Not long ago, communists met with shock and ridicule in the United States. With the collapse of the USSR, US imperialism became the dominant superpower and promised an era of peace and prosperity. To be a revolutionary in those days seemed utopian and absurd.

But today this has been turned on its head. Capitalism is proving itself to be a living nightmare for billions. There are currently 32 ongoing wars, affecting 2 billion people who live in the conflict zones worldwide. According to the UN, more than 1 in every 70 people on the planet were forcibly displaced in 2023, and 37.2 million people currently face emergency levels of hunger.

Are humanity’s problems really unsolvable? Do we just have to be “practical” and work within the system? No! All of these problems are preventable. At root, they are caused by a system where the wealth humanity produces is hoarded by a tiny gang of capitalist robbers. The vast majority, the working class, is responsible for producing all new wealth in society. The crime of communists is that we point out the truth: the capitalists need us, but we don’t need them.

The Revolutionary Communists of America are full of revolutionary optimism. A better world is possible if we build a formidable party which can lead the working class to political and economic power. Such a party will eventually need to explain to the masses of the working class that solving their problems requires a fundamental break with capitalism. This is an enormous task. Fortunately, we can learn from previous revolutions to guide our work today—above all, the experience of the successful Russian Revolution of 1917, led by the Bolshevik Party.

Revolutionary traditions

The Russian Revolution proved that the working class is able to run society, and inspired revolutionaries all over the world to follow its example. Parties of the newly-formed Communist International sprang up all over the world, often tossed immediately into the turbulent waters of revolution, for instance in Germany in 1918 and 1923, Hungary in 1919, Italy in 1920, and elsewhere. But those revolutions were defeated, isolating the Russian Revolution and, eventually, giving rise to a bureaucratic clique around Stalin.

In this process, the Communist International ceased to be a revolutionary academy, causing further defeats and strengthening the ruling caste in Russia. Throughout this period, Leon Trotsky, who led the Russian Revolution alongside Lenin, kept the flame of genuine Marxism alive. His work to preserve the lessons of the Russian Revolution culminated in the 1938 founding of the Fourth International.

In preparation for the founding congress of the Fourth International, Trotsky distilled the essence of Bolshevism and the best lessons of the Communist International—to transmit them to a new generation of revolutionaries—in a manifesto: The Death Agony of Capital and the Tasks of the Fourth International, better known simply as The Transitional Program. To this day, it remains a masterpiece of Marxist strategy and tactics.

Then as now, reformists took the wrong lesson from defeats, making excuses for why revolution is impossible: the working class is not ready to rule, they’re too backwards, or capitalism is too powerful. Yet capitalism was in the midst of a historic crisis—the Great Depression—and was increasingly unable to afford the luxury of bourgeois “democracy.” The whole world was hurtling toward another world war. The Transitional Program summarizes the situation:

The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.

These lines still accurately describe the fundamental problem facing the working class today, although there is one important difference. We are not facing mass counterrevolution after a historic defeat of the working-class movement internationally. On the contrary, the giant of the American working class is fresh for the battles ahead. What is missing is a fighting party to bind them together and give voice to express their revolutionary aspirations—this is the mission of the RCA.

The role of the revolutionary program 

The revolutionary party is not just an amalgamation of individuals, or funds, or offices—it is, above all, the ideas, methods, and perspectives of Marxism. All of this is summed up in the program that the party fights for. From the beginnings of the American socialist movement, debates have raged about whether the program should include “the whole litter of bourgeois reforms” or if it should exclusively recognize the principle of socialist revolution.

Counterposing the two like this often had tragicomic results, like this leaflet distributed to striking NYC transit workers 100 years ago:

Get ready for armed revolution to overthrow the Capitalist Government and create a Workers Government—as your brothers did in Russia. Stop asking merely for a little more wages. (Quoted in Roots of American Communism by Theodore Draper)

For Marxists, the question is not simply a black-and-white choice between “reforms or revolution.” Through the struggle for reforms, the working class becomes conscious of its collective strength and its role in society. The struggle for reforms is in fact a necessary part of the preparation for the socialist revolution. Reformism, on the other hand, accepts the limitations of capitalism, acting as a brake on the movement. The idea that capitalism is inviolable is what really lies behind the pressure to “be realistic” and fight for immediate, “practical” demands.

The Transitional Program lays out a method of linking up the maximum program of proletarian revolution with the minimum program struggling for partial reforms along the way. The program is not a wishlist of disconnected demands, but a dialectical whole, beginning with the vital needs of the working class today and leading inexorably to the need to overthrow capitalism.

