IV: The Socialist Transition to Communism

“The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.”

— Mao Zedong

4.1: What is Socialism?

4.1.1: We define socialism as the historical process of transforming a non-communist society into a communist society.¹ The socialist transition from capitalist-imperialism to the initial phase of communism will be a protracted revolutionary struggle, encompassing an entire historical epoch. During this period of socialist transition, all aspects of social life must be progressively transformed in accordance with the principles and logic of communism. Thus the foundations of communist society are systematically constructed by ensuring the direct satisfaction of human needs through full social provisioning of basic goods and services, the all-round development of human capacities through the socialist transformation of culture and education, and the people’s democratic control of the labor process and sustainable stewardship of our planetary ecosystem through a federative council system.

4.1.2: Historical materialism teaches us that such a period of socialist transition cannot be mechanically separated from the initial phase of communist society, nor can this initial phase of communism be neatly separated from a more advanced phase. Rather, each successive phase contains aspects of both the old and the new. Thus the socialist transition to communism must be grasped as a dialectical movement, in which there is both continuity and change within and between phases. In the words of István Mészáros and Tamás Krausz, socialism is a historical process in which there many “transitions within the transition” and “revolutions within the revolution.”²

Following Marx, we believe that: (a) the core characteristics of a communist society will emerge in the course of the people’s protracted revolutionary struggle to overthrow the capitalist state, overcome the social relations and institutions of capitalist-imperialism, and build the socialist commune; (b) the initial phase of communist society is, as Marx explained, “economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges,” because contradictions inherited from the old society inevitably persist, new contradictions develop, and the revolutionary struggle continues; and (c) a more advanced phase of communist society must necessarily develop upon foundations established during the initial phase.³

4.1.3: The central task of the communist movement is to organize and lead a world socialist revolution to victory against capitalist-imperialism. However, the precise characteristics of this revolutionary process will vary from place to place, in accordance with the particular conditions encountered in each country and region. The unique histories and cultures of diverse peoples, the average levels of literacy and education in various fields of knowledge, the overall level of development of the means of labor and the social organization of the labor process, the prevailing social structure and composition of the various classes and social groups, the ecological situation, and the correlation of forces prevailing at the national, regional, continental, and international levels will largely determine the precise starting point and immediate trajectory of the socialist revolution within a particular country. Nonetheless, by critically analyzing more than a century of historical experience and socialist experiments, we can identify certain general characteristics that are likely to emerge as the socialist transition to communism progresses.

4.1.4: The primary strategic objective of the organized communist movement in any one particular country is to lead a protracted revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of “their” capitalist state, the abolition of the social relations and institutions of capitalist-imperialism, and the construction of a socialist commune in as large a contiguous territory as possible. This socialist commune will replace the capitalist state with a federative council system democratically governed and administered directly by the armed masses of working people and their associations. The charter and constitution of this socialist commune must immediately and unconditionally enshrine equal rights for all social groups oppressed on the basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, caste, religion, gender, and sexuality. The sovereignty and right of self-determination for all nations oppressed as internal or external colonies must be immediately granted, up to and including the right to establish autonomous self-governing territories in areas of concentration within the broader territory of the socialist commune, or to separate from the commune altogether and establish independent republics. As the socialist revolution launches its strategic offensive against capitalist-imperialism on a world scale, the newly-formed socialist communes will be compelled to establish federative unions regionally and internationally so as to foster cooperative relations until the ultimate victory of world communism is secured.

4.1.5: The history of previous socialist experiments compels us to recognize an important truth: during the socialist transition to communism, characteristics of both communist and non-communist social systems persist. However, this is not a peaceful and harmonious coexistence. Rather, the emergent social relations and institutions of communism must contend for hegemony with, struggle against, and ultimately overcome the social relations and institutions inherited from capitalist-imperialism. The people’s movement must maintain vigilance and consciously struggle to defeat any and all attempts to usurp the people’s power by either the remnants of the old ruling class, or any new class of bureaucrats generated in the course of the revolutionary process itself. Socialism, then, is a transitional form of society, synonymous with the process of communization, through which the contradictions of capitalist-imperialism are progressively resolved, the enemies of the socialist revolution are roundly defeated, and the material basis for the self-reproduction of a communist social system is gradually established.

4.1.6: The socialist revolution is fundamentally a people’s revolution, in that it aspires to achieve the universal self-emancipation of all exploited classes and oppressed social groups, and to overcome humanity’s alienation from both nature and society. In analyzing the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Lenin argued that this was a real people’s revolution, because “the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed.”⁴ Within the people’s movement, the proletariat establishes its class hegemony, and thus constitutes itself as the leading class of a new historical bloc. By virtue of their social position within the labor process, proletarians form the only class with an objective historical interest in total liberation: the working class cannot liberate itself without liberating humanity as a whole from all forms of exploitation, oppression, and alienation. The socialist revolution is therefore a revolution of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority, whose ultimate aim is the liberation of humanity—as well as our planetary ecosystem—from capitalist-imperialism’s system of global domination. It is a social revolution that is at once proletarian, feminist, decolonial, democratic, and ecological, i.e. a real people’s revolution.

4.1.7: During the socialist transition to communism, the proletarian class struggle—and with it feminist, decolonial, democratic, and ecological struggles—will continue, as the social contradictions of capitalist-imperialism will not be spontaneously overcome. Throughout the process of social reconstruction, a system of revolutionary people’s power—which will have emerged from the system of counterpower constructed in the preceding phases of the protracted revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state—will be necessary to prevent capitalist restoration, defend the socialist commune from imperialist and fascist counterrevolution, and lead the process of building new social institutions and revolutionizing the totality of social relations. Based on popular democratic councils, this system of revolutionary people’s power will constitute the political form through which the liberation of humanity is achieved in the course of the period of socialist transformation.

4.1.8: The socialist commune’s system of revolutionary people’s power can best be described as a counterstate or semistate, that is, “a state of the Paris Commune type,” for it is not a state in the traditional sense of the term.⁵ Rather, it is an expression of socialist democracy, understood as the organized political power of the armed masses of working people, wielded in the service of building the foundations of a communist society. As all serious communist revolutionaries have consistently emphasized, the dictatorship of the proletariat is synonymous with proletarian democracy, and proletarian democracy is synonymous with the dictatorship of the proletariat. To put it another way: the masses become the central protagonists of history only by expanding and deepening their direct participation in the democratic governance and administration of society at all levels. We believe that during the period of revolutionary transition, this socialist democracy—the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat—must take the institutional form of a federative council system based on direct democracy with delegations. It should be the task of any communist party worthy the name to participate in the construction and defense of this system of revolutionary people’s power, exercising political leadership democratically by upholding a mass perspective and applying the mass line.

4.1.9: The socialist revolution aims to achieve the progressive resolution of the social contradictions inherited from capitalist-imperialism. However, while socialism can resolve the central contradictions produced by the historical development of capitalist-imperialism’s system of social organization—such as the contradiction between the socialization of the labor process and the private appropriation of the social product—it will inevitably generate new contradictions in the process of transitioning to the initial phase of communist society. We anticipate contradictions to emerge around questions of defense and security, ecology, economic planning and coordination, workers’ control, etc. The organized communist movement and the united front it leads must be prepared to identify and tackle new contradictions generated by the revolutionary process of socialist transition, ultimately relying upon the mobilization of the masses of working people and their autonomous mass organizations to resolve them.

4.2: The People’s Long March to Power

4.2.1: To effect the socialist transition to communism, the people’s movement must first conquer political power. The socialist revolution must “raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class” and “win the battle of democracy.”⁶ However, the capitalist state cannot be transformed into a commune state through a series of reforms; instead, it must be overthrown by a popular revolutionary uprising which smashes the military and bureaucratic machinery of state, replacing it with the direct democracy of the armed people. This is the only road to power, and atop the ashes of the capitalist state the socialist revolution must establish a commune state as the first step in the process of building an international union of socialist communes on the road to world communism.

