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

 

Introduction

 

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

 

IV.          Lessons for the Future

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