At the founding congress of the RCP, the assembled delegates voted unanimously to adopt the Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist Party as our founding document. It is on the principles and with the methods detailed herein that we will build the party the working class needs to overthrow capitalism!

We invite all those who are fed up with this system to read this important document.

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“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.”

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Capitalism has plunged us into darkness. Society is tearing itself apart, convulsed in an ever worsening downward spiral. Environmental destruction, racism, and war spread like the plague. 

Society is regressing in every possible way. Even things like life expectancy, literacy rates, caloric intake, are falling. 

Staring over the cliff into the abyss of capitalist barbarism, Communists are planting our flag in the soil of this country.

We are the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), the section of the Revolutionary Communist International in Canada. Our demands are modest: the complete overthrow of capitalism—the construction of a society free of exploitation and oppression. 

We have entered a new period. Stability and peace are a distant memory. Now is the time of convulsions, crisis, war and revolution. The time to build a party capable of leading the workers to power and putting an end to the horrors of capitalism has arrived. 

Part 1 – The terminal decline of Canadian capitalism

Canadian capitalism has been remarkably stable for decades. The economic boom following the Second World War gave new life to the system. The ruling class could afford to buy class peace with concessions to the workers. This is why—while communism began to take root during the crisis years of the 1920s and ‘30s—it hasn’t fared well in recent decades. Communism was reduced to a fringe idea. Those days are over.

Crisis is the new normal. Canadian capitalism is on its last legs. Per capita growth has slowed to its lowest rate since the 1930s. The OECD has predicted that Canada will fare the worst of the top 29 advanced economies over the next 40 years—the worst effects are still to come. 

The system is being suffocated by a mountain of debt. While the GDP of Canada is less than $2 trillion, government, consumer, and corporate debt total $7.2 trillion, nearly four times the economic output of the entire country. Everyday people are drowning, unable to afford to live.

The capitalists of Canada are more parasitic by the day. Instead of investing in production, they invest at the casino. Today, their game of choice is real estate speculation. This has created one of the largest housing bubbles in the world with record-high prices. Real estate has replaced manufacturing as the number one industry. Where there is still manufacturing, the bourgeoisie suckles at the teat of the state, demanding tens of billions of dollars to open new plants they could finance themselves. For the past five years, labour productivity has declined annually for the first time since records began. 

Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production.” Today, the bourgeoisie fails to even do this. Increasingly, Canada is resembling what Lenin described as a “rentier economy” where a bloodsucking layer of the population contributes nothing to production but makes billions while millions are forced into poverty.

This is neither a temporary slump, nor a small problem. It’s an existential crisis of capitalism. A terminal decline that penetrates society—socially, politically, and morally. 

Class peace is dead

The ruling class is waging a one sided war on the workers. The manufacturing heartland has been decimated with hundreds of thousands of good union jobs flushed down the toilet. Union contracts riddled with concessions are the norm. Pensions have been gutted. The unorganised workers in precarious industries are getting squeezed like lemons. State companies have been privatized to the feeding frenzy of bloodsucking profiteers. They’ve cut social services to a shadow of what they once were. Healthcare is in crisis. Schools are crumbling. Living standards are in freefall. 

The labour leaders have let this happen. They live in a dream-world where the post-war boom never ended and the bosses can still afford meaningful concessions. Every time the labour leaders extend the hand of compromise, the bosses slap it away. Their weakness only invites aggression, but the labour leaders learn nothing from defeat. No wonder that unionization rates have fallen from 38 to 29% in the last 40 years.

The so-called “social contract” between business and labour is a dead letter. Trade union rights are violated whenever profits are threatened. Bosses have no reason to negotiate—they know the state will come down on their side with court injunctions and back-to-work legislation. Faced with these attacks, the labour leaders capitulate almost every time. 

No wonder there is a growing rage in the unions. There are more and more strikes. Meanwhile, sellout deals face mass opposition from below. But this opposition is uncoordinated and spontaneous. This raw class anger needs an expression. The RCP will find and organise the radicalised layer of the class, and arm them with ideas and methods that can win.

