The following is an abridged version of an organizational resolution that was discussed by RCA cells across the country and approved unanimously by the Second National Congress of the party in June 2025.

What kind of party are we building? At first glance, this question is straightforward. We’re building a revolutionary party for the overthrow of capitalism. As Leninists, we’re specifically building a cadre party along the lines of the Bolsheviks, in order to eventually become a mass party and provide revolutionary leadership for the working class.

But this is merely the starting point of an explanation. To the average person, terms like cadre, Bolshevism, or Leninism say little about our strategy. What does it mean to overthrow capitalism? Is that even possible in the 21st century? How does an organization our size intend to win the support of tens of millions of workers? What exactly are we doing to advance toward that goal?

A thorough understanding of Bolshevism is critical not only to our ability to recruit and convince others to devote themselves to our common effort, but also to understand what we’re trying to achieve as a party and why we’re going about it the way we are. Yet even for a comrade who joins the party after thorough discussion, these questions of strategy are not necessarily exhausted.

The reality is that the concept of Bolshevism, the goals of the RCA, the theoretical and philosophical worldview that underpins our strategy and program, the perspectives and analysis behind our revolutionary optimism, the rich traditions behind our methods, and the weight of the role we aim to play in future events are not easily conveyed in a concise form.

Social revolutions are preceded by immense ideological groundwork. Consider one of the most thorough transformations in history, the French Revolution, which toppled the feudal monarchy and ushered in capitalism nearly two and a half centuries ago. The entire process of the Enlightenment prepared the rising bourgeoisie for that momentous leap forward in human history. “The great men,” as Engels described the 18th century materialist thinkers, “who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists.”

The comrades of the RCA are now tasked with preparing the minds of our century for the coming proletarian revolution, which will be no less momentous than the bourgeois revolutions of the past, and will require far more preparation and ideological depth.

Considering the scale of the task, it’s not unusual for a comrade to spend months or even years active in the party before experiencing that moment when something “clicks” and deepens their understanding of what we’re trying to build. These qualitative tipping points in our grasp of Bolshevism will happen repeatedly at different levels over time, as a result of the dialectical nature of the learning process itself.

“Where to Begin?”—the fight for clarity

Lenin’s entire life constituted a battle for extreme clarity as to what kind of party the working class needed to come to power. His writing style and even his manner of speaking expressed his exclusive concern for transmitting a clear line of argument. “The leading feature in Lenin’s speeches, as in his whole work, is his directness of purpose,” wrote Trotsky. “What holds his speech together is not a formal plan, but a clear aim formed for today, that pierces the consciousness of his listeners like a splinter.” The same can be said of the meticulous precision of his polemical writings, aimed single-mindedly at making the reader understand a complex dialectical idea in simple terms.

And yet, despite Lenin’s characteristic clarity, he constantly found himself making a case that his opponents within the Marxist movement seemed unable to understand. The history of the Bolshevik Party resembles a series of internal disputes in which Lenin often found himself in a minority of one, even among comrades who shared his revolutionary objectives.

For instance, the classic founding statements of Bolshevism, “Where to Begin?” and What Is To Be Done?, read like polemics directed against people who stubbornly refused to understand Lenin’s argument. They were written at a time when industrial workers and the youth of the intelligentsia were spontaneously forming Marxist study circles, distributing leaflets, and smuggling literature. The popularity of Marxism exploded across Russia after overtaking the influence of anarchism and liberalism, which had dominated the Narodnik revolutionary movement in the 1870s and 1880s. By the turn of the century, everyone in the Marxist movement could see the need for a strong revolutionary party capable of uniting these scattered efforts into a single struggle.

The problem was, there was little agreement as to what course of action would lead to the creation of such a party, how centralized and structured it should be, and so on. This was the question Lenin set out to answer in his article, “Where to Begin?” published in Iskra in 1901. “In recent years the question of ‘what is to be done’ has confronted Russian Social-Democrats [Marxists] with particular insistence,” he says in the opening paragraph. “It is not a question of what path we must choose, but of what practical steps we must take upon the known path and how they shall be taken. It is a question of a system and plan of practical work.”

Lenin’s opponents at this time were a trend called the “Economists.” They alternated between an insistence on “bread and butter” issues, and agitation to “form assault columns” to storm the tsarist regime. Lenin responded by asking, in effect, with what army?

The immediate task of our Party is not to summon all available forces for the attack right now, but to call for the formation of a revolutionary organization capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in name alone, that is, an organization ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak and use it to build up and consolidate the fighting forces suitable for the decisive struggle … We should not only be clear on the nature of the organization that is needed and its precise purpose, but we must elaborate a definite plan for an organization, so that its formation may be undertaken from all aspects.