4.2.2: The internal contradictions of capitalist-imperialism inevitably generate systemic crises which create objective conditions favorable to the socialist revolution. However, in making a revolution, it is the subjective factor which is decisive: the victory of a popular revolutionary uprising hinges upon the successful construction and consolidation of a revolutionary united front of mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations, embedded throughout the fabric of everyday social life, and capable of scaffolding a system of counterpower in cities across the country. Through the people’s organs of counterpower (i.e. popular assemblies, councils, and committees), the organized communist movement must gain the masses unambiguous support for their revolutionary program and obtain their unambiguous consent to lead the united front in overthrowing the capitalist state and seizing countrywide political power.

4.2.3: While openly acknowledging the fundamentally exploitative and oppressive character of the capitalist state, the historical necessity of conquering political power and achieving self-emancipation by means of a popular revolutionary uprising, as well as the likelihood of revolutionary situations emerging from the systemic crises of capitalist-imperialism, communist revolutionaries must never disregard the immediate importance of waging partial struggles for reforms. To the contrary, it is precisely in the course of mass campaigns to win reforms that the revolutionary consciousness of the people is developed, their fighting spirit encouraged, and their capacities for self-organization and self-activity cultivated and honed. However, this transformation of consciousness and capacities does not occur spontaneously from the organic development of reform struggles.

For example, in the absence of an organized communist movement, trade unions will tend towards economism, acclimating to the everyday rhythms of bourgeois society and accepting the unchallenged social domination of the capitalist state. In the course of their participation in the day-to-day class struggle, working people develop “trade union consciousness” organically, “i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc.”⁷ But how can this economic consciousness develop into political consciousness, i.e. the conviction that freedom for the exploited and oppressed masses can only be achieved by overthrowing the imperialist bourgeoisie, smashing the capitalist state, conquering countrywide political power, and building and defending an international union of socialist communes? Such a perspective can only emerge from the purposeful political intervention of revolutionary communists who, organized as a fighting party within the people’s movement, systematically wage a battle of ideas to win the masses to the theoretical, ideological, and political framework of revolutionary Marxism and formulate a socialist program on this basis.

4.2.4: Analyzing the defeat of the proletarian communist movement at the hands of fascism in Italy, Antonio Gramsci realized that, in the context of contemporary capitalist-imperialism and the modern capitalist state (and especially within the imperial core countries), the revolutionary struggle would be protracted in nature, akin to trench warfare and ultimately constituting a form of “total war” (i.e. a war requiring immense commitment and sacrifice on the part of the people, and encompassing all aspects of social life). Gramsci termed this type of struggle a war of position.⁸

4.2.5: For Gramsci, the progressive conquest of political power by the people begins in the trenches of civil society. This conquest is effected through the construction of a “historical bloc” (i.e. the unity of the class struggle of the proletariat with the liberation struggles of the oppressed social groups as a people’s movement; the exercise of proletarian class leadership within this movement and throughout society; and the fusion of the people’s movement with scientific socialism), as well as the forging of a “national-popular collective will” (i.e. a common revolutionary vision uniting the constituent classes and social groups of the people’s movement within a particular country, rooted in the unique historical conditions and cultural practices of that country).

4.2.6: “To be sure,” Gramsci explained, “the line of development is towards internationalism, but the point of departure is ‘national’—and it is from this point of departure that one must begin.”⁹ In other words, the global revolutionary struggle must proceed from local realities, which can only be discerned if communists engage in “accurate reconnaissance,” i.e. utilize the tools of social investigation and compositional analysis to formulate our political program, strategic orientation, and operational plans.¹⁰ The organized communist movement can achieve its aims only by leading grassroots social struggles that address the specific historical the needs, grievances, and interests of all exploited classes and oppressed social groups, forging the class autonomy of the proletariat in alliance with the liberation struggles of the oppressed masses, raising their political consciousness, developing their capacities for self-organization and self-activity, and ultimately cohering a common identity as a revolutionary people united in the protracted revolutionary struggle for communism (i.e. the revolutionary united front), which can in turn exercise political leadership within the social formation as a whole.

4.2.7: To successfully wage a war of position, the organized communist movement must systematically construct a revolutionary counterhegemony to contend with the bourgeois hegemony of capitalist-imperialism in all areas of social life. The people’s movement must exercise political leadership over society; the revolutionary united front must exercise political leadership within the people’s movement; and the organized communist movement must exercise political leadership within the revolutionary united front. This requires the articulation of a new ideology and construction of a new culture on a massive scale prior to the people’s conquest of political power. It is through the construction of a popular revolutionary counterhegemony—achieved, to use Althusser’s phrase, by “conquering combat positions” in the trenches of civil society—that a popular base of support for the socialist revolution can be assembled within a particular country, and the masses of working people can be educated, trained, and steeled in political combat to move history forward and lead the revolutionary process of socialist transformation.¹¹ Today, it is clear that such a war of position must encompass all spheres of social life, from the workplace to cyberspace, culminating in the emergence of a new “common sense” among the masses (i.e. a common sense informed by the theory, ideology, and politics of scientific socialism).

4.2.8: Only by waging a war of position on the cultural-ideological terrain of civil society will the people’s movement for socialism be capable of successfully initiating and sustaining a strategic counteroffensive against the capitalist state and the imperialist world-system. Gramsci termed this insurrectionary pivot a war of movement, akin to a frontal assault in warfare. While it should be obvious that there will be localized “wars of movement” within a historical period broadly defined by “a war of position” (and the two forms of war are, in fact, dialectically linked), it should be clear that in order for communism to win, we have a long march ahead. The modern capitalist state is far more than an instrument for the exercise of naked violence by the bourgeoisie against the exploited and oppressed masses. Rather, the integral state of capitalist-imperialism combines the most brutal coercive violence with the systematic production of the imperialist bourgeoisie’s cultural and ideological hegemony. Millions of people consent to and actively participate in the imperialist world-system. To lay the groundwork for the conquest of political power by the people’s movement, the hegemony of the capitalist state must be systematically eroded and a new revolutionary counterhegemony must be constructed. In the course of this protracted revolutionary struggle, the organized communist movement must build the class hegemony of the proletariat (i.e. its social and political leadership vis-à-vis the middle classes), as well as the theoretical, ideological, and political hegemony of scientific socialism within the people’s movement, ultimately articulating a historical bloc in which the masses come to see themselves as a new people—a revolutionary people—united around a common vision and program of revolutionary social change.

4.2.9: In the context of an urbanized, proletarianized, and networked imperialist world-system, the people’s protracted revolutionary struggle to overthrow the capitalist state, conquer political power, and advance the socialist transition to communism will take place mainly within the urban and periurban environments of modern cities. This means that prior to a countrywide popular revolutionary uprising culminating in the seizure of political power and the consolidation of a socialist commune in as large a territory as possible, any system of counterpower constructed in urban and periurban areas will not typically assume a contiguous territorial form. Out of necessity, within any particular city or town, there will be a prolonged period of gathering the people’s forces, steeling these forces in political combat against capitalist-imperialism and the capitalist state, gradually building a revolutionary counterhegemony and conquering combat positions in strategic sectors of struggle and throughout the fabric of society, and progressively constructing the organizational scaffolding for a system of counterpower based on people’s assemblies, councils, and committees.

4.2.10: This scaffolding will entail the construction of an integrated network of mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations, in combination with those bourgeois social institutions successfully conquered by the people’s movement as sites for the articulation of a counterhegemonic culture and ideology (which could include schools, university departments, factories, hospitals, housing complexes, cultural centers, press and media organizations, and religious institutions in which the worldview of scientific socialism has become the new common sense). It is through this complex organizational ecology that new masses of people will be mobilized and participate in the revolutionary process for the first time, and from which the people’s organs of counterpower will emerge with the maturation of a revolutionary crisis, ultimately achieving countrywide coordination with the formation of the revolutionary united front organization.