Many unions in Canada were founded by communists and revolutionaries. The movement forged militant traditions under their leadership. It organized the unorganized. It is the RCP’s mission to revive these traditions. 

The RCP aims to bring every layer of the working class into the struggle, whether unionised or not. We will be there, arm-in-arm with the workers in their day-to-day struggles everywhere, scraping and clawing for every gain that makes life more bearable under this rotten system. But what sets us apart is that at every stage, we will explain that the capitalist system is the root cause of the plight of the workers—that to defeat the attacks of the greedy bosses for good, the workers need to be the masters of society.  

Communism will find its way back to the mass of the working class and its organisations with these methods. Only a revolutionary leadership can rearm the workers’ movement as a fighting force.

Crisis of reformism

In the postwar period, the bourgeoisie conceded significant reforms like free healthcare, unemployment insurance, and pensions to the working class. They did that not out of the goodness of their heart, but because the workers battled for these reforms, and out of a fear of workers being won over to “communism” in the context of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The exceptional postwar boom gave them the financial leeway to buy class peace in such a way. This created a material basis for strong illusions amongst workers in reformism. Most people considered themselves not workers, but “middle class”. This is no longer the case. 

We’re at the start of a long period of crisis and instability. The old order is dying and the new world is struggling to be born. Old mentalities of class compromise are being shaken. Earth-shattering events unknown in Canadian history are around the corner.

As the system grinds millions into the dirt, the reformists who cling to the middle ground are the most absurd utopians. The crisis of capitalism means a crisis of reformism. Capitalism cannot afford stability, let alone reforms. In every province the NDP has come to power, they capitulated to capitalist interests. Québec Solidaire is doing all it can to seem acceptable to the establishment, following the path of the NDP. 

The leaders of the NDP and QS have accepted the capitalist system. They are constrained within its limits. As the system is in crisis and everything is rolling in reverse, they capitulate to pressure all along the line. ​​It is only through mass revolutionary struggle that significant improvements for the working class can be won. But the reformists refuse this, and therefore achieve nothing.

It is completely utopian to think that we can solve today’s problems within capitalism. Not even the most hopeful bourgeois economists think that the future is bright for the system. Young people today know very well that capitalism offers them no real future. This is why the reformists fail to muster any enthusiasm. 

The crisis of the system and the discrediting of the bourgeois establishment have never been so deep. Yet, the labour leadership and the “left” have never been in such a lamentable state. They offer no serious alternative. The working class is stronger than ever. The workers could change the world. But they are lions led by donkeys.

Workers have no control over our lives. Bosses impose wage stagnation. Grocery tycoons gang up to jack up prices. Parasites (landlords) constantly squeeze more out of their captive renters. Those lucky enough to have freed themselves from rent-slavery instead find themselves burdened by massive and growing debts to a bank. None of this can be solved with reforms. 

Everyone knows the bourgeoisie are destroying the planet with impunity. While they hide in their air-conditioned mansions the workers suffer. We go to work while the air is thick with smoke. We foot the bill when insurance companies hike rates in flood zones. We are the ones who die in heat waves and cold snaps. 

But bourgeois governments do nothing about it. And the reformists are complicit in this crime. They peddle snake oil “solutions” like carbon taxes which do not touch private ownership. None of these have made a dent in the problem. Worse, these “green taxes” shift the burden of the climate crisis onto workers’ backs. Climate change cannot be solved without ending the profit motive. Reformist solutions—while put forward as “practical”—end up as not only toothless but harmful endeavours.

Communists fight for any reform that improves the lives of working people. We demand genuinely free high-quality health care and education, an end to poverty and homelessness, the drastic reduction of the working week and the conquest of free time. But what the reformists don’t understand is that none of this can be achieved and maintained under capitalism.

You cannot control what you don’t own.

Marx and Engels explained:

“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of

private property.”