The substance of the plan he laid out was for a cadre organization of disciplined, professional revolutionaries united by strict ideological adherence to Marxism. But the necessary unity and centralism could not be decreed or imposed. It could only be established on the basis of thorough ideological unanimity. The amateurism, eclecticism, and narrow localism that plagued the movement at this stage could only be overcome by uniting around theory and a program. And the only practical step for achieving this was through the instrument of the revolutionary press.

In our opinion, the starting point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organization, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organization, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment, when interest in politics and in questions of socialism has been aroused among the broadest strata of the population.

It’s not that Lenin was any less eager for a full-scale class war that could lead the charge and topple the ruling class. It’s that he understood the steps that would lead to the creation of such a revolutionary party—and his opponents in the polemic did not. They agreed on a destination, but not on the strategy that could successfully arrive at the goal. Lenin didn’t just want revolutionary “action” or “agitation” in the abstract—he wanted effective, centralized, and systematic revolutionary action, and agitation capable of transmitting a unified message—a consistent Marxist program—to the entire working class of the country.

Today, faced with the numerous crises of our time, we encounter a similar impatience on the left to “do something now.” From mutual aid, to various forms of single-issue activism, the appeal of “direct action” reflects a healthy desire to get off the sidelines and achieve something concrete. The problem is that none of these efforts represent a genuine step toward the solution. If we recognize that capitalism is the root of society’s problems, and that the working class is the only force capable of transforming society through a revolution, then the strategic question we face is the same one Lenin posed: how do we build a party capable of bringing the working class to power in our lifetime?

Theory and program

Trotsky described Bolshevism as “above all, a philosophy of history and a political conception.” However, he also pointed out that it was “not merely a doctrine, but a system of revolutionary training for the proletarian uprising.” In other words, it’s not just a political stance, or a “variety of leftism” among many others. Its function is to prepare the general staff for a mass revolutionary party with all the necessary qualities, skills, methods, and ideas “as would prevent them from drifting when the hour for their October strikes.”

The process of training cadres and developing them into a political force capable of leading a revolution necessarily passes through stages. In Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, Alan Woods explains that clarifying the theory and program in the minds of the cadres lays the foundation for everything else that comes after it.

The Marxist party, from the very beginning, must base itself on theory and program, which is the summing up of the general historical experience of the proletariat. Without this, it is nothing. The building of a revolutionary party always begins with the slow and painstaking work of assembling and educating the cadres, which forms the backbone of the party throughout its entire lifetime.

In the building of a revolutionary party, ideas come first. The principles and theoretical outlook ingrained in the cadres sets the subsequent course of the party, by clarifying the question, what are people being recruited to?

“Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite,” Lenin wrote in the first issue of Iskra, “we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and hinder its radical elimination.” If the party’s theory and program are compromised or watered down at this crucial early stage, the inevitable result will be a disorientation under the impact of future pressures.

Today, we can see this clearly in the failed attempts at “multi-tendency” or “big-tent” organizations, built on the premise that “the left” should set aside any “small differences” and unite—the more the merrier, every member can do what they choose and defend whatever program and strategy that pops into their head. In fact, fewer people rowing in the same direction will travel farther than a larger boat with many people all rowing in different directions.

This idea runs like a thread through the history of Bolshevism and the writings of Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin described the earliest stage of the movement in Russia, beginning in the early 1880s, when there were only a handful of Marxists in the entire country:

This was the period of the rise and consolidation of the theory and program of Social-Democracy. The adherents of the new trend in Russia were very few in number. Social-Democracy existed without a working-class movement, and as a political party it was at the embryonic stage of development.

Marxism made its entry onto the Russian political landscape with zero influence or roots among the working class. What the Marxists had at this initial “embryonic stage” was ideas. Just as a single-celled embryo contains all the genetic information necessary to develop into the trillions of cells that make a fully developed organism, the theory and program of a cadre organization can be likened to the DNA of a full-fledged mass party. In both cases, quality is paramount.

The genetic code of an embryo has to account for the incredible variety of diverse cellular formations, in which small variations in the code can have an outsized impact on the gene expression of the organism. Similarly, the revolutionary party needs to be able to develop through various phases, creating increasingly sophisticated structures, all while knowing how to respond correctly to the infinite variability of concrete political events. If the world outlook of the party is consistently materialist and scientific, if it can understand the events that are unfolding in real time, if it can see where events are heading, and how they fit into a broader process, then the party will be able to keep its bearings. There is no other way to face up to such a complex task than to have the correct ideological “genetic code” from the earliest stage.

