ideology, and politics, cadre and supporters must ask themselves: Who does this particular line or policy serve? Does it serve the people? Does it serve the world socialist revolution? Does it serve the development of the protracted revolutionary struggle in our country? Does it reflect an accurate scientific analysis of the prevailing objective conditions and correlation of subjective forces?
3.8.21: A communist party must consciously build international connections with fraternal organizations, and ultimately work for the establishment of an international union of revolutionary parties. Such an international union must respect the particularities of the revolutionary struggles waged in different national and regional contexts, as well as the relative autonomy of the communist parties of the world (and in this way correct certain errors made by the Communist International in the previous century). It is the organized communist movement within a particular country that is best positioned to investigate and analyze the prevailing objective conditions and correlation of subjective forces, not a remote bureaucracy. Thus every revolutionary party organization should be encouraged to develop in a maximally self-sufficient manner, cultivating the capacity to respond to new challenges and unique situations, and formulate principled policies and programs accordingly. At the same time, principled debate, constructive criticism, and the comradely exchange of lessons learned through practical experience must be encouraged within the international union of communists.
3.8.22: Not only internationally, but within a specific country, the organized communist movement should develop a political culture that is sufficiently pluralistic and democratic to permit for the formation of multiple communist parties. At any given historical conjuncture, no single organization or tendency is likely to have all the answers to all the questions confronting the protracted revolutionary struggle. Based on an objective assessment of past historical experience, we can assume that—with the development of the revolutionary process—multiple revolutionary party organizations will emerge (and, in fact, already exist in certain national contexts). Instead of trying to prevent the inevitable, each communist party should approach both the organized communist movement as a complex organizational ecology. While at any given conjuncture, a specific party organization may play a leading role within this ecology, its leadership function must be continuously tested and verified in practice, and it cannot be declared or guaranteed in advance.
3.8.23: Line struggles internal to a specific party organization do not always result in successfully maintaining the unity of that party. Therefore, freedom of criticism and association of communists must be defended and encouraged within the organized communist movement in order to ensure that a correct political line does, in fact, win out. For example, in the context of settler-colonial nation-states, it is conceivable that multiple communist party organizations will emerge among members of both the oppressor and oppressed nations. While it is certainly desirable to aim for the construction of a multinational communist party that struggles against and successfully overcomes the chauvinism of the workers of the oppressor nation, wins the working class as a whole to the political program of socialist decolonization, and unites the exploited and oppressed masses across lines of race and nationality, such a process of organizational development cannot be presumed: doing so would violate the principle of the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, and ignore the historical realities of national chauvinism in the settler-colonial context.
3.8.24: When consolidation of communists into a unitary party organization proves impossible at the national level, we propose the formation of a union of revolutionary parties in order to unite the organized communist movement to the greatest degree possible. Instead of sects competing with each other for dominance within the people's movement, each party affiliated with this revolutionary union could function as a complementary part of a more complex whole, maintaining a degree of theoretical, ideological, and political autonomy while still achieving an overall level of programmatic, strategic, operational, and tactical unity. "The existence of defined and precise tendencies and groups is not an evil," José Carlos Mariátegui tells us. "On the contrary, it is the sign of an advanced period of the revolutionary process. What matters is that these groups and tendencies know how to understand themselves when facing the concrete reality of the day."28
3.8.25: Such unions of revolutionary parties are not without historical precedent. In El Salvador, for example, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) successfully united the Popular Liberation Forces, People's Revolutionary Army, National Resistance, Revolutionary Workers' Party of Central America, and Communist Party of El Salvador in a common system of organization to coordinate the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and socialism. Similarly, Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) united the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and the Guatemalan Party of Labor.