4.2.11: Throughout the long war of position, in the period of transition from strategic defensive to strategic equilibrium, from the initial accumulation and consolidation of revolutionary forces to the winning of public opinion and the emergence of dual power, it is probable that a rudimentary system of counterpower will take the form of a diffuse patchwork, limited to specific geographic zones, with key strategic nodes of struggle and hubs of activity connected across the territory by a revolutionary media and communications infrastructure, and coordinated by the political leadership of the united front. While it should be expected that the revolutionary process will accelerate more rapidly in certain geographic locations than others (and indeed, there will always be red strongholds like Vyborg or Yan’an in any successful revolutionary struggle), and it is obvious that the first workers’ council or people’s assembly or defense committee must be formed somewhere and someplace by someone, it is equally true that the mass vanguards of the socialist revolution must avoid isolating themselves from the masses and evade the omnipresent danger of encirclement and destruction by the capitalist state. The advanced political detachments of the people’s movement must be conserved for the decisive battles still to come.

4.2.12: Whenever rudimentary organs of counterpower emerge in an isolated fashion (i.e. a workers’ council in one factory, a people’s assembly in one neighborhood, or a committee of struggle in one industrial belt), it is crucial for the people’s movement to avoid decisive engagements with the forces of the capitalist state in defense of a particular territory absent the development of a popular revolutionary counterhegemony and countrywide revolutionary crisis, for these are the factors necessary to facilitate the development of countrywide system of counterpower. It is crucial that both the objective conditions and subjective factors are favorable to the people’s conquest of political power, and that a system of revolutionary people’s power could be consolidated across a territory sufficiently large to facilitate the founding, construction, defense, and expansion of a socialist commune.

4.2.13: As the initial phase of the protracted revolutionary struggle progresses, the first organs of counterpower to emerge from the people’s movement will be embattled—not only with the official repressive forces of capital and the state, but also the bureaucracies of the trade unions and non-profit industrial complex, as well as the cultural and ideological hegemony of capitalist-imperialism—and in a great many instances they will be forced to operate in a clandestine or semi-clandestine fashion. Only at a later phase of the protracted revolutionary struggle, when the people’s movement has achieved strategic equilibrium with the capitalist state, when a situation of dual power arises, will it become possible for these organs of counterpower to operate openly and thus incorporate on an unprecedented scale new masses of people into the revolutionary process. At such a time, it will then be possible for us to issue the only realistic call to action: “Victory to the people’s revolutionary uprising! For the immediate transfer of all political, military, and economic functions to the popular revolutionary councils! Forward with the socialist transition to communism!”

4.2.14: The repressive capacities of the modern capitalist state are immense, and recent advancements in surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence, and automated weapons systems pose new challenges to revolutionary movements. Yet this point must not be exaggerated: imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers, the “order” of capitalist-imperialism is built on sand, the power of the people is greater than the murderous machinery of the capitalist state, and the workers of the world are not in the least afraid of ruins for we built this world, we can build it again, and we carry a new world in our hearts. From China to Cuba, Vietnam to Palestine, history is littered with heroic episodes proving the power of the people. However, in addition to the people’s heroism we require a scientific analysis of our historical conjuncture and operational terrain in order to correctly select tactics and sequence operations in the protracted revolutionary struggle for communism.

4.2.15: A number of studies indicate that the likelihood of a popular revolutionary uprising’s success is closely correlated to force ratios (i.e. the ratio of the overall size of the state’s repressive forces in relation to the people’s revolutionary forces).¹² While domestic police forces in the United States have grown from ~300,000 in 1968 to more than 800,000 today (a nearly three-fold increase), the U.S. military has, in fact, contracted from 3.5 million personnel in the era of the imperialist wars in Korea and Vietnam to around 1.4 million today, placing the total number of repressive forces at the immediate disposal of U.S. imperialism at a level significantly lower today. It should be obvious that this reduction in force has been accompanied by the further professionalization of military forces, new advancements in military technologies, and the proliferation of private military and security companies. Yet recent historical research reveals that reductions in force size ratios have—even in the contemporary context—created certain strategic advantages for revolutionary forces operating in urban environments. “Although advanced surveillance technology has certainly helped [offset the effects of force reductions],” Anthony King reports, “urban operations still require a substantial and permanent physical presence on the streets to maintain public order, to reassure the civilian population, to gather intelligence, and to restrict insurgent freedom of movement.”¹³

4.2.16: If Anthony King’s assessment is correct, then our historical conjuncture may present certain advantages for a popular revolutionary movement operating in complex urban and periurban environments. Indeed, the massive popular support for and the rapid territorial generalization of the George Floyd Uprising across multiple cities in 2020 reveals that the primary challenges facing popular revolutionary uprisings in imperial core countries are theoretical, ideological, political, and especially organizational. However, if the organized communist movement can succeed in building a counterhegemonic culture and ideology, a popular base of support for a socialist program, and, ultimately, a system of counterpower based on popular democratic councils networked across multiple cities and coordinated by a united front organization, then it is plausible that the capitalist state will be unable to amass the necessary force ratios to pacify a countrywide popular revolutionary uprising in the metropole.

Professionalization of repressive forces and the deployment of advanced technologies can only go so far. In the final analysis, the streets belong to the people:

Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!¹⁴

However, without the patient and systematic construction of a revolutionary counterhegemony and the organizational scaffolding of a system of counterpower, all talk of a popular revolutionary uprising will be pure foolishness. The mass vanguards of the people’s struggle must be won to the cause of socialist revolution, and, in turn, they must secure the support and participation of the masses in their millions. The work of theoretical, ideological, political, and organizational preparation is of decisive importance.

4.2.17: During the first phase of a protracted revolutionary struggle—that is, a phase of strategic defensive in a prolonged war of position—the central task of communists is to accumulate and consolidate revolutionary forces by building the nucleus of a fighting communist party (which in the absence of such a party entails the construction of a pre-party organization), and to conquer combat positions within the trenches of civil society and in the labor process. This is achieved by consciously cultivating organic connections with the exploited and oppressed masses through the social insertion and mass work of revolutionary cadre in the class struggle of the proletariat and the liberation struggles of the oppressed social groups. Only with the accomplishment of these preparatory tasks will it be possible for a new revolutionary counterhegemony to emerge, which is itself a necessary precondition for the subsequent development of a revolutionary counterpower.

4.2.18: Through the social insertion and mass work of revolutionary cadre, a popular base of support for socialist revolution can be gradually developed, and a revolutionary communist tendency can be cohered within the people’s movement. From such strategic social positions, a fighting communist party will be capable of leading the concentric construction of the people’s mass organizations and defense organizations, and facilitate the convergence of these organs of struggle within a revolutionary united front.

The formation of the united front is linked dialectically to the process of cultivating an ideological and cultural counterhegemony (by instilling a new common sense and way of life among the people) and the eventual construction of a system of counterpower (based on popular assemblies, councils, and committees, which serve to centralize the multiple expressions of the people’s struggle for socialism). With the successful accumulation and consolidation of revolutionary forces on a massive scale, the cultivation of an ideological and cultural counterhegemony, the delegitimization of the capitalist state, and the construction of a system of counterpower in the major urban centers and their periurban peripheries, then the hour of the people’s revolutionary uprising and the countrywide conquest of political power will be approaching.

4.2.19: To advance the struggle for communism, we must cultivate revolutionary consciousness among the working class and all oppressed social groups, and facilitate their mass participation in the revolutionary process. Prior to a revolutionary situation, this is primarily achieved through the construction of autonomous mass organizations as instruments of struggle for the immediate improvement of people’s living and working conditions. As the protracted revolutionary struggle progresses and the organized communist movement articulates a counterhegemonic historical bloc, these mass organizations will form the basic organizational units of the people’s movement, as well as essential components of the socialist commune.