In 1940, Trotsky summed up “the history of the past 50 years of factional struggles in the labor movement,” as a struggle to clarify these strategic and philosophical questions above all else, consciously counterposing them to the “concrete” tactical concerns which flow from them:

In every principled conflict, without a single exception, the Marxists invariably sought to face the party squarely with the fundamental problems of doctrine and program, considering that only under this condition could the “concrete” questions find their proper place and proportion … To those enamored with “concrete political questions” Lenin invariably explained that our politics is not of conjunctural but of principled character; that tactics are subordinate to strategy; that for us the primary concern of every political campaign is that it guide the workers from the particular questions to the general, that it teach them the nature of modern society and the character of its fundamental forces (Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism).

The entire concept of Bolshevism rests on the ideological bedrock of a Marxist world view—absolute theoretical clarity on materialism and dialectics. When this clarity is translated into organizational forms, it gives rise to the characteristic traits of a Bolshevik Party: disciplined centralism and professionalism, and an iron will and determination to smash all obstacles in the way of victory.

The essential function of a cadre organization is to imbue a relatively small number of people with the ability to quickly train and lead a much larger force when the situation calls for it. In a military context, it refers to “a key group of officers and enlisted personnel necessary to establish and train a new military unit.” The officer corps of an army is educated for years in military academies to instill it with the necessary qualifications to raise and train military units in the shortest possible space of time, and lead them into combat. A revolutionary party requires a similar capacity. Its general staff cannot be improvised in the heat of the moment, but must be selected, assembled, and prepared long in advance.

Why we study history

Part of the challenge in conveying and absorbing revolutionary politics is that we must synthesize the entire experience and historical memory of the class struggle across generations. A social revolution is the ultimate political crisis with life-and-death stakes, and although 1917 was preceded by the “dress rehearsal” of the 1905 Revolution, history rarely offers a revolutionary party the luxury of a “test run.”

When we are confronted with a revolutionary situation in the future, we will not have the benefit of firsthand experience or practical hindsight to draw from. Our only hope for successfully navigating the storm and stress of an upheaval and of withstanding the titanic pressures it entails is to thoroughly study previous instances when the working class moved to take power. With each particular revolution we delve into deeply, we arrive closer to a generalized understanding of the dynamics that govern all revolutions—i.e., the laws of mass psychology, the way consciousness is transformed, the process that leads the state apparatus to fracture, the role of various parties and leaders; in short, the “mechanics” of the class war.

Trotsky underscored this point in Lessons of October:

Had we failed to study the Great French Revolution, the revolution of 1848, and the Paris Commune, we should never have been able to achieve the October Revolution, even though we passed through the experience of the year 1905. And after all, we went through this “national” experience of ours basing ourselves on deductions from previous revolutions, and extending their historical line. Afterwards, the entire period of the counter-revolution was taken up with the study of the lessons to be learned and the deductions to be drawn from the year 1905.

The task of familiarizing ourselves with the rich history of working-class struggle takes considerable time. Our class has risen up to seize control of its destiny on numerous occasions since 1917. We need our cadres to be familiar not only with Russia in 1917, but also the revolutions in Germany, Spain, China, Cuba, Chile, Iran, the postwar colonial revolutions, and the revolutionary wave of 1968. Not to mention the revolutionary history of the US and its labor movement, and the revolutions of this century in Venezuela, the Arab Spring of 2011, Greece in 2015, the dozens of uprisings in 2019, Sri Lanka 2022, etc.

Each of these events unfolded under particular circumstances that need to be grasped in their own concrete context, in order to recognize the patterns and laws at play. The time it takes to absorb the lessons of these complex events is precisely one of the reasons a revolutionary leadership cannot be improvised in the heat of events. But it’s necessary training for a party that aspires to participate in these kinds of events as a leadership, in order to guide them successfully to victory—as we intend to do in our century.

The purpose of dedicating so much time to extensive discussions of these events in our cell meetings is not to engage in a dry academic exercise, but to instill in our cadres a degree of class consciousness that only comes with a broad historical vantage point. Taken as a whole, this history shows the true face of the working class. It reveals the unstoppable force that is unleashed once the working class becomes conscious of its power, and the awe-inspiring creativity and heroism it possesses. Revolutions bring out characteristics of the proletariat that remain dormant for long periods, but emerge explosively under the right conditions.

On the eve of May 1968 in France, one of the greatest revolutionary general strikes in history, André Gorz, a theoretician of the “New Left,” famously dismissed the potential for revolution, saying that, “In the foreseeable future there will be no crisis of European capitalism so dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general strikes or armed insurrections in support of their vital interests.”

Just weeks later, ten million French workers seized their factories, prompting General De Gaulle to lament to the US ambassador: “The game’s up. In a few days the communists will be in power.” Unfortunately, the existing leadership of the working class proved incapable of completing the job. But had there been a genuine communist party in place, the French workers could have easily taken power in 1968.