None of our problems will be solved until the working class takes power. The working class must seize the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Under a democratic plan of production the workers will put the wealth of society to work, unleashing the productive potential of humanity to tackle climate change, poverty, homelessness, and every evil of the system. Human needs and nature will be harmonized.

Oppression: the DNA of capitalism

Now is the time of monsters. As the system decays, the fabric of society is torn apart. 

At the time of publishing, the burning issue is Palestine. The scenes in Gaza make your blood boil. Israeli imperialism is carrying out a genocidal war aided and abetted by the Canadian government. But this is just western imperialism’s latest atrocity. 

With a straight face bourgeois politicians in the West talk about “human rights” as they send billions of dollars to the Israeli imperialist killing machine. Every part of the establishment, every defender of the institutions of capitalism, the media, academia, every political party, all of them have incriminated themselves and their psychopathic system. 

This will not be forgotten.

The supposed friendlier face of Canadian imperialism is a convenient deception by the ruling class. In reality, it acts as the little brother of American imperialism and defends its own interests through the exploitation of people around the world. As one example, 75 per cent of the world’s mining companies are headquartered in Canada and the industry is riddled with slavery, child labour and environmental devastation.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is the unconditional enemy of Canadian imperialism. We declare a class war on our own ruling class, and seek to end their bloody crusade for profit abroad. The main enemy is at home.

But the horrors of capitalism are not just in faraway lands. Oppression is built into the DNA of the system.

The birth of Canadian capitalism was bloody. Through the most brutal means imaginable, capitalism ravaged the people and broke down all the myriad of ways of living which were incompatible with capitalist development. Indigenous peoples were forced off their traditional lands, slaughtered, enslaved and subjected to oppressive and genocidal policies for centuries. And this continues to this day. In one of the richest countries on Earth, many Indigenous people live in third world conditions, their land is violated and racism and police violence are alive and well.

The ruling class also relied on African slaves and immigrants as cheap sources of labour. Chinese workers were brought over to build the railway and poor Europeans were forced to immigrate. Many died in the process. The capitalists continue this practice to this day, through varying immigration schemes which allow them to hyper exploit millions of migrant workers who have little to no rights. Even the United Nations has called the Temporary Foreign Worker program a contemporary form of slavery.

The ruling class whips up the worst prejudice to maintain itself. They pit workers against each other to divide and distract. Violence against women is on the rise. LGBTQ people are targeted by bigoted politicians. Bourgeois politicians of all stripes blame immigrants for the failures of their system. 

The RCP will fight oppression with the ferocity of pitbulls. We always take the side of the oppressed. The struggle against all forms of oppression is indispensable to the fight against capitalism. To overthrow capitalism, the working class needs maximum unity. This unity can be forged only through a determined struggle against prejudice. In turn, overthrowing capitalism will give us the means to tackle the root of all oppression—class society.

This sets the RCP apart from liberals and reformists. While the conservative wing of the ruling class stokes the worst prejudices, the liberals and reformists resort to “identity politics” — which is just the other side of the same coin. They focus on actions which change nothing like land acknowledgements, tokenizing, and telling people to “check their privilege”. They wrongly say certain layers of the working class benefit from the oppression of others—which is the flip side of the dangerous lie that workers steal other workers’ jobs. This dangerous idea kneecaps the fight against oppression by dividing the workers.

Only the ruling class benefits from oppression. Every worker has an interest in fighting every form of oppression. An injury to one is an injury to all. 

Against the reactionary swamp of identity politics, the RCP fights for class unity. Mass strikes and demonstrations are excellent teachers: the common struggle against the capitalists forges bonds of unity and solidarity that no amount of language changing and petty quotas can ever dream of achieving.

The oppression of the Quebecois was central to the development of Canadian capitalism. Divisions between Quebecois and Canadian workers have had a corrosive effect on the class struggle. The RCP seeks to bridge this gap and unite workers across the national and language divide. 

