This article was first published last February in Le Communiste, the paper of the Swiss section of the International Marxist Tendency. We have decided to reproduce it here, as it contains all the fundamental theoretical points on the role of the communist paper. As explained, the paper is “the party in your backpack”. Our own Communist Revolution is a tool that all communists here should use to build the Revolutionary Communist Party. Let’s get to work!
When we found the Revolutionary Communist Party in May this year, we won’t be starting from scratch. We are carrying on a long and rich tradition that traces its roots to the Communist Manifesto.
Lenin is a key figure in this rich tradition. He was able to put Marx and Engels’ ideas into practice. Starting out with a handful of Marxists, he succeeded in building a revolutionary party after years of hard, patient work. This party, the Bolsheviks, won over millions of workers and peasants to the communist program. It was this party that led the Russian working class to a victorious revolution. It broke with capitalism and held out the prospect of world revolution to the oppressed masses. It’s on top of this historic tradition that we are building upon.
What is to be done?
The founding of the RCP is a declaration of war against the isolation of revolutionaries in this country. This declaration is aimed at both reformism and the pessimistic illusion that nothing can be done against this all-powerful system. Lenin demonstrated how this fragmentation can be overcome, and how the revolutionary mass party can be built.
To this end, he laid the foundations of the party in the years 1900 – 1903. The Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party was founded in 1898 with a clear revolutionary communist conception. But Lenin saw that the emergence of reformist tendencies, organizational fragmentation and amateurism were holding back the workers’ movement. A common plan for action was lacking.
In 1900, Lenin launched the newspaper Iskra (“The Spark”), and in 1902, wrote the pioneering polemic What is to be done? It was a declaration of war against those tendencies that paralyzed the revolutionaries’ fighting force, even though they were boundlessly motivated, as they still are today. The text also called for a disciplined, centralized revolutionary party:
In the first place, it is necessary to work for solid ideological unity which should eliminate discordance and confusion that—let us be frank!—reign among Russian Social-Democrats at the present time. This ideological unity must be consolidated by a Party programme.
Lenin, “Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra”, 1900
The revolutionary program
Lenin never prioritized organizational questions. A revolutionary party is first and foremost ideas and a program. From these flows the manner of organization, and Lenin’s approach was always characterized by great flexibility.
All his life, he fought against reformist adaptation to the existing system and for a fiercely consistent revolutionary program. In the phase that gave rise to What is to be done?, Russian reformism existed in the form of “economism”.
Economists reduced their program to simple, everyday “union” demands, notably for improvements in the workplace. They claimed that workers were only interested in the “concrete” issues of their living conditions, not in revolutionary ideas or theory.
Lenin fought vehemently against this conception, as it led to the abandonment of the revolutionary program and a focus on immediate, supposedly easier tasks.
Marxists will always fight for reforms that improve workers’ living conditions. But “[the revolutionary party] subordinates the struggle for reforms, like the part to the whole, to the revolutionary struggle for freedom and socialism.”
No problem of the workers and the oppressed can be solved as long as a tiny exploiting elite holds political and economic power in its hands. Therefore, the party “leads the struggle of the working class, not only to obtain advantageous conditions in the sale of labor power, but also for the suppression of the social order that forces the non-possessors to sell themselves to the rich.”
The working class needs a revolutionary program. Only the united struggle for such a program can lead to the conclusion that the class itself must take power and expropriate the capitalists. For this, total political and organizational independence from the bourgeoisie is necessary, as the interests of workers and bourgeois are diametrically opposed.
The role of the party
Economists claim that workers are not interested in the big questions of politics and revolution. Claiming to be “proletarian” and “close to the workers”, this idea actually shows the profound contempt petty-bourgeois intellectuals have for workers.
Workers are not idiots! Nobody has to explain to them that their working conditions are bad; for that, the party is not necessary. What they need is a real explanation of the link with the whole system, and a clear proposal for the way forward.
Far from idealizing the working class, Marxists know very well that the masses of workers have no revolutionary consciousness most of the time. Consciousness is slow. Problems of everyday life, and the paralyzing, divisive influence of bourgeois ideology weigh heavily on workers’ heads.
On the other hand, Lenin and all the true Marxists at his side always had the utmost confidence in the working class and its revolutionary potential. He knew that harsh experiences under capitalism would sooner or later push them to revolutionary conclusions.
The role of the revolutionary party is not to accommodate itself to the average consciousness of the workers and reinforce their false conceptions. It must speak to their healthy class hatred, and help them scrape away their false prejudices. It must transform the unconscious aspirations of the working class into genuine revolutionary consciousness.
The attempt to win over the “general public” is a search for a shortcut that doesn’t exist. It’s opportunism: adaptation to an existing system and its reactionary prejudices. Limiting oneself to presenting to workers what most of the class already knows anyway does nothing to help the struggle for liberation.