Our unshakable confidence in the potential of our class to transform society is built on countless experiences like these. In the long run, a remorseless, uncompromising struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be sustained by this historical memory. This is the real meaning of our program—which is not simply a “list of demands” printed at the back of our paper. Our program consists of our guiding principle of class independence, our entire conception of how the working class can come to power and establish a workers’ government, and what its tasks will be in the transformation of society. By formulating a system of transitional demands, we translate this conception back into particular, concrete policies. The practical is rooted in the theoretical.

Preparing today for the events of tomorrow

There’s more to Bolshevism than assimilating the history of the class war. Our aim is not to become “revolutionary historians” but to acquire a deep grasp of the dialectic of history—i.e., to perceive the unfolding direction of events from the broadest possible standpoint. Our party must learn to discern in the immediate situation the seeds of the very different scenarios that are being prepared for the next period. In the contradictory polarization and anger of the working class of today, we must see the path that leads to the united and confident working class of tomorrow.

The advantage of foresight is not only a matter of keeping our bearings in tumultuous times. It’s indispensable for gathering and preparing the necessary forces well in advance of the tumult, and forging sufficient strength to stand up to the eventual test of experience. Only a party armed with a long view of history will be capable of finding and assembling the type of people who can play a decisive role in great events, and imbuing them with the qualities required for the task.

This is the meaning of the recruitment and training of new members. It is not a mere administrative job of “following up,” having a phone call, or signing someone up for dues. Recruiting to the revolutionary party ultimately comes down to whether we are able to effectively transmit the broad scope of history, the road to revolution, and how it can win if we organize and prepare for it correctly.

Trotsky observed that a special frame of mind was required of those who were willing to join the Bolsheviks in the decades before revolution was apparent on the horizon:

An intellectual needed exceptional political intuition and theoretical imagination, unusual faith in the dialectical historical process and in the revolutionary attributes of the working class, in order seriously and firmly to tie his fate to the Bolshevik Party in the days when Bolshevism was no more than a historical anticipation.

For our comrades, it’s not the pressures of tsarist repression, but the “pressures of life” of modern capitalist society that weigh on communists and push them to relegate politics to the background. It would be fair to say that American Bolshevism is “no more than a historical anticipation,” in the sense that most people have not fully comprehended the many factors that are pushing society inexorably toward a revolutionary crisis, and therefore do not see the need to prepare a leadership for such an eventuality. On the surface, a mass uprising of the American working class can appear remote—most of the left has written it off as nothing short of a fantasy.

The paradox of history is that by the time it becomes evident that a revolution is about to erupt, it will be too late to begin preparing a leadership capable of guiding it to victory. We therefore have no choice but to accept the challenge of building our forces on the basis of a perspective rooted in a scientific understanding of the laws of history—however remote it may seem at the present time. There is no other way to proceed.

The Bolsheviks were faced with the same challenge, and the only way they succeeded in surmounting it was through the depth of their ideological grounding in materialism and dialectical thinking. These same tools today allow us to recognize the social fault lines where tectonic pressures are accumulating, even if the precise timing of the earthquake cannot be predicted.

Is revolution still possible?

The reformist press of today’s liberal-socialist left is full of pompous essays by university professors dedicated to preaching the non-viability of social revolution in the 21st century. Outlets like Jacobin magazine—the unofficial publication of the Democratic Socialists of America—set the tone for this middle-class pessimism. For example, an article published by a University of Wisconsin professor during the first Bernie Sanders presidential campaign instructs readers on “How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century”:

Give up the fantasy of smashing capitalism. Capitalism is not smashable, at least if you really want to construct an emancipatory future … in one way or another you have to deal with capitalist structures and institutions. Taming and eroding capitalism are the only viable options.

On the question of strategy, Jacobin editor and NYU professor Vivek Chibber’s “Our Road to Power” acknowledges that “a mass cadre-based party with a centralized leadership and internal coherence” has been the only “politically effective model” in the history of the left. Unfortunately, the worthy professor goes on to conclude, Bolshevism belongs to “an era in which the possibility of a rupture with capitalism could be seriously contemplated.” In his considered view, those days are long gone:

Today, it seems hallucinatory to think about socialism through this lens … Today, the state has infinitely greater legitimacy with the population than European states did a century ago. Further, its coercive power, its power of surveillance, and the ruling class’s internal cohesiveness give the social order a stability that is orders of magnitude greater than it had in 1917.