By advancing demands, not based on what capitalism can afford to give, but on what is objectively possible given the development of the productive forces, the transitional program reveals that the primary obstacle to further human progress is the capitalist system itself. Skillful use of the program creates a “bridge” for the masses to reach revolutionary conclusions:

It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat. (The Transitional Program)

This does not mean watering down our demands to meet the “present level of consciousness.” We must use the program as a tool to overcome the ideological prejudices inherited from bourgeois society, understanding that mass working-class consciousness is subject to significant changes on the basis of events. There is no way to adapt reality to fit the current level of consciousness. Our task is to raise consciousness to meet the tasks posed by history.

In order to “build a bridge” we must be capable of showing concretely how capitalism is incapable of resolving the problems facing humanity. We should aim for precision, backing up our slogans and demands with facts, figures, and arguments. These demands are brought together and lead to the call for a workers’ government—the idea that the capitalists should no longer rule over society.

Bolshevik methods

The working class, due to its role in capitalist production, is the only force capable of transforming the program of socialist revolution into reality. But in order for us to win the working class to the program, we must first weld together the most conscious and devoted individuals into a party capable of transmitting these ideas into the movement.

Of course, it would be “ideal” if we could skip intermediate steps and organize the working class directly under the banner of revolutionary communism. But mass consciousness does not develop in a straight line leading directly to revolution. In fact, it tends to lag behind events and seek the path of least resistance. While the advanced layer of the class may understand that capitalism is the chief obstacle facing humanity, the masses will come to understand this through the experience of the class struggle, testing existing parties, leaders, and slogans.

The communists must struggle to make ourselves a recognized force in the workers’ movement. We cannot stand on the sidelines issuing critiques and denunciations, or rejecting the demands of the workers as the early American communists did. The only way to win authority is through active participation in the struggles of the working class, putting forward positive demands, which elaborate how communists would advance and widen the struggle.

Trotsky writes in The Transitional Program that Marxists, following the method of the Bolsheviks, must, “Critically orient themselves at each new stage and advance such slogans as will aid the striving of the workers for independent politics, deepen the class struggle of these politics, destroy reformist and pacifist illusions, strengthen the connection of the vanguard with the masses, and prepare the revolutionary conquest of power.”

In 1917, the most burning desire of the Russian workers and poor peasants was for, “Peace, Bread, and Land.” But the crisis of Russian capitalism made those demands impossible to achieve under capitalism. The Bolsheviks put forward this slogan in the context of a broader socialist program, helping the Russian workers and peasants realize that only a socialist revolution could address their problems.

Workers councils, called “soviets,” had sprung up all over the country. At the beginning of the revolution, the Bolsheviks were only a minority in the soviets, but they advanced the slogan: “All Power to the Soviets!” They were appealing to the toiling masses to rely on their own strength, in effect, saying: “If we Bolsheviks seem too extreme, then call on your own reformist leaders to take power and carry out this program.”

Those leaders refused to carry the struggle through to the end, and they were exposed as a brake on the movement. As Trotsky writes, “The demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: ‘Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!’ had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”

Trotsky later explained that reformist leaders are often caught in a bind—on the one hand, exploiting the movement to boost their own authority, while, on the other, trying to hold it within safe bounds for the system. When the revolutionary party applies positive pressure on this contradiction, the reformists are either forced along by the movement, or exposed for holding things back.

It is precisely through active participation in the struggles of the working class that communists can raise our banner and win authority as the most resolute champions of the movement, struggling until the end. In order to do this, we must learn to wield our program to raise class consciousness, confidence, and unity.

The voice of America’s communist generation

In What Is To Be Done? Lenin explained that the role of the revolutionary press, the party, and its individual members is to be a “tribune of the people”:

[One] who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.

The early years of the American revolutionary movement did produce such tribunes in figures like Eugene Debs. “I abhorred slavery in every form. I yearned to see all men and all women free,” he said. When he finally grasped the necessity of revolution, it seized him with a wild fury. Massive crowds gathered outside of his train to hear him speak about socialism. He couldn’t control it—the truth burned so bright in him that it spilled out of him, choosing its own words and molding its own sentences. The secret of all great orators was, he explained, “The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence.”

Debs arrived at his revolutionary convictions through painstaking experience, face-to-face with the brutality of racism, women’s oppression, and child labor. Instead of a scientific worldview, he relied on instinct to improvise his ideas. Unlike Debs, we have the benefit of all the best methods of the class struggle condensed in the form of Marxist theory. We must take the sharpest weapons from this armory and master them.

This is what Trotsky meant when he explained to his followers that,

The program is the articulation of the necessity that we learned to understand, and since necessity is the same for all members of the class, we can reach a common understanding of the tasks, and the understanding of this necessity is the program.