The uncompromising, undiluted defense of the program demands the rallying of the more advanced, more conscious, more active stratum of the working class. The revolutionary program requires a firm organization of revolutionaries, not a loose network of passive sympathizers. This is the only way to build revolutionary forces:
If we begin with the solid foundation of a strong organisation of revolutionaries, we can ensure the stability of the movement as a whole […] If, however, we begin with a broad workers’ organisation, which is supposedly most “accessible” to the masses, we shall achieve neither the one aim [reforms] nor the other [revolution].
What is to be done?, Chapter 4c
A “vanguard” party
The revolutionary party is the party of the class-conscious minority. Such an “avant-garde party” sounds elitist, even authoritarian to the petit-bourgeois moralist. But it is based on a simple observation that stems from the actual development of class struggle and working-class consciousness: the class is not homogeneous. All strata do not fight at the same time, nor do they draw the same revolutionary conclusions at the same time.
Those who draw certain conclusions – for example, that capitalists and workers have opposed and irreconcilable interests, or that the so-called democratic state is in fact the dictatorship of the banks and big business – have a more advanced development of consciousness than the average today.
This is not a moral judgment, it’s a fact. But it does imply a duty to help the next layers of the class overcome their paralyzing bourgeois prejudices and gain a clear perspective on their own role in history.
Today, all social classes are in ferment. Large sections of the working class are losing faith in the established parties, institutions and, increasingly, the entire capitalist economic system. And yet they still don’t endorse the Communist program, according to which the crisis can only be resolved by overthrowing the capitalists in a revolution and building a socialist planned economy, and are therefore not actively committed to it.
Should we then abandon the communist program? Absolutely not! This general fermentation is producing a particular, more advanced layer.
Thousands, even tens of thousands, are ready to fight today for no less than the entire communist program. This layer must now be brought together on the basis of a fully revolutionary program. The Revolutionary Communist Party aims to fulfil the task of uniting this layer under the proud banner of communism.
But this layer is only the beginning. A clear understanding of the current capitalist crisis allows us to predict with scientific certainty that the harsh reality of capitalism will make more and more layers receptive to communist ideas. But will the communist voice be strong enough to carry this program to all these open ears? That depends entirely on the organization of today’s more advanced layer!
Cadres: the scaffolding of the mass party
The construction of this party cannot be left to chance. The revolutionary program needs a body. We need people capable of applying this program to all concrete questions, of defending it against the pressure of “public opinion”, and of carrying it through all struggles and movements.
This cannot be taken for granted. Communists will remain a minority until the revolution. It’s in the nature of things: we’re up against the power of the capitalist state, its media, religion and education system. The pressure to conform to bourgeois prejudices and lifestyles is enormous. All those who have shown solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people in recent months have experienced this themselves. All the other “left” parties have simply folded in the face of this pressure.
Firm revolutionaries are not born as such. We have to learn—through experience in practice, but also through training in the most powerful revolutionary theory: Marxism. Marxism provides a profound understanding of the world we live in. It is a guide to revolutionary action. If we are to win on the battlefield of class warfare against the better organized capitalists, revolutionaries need a point of view completely independent of the ruling class.
That’s why Lenin so firmly asserted that the road to a mass communist party lay only with well-trained, experienced revolutionaries who had learned Marxism in theory and practice. Such “cadres” are the necessary scaffolding, the rock-solid foundation for building a mass communist party.
This scaffolding must be built well in advance of the revolution, “for at the moment of explosion, of conflagration, it is too late”. The best proof of Lenin’s depth of understanding, his foresight and unprecedented consistency, is that he expressed this idea loud and clear as early as 1901, and invested his whole life in putting it into practice.
The Russian Revolution triumphed in 1917, while all the many other great proletarian revolutions in Germany, Spain and Italy ended in tragic defeat and bloody reaction. The difference is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were ready in 1917. All the others were not.
This lesson is firmly anchored in our DNA and will be decisive for the RCP’s work in the coming period: the first 1,000, 2,000 communists in Canada must be organized and hardened by Marxist theory and practice. Only with such stable scaffolding will we be able to win over the next layers to the communist program when they enter the struggle.
The revolutionary newspaper
In this task of party building, Lenin always attributed an absolutely decisive role to the revolutionary newspaper. In 1901, he declared:
In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper.
“Where to Begin?”
A centralized newspaper (not scattered local papers) of the entire Russian workers’ movement – Iskra – was needed to overcome ideological, programmatic and organizational fragmentation.
A true revolutionary newspaper creates a common understanding. It is the face of the party to the outside world. It brings revolutionary ideas and programs to every workplace, every neighborhood, every schoolroom and every class struggle.
The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.
“Where to Begin?”