3.8.26: If present trends continue, and if our aim is to make revolution, then it is our position that both the objective conditions and subjective correlation of forces will likely require the formation of such unions of revolutionary party organizations. It is therefore crucial that we build today an organized communist movement capable of seeing itself as a complex organizational ecology, respecting the relative autonomy of its affiliate organizations, and distributing leadership functions throughout this network. Without papering over qualitative differences in revolutionary theory and practice, nor foregoing principled struggle over the platform and program of the communist movement, it is our conviction that we must struggle to unite the common efforts of all revolutionary party organizations who support the protracted revolutionary struggle for socialism. If within this union, a non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, scientific, and democratic culture prevails, and a plurality of theoretical, ideological, and political perspectives are permitted to contend through comradely dialogue and debate, then new unities will inevitably emerge from this dialectical process.
3.9: United Front Organizations
3.9.1: Communists must work to unite the various expressions of the people's movement around a common program for socialism and coordinate its implementation. Thus the ultimate culmination of our organizational work is the unification and coordination of the people's mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations as a popular revolutionary bloc capable of eventually establishing a system of territorial counterpower throughout the country, leading a popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, and building a socialist commune in the revolutionary transition to communism. We call this three-in-one alliance of mass organizations, defense organizations, and party organizations the revolutionary united front, and conceive of it as a space of convergence and center of coordination for the people's movement, as well as a rudimentary prefiguration of the socialist commune.
3.9.2: Through the construction of combative but short-term alliances for immediate demands associated with the defense of the common material interests and basic democratic rights of the masses, communists can gradually win the people to a broader revolutionary program. Through their participation in tactical alliances, communist revolutionaries can set the stage for the formation of a strategic alliance in the form of a revolutionary united front that bring together all the various sectors of the people's movement on the basis of a common program for socialism.
3.9.3: The highest expression of the revolutionary united front is to be found with the emergence of councils organized on both an industrial and territorial basis. It is within these councils that the various organized expressions of the people's movement—delegates from mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations—converge and achieve a high level of coordination. It is also through these councils that new masses of people are mobilized and empowered to participate in the revolutionary struggle, with many participating in political life for the first time, and in this way the popular participation of the masses in the revolutionary process is greatly expanded. Once a revolutionary situation materializes, these organs of counterpower begin to exercise governmental and administrative functions, ultimately supplanting the organs of the capitalist state with the establishment of the socialist commune.
3.9.4: We envision sectoral fronts as constituting the organizational foundation and mass base of the revolutionary united front. These sectoral fronts would likely include a workers' front (composed of industrial workers' councils, revolutionary trade unions, committees of struggle, revolutionary opposition groups within the established trade unions, strike committees, and economic cooperatives; this sectoral front could, in turn, be organized into subsectors for various industries, such as manufacturing, construction, healthcare, education, transportation, etc.); neighborhood and community front (composed of communal councils, neighborhood associations, community organizations, tenant unions, eviction defense committees, mutual aid and disaster relief organizations, housing cooperatives, and organizations of slum dwellers); national democratic front (composed of organizations affiliated with the movements for the national liberation of all internal colonies and Indigenous peoples, and in defense of the democratic rights of all oppressed nationalities); feminist front (composed of organizations fighting for gender and sexual equality, women's liberation, LGBTQ+ liberation, reproductive rights, and the revolutionary transformation of domestic labor); student front (composed of revolutionary student organizations formed by secondary, undergraduate, and graduate students); cultural front (composed of revolutionary cultural associations of artists, musicians, intellectuals, and journalists); and prisoners' front (composed of revolutionary organizations formed by people incarcerated in jails, prisons, and detention centers, including political prisoners and prisoners of war, as well as outside support organizations for prisoners and their families).
3.9.5: Each sectoral front could convene a congress to adopt a program of struggle for its corresponding sector. In turn, the united front could convene a congress in which the various sectoral programs would be debated, and a multi-sector program of struggle would be synthesized and adopted for the revolutionary united front as a whole. In terms of internal governance and administration, the revolutionary united front could establish a central council composed of delegates elected from congresses of each of its sectoral fronts and affiliate organizations. In this way, the united front scaffolds and prefigures the federative structure of the socialist commune. The nationwide organizational structure of the united front could be replicated at lower levels, with territorial people's assemblies and councils serving as the main points of convergence and centers of coordination for the revolutionary united front at the local level. In a revolutionary situation, the central council of the united front would be responsible for the rapid implementation of initial revolutionary measures, and issue call for the convocation of a countrywide people's assembly to adopt a new constitution and confirm initial governmental appointments for the socialist commune.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.