In reality, the role of these bourgeois “scholars” is to disguise the poverty and apostasy of the left as a natural and inevitable feature of modernity. They present Leninism and Bolshevism as ancient artifacts dug up from an irretrievable “geological” era when class war was “possible.” The irony is that these ex-“Marxist” reformists are themselves the decrepit artifacts of the bygone postwar left. Having dabbled in low-level radicalism in their youth before realizing that the only “realistic” thing was to give up impulsive fantasies like revolution, they found comfortable careers in sociology faculties, and are happy to “give back” by contributing their services to Jacobin magazine.

The pathetic state of what passes for “the left” in the US is the result of a long process rooted in the post–World War II economic upswing, which created the deep-seated illusion that capitalism would improve living standards from one generation to the next.

In addition to the objective obstacles for class-war propaganda in this social environment, there were subjective factors such as the abysmal political level that has always plagued American politics. The Stalinist degeneration of the Communist International destroyed the political authority of the communist parties in the eyes of an entire generation of workers. This was compounded by the ineptitude of the leaders of the Fourth International after Trotsky’s death, who, with the sole exception of Ted Grant in Britain, failed miserably in their analysis of the situation and were unable to find their bearings after the war. This was not a moral question, but a result of not understanding the dialectical method and how to apply it to party building.

The remnants of the barren postwar left either collapsed into the world of NGOs, splintered into the feeble smattering of minuscule activist sects on the left today, or abandoned class politics altogether and plunged into the “New Left” academic circles. The latter group turned from Marxism to various strains of “critical theory” and postmodernism, only to ferment into identity politics, “intersectionality,” and other “woke” fodder for the reactionary culture war.

Together, these factors resulted in the destruction of the American communist movement for a prolonged period, and, by extension, the atrophy of the labor movement, which saw its class-war traditions severed.

The turning of the tide

Against the backdrop of confusion and disorientation that has gripped the international left since the 1940s, it fell to Ted Grant to preserve the unbroken thread of Marxism through the difficult postwar period. This is the legacy that has produced the Revolutionary Communist International, and with it, the seeds for the revival of the communist movement now that the tide has started to turn.

The party we have today would not have been possible without a great deal of foresight and confidence on the part of the cadres in the early days, laying the necessary groundwork under incomparably less favorable conditions. The correct perspectives of this International, combined with the tenacity that comes with a firm grasp of Marxism, is what allowed us to grow from a single cadre living in North Dakota in 1998, to a party with a presence in every region of the US, building in what is today the most favorable context in nearly a century.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, when the word “socialism” was received with a mix of hostile bewilderment and ironic indifference, our comrades learned to see what was being prepared beneath the surface of events. Our perspective was that the intensifying crisis of capitalism would eventually produce a dramatic shift in public opinion, and that the time would come when Marxist ideas would find a large and favorable audience in this country.

In the late 2010s when the “democratic socialism” of Bernie Sanders and DSA was in vogue, we predicted that a significant layer would eventually leap past this reformist outlook and seek the road of bold, revolutionary communism.

In this, we were proven 100% correct. More importantly, this process is nowhere near complete—the radicalization of the working class is only beginning. All the factors that previously conspired to stabilize world capitalism and isolate the forces of genuine Marxism are now going into reverse. The favorable shift in public opinion toward communism in recent years is the reflection in mass consciousness of an objective process that has been unfolding since the end of the postwar upswing half a century ago.

Although the boom ended in the mid-1970s, it took considerable time for this fact to find a conscious reflection in the minds of the masses. The economic crisis of 2008—in which nearly nine million workers lost their jobs and ten million lost their homes—was a major turning point. The post-2008 “jobless” recovery, the longest and weakest in US history, hastened the breakdown of lingering illusions in capitalism.

Today, the decline is made evident by virtually every metric: workers’ income, savings rates, life expectancy, and birth rates have all fallen, while household debt, homelessness, incarceration rates, mental illness, deaths of despair, and mass shootings have all climbed sharply over the last 50 years.

Trump’s second term is both a reflection of this process, and its accelerant. The relative stability of world relations held in place by the domination of US imperialism over the West, and America’s unchallenged global supremacy after the collapse of the USSR, is over. The world order has rapidly disintegrated into a more turbulent and unpredictable state of multipolar conflict. What has ended is not the era of class war, but the era of class peace and social stability.

The utter disarray of the Democratic Party and their establishment counterparts throughout the West is ultimately a reflection of capitalism’s decline—which Trump is powerless to fix. The ability of the right populists to profit politically from the discrediting of Western liberalism will be short lived. Tomorrow it will be the right populists who suffer the same discrediting of their brand, as they expose their inability to deliver any improvement for the living standard of the working class.

To top it off, the unmitigated climate crisis continues to gather pace, as if to enlist the power of nature itself as a messenger of capitalism’s bankruptcy. The sense that “the world is on fire” and that the system is unable to cope with it will only grow with each catastrophe.