To this end, the RCP employs a genuine Leninist approach. We defend the right of the Quebecois to self-determination. In English Canada, our comrades aim their fire against the federal state and the Canadian bourgeoisie. In Quebec, we fight first and foremost against the Quebec ruling class, including the nationalists. Only in this way can we unite Quebecois and English Canadian workers in a struggle to overthrow the state and the capitalist system. We fight for a voluntary socialist union of peoples which is the only possible system that can offer genuine self-determination. 

In every instance, we take a revolutionary, class based approach that cuts through all lines used to divide the working class. This is the only way to truly liberate the Quebecois, Indigenous peoples, and workers of all backgrounds. 

Communism is back

For a long period, communism was on the margins of society. Not anymore. The period of peace, stability and a good middle-class life in North-America was only a blip in history, and in reality a fiction for most. What is occurring today is the new normal for capitalism—horror without end.

Our epoch is more like the 1920s and 1930s than any decade since. This was the heyday of the communist movement—the epoch of the Russian revolution and the creation of the Communist International, a time when communism was a mass force, when revolution shook the world.

It is from revolutionary struggles like these that Marxist theory—the foundation of communist action—comes. Marxism is the memory of these titanic struggles. It is the distilled essence of the pinnacle of human thought, maintained against the scorn of bourgeois society. 

Communism is not a dogma. It is not a series of complicated theoretical formulations contained within ancient tomes. Communism is a real organic yearning of the oppressed labouring class when it moves into action. This is what makes communism a vital force to this day.

Our International has maintained the ideas of Marxism through the most difficult period when others capitulated. Now the words of the Communist Manifesto ring truer than ever before. It’s time for communists to enter the arena as a force to be reckoned with. Our party will fuse the ideas of Marxism with the developing revolutionary mood in society.

Storming heaven

The history of capitalism is the history of the revolt of the working class against intolerable exploitation. The boss can only spit in a worker’s face for so long. Sooner or later, the workers always fight.

In the last 100 years, no year has passed without uprisings somewhere in the world. Through struggle, workers learn. They learn that a tiny minority of obscenely rich suits decide everything. Eventually they learn that overthrowing these leeches is the only way out. When they can’t take it anymore, a revolutionary process begins. This is exactly what we are witnessing today.

In the 1936 Spanish Revolution the workers organised a revolutionary army to fight Franco’s fascists. The workers fought tooth-and-nail. They seized arms from everywhere possible: the homes of fascists, sporting goods stores, even army barracks. Five thousand miners armed with dynamite marched on the Madrid fascists. The heroism of the Spanish workers was enough to make ten victorious revolutions, as Trotsky once said. But the Spanish workers were defeated.

This has happened hundreds of times. Workers revolt, but are defeated. Why? Because, when rising up, the workers run into a wall: their leadership. Revolutionary movements always eventually arrive at the question of power. But if the leaders of the workers’ organisations are not ready to take power, the movement will go down in defeat. 

This is the fundamental contradiction today. In the depths of the working class, a revolutionary mood is brewing. But the workers’ organisations are led by people who believe that the capitalists alone have the right to rule. 

This is what sets the RCP apart from every other party, group and tendency in society. We are the only ones that truly believe that workers can overthrow the parasites, smash their state and run society on their own. We are the only ones seriously and systematically organising to reach that goal. We aim to lead the working class in this fight—to make the workers the true masters of society. We won’t rest until power has been torn from the capitalists’ grasp and all exploitation extinguished.

In the words of Marx, we will “storm heaven”.

Part 2 – What is the Revolutionary Communist Party?

The RCP does not accept what capitalism offers. The RCP does not accept unemployment, low paying jobs, skyrocketing housing costs, environmental degradation, wars and exploitation. The RCP does not accept the rule of this tiny group of big banks and giant companies. We stand for the expropriation of these parasites and the implementation of the democratically planned economy run by the working class. This is the only way to guarantee full employment, universal healthcare, free education, social housing, and eradicate oppression and exploitation once and for all.

The RCP is not starting from scratch. We build on the long tradition of revolutionary Marxists going back to the Communist Manifesto. We are part of the Revolutionary Communist International, based in dozens of countries where our comrades are doing exactly like us—building revolutionary communist parties.

