Building the Revolutionary Party in Theory and Practice
Looking Back and Ahead after 25 Years of Organized Struggle for Bolshevism
By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, December 2014, www.thecommunists.net
Contents
I. The Revolutionary Party and Its Role in the Class Struggle
Class Independence through Class War
Class War as the Organized Struggle Led by the Revolutionary Party
The Proletariat as a Homogenous but Multi-Layered Class
Marxism, Fatalistic Objectivism, and Voluntary Subjectivism
The Party as Vanguard
Leadership, Party, and Class
The Revolutionary Party Brings Class Political Consciousness to the Proletariat
On the Bolsheviks, Their Membership, and Their Leadership
II. The Revolutionary Party and its Characteristics
Unity of Theory and Practice
Devotion of the Party’s Militants
Program First
Propaganda and Agitation
Communist Work among the Masses
Class Composition and Orientation to the Non-Aristocratic Layers of the Working Class
Tactics in Building the Revolutionary Party
The Communists’ Obligation to Work and Democratic Centralism
The Struggle against Bourgeois and Petty-Bourgeois Influences in the Working Class
Building the Party in the National and International Realms Must be a Simultaneous Process
III. 25 Years of Building of Our International Tendency
i) Workers Power (Britain) and the MRCI in 1976–1989: The Beginning of the Reconstruction of Revolutionary Marxism
ii) The LRCI in the Period 1989-2001: The Collapse of Stalinism and National Liberation Struggles
1989-1991: Political Revolution and Social Counterrevolution in the Stalinist States
1991: The Imperialist Attack against Iraq
1992-1995: Balkan Wars
1997-1999: The National Liberation Struggle in Kosova and NATO’s War against Serbia
1994 until Today: The Uprising of the Chechen People against the Russian Occupation
The Difficulties in Party Building in the 1990s and the Struggle against Passive Propagandism
Discussing the Character of the Period
iii) The LRCI/LFI in the Period from 2001 to 2008: Pre-Revolutionary Period of Imperialist Wars and Resistance
2001: The Imperialist War of Aggression against Afghanistan
2003-2011: The War in Iraq and the Struggle against Imperialism
Revolutionary Developments in Latin America: Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Bolivarian Movement
The Anti-Globalization Movement
The Crisis of Reformism and the New Workers’ Party Tactic
Internal Debates and the Split in 2006
Growth … and Harbingers of Problems in the Future: Class Composition, Orientation, and Our Struggle against Aristocratism
Growth in South Asia
iv) 2008 – 2011: The LFI’s Failure to Meet the Challenges of the Revolutionary Period of Historic Crisis of Capitalism
Failure to Understand the Nature of the Period
Failure to Understand the Oppression of Migrants and the Nature of the Labor Aristocracy
The Practical Demonstration of the LFI’s Centrism during the August Uprising 2011 in Britain
Failure to Understand and to Fight against Centrism
Split, Decline, and Further Political Degeneration of the LFI
v) An Ongoing History: The Foundation and Rise of the RCIT since 2011
Growth and Exemplary Mass Work
Marxist Theory and Propaganda
Centrality of the Bolshevik Organization – Nationally and Internationally
The Unity of Theory and Practice Must Be Implemented in all Areas of Party Work
The Centrality of the Revolutionary Program
Further Development of Program and Theory
Importance of Exemplary Mass Work
Splits and Fusions
Building the Communist Pre-Party Organization in the Working Class
Struggle against Left-Reformism and Centrism