Just as the economic dislocation and geopolitical instability returns to levels unseen since before the last world war, so will the class struggle resume the intensity it displayed in the early 20th century. The factors fueling the widespread discontent will not recede, but will eventually reach a fever pitch, forcing the class anger in society to seek a revolutionary outlet.

The period we’re preparing for

This is not merely an abstract perspective for the distant future. Five years ago, the embryonic outline of a national uprising erupted from coast to coast. Those who write off the possibility of a 21st-century revolution in the US would do well to reflect on those scenes, and consider how easily the movement could have escalated. In reality, the George Floyd movement against police terror provided a mere glimpse of the potential that has been building up beneath the surface for decades.

One of the most remarkable facts of the summer of 2020 is that when Minneapolis protestors burned down the Third Police Precinct, this de facto act of insurrection met with astonishing levels of sympathy across the country. A poll published by Newsweek immediately after the incident revealed that 78% of Americans felt that the anger that led to the protests was justified, and 54% felt that torching the precinct was justified.

Equally significant were the instances of self-organization among ordinary people in Minneapolis who spontaneously formed committees and patrols to defend their neighborhoods against the threat of right-wing vigilantes, militiamen, looters, and police terror. Other improvised committees sprang up in poor and working-class neighborhoods to maintain security and distribute food and supplies. Although on a modest scale, this provided a glimpse of how things could develop in the future.

The mass demonstrations sent Trump scurrying into the White House underground bunker. He ordered military bases to be ready to deploy within four hours if called upon to suppress the movement, and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807—an idea that was publicly rebuked by the Secretary of Defense and numerous other Pentagon officials.

It’s not hard to imagine how events could have escalated if he had persisted in playing the “send in the troops” card, at a time when the overwhelming majority of the population sympathized with the demonstrations. With an estimated 26 million people in the streets that summer, roughly 10% of the adult population, this was the largest mass movement in US history. One false step by the administration could have multiplied the size of the movement, and the scenes of self-organization in Minneapolis could have been replicated across dozens of other major cities.

In this kind of scenario, what would be required of a revolutionary party to win the leadership of the movement and guide it to victory? Posing this question concretely helps to illustrate the many-sided nature of Bolshevism—and the challenges involved in building a party capable of playing this role.

How does a cadre organization influence events?

To begin with, without numbers, there can be no political influence. The party would need to have attained a sufficient size and political authority before the onset of these events. But this doesn’t mean starting with a ready-made mass party of millions. Since the entire purpose of a cadre organization is to achieve the capacity to expand rapidly, the decisive factor would be the caliber of the average party member, even if the total numerical membership were limited.

The Bolsheviks’ 50-fold growth from 8,000 to 400,000 over eight months is the most notable but not the only example of astronomical growth in a revolutionary situation. In the Spanish Revolution, the most left-wing party, the POUM, despite its confused program which would lead to fatal errors, nevertheless managed to grow from a core of 1,000 cadres to a party of 30,000 in just six weeks. Similar examples abound in revolutionary history.

If we assume the presence of a revolutionary party in the US with a seasoned membership in the range of 10,000 to 20,000, the same growth rate as that of the Bolsheviks in 1917 would yield a party of up to a million members in a short space of time. This would be enough to supply between 50,000 and 100,000 Bolsheviks in each of the ten largest American cities, if they were distributed evenly.

For comparison, in 1917 Petrograd had a population of 2.7 million, slightly larger than the city of Chicago today. The Bolshevik Party had around 2,000 members in the capital in February and grew to 43,000 by September. With these forces, the party won over the Petrograd garrison and rallied the support of 400,000 industrial workers around the Bolshevik program.

Here, however, there is a break in the analogy between a military cadre and the political cadre of a revolutionary party. Whereas a bourgeois army, as part of the state apparatus, has the ability to expand its ranks through the compulsion of wartime conscription, the ranks of a revolutionary party can only grow through the voluntary political agreement of tens of thousands or millions of workers with the party’s program. Contrary to the propaganda of the ruling class, Bolshevism has nothing to do with a “coup-plotting” minority, and does not seek to “impose” itself upon the working class.

In a revolution, the party’s task is to show the way forward for the working-class majority under circumstances in which the class has drawn revolutionary conclusions on the basis of its experience. It does this by uniting the advanced guard of the class—who make up the rapid influx of new members absorbed into the ranks of the party—around its program.

The reason for the sudden nature of this growth is that mass consciousness grows by leaps under the impact of revolutionary events. The same workers who, in normal conditions, consider it too “extreme” even to contemplate a workers’ government and the expropriation of the Fortune 500 companies, under changed circumstances, can see it as the only reasonable step.

