When it comes to favorable conditions for organizing communists in the US, it’s hard to imagine a better time than the present. The fantastic progress of the Revolutionary Communists of America over the past year has been a case in point.
It all started with the momentous realization that the number of people in the US who consider themselves communists—and are looking to take action—make up an astonishingly vast layer of the population. In order to become an effective fighting force, this layer must be organized into a party. What began last summer as the most successful recruitment campaign in our history—the “Are You a Communist” campaign—culminated in the founding of a new party for America’s communist generation.
Over the last 16 months, we have received more than 6,000 membership applications through our online join form. We’ve more than doubled our forces nationally—and we know we’ve still barely scratched the surface.
Across our top ten largest branches, our membership has grown by an average of 267% since the start of last year. These include New York City, Dallas–Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, St. Louis, and Phoenix. Among these, our five fastest growing cities more than tripled their ranks, with 580% growth in Dallas, 478% in Seattle, 414% in Los Angeles, 250% in Chicago, and 200% in Boston.
Even these figures don’t capture the full extent of the party’s transformation. More than numerical growth, what has rapidly turned the RCA into what it is today is the type of recruits we’ve been encountering. These are not just “paper members” who sign up online and pay dues once a year. In every city where we have a presence, our party cells have been flooded with some of the most serious, dedicated revolutionary workers and youth we’ve ever met, determined to build a force capable of gathering millions into a mass communist party.
This attitude—which flows from our unwavering confidence in the ideas of Marxism, and our vow to bury capitalism in our lifetime—is what characterizes the spirit of the RCA.
Hundreds of millions view inaugural RCA march
The day the RCA announced its arrival to the world resulted in an unexpected viral moment. On February 25, hundreds of comrades gathered in watch parties from coast to coast to witness a live broadcast from New York announcing the launch of the new party, analyzing the historic process that produced the communist generation, and outlining the tactics and methods that would allow us to gather this layer into our ranks. The meeting was followed by a communist march and rally in downtown Brooklyn, complete with as many red flags as comrades could find.
The Revolutionary Communists of America are forming a party! After the launch rally, we hit the street in downtown Brooklyn to say it loud & clear: the communists are here! #Communism pic.twitter.com/i4xapzQFSC
— Revolutionary Communists of America (@communistsus) February 26, 2024
Footage of our march was picked up by international media, quickly gathering more than 200 million views across platforms. We were then inundated by membership applications in response to a video explaining why we were launching the party. We also received messages of solidarity from people as far away as China, Russia, India, and beyond, expressing excitement and inspiration at this bold initiative from within the heart of world imperialism.
Launch of The Communist
Unlike the “online left”—whose activity consists entirely of frivolous debates on social media—the RCA was formed as an active party to fight for revolution in the real world. That’s why, in April, we launched The Communist as a means for physically bringing our ideas into the streets and into the hands of other revolutionaries who have yet to get organized.
We’ve now printed over 50,000 copies across nine issues. It’s the collective product of hundreds of communist correspondents who wrote political analysis and regular reports of their party-building activities. In addition to educating our ranks and periphery in Marxist perspectives, it’s a bulletin of our efforts to organize the communist generation, and a tool for engaging coworkers, friends, and classmates in discussions about the class struggle and the road to revolution.
To properly announce the arrival of The Communist—and the start of the largest communist recruitment campaign since WWII—we held outdoor rallies and marches in a dozen cities across the country on the first weekend in April.
The Seattle comrades sold 100 papers in the first few hours, and recruited new members on the spot. In New York, comrades held simultaneous recruitment activities and sold the paper in 12 locations around the city. The Minneapolis comrades’ march through downtown got the attention of the Chairman of the Minnesota GOP, who called on Republicans and Democrats to unite “in action to prevent the spread” of communism and exposing “the realities of the agenda of the Revolutionary Communists of America.” We wish them good luck with that!
“Communists of America” weekly podcast
In addition to our print media circulation, we also launched the “Communists of America” podcast to deliver weekly analysis in video and audio format. We recognized the importance of audio visual media after countless recruits reported that YouTube videos and leftist podcasts were instrumental to their political radicalization.
The first 30 episodes of the podcast have accumulated over 160,000 downloads, providing listeners with a regular stream of theory and perspectives. Most episodes are also packed full of audio clips submitted by comrades around the country—an audible reflection of a young, vibrant party spreading a consistent message: the communist generation is everywhere, and the RCA is organizing it into its party!
Dues-raising campaign and new headquarters in Manhattan
In the spring, we launched an internal dues-raising campaign, appealing to comrades to contribute the resources the party required to expand its staff and acquire a larger national headquarters. After political discussions throughout the cells about the opportunities and challenges ahead of the RCA, comrades resolved to pay “communist dues”—i.e., the equivalent of at least one day’s wage.
The spectacular success of this campaign is a testament to the serious devotion and commitment among the communist generation. The average rate of our member dues more than doubled, and our monthly dues income tripled since last summer. This has allowed the party to move its headquarters to a central location in Midtown Manhattan, five times larger than our previous office in Brooklyn. We’ve doubled our full time staff in New York and have enlarged all the departments, which are operating far more efficiently than ever before.