In this new epoch, there will be many revolutionary events which will present the working class with the opportunity to take power. But even in its frail condition, the capitalist system will not simply give way to communism. It will require the conscious overthrow of the system and those who defend it by the working class. For that, the working class needs a party. The RCP will weld together the revolutionary workers and youth who recognize this into a fighting force which can win over the masses in struggle

What is a communist?

Communism starts in the heart. A communist is a fighter. A communist is someone who is disgusted by injustice and devotes their life to ending it. 

How? The only way possible—overthrowing the bloody capitalist system and the state that defends it. To do this, the workers must have the guidance of a communist party. Therefore, a communist works tirelessly to organize the sea of unorganized communists, win more workers to communism, and weld them together into a revolutionary army.

This ocean of communists is constantly growing, looking for their party. Thousands are looking to devote their entire lives to the struggle—if a party worthy of their ambitions existed. That’s why we are founding the RCP, the banner around which all communists will rally for battle.

A communist is someone who uses every opportunity to speak out and spread communist ideas: in the subway, at the bus stop, on street corners, in neighbourhoods, in classrooms, with our co-workers, in our union meetings, by organising public rallies—in short, by every means at our disposal.

An RCP member aspires to be the communist of their workplace, school or neighbourhood, to build a cell of communists around themself. Any method that connects with the latent anger in society and directs it toward our communist ideas must be exploited. 

Nothing will stop the communists. Capitalist society makes people think it’s “weird” to stand out and denounce the system. Thousands of unorganised communists reject this. We shout from the rooftops that the RCP is theirs and ready to fight.

We will become the party of all who burn with rage at injustice, all who—consciously or unconsciously—seek communism. We will feed the flame of class hatred, stoke it into an inferno, and concentrate it into a relentless struggle.

In this quest, we stand on the shoulders of the giants that led the Russian Revolution: the Bolsheviks. In October 1917, under their guidance, the workers took power and shook the world. 

We aim to play the same role today. The Bolsheviks conquered by building a battle-hardened party ahead of time. They were unlike any other party. Trotsky summarises:

“In practice a reformist party considers unshakable the foundations of that which it intends to reform. It thus inevitably submits to the ideas and morals of the ruling class. Having risen on the backs of the proletariat, the social democrats became merely a bourgeois party of the second order. Bolshevism created the type of the authentic revolutionist, who subordinates to historic goals irreconcilable with contemporary society the conditions of his personal existence, his ideas, and his moral judgments. […] Thus by a process of selection and education—and in continual struggle—the Bolshevik party created not only a political but a moral medium of its own, independent of bourgeois social opinion and implacably opposed to it. Only this permitted the Bolsheviks to overcome the waverings in their own ranks and reveal in action that courageous determination without which the October victory would have been impossible.”

We must be as resolute today.

The RCP: a weapon for all communists

Bourgeois political parties are rotten nests of corruption, cynicism and electoralism. Politicians get elected only to betray their promises as if nothing happened. The RCP is a completely different type of party. We are not parliamentarians, we are agents of the proletarian revolution. The RCP would only ever enter parliament to expose it from inside. 

In so-called left-wing parties, the party bureaucracy controls everything; members have a passive role, only mobilized once every four years for elections. Not us. Our party belongs to each and every communist fighter. To be a member of the RCP is to make the party your own and wield it as a weapon to change the world. Our members are active day-in, day-out, striving to advance our cause.

The RCP is a party which recruits communists and puts them into action. Every comrade must be a recruiter. If every RCP member personally recruits one person every few months, we will grow exponentially. This can only happen if every comrade makes it their mission to find, recruit, and ideologically arm communists.

Every member plays a role in recruiting new members and conquering new ground. Everyone has skills and talents which must be used. Our party must be a well-oiled machine, with every comrade playing their part. They must work together like a symphony. Every member of the party must seriously consider their role in this great collective enterprise.