For the same reason, most people wouldn’t dream of pulling the fire alarm in a public building or smashing the window of a bus—but in the emergency conditions of a fire or terrible collision, these steps are understood to be the only rational way to proceed. Likewise, when a crowded building catches fire, whoever can communicate clearly in the moment and direct the crowd toward the emergency exit will find near-unanimous voluntary cooperation in response. In the context of a revolutionary crisis, in which the ruling class threatens to lead society into the blind alley of barbarism, the role of the party is to clearly and confidently communicate the way out of the impasse.

The party’s agitation in such times would revolve around the practical implementation of its program, tailored to the concrete conditions of the day. Whatever the immediate steps of the moment may be—the coordination of a general strike, the formation of workers’ councils, the mass defense of picket lines, a show of force through simultaneous demonstrations in every major city—the party’s aim would be to bring the working class, step by step, to the simple conclusion that it can only resolve the present social crisis by taking political and economic power.

The aim would be to make the working class conscious of the immense sway it holds over the levers of the economy by the nature of its role in the production and distribution of everything in society. The simple fact that absolutely nothing is built, powered, moved, stocked, or sold without the cooperation of workers gives the working class the capability not only to pull the plug and shut down anything it wants, but to bring the economy under its democratic control.

The history of proletarian revolutions, beginning with the Paris Commune of 1871, reveals the basic truth that nothing can stop a united working class that has awakened to its own power. The moment this happens, even the repressive force of the state is no match for it, as Trotsky observed:

The proletariat produces arms, transports them, erects the buildings in which they are kept, defends these buildings against itself, serves in the army and creates all its equipment. It is neither locks nor walls which separate the proletariat from arms, but the habit of submission, the hypnosis of class domination and nationalist poison. It is sufficient to destroy these psychological walls—and no wall of stone will stand in the way (Whither France?, 1936).

In conditions in which a revolutionary program is likely to find broad support, the strength of our media would be another key measure of our ability to influence events. How many people beyond our ranks are coming into contact with our propaganda and hearing our message? How many people are aware of the party’s program and attitude to events?

While digital media can be instrumental in growing our influence in normal periods, it’s no substitute for a robust boots-on-the-ground network for distributing printed material from hand to hand. A key component of this network would involve correspondents rooted in every critical workplace who can deliver the party’s message and relay every urgent detail back through a chain of communication to keep the party informed of the state of the struggle across every sector of society. If we are to meet the test of events, we must energetically build this infrastructure now.

The skill of our agitators is another aspect of influence. In a situation where crowds are gathering by the thousands, do we have people capable of addressing them at a moment’s notice with clarity and conviction? Are our cadres prepared to tap into the mood of a revolutionary crowd, not only to say what needs to be said to channel the voice of the revolution, but to politically convince and win mass support in action?

Revolutionary agitation is not a matter of shouting loudly to “get our ideas out there” in the abstract. The prerequisite for effective agitation at the height of a struggle is the political authority built up by a party and its members over time. Correct ideas alone are not enough, if they are delivered by a group with no track record. Gaining credibility in the eyes of the working class is a byproduct of the party’s patient efforts to sink roots by participating in struggles and engaging in consistent public activity long before a mass movement breaks out. The right speech at the right moment, given by a cadre who has gained the respect of their coworkers over years, can sway an entire crowd.

All of these elements would need to be in place in order to transform a spontaneous upsurge into an organized attempt by the working class to bring society under its democratic control. At each stage, the success of our efforts will depend on an extreme degree of ideological cohesion, discipline, professionalism, and coordination. The process of absorbing large numbers of untrained and inexperienced new members into the party without allowing the party structures to become swamped and disoriented would presuppose the existence of capable leadership teams in every city, ready to discuss, decide, and act under the most intense pressure imaginable.

Building the party today

We are not yet on the eve of the scenarios outlined above. However, this is not because that kind of social crisis is so far away—the main conclusion of our perspectives is that all signs indicate its approach. But we still lack the strength and influence to fulfill our historic task. The ideas outlined in this resolution convey the essence of Bolshevism, and show how we can eventually transform our organization into a mass party. But what does this mean for each member of the RCA today?

Countless interactions have verified our perspective that a growing layer of the population has begun to identify as communists in recent years. This layer is the fruit of an objective historical process. Standing knee-deep in the 21st century, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t share the feeling that we’re living through a historic decline. This is breeding an anti-establishment, anti-rich, anti-politician sentiment. Yet, over the past decade, “democratic socialism” has shown its inability to channel the anger in society in a productive direction. The communist layer emerging today is a product of the post–2008 era and the insufficiency and spinelessness of the reformist “soft left” associated with the Democratic Party. This is what has transformed the hammer and sickle from a historic relic into a symbol with wide appeal.