4.2.20: Within the people’s movement, communists must nurture a counterhegemonic ideology and culture in order to prepare the masses of people for the constructive tasks of the socialist transition to communism. On the widest possible basis, we must organize political education, the production of revolutionary media, and development of our own communications infrastructure; we must conduct social investigations and compositional analyses that map the terrain of struggle and build political organization; we must identify those social struggles and mass campaigns most capable of generating and sustaining the people’s mass organizations; and facilitate the convergence and unification of all sectors of the people’s struggle under the banner of the revolutionary united front. Armed with such an organizational infrastructure, the cadres of the organized communist movement can hasten the development of dual power situation, where the ideological-cultural hegemony and political power of capitalist-imperialism is directly challenged and ultimately broken by the counterhegemony and counterpower of the socialist revolution. In such a context, communists must work diligently to mobilize the exploited and oppressed masses in their millions to participate in the revolutionary process, and embrace the emerging system of counterpower as the only legitimate political alternative to the capitalist state.

4.2.21: Prior to the development of a situation of dual power, the organized communist movement cannot stand idly by on the sidelines of struggles to win material improvements in the everyday working and living conditions of the masses. To the contrary, communists must be the most active and ardent participants in social struggles to resist displacement and dispossession, to improve the wages of workers, to reappropriate and redistribute the social surplus, to defend and expand the democratic rights of the people, and to mitigate the planetary ecological crisis. Using a diversity of tactics, the people’s movement can win concrete material improvements in the everyday lives of the masses while simultaneously strengthening the people’s mass organizations, heightening the combativity of the masses, and raising antagonistic social contradictions to their boiling points. Struggles to lower rent, raise wages, shorten the working day, build food sovereignty in proletarian communities, repair local ecosystems, defend the rights of oppressed peoples, and win universal access to public housing, transportation, education, and healthcare systems that genuinely serve the people are integral to the protracted revolutionary struggle.

4.2.22: The organized communist movement must be prepared to swim in the sea of spontaneous mass rebellion, providing support wherever possible (be it logistical, tactical, etc.), and offering strategic guidance and political leadership wherever appropriate. By agitating for the formation of popular democratic councils, and by taking positions on the frontlines of the people’s struggle, we can influence the development of the revolutionary consciousness, self-organization, and self-activity of the masses. From the frontlines of struggle, a fighting communist party—no matter how small—can win the trust of the people, unite with mass vanguards around a revolutionary communist platform and program, and emerge from the heat of battle in a stronger position, armed with a larger sense of purpose, possibility, and direction.

4.2.23: Through systematic social insertion and mass work, the organized communist movement sows the seeds of a territorial system of counterpower. This phase of the protracted revolutionary struggle is characterized by the progressive accumulation of revolutionary organization and activity mainly in the country’s urban centers and their periurban peripheries. In territorial terms, we can define a system of counterpower as a geographic zone in which the popular protagonism of the masses—the proletarian class struggle and the liberation struggles of oppressed social groups—has developed an overtly antagonistic (i.e. antisystemic) character, and become a defining feature of everyday life. It is broadly comparable to what Italian communists referred to as an “area of autonomy,” which can be broadly understood as a heterogeneous and complex organizational ecology generated by the people’s struggle and composed of antagonistic political practices and emerging subjectivities. It could also be viewed as a modern reconceptualization of the revolutionary base area and, as previously argued, fits within the contemporary politico-military theory which views urban space in terms of competitive control.

4.2.24: Within a territorial system of counterpower, the revolutionary united front has achieved a critical mass of popular support, generating a dense network of mass organizations protected by the people’s defense organizations, and guided theoretically, ideologically, and politically by the revolutionary parties affiliated with the organized communist movement. Within such a territory, a degree of popular support for the program of the socialist revolution has been achieved such that the area can be used as a popular base of support for the political education and training of revolutionary forces, and some degree of popular democratic governance and administration has emerged based on council democracy. It is a space in which the people’s movement is, for all intents and purposes, hegemonic and capable of exercising a limited degree of political power.

4.2.25: For communists, the central aim in building a system of counterpower is to achieve both the maximum concentration and unity of the people’s revolutionary mass organizations (i.e. trade unions, tenant unions, cultural associations, and eventually political and economic councils, popular courts, etc.), with the aim of imposing a degree of workers’ control of agriculture and industry, and the people’s control of housing, healthcare, education, childcare, eldercare, communication, energy, and transportation, alongside achieving a critical mass of revolutionary cadre concentrated in key strategic sectors of struggle. In many cases these urban and periurban base areas will operate primarily as bastions of popular support for the socialist revolution, rallying the masses to the popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, with rather limited governmental and administrative functions until the arrival of a revolutionary crisis and emergence of dual power. Nonetheless, to the maximum extent possible, the masses of people must be educated, trained, and prepared in advance to assume responsibility for the democratic governance and administration of society upon the destruction of the capitalist state.

4.2.26: Having conquered combat positions throughout civil society, won public opinion, and laid siege to the “earthworks and fortifications” of the integral state of capitalist-imperialism, this phase concludes with the formation of popular democratic councils (i.e. workers’ councils and communal councils) as the main points of convergence for all organizations affiliated with the revolutionary united front, as instruments for awakening and mobilizing new masses of people to participation in political life, and as the primary means for the working class and all oppressed social groups to exercise their hegemony and political power against their class enemies and the forces of reaction. Through these councils, the masses learn to govern and administer society prior to the establishment of the socialist commune.

4.3: The Emergence of Dual Power

4.3.1: A situation of dual power refers to the simultaneous existence of two competing centers of political power centers within a society. On the one hand, stands the established power of the apparatuses of the capitalist state; on the other hand, stand the people’s organs of counterpower. Historically, situations of dual power have emerged in a context of revolutionary crisis, as was the case of the Russian Revolution of 1917, where councils of workers, soldiers, and peasants—the soviets—challenged the political authority of both the Tsar and bourgeois democracy in the wake of the inter-imperialist world war; or in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, where assemblies, committees, collectives, and militias of revolutionary workers and peasants emerged as a formidable challenge to the forces of both clerical fascism and bourgeois republicanism. Across numerous historical contexts, the emergence of dual power has served as a strategic concept for understanding how communists can build the power of the people from below, erode the hegemony of the capitalist state, and lay the groundwork for the establishment of a system of revolutionary people’s power and the eventual victory of the socialist revolution through a popular revolutionary uprising and revolutionary civil war.

4.3.2: With the proliferation of the people’s mass organizations and defense organizations throughout the fabric of society, and equipped with the leadership of an organized communist movement and its party organizations, the revolutionary united front will have the capacity to contend directly with the capitalist state for power during a period of systemic crisis. In such a scenario, the hegemony and institutional viability of capitalist-imperialism will falter, and the elements of a communist alternative begin to coalesce. Not only does the united front organization forge a strategic alliance of all progressive social forces struggling against capitalist-imperialism, but prefigures and scaffolds the socialist commune through an emergent system of revolutionary people’s power based on federated council democracy.

4.3.3: The apex of this struggle is reached when the armed masses of working people, organized in popular democratic councils, assume direct responsibility for the governance and administration of society, emerging as an effective territorial counterpower to capitalist-imperialism’s system of state power in major cities across the country. This division of the social formation into two competing centers of political power—two competing governments—cannot last for long. In the final analysis, either the capitalist state will restore its power, or the revolutionary united front will lead the people’s movement to seize political power and establish a socialist commune in as large a territory as possible, transforming the people’s system of counterpower into a system of revolutionary people’s power as the basis of the commune state. The task of the organized communist movement in this phase of struggle is to sharpen antagonistic social contradictions to accelerate a revolutionary crisis, and prepare to lead a popular revolutionary uprising to victory against the capitalist state.

4.4: A Revolutionary Uprising of the People

4.4.1: Situations of dual power are inherently unstable, resulting either in the establishment of a new power, or the reestablishment of the old power. The role of a fighting communist party in a situation of dual power is to lead the people’s movement to seize and consolidate political power in as large a territory as possible. This will be achieved through the organization of the revolutionary united front, which will coordinate the popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state in multiple cities across the country and form a provisional revolutionary government. Upon the successful destruction of the capitalist state and the people’s conquest of political power, a socialist commune will be established and consolidated in as large a territory as possible.