All this comes from the long tradition of communism. The Third Congress of the Communist International explained in 1921:

“The art of Communist organization is to make use of everything in the proletarian class struggle, to divide up party work effectively among all members, and through the members to draw broader masses of the proletariat into the revolutionary movement. This art also involves maintaining a leadership position in the movement as a whole not by virtue of power but by virtue of authority, energy, and great experience, diversity, and ability.

“In its efforts to have a genuinely active membership, a Communist Party should ask of everyone in its ranks to commit their energy and time to the party, to the extent possible under given circumstances, and to always do their best in its service.

“Besides commitment to Communist ideas, membership in the Communist Party normally involves formal registration, perhaps initially as a candidate and later as a full member; regular payment of fixed dues; a subscription to the party newspaper; and so on. The most important thing, however, is the participation of every member in daily party work.” (Our emphasis)

This is what the RCP is all about.

The heritage of Marxism

The RCP bases its activities on a rich tradition. We trace our roots through the unbroken thread of Marxism all the way back to Marx and Engels. We are just the latest in a long line of fighters of the oppressed going back tens of thousands of years to the birth of class society.

We claim the heritage of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and the heritage of the first four congresses of the Communist International. This heritage was preserved by Leon Trotsky—who kept the torch burning in the face of the executioner of Lenin’s party, Stalin.

Any young communist who joins one of the old Stalinist “communist” parties will be disappointed. Thanks to their betrayal of all the principles of Leninism, they have degenerated into reformism and nationalism. These husks of the once-great communist parties have no right to call themselves communist.

The real heritage of Marxism, of communism, belongs to us in the Revolutionary Communist International. The ideas of Marxism have stood the test of time. When the Soviet Union fell under the contradictions of the Stalinist regime, the capitalist parasites celebrated. They toasted the “end of history”, the final victory of capitalism. Who’s laughing now? True communism’s day has come. After almost 180 years, no document is more relevant than the Communist Manifesto.

‘A school of revolutionary Marxism’

History is littered with socialist and communist groups that fell almost as fast as they rose. In each case, mistaken political perspectives or insufficient theoretical education explain their failure. Socialist and left-wing groups today which regard the theoretical struggle with indifference or contempt are doomed to the same fate.

As Lenin explained, a revolutionary party can only be victorious if it is guided by the most advanced theory. That is why the RCP bases itself on the most advanced theory yet known, Marxism.

And the bourgeois parasites agree: they know these are dangerous ideas—ideas that can change the world. Just look at their reaction to Marxism. They receive it “with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander,” to borrow the words of Lenin.

Every comrade must take pride in learning these ideas. Communism begins at the heart—but it acquires a rock solid basis only by conquering the scientific ideas of Marxism. 

The RCP cultivates an atmosphere of political education and discussion. But we are not a book club. As Lenin put it, “a revolutionary epoch is to [communists] what war-time is to an army.” This means getting Marxist training in the fire of the class war.

We cannot fully learn unless we connect study with revolutionary practice. Whether we’re giving a speech at a subway station, writing agitational leaflets, or discussing with coworkers, we need to think clearly. We need to develop our ability not just to denounce oppression, but to offer a communist solution. This requires meticulous study of Marxist theory and the history of class struggle. When we study Marxist ideas, our study should be informed by our activity and used to prepare for future activity.

Thus the RCP will be, in the words of the Communist International, a “school of revolutionary Marxism.”

Money: the sinews of class war

We have great conviction, but we face a ruling class that has unimaginable wealth. Our conviction must be backed up by material strength, and that means money.

Financial sacrifice has always been part of the struggle. Class fighters sacrifice immensely for a great cause. The first trade unions would never have existed without workers paying part of their meagre wages to the collective. 

In the Algerian war of independence, poor Algerian families in France would send most of their wages to their comrades fighting for liberation. We follow in the footsteps of this proud tradition. Our party will be funded exclusively by its members and the wider working class. As Lenin said, the Bolsheviks were funded by “the kopeks of the workers”.