The RCA was founded last year to gather this layer into a party of its own, as a first step towards the conquest of political and economic power by the working class. We feel our message resonating. Wherever we go, we stumble across people who readily agree with the need for a revolution. Ideas that were dismissed as extreme or unrealistic a decade ago are now embraced with irresistible enthusiasm.

On the basis of their life experience, thousands of people are drawing conclusions that make them candidates for RCA membership. Whether we succeed in winning them to our ranks depends on the efforts of every member of the party today.

The revolutionary epoch we’re living in requires us to be communists 24–7. This means making Bolshevism the constant throughline of our daily lives, and not something that we switch “on” and “off” depending on the circumstances. It’s not just a matter of wearing the hammer and sickle—although that can be a great conversation starter. It means letting our ideas be known, discussing politics with coworkers and classmates, reading revolutionary literature in public, and welcoming the spontaneous interactions this invites from random people around us. It means being attuned to the mood in society, and engaging with it. It means being the communist in class, on the bus, or in the checkout line. This also means having The Communist and other party propaganda on us at all times, and always being ready to put our ideas into someone else’s hands when the opportunity presents itself.

Above all, our comrades must absorb the ideas of Marxism by delving into the classics and constantly discussing politics with other comrades. Our party will live or die on the strength of our cadres. This is the only guarantee for our future development.

Sense of urgency and sense of proportion

The opportunities in front of us are enormous. If we do our work correctly, and stay focused on recruiting and educating the radicalized youth, we can build a party of 10,000 members over the next several years—something that hasn’t been achieved since the early days of the Communist Party. In the current political vacuum on the left in the United States, a party that size could become a focal point, a small but visible factor in the political situation. From there, 20,000, 50,000, and beyond would be within reach.

But the road to 10,000 will not be easy or automatic. We will need to continually assess our forces, identifying and taking advantage of the most promising opportunities that can get us closer to that goal. Local leadership should not only inspire comrades with general discussions of theory and perspectives, but must also have a concrete “mission focus” to guide the work locally. This should involve attainable, concrete targets developed for each local area in conjunction with the cells, the Regional Secretaries, and the National Center.

As Trotsky put it in when he was advising the fresh forces of the Fourth International:

Whatever you do, set yourself an objective, even a very modest one, but strive to achieve it. Then elaborate a short- or long-term plan and apply it without weakening, with an iron hand. It is the only way to advance and for the whole organization to make progress.

We need a sense of urgency—but also a sense of proportion. Comrades should avoid the type of “frantic energy” that can lead to burnout or frustration with other comrades, the party, or the pace of events. While we can take measures to accelerate the process of training and growth—improving cell meetings, running cadre courses and day schools, increasing public activity—developing our political level and building the party takes time.

We are building in a country of 340 million people. Our comrades shouldn’t have the kind of desperate impatience that leads to a search for shortcuts, opportunism, and ultraleftism—but the confident resolve of those who know the tide of history is on our side.

In March 1929, Trotsky addressed a letter “to the American Bolshevik-Leninists.” In this first exchange of communication between the architect of the October insurrection and the American Trotskyist movement, he remarked on the historic significance of planting the banner of Marx and Lenin in the US, since “in the last historic analysis, all the problems of our planet will be decided upon American soil.”

We must not for a minute lose sight of the fact that the might of American capitalism rests more and more upon a foundation of the world economy with its contradictions and crises, military and revolutionary. This means that a social crisis in the United States may arrive a good deal sooner than many think, and have a feverish development from the beginning. Hence the conclusion: It is necessary to prepare.

These words could have been written today. He then goes on to excoriate the middle-class reformists of his day:

For the majority of those socialists—I have in view the governing strata—their socialism is a side-issue, a second-class occupation accommodated to their leisure hours. These gentlemen consecrate six days of the week to their liberal or commercial professions, rounding out their properties not without success, and on the seventh day they consent to occupy themselves with the saving of their souls … These are not intellectual opponents, but class enemies.

He advised the comrades to steer clear of the petty-bourgeois dilettantes, “incapable of sacrifice in the name of a great idea,” and to instead build a force out of proletarian fighters, “for whom the idea of Communism, when they are once imbued with it, becomes the content of their whole life and activity.”

He calls on them to find the road to the youth, and to dedicate time to training them up into cadres: “Remain in continual contact with them, help them in their self-education, train them in the questions of scientific socialism, and systematically introduce them to the revolutionary politics of the proletarian vanguard.”

These are the methods that forged the individuals who made the October Revolution. Guided by the same methods and the same foundation of materialist dialectics, the RCA will forge American Bolshevism to even greater heights.

Approved unanimously by the Second National Congress of the RCA
Philadelphia, PA
June 1, 2025