If we learn to wield the transitional method, we will become the voice of America’s communist generation.

Workers and youth are drowning in propaganda designed to justify the system and the interests of the ruling class. US imperialism, through the mirror of its own media, fashions itself as the force of moderation and peace talks while sending tens of billions to wage war. Only 18% of the US population has confidence in what they read in newspapers. The only people more deceitful are the politicians, who enjoy the confidence of just 9%.

When real life feels at odds with the nonstop stream of lies from the media and politicians, clear revolutionary perspectives will strike like a bolt of lightning—sudden, illuminating, and impossible to ignore. In the heat of a struggle, when workers begin looking for answers, communists should be there to concretize their demands, adding structure and direction to the struggle.

Another world is possible

Communists should take up concrete demands which meet the most burning issues of the working class today and show that the only road to achieving them is class war. “To the extent that this is done,” explained the Communist International, “the working class will become aware that for it to live, capitalism must die.”

Capitalism means horror without end for billions around the world. Yet, there is no objective reason for anyone to go hungry when the planet is capable of feeding more than the current population. In the US alone, the FDA estimates somewhere between 30–40% of the food supply is wasted.

Meanwhile, the Democrats and Republicans are both fully committed to continue shoveling staggering sums of money to protect “American interests” abroad. Despite both parties’ attempts to hide it, they are in full agreement on the fundamentals: defending the interests of US imperialism. There has been little disagreement, for instance, on the need to send tens of billions to prop up Israel and fuel NATO’s proxy war with Russia.

As one Brookings commentator concluded, analyzing Trump and Harris’s policies on military spending, “The differences are slight, and the pledges about where either candidate would take the defense budget going forward are imprecise and thus, indistinguishable . . . as best I can tell, the real differences boil down to civil-military relations and also to possible decisions on the use of force.”

In other words, the key difference comes down to whose finger deploys the military—internationally or, in the case of social unrest, at home.

The capitalists would have no cause for alarm if their system were capable of delivering a decent life. But even in the wealthiest country in the world, the vast majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and two-thirds would be unable to handle a $1,000 emergency. While the rate of inflation has slowed down, its cumulative magnitude has eaten into purchasing power. Last year saw a leap in the number of hungry households from 17 to 18 million. On top of this, the child poverty rate more than doubled the year before. No wonder 69% believe that the ”American Dream” is dead.

Both capitalist parties hearken back to their version of “the good ol’ days”—the Democrats even pledge to lift millions of children out of poverty!—but they both uphold the system that exploits and oppresses the working class at home and abroad. This explains the rising polarization, political violence, and fears that the US is headed for a civil war in the next decade.

In one poll, respondents were asked what this civil war would revolve around: Democrats vs. Republicans? Cities vs. rural towns? No. By far, the most popular answer was a war between the rich and the poor.

The bourgeoisie are already waging a one-sided class war. We need a party to unite the working class in the struggle for a revolutionary program. America’s revolutionary communists have a duty to become the living embodiment of this program and show the concrete way forward.

Last year, a record 250,000 people were living without any shelter—despite there being over 15 million vacant homes. This coincided with the largest real increase in rents in over a decade, according to the Census Bureau, which noted that nearly half of all renters spent 30% or more of their income on housing costs. A workers’ government would combat homelessness and skyrocketing rents through a rational plan of production—expanding safe, quality housing for all with rents fixed at no more than 10% of wages.

Prices are rising while real wages have remained stagnant for decades. In 1973, median family income was $12,050. If this had kept up with inflation, it would currently be $86,700, but the latest figure is $80,610—a 7% pay cut! Meanwhile, there are more billionaires than ever, and just the top 10 individuals have a net worth of $1.2 trillion. A workers’ government would guarantee jobs or a place in education for all and launch a massive campaign of public works to upgrade infrastructure, transportation, and housing.

Far from stifling innovation, a democratically planned economy would eliminate the shackles of the profit motive, harnessing the enormous creativity of the working class by engaging them directly in the running of society. All that stands between us and that future is a system hellbent on preserving the power and profits of a tiny minority. There are just 2,781 billionaires on the planet idly growing their hoard while billions scramble to survive. Another world is possible, we just have to fight for it.

There is now a fresh generation of communist revolutionaries in the United States. It is up to the RCI and the RCA to become the party Trotsky spoke of when he said:

There never was a greater task on the earth. Upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility.

 

Our party demands each of us, totally and completely. Let the philistines hunt their own individuality in empty space. For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.

 

Yes, our party takes each one of us wholly. But in return it gives to every one of us the highest happiness: the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future, that one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind, and that one’s life will not have been lived in vain.