4.4.2: Within a particular country, the destruction of capitalist state power in tandem with the people’s conquest of political power and the implementation of initial revolutionary measures by the provisional revolutionary government established by the united front are the necessary preconditions for initiating a socialist transition to communism. While the revolutionary masses can gain important education, training, and direct experience in governing and administering society in the course of the protracted revolutionary struggle itself, it is only with the seizure of political power by the united front and establishment of a commune state in as large a territory as possible that the transitional period can be said to begin in earnest.

4.4.3: A popular revolutionary uprising may be preceded by or combined with waves of economic and political strikes, supported by the people’s defense organizations. The uprising itself will be organized and coordinated by a united front, with a fighting communist party at the forefront providing both political leadership and technical expertise. The initial spark igniting a popular revolutionary uprising could be a general strike triggered by deteriorating living conditions for the masses and the subsequent transformation of this economic struggle into a political struggle. The election of a progressive government could solicit a right-wing reaction, which could in turn prompt a revolutionary uprising of the people. Alternatively, spontaneous mass rebellions against police terror, attacks on reproductive freedom, the horrors and depredations of imperialist war, or the capitalist state’s inept response to a natural disaster could set into motion a sequence of mass political struggles culminating in a popular revolutionary uprising. Regardless of the particular catalyst, the objective conditions and subjective factors required for the successful initiation and coordination of a popular revolutionary uprising include the emergence of a situation of dual power in the context of a systemic crisis of capitalist-imperialism and the state, and the existence of a revolutionary united front—rooted among the exploited and oppressed masses, and composed of the people’s mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary parties—capable of leading the uprising to victory.

4.4.4: With the unleashing of a popular revolutionary uprising across multiple cities, the united front must see to it that strategic infrastructure is immediately seized and secured both to enable the effective coordination and generalization of the uprising, as well as to ensure that social reproduction can continue at a basic subsistence level with minimal interruptions until the socialist commune is firmly established and consolidated. The organized communist movement must ensure, without hesitation or delay, that political power is transferred into the hands of the united front and its popular democratic councils.

4.5: Building and Defending the Socialist Commune

4.5.1: Socialism is the historical process of the people’s self-emancipation, through which a non-communist society is progressively transformed into a communist society.¹⁵ Only with the victory of a popular revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, the establishment and consolidation of a socialist commune in as large a territory as possible, and the delinking of this social formation from the imperialist world-system will it be possible for the socialist transition to communism to begin.

4.5.2: During the revolutionary process of socialist transition, the initial premises of a self-reproducing social system based on a free association of social individuals rationally regulating their metabolic interchange with nature shall be progressively established, starting with the formation of the socialist commune. In turn, the foundations will be laid for the eventual emergence of a classless, stateless, decolonized, feminist, democratic, and ecological society. During this phase of socialist transition, the emerging communist social relations and institutions will struggle against and contend for hegemony with the social relations and institutions inherited from capitalist-imperialism, including private property, market allocation, and hierarchical divisions of labor. As the revolutionary process unfolds, the organized communist movement must play a leading role in the struggle to win the masses to the socialist road that leads to communism against those tendencies pulling towards roads that objectively lead to the restoration of capitalist-imperialism or the emergence of a new form of hierarchical class society.

4.5.3: There is not one model for socialist transformation. The peoples of different countries must find their own path to socialism in accordance with circumstances encountered, finding appropriate forms of international cooperation and coordination in the process. In accordance with historical trends, the masses of people will continue to chart their own path to communism using the resources available to them and drawing upon their own experiences. Nonetheless, we can identify certain general characteristics of socialist transition, basing ourselves upon a critical analysis of accumulated historical experience. With this aim in mind, we should carefully study both the successes and failures of the socialist and national democratic revolutions in Mexico, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Burkina Faso, Namibia, South Africa, Venezuela, Nepal, India, Rojava, the Philippines, and so on.

4.5.4: In order to initiate a socialist transition to communism following the destruction of the capitalist state, the revolutionary united front must secure the immediate founding of a socialist commune and the establishment and consolidation of a system of revolutionary people’s power in as large a territory as possible. This system of people’s power must base itself on the growth, development, and consolidation of the system of counterpower constructed in the preceding phases of revolutionary struggle, whose principal organizational expression is to be found in the revolutionary united front’s federation of popular democratic councils formed on the basis of territory (i.e. neighborhood, ward, district, and city, town, or county) and industry (i.e. department, workplace, and industrial sector). Within such a system, the composition of council delegates could be based on the united front’s triple combination of mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations, with a majority of seats held by delegates from the people’s mass organizations to ensure popular democratic control of the commune state.¹⁶

4.5.5: This system of revolutionary people’s power must take immediate and direct responsibility for the general governance and administration of the commune during the period of socialist transition. Upon the successful establishment of a socialist commune, there will be many urgent tasks confronting the masses of working people: expropriation and collectivization of agriculture and industry; the transformation of private property into social property; construction of a system of democratic economic planning and coordination in order to meet people’s basic subsistence needs while simultaneously developing society’s productive capacities; sweeping reductions of carbon emissions; protection and restoration of our planetary ecosystem’s biodiversity; coordination of the commune’s defenses in the face of the inevitable counterrevolutionary onslaught; and establishment of the commune as a beacon of hope, a model to be emulated, and a base area of the world socialist revolution.

4.5.6: Within social formations where antagonistic contradictions persist between exploiter and exploited classes, as well as between oppressor and oppressed social groups (colonizer and colonized, men and women, etc.), the dominant classes and social groups will consciously organize to defend their material interests and leading social positions by means of a system of state power. Given the inevitable persistence of such contradictions under socialism, the commune’s system of revolutionary people’s power could best be described as a counterstate, semistate, or commune state, for while it advances the collective interests of the working class and all oppressed social groups—and it maintains a monopoly on legitimate armed force through the people’s defense organizations—it is not a state in the traditional sense of the term. Rather, the socialist commune deploys political power for the purpose of overcoming the social relations and institutions of capitalist-imperialism while simultaneously aiding the growth and development of a communist social system. Whereas traditional forms of state power and their corresponding state apparatuses serve to maintain, defend, and reproduce private property and the privileged rule of a minority class of exploiters and oppressors, a revolutionary counterstate or semistate is based on a system of revolutionary people’s power—a federative council system governed and administered directly by the masses of working people—which serves as a shield for the defense and stabilization of the commune, a rampart with which to break the stubborn resistance of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their comprador lackeys, as well as a catalyst and guide in the process of social reconstruction during the socialist transition to communism.

4.5.7: In addition to an organizational structure based on realizing the principle of direct democracy with delegations through the federative council system, what distinguishes the revolutionary counterstate from the bourgeois state are the political programs, policies, and campaigns pursued by the government of the commune in order to establish the initial premises for the emergence and stabilization of a self-reproducing communal social system. The socialist commune does not aim to create another alienated and parasitic state power. Instead, the commune arises from the reabsorption of state power as an organic force by society itself during the process of socialist transition. Thus the commune’s character as a counterstate dissolves once the exercise of political power over and against the former exploiters and oppressors is no longer necessary, because classes have ceased to exist and a more advanced form of communist society has been attained on a world scale.

4.5.8: The central question of every social revolution is the question of political power: Which classes and social groups hold political power? How is political power maintained by these classes and social groups? How is political power exercised, and in order to achieve what objectives? These are important questions with which the people’s movement must grapple during the period of socialist transition. It is the task of the organized communist movement to ensure that political power rests firmly in the hands of the working class and all oppressed social groups, and that it is exercised through a federative council system to the exclusion of all reactionary classes and social groups.

4.5.9: Historical experience proves conclusively that the ruling class will never surrender their wealth and power voluntarily or peacefully, nor will the social relations and institutions inherited from capitalist-imperialism be overcome easily or spontaneously. Civil war, sabotage, blockades, and the ideological allure of the imperial mode of living—alongside the imperative to mitigate the effects of climate change (flooding, drought, etc.), control epidemics and pandemics, eliminate mass illiteracy, implement agrarian reform, ensure reparations, autonomous social development, and the right of national self-determination for all oppressed nations and nationalities, and restore and protect biodiversity—are all challenges that require swift, decisive action on the part of the revolutionary government of the commune. The socialist transition to communism will thus be a protracted process, during which the initial gains of the socialist revolution must be consolidated and progressively expanded, the masses of working people are empowered to assume increasing responsibility for the governance and administration of society at all levels and in all aspects, and the counter-revolution is roundly defeated and disarmed. The commune state is thus an expression of organized political power established on the basis of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. It is not a state in the traditional sense of the term, for it is synonymous with the organized power of the people engaged in the process of progressively laying the initial foundations of communist society, expressed institutionally in the form of a socialist commune governed and administered by federated councils.