For a bourgeois perspective on these trends, see David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Mark R. Beissinger, The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022).
V.I. Lenin, "The Collapse of the Second International" (1915), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/.
V.I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021).
Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023), 56—60. The two main communist parties in the Tunisian Revolution were the Unified Party of Democratic Patriots (Watad) and the Tunisian Communist Workers Party (PCOT).
The Rojava Revolution emerged within the context of the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War as a result of the groundwork laid by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Rojava has rallied to its banner revolutionary and progressive forces internationally, with illegal organizations such as the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Turkey and North Kurdistan (MLKP) playing a prominent role in the defense of Kobanî in 2014, and in the revolutionary process more broadly. However, the future of the Rojava Revolution is uncertain following the overthrow of the Assad regime in 2024 and the call made by Abdullah Öcalan in 2025 for the PKK to disarm, disband, and pursue a peaceful resolution to the national question.
Beissinger, The Revolutionary City, 201.
V.I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 11.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 276.
Frederick Engels, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 123.
See especially Mao Tse-Tung, Six Essays on Military Affairs (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972), and Võ Nguyên Giáp, People's War, People's Army (New York: Bantam Books, 1968). While often juxtaposed to the protracted people's war strategies of Mao and Giáp, Che Guevara also framed his politico-military strategy as a three-stage protracted people's war, in which a guerrilla nucleus establishes liberated zones, and gradually encircles the cities from the countryside. According to Che, "in this region begins the construction of the future state apparatus entrusted to lead the class dictatorship efficiently during the transition period. The longer the struggle becomes, the larger and more complex the administrative problems; and in solving them, cadres will be trained for the difficult task of consolidating power and, at a later stage, economic development." See Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 151.
Mao Zedong, "On Protracted War" (1938), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_09.htm.
This factor has been present throughout much of the world for many years. For example, National Liberation Action (ALN) in Brazil and the Revolutionary Workers' Party and People's Army (PRT-ERP) in Argentina were primarily urban-based movements which each attempted in their own way to use work in urban areas to build a rural revolutionary front (Rio Araguaia in Brazil, and Tucumán in Argentina). In both cases, the rural fronts established were quickly detected and swiftly annihilated by the armed forces of the reactionary state, while the nuclei of the urban politico-military organizations were able to regroup and continue the struggle, at least for a time. See: T. Derbent, Clausewitz and the People's War (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2025).
Communist Party of India (Maoist), Urban Perspective (Utrecht: Foreign Languages Press, 2018); Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), "Changes in Relations of Production in India: Our Political Program" (2021), BannedThought.net, https://bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Books/ChangesInRelationsOfProduction-2021-Eng-View-OCR.pdf.
World Bank, "Urban Development Overview," https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview.
Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, The 2018 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, https://www.un.org/en/desa/2018-revision-world-urbanization-prospects.
Beissinger, The Revolutionary City, 15.
Eric Hobsbawm, "Cities and Insurrection" in Revolutionaries (New York: The New Press, 2001), 261.
AngryWorkers, Class Power on Zero-Hours (London: PM Press, 2020), 349.
Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains, 116—168.
Anton Pannekoek, The Workers' Way to Freedom and Other Council Communist Writings (Oakland: PM Press, 2024), 118.
Scott Harrison, The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement (2023), Massline.info, https://massline.info/mlms/mlms.htm.
Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
V.I. Lenin, "Where to Begin?" (1901), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/may/04.htm.
V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), 99.
Michael A. Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 161.
Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative, 161.
José Carlos Mariátegui, "The United Front," Cosmonaut, November 23, 2019, https://cosmonautmag.com/2019/11/the-united-front-by-jose-carlos-mariategui/.