On the 109th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Revolutionary Communists of America held its largest Marxist School ever in New York City. Over the weekend of November 7–8, 384 communists traveled from near and far to deepen their revolutionary education.

Besides the five boroughs, comrades and guests came from across the Atlantic seaboard, including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Albany, New Brunswick, New Haven, Pittsburgh, Portland, ME, Providence, and Raleigh-Durham, as well as Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas–Fort Worth, Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Diego, and Denver. We even had one guest from Puerto Rico!

The New York School was the grand finale of the RCA’s nationwide Marxist School series, following successful schools in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

The weekend opened with a discussion of Friedrich Engels’s excellent introductory work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The capitalist class and their apologists insist that socialism is a utopian pipe dream and incompatible with human nature. For Marxists, however, our conviction in the socialist transformation of society arises from a scientific study of capitalism’s development and its insoluble contradictions.

In striving to maximize profits, the capitalists have conjured economic wonders that dwarf the civilizational achievements of all hitherto society—including a worldwide division of labor. This has created the material basis for a society of abundance, yet the system that created these possibilities condemns millions to poverty and desperation.

The growing crisis is bringing wider layers into contact with Marxist ideas, and revolutionaries need a scientific understanding of the world to explain these developments and link up with the newest members of the proletarian vanguard.

General strikes in Italy and France, and the ongoing housing protests in Spain—the “red autumn” in Europe is a foretaste of the class struggling coming to America.

Trump’s defeat in the midterms was the working class’s revenge for its worsening living conditions these past two years, just two years after they punished the Democrats for Bidenflation and the genocide in Gaza. The boiling rage felt by millions of workers has no class-independent political expression, caught in the straightjacket of the ruling class’s two-party system. What we need is a mass, independent working-class party with a strong foundation in the only ideas that can unite workers and fight back effectively: the ideas of Marxism.

A School of Revolutionary Education

Over the course of 14 sessions, comrades examined the history of the class struggle, Marxist philosophy, economics, revolutionary strategy, and even culture.

John Peterson, executive editor of The Communist, detailed the events of Bacon’s Rebellion and the origins of American racism. In 1676, a coalition of poor farmers, white indentured servants, and enslaved Africans staged an uprising that burned down Jamestown and forced Virginia’s governor to flee. In the decades that followed, colonial officials pursued a policy of racialized slavery to divide the exploited and prevent the united struggle of whites and Blacks. Featured in his new book, Revolution and Counterrevolution in America, this history exposes the class interests behind the “original sin” of American racism.

To understand class society, Marxists have to understand its economic foundations. Charlotte Papin outlined the contradictions inherent in capitalism, and how they inevitably lead to crises.

Erika Roedl explained why the Great Depression happened, when global production plummeted and the ruling class threw tens of millions into unemployment. The speculation preceding the crash of 1929 has eerie parallels with the gambling on Wall Street today.

Turning to the so-called “sewer socialism” of yesterday and today, Tom Trottier looked in particular at the emergence of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Tom contrasted the modest goals of democratic socialists today with those of the Marxist-led Liverpool City Council in 1980s Britain, showing how communists can use elected positions to organize workers around an independent class program. However, preserving the gains won through that struggle ultimately requires overthrowing capitalism.

In another session, comrades explored the limitations of reformism in Chile. Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government nationalized key industries and froze rents, generating enormous hopes in a parliamentary road to socialism. The Chilean ruling class and US imperialism were prepared to drown the movement in blood to defend their property and power, but neither Allende nor the Chilean Stalinists were willing to lean on working-class mobilization against the counterrevolution. After the US-backed coup of September 11, 1973, the country suffered 17 years of military dictatorship. This defeat remains an essential lesson for a new generation drawn toward democratic socialism.

Bryce Gordon chronicled the Communist Party USA’s growth in the 1930s, when it gained significant influence among workers and the oppressed nationwide—and then the party’s decline following its class-collaborationist mistakes.

We also discussed the history of American Trotskyism from 1945 to 1984, led off by Steve Iverson. He recounted the Trotskyists’ internal disputes and failures, which stemmed from their lack of understanding of Trotsky’s dialectical-materialist method. Only by learning from both the successes and failures of past revolutionaries can we build a party worthy of leading the American working class.

We also took up the claim of postcolonial theorists that Marxism is allegedly “Eurocentric.” In the colonial world, the local ruling classes are fundamentally subservient to foreign, imperialist capital, such that the working classes there must establish a class-independent policy.