4.5.10: Among the first steps to be taken by the government of the socialist commune will be the expropriation and collectivization of the means of social production and reproduction; the abolition of the police and army of the capitalist state and the establishment of a people’s army and militia under the direct control of the council system; the abolition of the bourgeois judicial system and the establishment of people’s courts and tribunals; the immediate redistribution of land and resources to oppressed nations, and the legal codification of the right of all oppressed nations to autonomy and self-determination—up to and including the right to secession—in the communal constitution.

4.5.11: To the greatest extent possible, communist social relations and institutions should be immediately established. However, for the first socialist communes to be created in the twenty-first century, an arduous path awaits. In this context, a mixed economy will likely prove to be inevitable—and indeed, a vital necessity—during the first stages of the socialist transition to communism. For example, in order to secure a stable food supply, cities will need to establish cooperative relationships with rural farmers. To the extent that social relations and institutions such as markets are deemed provisionally necessary, they must be completely subordinated to the organs of the commune’s federative council system, and all economic units operating within the context of a market allocation mechanism must be progressively collectivized and integrated into a democratically planned economy based on social property by utilizing both material incentives devised by the economic units themselves and, more importantly, socialist emulation and mass mobilization. Similarly, to the extent that centralized systems of economic planning are deemed provisionally necessary, the aim must be to decentralize primary responsibility for the administration and coordination of the planning process to the popular democratic initiative of the local economic councils and their federations.

4.5.12: The tasks of the socialist transitional period call for the mass mobilization of all revolutionary workers and oppressed peoples to exercise ideological and political hegemony within the commune. This will be achieved through the process of social reconstruction by transforming organs of counterpower into a communal system of revolutionary people’s power, seizing and collectivizing the means of social production and reproduction, integrating non-proletarian classes into socially-useful productive activity, defeating the counter-revolution, and laying the material foundations for the emergence of a world commune of communes. Only the victory of the world revolution and the successful construction of a world commune of communes will secure the complete abolition or withering away of the state as a social relation, as humanity enters the initial phase of communist society.

4.5.13: In order to prevent the bureaucratization and corruption of the political apparatuses through which revolutionary people’s power is exercised during the socialist transition, and in order to advance the global revolutionary process towards the world commune of communes, a continuous revolution must be unleashed from below. The masses of working people must mobilize to seize power in all areas of social life in order to construct the social relations and institutions of communism, ultimately advancing society towards a condition in which the full and free development of each is the condition for the full and free development of all. This continuous revolution should touch upon all aspects of social activity: politics and economics, arts and culture, kinship and ecology, science and technology.

4.5.14: However, if the means employed for resolving contradictions inherited from the old society during the period of socialist transition destroy the very core characteristics of communism we aim to develop by either reinforcing the social relations and institutions inherited from capitalist-imperialism, or leading to the creation of new exploitative and oppressive social relations and institutions, it will be unnecessary to speak of a transitional phase from the socialist present to a future communism, because the germ of communism will cease to exist and we will transition to an entirely different (or all-too-familiar!) social system. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: what concrete organizational form might a communal system of revolutionary people’s power take?

4.5.15: With the overthrow of the capitalist state, the people’s movement should proclaim the establishment of a socialist commune, form a provisional revolutionary government, and call for the convocation of a Communal People’s Assembly to ratify a new constitution, elect a Central Council as the main governing body of the socialist commune between sessions of the People’s Assembly, as well as adopt and implement a program of transitional measures. We envision the central council of the commune will consist of democratically-elected and immediately recallable delegates, chosen from the ranks of territorial federations of people’s communal councils, the industrial federations of workers’ councils, and the various mass organizations, defense organizations, and party organizations affiliated with the revolutionary united front. Under no circumstances should the overthrown bourgeoisie and their counterrevolutionary allies be permitted to elect, run for, or serve as delegates to any level of the communal government. These exclusionary measures remain necessary so long as the former ruling class of exploiters and oppressors continues to exist as a defined social entity with a material basis for a future return to power (and thus posing an active threat to the commune’s stability and survival).

4.5.16: Upon its victory against the capitalist state, the people’s movement will be tasked with leading the immediate formation and consolidation of the socialist commune, facilitating the process of drafting and ratifying a social charter and constitution for the commune, arming the masses and coordinating the commune’s military defenses, maintaining social cohesion and public order, conducting a revolutionary foreign policy, and taking measures to implement a program for socialist transition. This program will include but is not limited to the stabilization of the commune’s polity and economy, expropriation and collectivization of the means of social production and reproduction (especially the banks, large corporations, and key strategic industries), establishment of a commune-wide system of democratic economic planning, continued expansion of social provisioning of essential goods and services for the general population, and the revolutionary transformation of education, culture, carework, science, and technology. The commune must establish itself as a real working collective assigned both legislative and executive functions and duties. As new councils are formed and integrated into their corresponding federations, and as new municipal and regional communal administrations are established, additional delegates will be elected to the Communal People’s Assembly and its Central Council, thereby ensuring that grassroots direct democracy is continually deepened as the socialist commune grows and develops.

4.5.17: In addition to the convocation of a Communal People’s Assembly and election of its Central Council, people’s assemblies and central councils should be convened at the regional and municipal levels in order to implement the policies, projects, and programs of the socialist commune in their respective operational areas, assisting the construction and federation of municipal and regional communes as key administrative units of the commune. The structures of these regional and municipal people’s assemblies and councils should mirror those of the central government of the commune, being composed of elected and recallable delegates chosen from the ranks of the popular revolutionary councils, mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary parties affiliated with the united front.

4.5.18: In order to play a constructive role in the transition to a communist social system, the class standpoint and program of the socialist commune—which we shall again emphasize is synonymous with a system of federative council democracy—must be proletarian. The commune is guided by the necessity to abolish the exploitation of labor by capital, expropriate the capitalist class, collectivize the means of social production and reproduction, overcome the division between manual and intellectual labor, and establish an economic system based on workers’ control and democratic planning. Beyond its proletarian class standpoint and program, the commune’s policies must be informed by the liberation struggles of all oppressed social groups residing within the territory—particularly oppressed nations and nationalities, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, elders, and youth—who, united with and within the class struggle of the proletariat, constitute a revolutionary people. The commune’s program of social reconstruction during the period of socialist transition must be informed by an integral communist vision and strategy as well as a scientific analysis of the concrete material situation faced within the territory and globally.

4.5.19: A communist social system will not immediately produce all its premises. Rather, the socialist commune inherits the premises of the old social system. The socialist transition to communism is therefore a process of transcending the historical premises inherited from capitalist-imperialism. The commune becomes an organic and self-reproducing social system only by consciously subordinating all elements of society to communism’s programmatic imperatives, including the direct satisfaction of human needs, the integral development of human capacities, the radical expansion of people’s democratic participation in social administration and coordination, and the sustainable stewardship of our planetary ecosystem. This forms the criteria for assessing the progress or regress of the socialist commune in the direction of communism.

4.5.20: As the tasks of the transitional period are completed, the communist program is implemented, and the social relations and institutions of the commune’s political economy are stabilized on a self-reproducing basis, the path will be cleared for the eventual supersession of the commune’s function as a counterstate or semistate. In this context, the defensive political and military functions of the commune will recede, its educational and cultural features will greatly expand, and alongside exploitative and oppressive social relations and institutions, state power as such will cease to exist. In the words of Engels, the “government of persons” would give way to “the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.”¹⁷ Thus begins the initial phase of communist society.