In What is to be done? Lenin illustrates this role of the newspaper as “collective organizer” with a powerful metaphor. The newspaper is the “thread” from which we build the party:
Pray tell me, when bricklayers lay bricks in various parts of an enormous, unprecedentedly large structure, is it “paper” work to use a line to help them find the correct place for the bricklaying; to indicate to them the ultimate goal of the common work; to enable them to use, not only every brick, but even every piece of brick which, cemented to the bricks laid before and after it, forms a finished, continuous line?
What is to be done?, Chapter 5b
And, as Lenin observed, there was no lack of stones or masons: “All that’s lacking is a thread visible to all”. As a result, the stones were “laid quite uselessly”.
From each page to the work
This certainly applies to our current situation. What’s more, our communist masons don’t just lay their stones haphazardly and pointlessly, because they lack a common guideline. Most masons today are unemployed and waiting to be hired.
Today, there are thousands of young revolutionaries in Canada. They already consider themselves communists or are pushing in that direction. They all feel the need to build a gigantic edifice on an unprecedented scale: a mass communist party that will achieve nothing less than to lead the working class to world revolution, the overthrow of all class domination and the liberation of humanity. But they are all still isolated and atomized. So each of them thinks for himself: “I’ve got to do something! But what can I do? Where do I start? I’m on my own.
What we need today is precisely this guideline that shows us the way and the final goal of our common work. The revolutionary paper Communist Revolution has this objective. It makes us all parts in a greater whole, in a gigantic construction. It gives each and every one of us the opportunity to make a contribution, and to place it wisely in the right place.
Each individual can do better if all have a common understanding and plan. Contrary to what anarchists think, the greatest possible centralization is actually the prerequisite for the most energetic “decentralized” initiative. That’s why all party members and sympathetic workers must send the editorial staff their experiences and reports of their activity in every corner and in every struggle. These should be collected, evaluated and generalized.
In this way, Communist Revolution will be able to show by a thousand examples that we are not alone. This newspaper must become the voice of communists and all conscious workers in the country. It will publish the best reports on daily work. It will apply the communist program to all the most diverse questions, and thus give communists the weapons for their daily work. It will show our common enterprise and bring together the results of our most diverse activities. It encourages us to work tirelessly, on all sides, on the road to revolution.
Building through the paper
In Tsarist Russia at the time, revolutionary political work was forbidden. Circles were regularly destroyed by police repression.
But Lenin ensured that the newspaper always immediately indicated to local circles the common plan and scope of the work. With a centralized newspaper, where the threads of all the work are brought together, the work didn’t always have to start from scratch when a circle was dismantled: “2–3 energetic people are enough to build new youth circles in a few weeks.”
Today, police repression does not threaten to destroy our cells on a regular basis. But the underlying idea is true a thousand times. Communist Revolution should help you and everyone else create new cells in new places, businesses, and schools, with 2–3 energetic people. All you need is a revolutionary newspaper—the party in your backpack.
If you build continually with it, if you agitate by defending the positions exposed it it, if you organize discussions around its content, if you draw inspiration from its reports, if you send in your own contributions, we guarantee you’ll become a class-conscious revolutionary cadre, capable of building cells everywhere, who learns to independently assess new situations and influence them.
From the workers’ paper to a mass party
All this did not remain in Lenin’s declarations of intent or in the pages of What is to be done? Bolshevik newspapers, the Iskra and its successors, have played a central, leading role in party building throughout the history of Bolshevism.
At every stage, the revolutionary party develops with the newspaper, through the newspaper, on the basis of the newspaper. At every stage in the party’s development, the newspaper was published more frequently and distributed more widely.
With their newspapers, the Bolsheviks succeeded in creating a network of cells united by a common understanding, capability of carrying out revolutionary work. At the height of the pre-revolutionary phase in 1912-14, Pravda was selling 40 to 60 thousand copies… a day! Roughly half were sold on the streets, the other half inside factories.
It was read collectively and discussed everywhere. It’s testimony to the Bolsheviks’ fusion with the vanguard of the working class. Pravda was the party’s “collective organizer”. Through the newspaper, they had established a network of links and correspondents in every factory.
The debacle of the First World War set the Bolsheviks back. But the Bolshevik workers had been at the school of Iskra and Pravda for years, had been trained in Lenin’s ideas and methods, and were therefore capable of thinking independently. This could not be destroyed.
These class-conscious Bolsheviks, who numbered just 8,000 at the start of 1917, provided the scaffolding needed to win over the vanguard of the working class, then the overwhelming majority of the working class and finally the peasants to the revolutionary program during the year of the revolution.
This is the tradition of Bolshevism that we defend. If the fighters of the Revolutionary Communist Party absorb and assimilate these lessons, if they learn to apply them autonomously, every day and everywhere, and to put them energetically into practice, together we can lay the first stones to build, together with the world’s working class, the most gigantic and beautiful building in the history of mankind.