Andrew Wagner likewise traced the history of American imperialism’s crimes, from World War II to the Cold War and the current collapse of its unipolar hegemony. Dripping blood and dirt from every pore, American imperialism’s hypocritical propaganda about “defending democracy” was thoroughly exposed. The utter disgust toward these crimes, renewed by the genocide in Gaza, is drawing millions of young people toward revolutionary conclusions.

Jarrett Brown discussed the Marxist theory of knowledge, which offers a consistent materialist explanation for how humanity proves its understanding of the world through practical activity. Our species continually reshapes the world to suit its needs, but under class society the consequences of these pursuits more often than not get out of our control.

In a similar vein, Abadie Ludlam spoke on the recent development of artificial intelligence. AI is changing how we work, learn, and think; it’s also central to the fortunes of the world’s largest monopolies and the competition between the imperialist powers. Revolutionaries today have to explain the limitations of AI and its stifled potential under capitalism, while challenging the doomsday predictions around so-called “artificial general intelligence.”

Marxism is a science that seeks to understand the world in its entirety, and Jon Lange addressed the accusation that Marxists reduce everything to economics and politics in his session on Marxism and Art. Marx often quoted the Roman playwright Terence, “I am human, and nothing that is human is alien to me.” Art does not exist outside of our class society. It is a product of human history—shaped by the material conditions in which we live—and expresses humanity’s efforts to understand the world and our place in it.

Building a Party for Revolution

Antonio Balmer, managing editor of The Communist, concluded our last session by recounting the momentous events of 1917’s Russian Revolution, the greatest event in human history. For the first time, the working class overthrew capitalism and fought off the ensuing counterrevolution. The Bolsheviks’ years of theoretical training and their work among the masses had forged a party capable of leading that struggle.

While Antonio mentioned that there is no simple, step-by-step guide for building a revolutionary party, studying the history of the only successful socialist revolution is indispensable. Examining the events, hearing the stories, imagining what it was like to be one of the revolutionaries living through such an earth-shattering event—the audience was in rapture. As one comrade attested, “You realize it’s possible, and that capitalism can be overthrown.”

The gravity of the task ahead of us was palpable. Through our communist fundraiser and raffle, comrades raised an incredible $20,332. Likewise, because of the comrades’ enthusiasm for Marxist education, our bookstore collected an additional $18,100.

In his closing remarks, John Peterson reflected on how far the RCA has come since our organization’s first New York Marxist School in 2008, which hosted just ten people in a cold, windowless basement. By comparison, this year’s school was “a stone’s throw from Times Square.” It has taken years of patient work by comrades who committed their lives to building this party, through personal and organizational setbacks.

John reminded us, “Our task isn’t merely to learn Marxism, but to acquire it, to absorb it, to really make it a part of our daily lives.” Speaking on the dialectical concept of “the adjacent possible” from evolutionary biology, he explained:

At any given moment based on what’s come before, a range of new possibilities emerge through the infinite reconfiguration of matter and motion through space and time…

You acquire more understanding, you read other Marxist works, you analyze current events, you read articles, you attend cell meetings, you discuss with your comrades. Over time, the understanding that you have of Marxism becomes much more refined and nuanced. The connections of many interrelated concepts of Marxism become clearer and clearer, and applying them to living reality gets easier…

Combined with another dialectical concept, punctuated equilibria,

It’s normal, and even necessary frankly, for bursts of progress in your understanding to be followed by periods of apparent stagnation—or even regression. You can feel like you’re getting dumber … but if you stick it out, you realize it works in the opposite direction as well, and those periodic plateaus are followed by periods of exponential growth.

There is no substitute for putting in the time to study these ideas, and to do so deliberately.

The RCA’s adjacent possible has grown a hundred times over since 2008. The task now is for every member to carry this school’s enthusiasm into their daily work, because the molecular process of party building is part and parcel to the molecular process of revolution.

The movements developing in Europe indicate the scale of the battles ahead. As capitalism drives more workers into struggle, the need for revolutionary leadership becomes even more urgent.

“The objective factors,” John reiterated, “for the socialist revolution are beyond rotten ripe, but the subjective factor, the political leadership for the working class is in a lamentable state … the difference between going into a prerevolutionary situation with 1,000 members versus 5,000 members or 10,000 or, better yet, 50,000 simply can’t be overstated. As someone once said, quantity has a quality all of its own.”

Closing the school out, the whole room boomed with passionate renditions of The Internationale and Bandiera Rossa.

Our Marxist Schools have concluded, but they have composed a “galaxy of talent”—as the founder of our tendency, Ted Grant, would have said. We will be uploading the discussions from these schools in the coming weeks.

The work of building the party is just beginning. Join the RCA, and help us slay the most reactionary force on the planet from the belly of the beast.