The workers can only count on their own means. Capitalists never fund anything, except to corrupt or use it. Many reformist organisations and amateur petty-bourgeois leftist groups rely on funding from the state or the trade union bureaucracy—but all money comes with strings attached. When you are financially dependent, you are politically dependent.

For the bourgeoisie, nothing is more strange than dedicating time and money to a cause, without expecting a return. But communist morality is something different altogether. To donate to the party, to raise money with friends, colleagues and supporters for the party is not about getting a personal reward—it is about furthering the struggle for the emancipation of the working class.

Everything we do has an army of dedicated volunteers behind it. But our work cannot be done with only volunteers. We need an apparatus of professional revolutionaries to help conduct this work. That’s why, just like Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, we have comrades working full-time for the party.

Any worker knows that you need the proper tool to complete any serious task. Our most important tool is our independent workers’ paper. 

The bourgeoisie dominates the working class ideologically, principally through the mass media. Their hypocritical defence of the banks, bosses and status quo can only be consistently challenged by a paper that unapologetically takes the side of the working class. Our paper will never bend, even under the most vicious attacks.

The paper of the RCP, Communist Revolution/Révolution communiste, is the party in your backpack. The paper includes everything you need to build the party. It is a voice for every communist: it belongs to every one of its readers—every reader should contribute to it. It also directs our struggle, with the sharpest Marxist analysis of the class struggle in Canada and internationally.

All of these political needs and tasks require large and sustained sources of funding. We will be unyielding in search of these funds. As Trotsky once said: “If you really want to succeed in doing that which you have clearly understood, then you will also be capable of finding the means.”

We will conquer

Capitalism has created a world where obscene wealth stands side-by-side with the deepest poverty. A world where the potential to satisfy human need has never been greater. We are the most educated generation in human history; but the system is wasting our potential. As Trotsky said, “With rare exceptions, the sparks of genius are smothered in the oppressed depths of the people, before they can even spring forth.”

But capitalism creates the people who will overthrow this system. It creates the workers who will dig its grave. The masses are learning through experience. This is preparing a revolutionary eruption seen so far only in the capitalists’ nightmares. Under the hammer blows of the crisis, sooner or later tens of millions will rise. 

This is the moment we’re preparing for. We must be ready. A communist party can only become a mass force in the crucible of great events like these. When they come, we must have a strong party, one with thousands of battle-hardened Marxists. One with cells in every neighbourhood, every workplace, every campus, ready to meet them workers and give them the communist ideas they need to win.

The role of Marxists today is not to sit on the sidelines reading books and discussing the theoretical possibilities in the abstract. Our role is to merge with this movement and make it conscious, fusing the organic yearning for a new world with the theoretical understanding of the past. 

This is the most favourable situation for building a communist party in living memory. We must seize it.

Every RCP member must see themselves as a communist pioneer, ready to conquer new territory for communism all across the country. The possibilities are immense. There is no limit but ourselves.

We take it upon ourselves to organize the tens of thousands of communists in Canada into a revolutionary juggernaut—there has never been a greater cause. 

For thousands of years, people have fought and died in the struggle against oppression. From John Brown to Louis Riel, to the Spartacus slave uprising in Ancient Rome, to above all millions of unknown heroes, people have fought oppression for thousands of years. Countless have paid the ultimate price. We are proud to take up their torch. 

But for millennia, every revolution only installed a new form of class oppression, a new ruling class. Only in the past century, with the massive development brought by capitalism, do the productive forces for satisfying all human needs, ending all exploitation, exist. 

We now have an opportunity millenia of class fighters never did, to end class society and crush all oppression. Communism will be a society of true freedom. One where people can live in dignity. One where human beings finally reach our real potential.

Rosa Luxemburg once wrote about the Russian Revolution: “Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: ‘I have dared!’” In the face of the hypocritical morality of the modern-day slave-owners, we too must dare.

“To vanquish, we need audacity, audacity, and yet more audacity.”

Georges Danton, 1793