As just one example of this, our online bookstore, Marxistbooks.com, has seen its income more than double since the start of last year. The booming demand for the communist literature meant we needed to hire more staff to fulfill the growing volume of orders. The latest title we’ve just published is by John Peterson, Colossus: The Rise and Decline of US Imperialism—a timely book for a period characterized by the violent breakdown of the post-WWII global order.
Gaza Solidarity Encampment movement breaks out
In addition to the party’s internal progress, this has also been our most active year ever in terms of outward activity aimed at connecting with a wider layer of society. When the Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia University, RCA comrades wasted no time in showing up to support the movement and discuss revolutionary ideas.
During the first week, comrades reported that the crowd was extremely receptive to our views, with many students coming up to our comrades to buy a copy of The Communist with the slogan “Intifada until victory” printed in large words on the back cover. In the following weeks, comrades sold several hundred copies at more than 35 campuses across 20 cities, collecting contact information from over 60 new prospective members in the process.
Above all, our comrades energetically brought a class-war program into the movement: The demand for divestment needed to take the form of a fight for faculty and student control over the campuses; that the boards of directors needed to be replaced by boards of elected students, faculty, and campus workers; and that the demand for financial transparency should take the form of a fight to open the books of the universities and assert democratic control over the funds. In short, the communists argued that the movement should rely only on the power of the working class to carry out its program, instead of hoping campus administrators or the state would bend to mere “pressure.”
In May, when the UAW 4811 declared a political strike at the UC campuses in California, our comrades showed up in support at the picket lines with a program for how to escalate the struggle.
Founding World Congress of the new International
In June, a delegation of 40 RCA comrades traveled to Italy to attend the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist International. With activity in over 70 countries, the RCI links our efforts in the US to those of committed revolutionaries around the globe.
On top of being an enriching educational experience as a “World School of Communism,” the conference was an inspiring reminder that the deeply felt opposition to capitalism is shared by young workers in every part of the planet. Our efforts to give this sentiment an organized, disciplined expression also links us to the activities of thousands of revolutionaries worldwide.
RCA Founding Congress in Philadelphia
In July, hundreds of comrades from over 50 cities filed into the Pennsylvania Convention Center in downtown Philadelphia for the founding congress of the RCA. The proceedings of the congress clarified the perspectives and tasks on the road to organizing the first 10,000 members of our contemporary American edition of the Bolshevik Party. Delegates voted unanimously to approve the Party Manifesto. We also held a record-breaking financial collection, in addition to selling $25,000 worth of Marxist literature over the weekend.
We capped off the event with what some media outlets called a “Communist Mega March” which succeeded in getting the attention of figures like Elon Musk, who retweeted a video of it on X. The march arrived at Independence Hall for a rally with defiant speeches announcing that “the communist movement in this country is just getting started!”
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2024
“Class War 2024” Campaign
Coming back from the congress, the party launched into action with the Class War 2024 campaign. In response to this year’s presidential election, comrades flocked to campuses and working-class neighborhoods across the country, distributing posters, stickers, and leaflets by the thousands, knocking on doors and starting conversations on street corners with the message that neither candidate represents us, because both parties are tools of the ruling class.
In the thousands of interactions we had, the clear response we got time and again was, “You’re damn right! They don’t represent us!” As if any more proof were needed, the way our Class War message resonated with nearly everyone we met confirmed the enormous vacuum for revolutionary politics in a country brimming with class anger. What’s required is a well-organized force that can go out and energetically tap into this mood—and that’s what we did to the best of our ability this fall!
Coast-to-coast Marxist Schools
In October and November, the party organized Marxist schools in 13 cities (New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Boston, Detroit, Sacramento, New Brunswick, NJ, and Nauvoo, IL).
The purpose of these events was to accelerate the training of party cadres in the spirit of classical Leninism. The RCA is a cadre organization along the lines of the Bolshevik Party, which, as Lenin always insisted, rested on the “granite foundation” of Marxist theory. Only by deeply grounding our ranks in consistent revolutionary theory and a sense of history can we establish a professional framework sturdy enough to keep together a party of several thousand, and eventually tens of thousands.
Luigi Mangione: Ending the year with a bang
We knew at the start of 2024 that it would be an exciting year ripe with political opportunities, given the mood in society, the crisis of capitalism, and the timing of the presidential election. Our prognosis was proven more correct than we could have anticipated.
Perhaps no single event has captured the sense of boiling class rage coursing through the country as much as the assassination of an insurance CEO on his way to a shareholder’s meeting. The killing of a capitalist representing one of the most hated and parasitic industries has brought out messages of justified class hatred to a fevered pitch.
Polls have now confirmed statistically what the social media storm had shown anecdotally—huge numbers of the population feel sympathy for action for which Luigi Mangione has been charged. Among young people under 30 years old, a whopping 41% consider the killing “acceptable” to some degree!
The class-war methods we advocate are mass actions that harness the strength of the united working class, rather than individual targeted actions such as the assassination of CEOs. But the mass sympathy elicited by this act speaks volumes about the political vacuum in the US. For all the palpable class anger felt by millions, there is no mass organization giving it a coherent expression—at least not yet. The RCA is working hard to change that, and we’re confident that 2025 will be just as fruitful.