4.5.21: In accordance with our strategic framework, revolutionary parties should be conceptualized as component parts of a revolutionary united front and, with the establishment of a socialist commune, as component parts of a revolutionary counterstate, with equal rights and equal responsibilities. Within the historical bloc of social forces assembled by the revolutionary united front, a communist party’s leadership role must be earned, tested, and constantly verified by the democracy of the masses via the federated council system.

4.5.22: While the polity of the socialist commune will be characterized by federative multiparty council democracy, all counter-revolutionary parties fighting to advance the interests of the former ruling class, advocating the restoration of capitalist-imperialism, or representing any expression of fascism would be banned. However, the freedom of dissent, media, association, and mobilization for the masses of workers and all oppressed social groups must be encouraged, not restricted. “Freedom,” Rosa Luxemburg declared, “is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”¹⁸

4.6: Continuous Revolution and the Socialist Transition to Communism

4.6.1: How do we advance from the seizure of political power by the revolutionary united front to the initial construction of a socialist commune? How do we proceed from the initial construction of the commune to the ultimate victory of the world socialist revolution and subsequent transition to communism? How can we prevent the usurpation of the people’s power by a new ruling class? How can we ensure that the revolutionary process is not subverted by the development of authoritarianism and bureaucracy? How can we ensure that the social relations and institutions of capitalist-imperialism are not restored?

Certainly, the revolutionary transition to communism will be characterized by numerous contradictions, including both the persistence of old contradictions inherited from capitalist-imperialism, as well as the emergence of new contradictions generated during the process of communist social reconstruction. Climate change, resource scarcity, counter-revolutionary sabotage, decolonization, the feminist transformation of social reproduction, the continuation of proletarian class struggle, and the necessity to raise new generations of revolutionary successors are all factors which will produce complex challenges for the revolutionary people’s movement. Such challenges can only be overcome by relying upon and mobilizing the masses of people to continue to seize power in all areas of social life, and to deepen people’s direct participation in the governance and administration of the commune.

4.6.2: With the smashing of the old state, the seizure of power by the revolutionary united front, and the establishment of a socialist commune, the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution will continue. Social relations and institutions inherited from capitalist-imperialism will continue to exist throughout the phase of socialist transition, especially prior to the consolidation of a self-reproducing communal social system. During the socialist transition to communism, the struggle to overcome old ways of thinking and living will continue—indeed, they will intensify—and so long as capitalist-imperialism exists as both a hegemonic global force and articulated social system, it will continue to pose an ongoing existential threat to the emerging realm of freedom unleashed by the socialist revolution.

4.6.3: To resolve these contradictions, the working class and all oppressed social groups must unleash a continuous revolution, both within the territory of the socialist commune, and on a world scale through the counter-encirclement of capitalist-imperialism. In the period of socialist transition, continuing the revolution ensures that the socialist commune maintains its autonomous, self-governing character through anti-authoritarian and anti-bureaucratic mass mobilizations. Furthermore, by waging a battle of ideas, the organized communist movement can ensure that a revolutionary orientation and line of march are maintained by the people’s movement, and that mistakes are openly acknowledged and effectively rectified. A continuous revolution will progressively resolve important social contradictions and expand the ethical, cultural, and educational foundations of communist society. As new socialist communes are constructed, stabilized, and federated on a world scale, the defensive political and military functions of the commune state will be made increasingly superfluous and gradually dissolve as mass political movements carry the revolution forward in all spheres of social life until the complete and ultimate victory of the world commune of communes is achieved.

4.6.4: The grassroots organs of revolutionary people’s power which constitute the institutional foundation of the socialist commune (i.e. popular democratic assemblies, councils, and committees) must exercise hegemony and control over the apparatuses of the counterstate. While the socialist commune must take decisive action to contain and suppress the counter-revolution (which entails the formation, mobilization, and deployment of a popular revolutionary army), as well as initiate emergency measures to secure and protect both the sustainability of life on this planet and the general welfare of the masses (e.g., secure sustainable food and energy systems to maintain other essential economic sectors), the people’s movement for socialism must not allow the consolidation of power by a new ruling class of exploiters and oppressors based on a political or economic bureaucracy. History has shown that it is necessary for the masses to engage in continuous struggle in order to prevent or reverse this outcome.

4.7: From the Initial Phase of Communism to the World Commune

4.7.1: Humanity “inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve,” Marx tells us, “since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.”¹⁹ By accelerating the global integration and socialization of the labor process, and by constantly revolutionizing the means of labor, the historical development of capitalist-imperialism has furnished the material preconditions for the construction of a communist society. As the first socialist revolutions of this new cycle of struggle successfully build the institutional foundations and initial premises for a new mode of social organization, the historical stage will be set for completing the transition to the initial phase of communist society. As Marx explained, this initial phase refers to “a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”²⁰ As we have emphasized, this demands a continuation of the revolutionary process: there will be many revolutions within the revolution, many transitions within the transition, before a self-reproducing communist society is brought into existence. A luta continua.

4.7.2: Given the historical development of capitalist-imperialism as an integrated world-system, it is plausible that, during this phase of the protracted revolutionary struggle, the epicenter of the world socialist revolution may rapidly shift from a handful of isolated socialist communes, to regional unions of socialist communes encompassing multiple countries, most likely in the weak links of the imperialist chain (i.e. the countries of the Global South). These regional unions could provide a sufficient material basis for the initial construction of a communist social system, and serve as global base areas from which the final offensive against capitalist-imperialism could be launched and sustained. For example, we can envision the establishment of regional communes in the Middle East, South Asia, Central America, Southern Africa, or the Southern Cone of Latin America preceding the eruption of continental and global revolutionary processes, ultimately culminating in the establishment of an international union of socialist communes.

4.7.3: The strategic implications of such regional revolutions for the global revolutionary process should not be underestimated. For example, a regional socialist revolution in the Middle East would effectively delink the imperial core from its primary natural gas and oil supply, and with the liberation of Palestine from Israeli settler-colonialism (an event whose world-historical significance cannot be overstated), this would deprive U.S. imperialism of its regional garrison. A regional revolution in the Southern Cone of Latin America would cut off the imperial core from the extraction of important raw materials such as copper and lithium (a central input for batteries), as well as an immense agricultural production base. A regional revolution in Southern Africa would deprive imperialist capital access to markets for gold, platinum, chrome, diamonds, uranium, oil, natural gas, and agricultural products, and with the eruption of a continental revolution in Africa, this would place a majority of the world’s arable land at the disposal of an African union of socialist communes. And we must remember that the partitioning of the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America into separate nation-states, as well as their internal division on the basis of warring ethnic and ethno-religious communities, was itself a project initiated by the colonizing nation-states of the imperial core who, in their relentless pursuit of profit, sought to prevent the autonomous social development of the peoples and nations of the global peripheries. The delinking of whole regions from the capitalist world-economy and their unification as members of an emerging international union of socialist communes would have effects reverberating throughout the whole world-system, prefiguring the world commune of communes and hastening capitalist-imperialism’s ultimate destruction.

4.7.4: What is to be accomplished within a regional union of socialist communes? Private property will be transformed into social property through collectivization, and economic life will be planned rationally and democratically in order to satisfy human needs, develop individual capacities, and sustain our planetary ecosystem. This economic integration of multiple countries will enable the production of a social surplus at a level sufficient to enable the transition to a classless society in which individual workers are, once the costs of communal administration, social reproduction, and the satisfaction of common needs have been accounted for, remunerated in accordance with their contribution to the labor process (i.e. duration, intensity, effort, and sacrifice).

During this initial phase of communism, labor time will operate as the primary means of economic calculation within a system of rational and democratic planning coordinated by federated councils of workers and consumers. As Marx explained, “the individual producer receives back from society, after the deductions have been made, exactly what he gives to it.”²¹ What the worker has given is an individual quantum of labor, and in return they receive “a certificate from society” (i.e. labor credits), which, after the necessary deductions for the common fund have been made, permits them to obtain individual means of consumption equivalent to the amount of labor time contributed.

4.7.5: As regional unions of socialist communes are established and federated across multiple continents, the defensive functions of the commune state within these liberated territories will become increasingly superfluous, as the political organs of society—under the direct democracy of the people—assume greater administrative, cultural, educational, and ethical functions, and an entirely new economic system begins to take root. “Freedom,” Marx tells us, “consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it.”²²

Once this is accomplished—that is, once the reactionary dictatorship of capital has been overthrown by the revolutionary dictatorship of labor organized as an international union of socialist communes, rapidly advancing towards the seamless integration of political, economic, and cultural life—it will be possible to complete the transition to a society without exploitation or oppression, in which the alienation of humanity from both nature and the labor process has been overcome. Only then will it be possible to speak of the emergence of communism as a stateless society. “The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers,” Engels asserted, “will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities.”²³

4.7.6: The victory of the world socialist revolution will culminate in the establishment of a unified social system, based on an international union of socialist communes. In place of the boundless accumulation of capital, the social organization of the labor process under this world commune of communes will secure the direct satisfaction of human needs, the integral development of social individuals, and the reproduction of the material conditions of both social and natural life through the sustainable stewardship of our planetary ecosystem. Overcoming the separation of production from reproduction, intellectual labor from manual labor, the individual from society, and humanity from nature, the world socialist revolution will usher in a new era of world history. Beyond the ravages of war and poverty, artificial scarcity and ecological ruin, the commune will herald the victory of humanity’s struggle for freedom. “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,” Marx and Engels proclaimed, “we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”²⁴

4.7.7: The transition to a higher phase of communist society presupposes the construction of a federative union of socialist communes on a regional, continental, and eventually world scale, progressively integrating their economic, political, and cultural life in order to establish a world commune of communes. Such a process of global integration is: (a) economically necessary, in order to combine industry with agriculture and facilitate the production of a social surplus sufficient to abolish poverty and overcome class society; (b) politically necessary, in order to maintain a united front in the global revolutionary struggle against capitalist-imperialism while simultaneously enlisting the participation of new masses of people in the governance and administration of communal social life at all levels and in all spheres of activity; and (c) culturally necessary, in order to engender a new revolutionary consciousness, cultivate a new ethics and morality, and forge a new communist humanity in the course of the struggle to resolve those contradictions inherited from the old society, as well as those generated by the process of socialist transformation itself. As Marx explained:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime desire and necessity; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly, only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be completely transcended and society inscribe upon its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!²⁵

4.7.8: “The wealth of bourgeois society,” Marx asserted, “presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities.”²⁶ Against the objective possibilities posed by the historical development of the labor process and numerous advancements in the fields of science and technology, the accumulation of private riches in the hands of the privileged few has led to the artificial production of scarcity, the destruction of public wealth through the enclosure and privatization of the commons and subsequent devastation of our planetary ecosystem, and the degradation of public life through the commodification of knowledge, skills, and culture. Analyzing the historical development of hierarchical class societies, Engels observed that bourgeois civilization had only achieved the transformation of the labor process “by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society but of the single scurvy individual—here was its one and final aim.”²⁷

4.7.9: While the science of ecology and the development of ecological Marxism should make it rather obvious that no mode of social organization can achieve absolute “post-scarcity” (in the sense of facilitating the infinite development and expansion of material production, disregarding the biophysical limits of our environment and limited availability of various resources), communism does aim to overcome the artificial scarcity imposed by capitalist-imperialism. It aims for the establishment of a social system premised upon an immense abundance of wealth, albeit wealth of a particular kind, i.e. communal wealth.

4.7.10: Kohei Saito envisions the socialist transition to communism as “the rehabilitation of communal wealth in a higher form without going back to the isolated small-scale production of precapitalist communes.”²⁸ Rather, taking the socialization and global integration of the labor process achieved by capitalist-imperialism as its point of departure, and by appropriating and repurposing science and technology, the world socialist revolution will both expand the realm of freedom and establish a sustainable social metabolism with nature. It will do so by transforming private property into social property, and by replacing competitive market allocation with rational and democratic planning of the labor process, in order to ensure the satisfaction of basic needs, as well as “to hinder infinite economic growth and to decrease output in those branches that drive extravagant consumption.”²⁹

4.7.11: In contrast to the bourgeois civilization of capitalist-imperialism, the abundance of communal wealth under communism will serve the all-round development of social individuals through the expansive provisioning of public goods and services—from healthcare and education to arts and culture—in concert with the maximum reduction of the working day to ensure sufficient free time for creative self-realization. The accumulation of private wealth by atomized individuals locked in ceaseless competition with one another will be superseded by an abundance of communality and a free association of social individuals who, with the means of labor held in common, democratically govern their metabolism with nature in a rational way.³⁰ Humanity will then be rich—not only materially, but also intellectually and spiritually—as all barriers to our full and free development are removed, and the cooperative commonwealth is realized on a world scale.

4.7.12: In this higher phase of communist society, an abundance of free time will replace the acquisition of commodities as the social measure of real wealth. This is a necessary condition for the integral development of social individuals through cultural enlightenment, the acquisition of new skills, and the production of new knowledge. Instead of mere survival, the all-sided development of the individual will be the central organizing principle for social institutions. While certain arduous activities will never be fully eliminated from the labor process, labor in general will become a means of creative self-expression, fully integrated with the autonomous social development and self-reproduction of social individuals.

Return to table of contents.

1 In developing this conception of socialism, we are indebted to the work of Pao-yu Ching and Deng-yuan Hsu. See: Deng-yuan Hsu and Pao-yu Chin, Rethinking Socialism: What is Socialist Transition? (Utrecht: Foreign Languages Press, 2017); Pao-yu Ching, Revolution and Counterrevolution: China’s Continuing Class Struggle Since Liberation (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021).

2 István Mészáros, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 490; Tamás Krausz, Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015), 367.

3 Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (Oakland: PM Press, 2023), 57.

4 V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (London: Verso, 2024), 47.

5 V.I. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)” (1917), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch07.htm.

6 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.

7 V.I. Lenin, What is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 32–33.

8 Antonio Gramsci, “State and Civil Society” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 206–276. For an excellent summary of the Gramsci’s approach to revolutionary communist strategy, see Harmony Goldberg, Hegemony, War of Position, Historic Bloc: A Brief Introduction to Gramsci’s Strategic Framework (2017). In many respects, Gramsci’s concept of the war of position can be viewed as complementary to the phase of strategic defensive in Mao’s politico-military framework, whereby the revolutionary movement gradually accumulates and consolidates its forces in a sequence of smaller engagements with the enemy forces in order to amass the confidence and strength necessary to achieve a strategic equilibrium (i.e. dual power) before launching a strategic counteroffensive against the state.

9 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 240.

10 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 238.

11 Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (London: Verso, 2014), 245–246.

12 Anthony King, Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021); Stephen Biddle, Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021).

13 Anthony King, “Urban Insurgency in the Twenty-First Century: Smaller Militaries and Increased Conflict in Cities,” International Affairs (98:2 [2022] 609–629), 622.

14 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Masque of Anarchy” (1819), Scottish Poetry Library, https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-masque-of-anarchy/.

15 Deng-Yuan Hsu and Pao-Yu Ching, Rethinking Socialism: What is Socialist Transition? (Utrecht: Foreign Languages Press, 2017).

16 Such a triple combination of masses, soldiers, and party cadre formed the basis of the new organs of people’s power which emerged from the Shanghai Commune of 1967: the revolutionary committees. It was from assemblies of each of the three aforementioned groups that delegates were elected to the revolutionary committee, with delegates from the mass organizations typically constituting the majority of committee members. See Hongsheng Jiang, “The Paris Commune in Shanghai: The Masses, the State, and Dynamics of ‘Continuous Revolution’,” PhD dissertation, Duke University (2010).

17 Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 309.

18 Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russian Revolution (1918),” Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch06.htm/.

19 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 21.

20 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 57.

21 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 57.

22 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 67.

23Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 232.

24 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 31.

25 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 59.

26 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 27.

27 Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 235.

28 Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 233.

29 Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene, 233–234.

30 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume III (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 959.