We are living through an unprecedented crisis of capitalism. Inequality is at record levels. There are currently more wars than at any point since WW2. And the world economy is mired in stagnation, inflation, and crushing debt. Now, with the re-election of Trump, the entire edifice of the post-war order – of unchallenged American dominance – is beginning to crumble.
These Earth-shaking events are the backdrop against which 350 leading communists gathered together in Italy for the First Congress of the Revolutionary Communist International, joined by 2,500 comrades online, and hundreds more watching along at dozens of watch parties all over the world.
Counting only those which were reported to the congress organisers, we are aware of over 60 watch parties all over the world, and doubtless there were many, many more.
We received pictures of comrades gathering to watch In Bulgaria, Colombia, Canada (with 14 watch parties across the country including in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary), Britain (including Leeds, South London, North London, East London, Cambridge, Manchester, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, Bristol and Bath), Ireland (Belfast and Dublin), Austria where 75 comrades attended, the Spanish State (Barcelona, Basque Country and Cartagena), the Netherlands, Finland (Helsinki, Tampere, Pori and Turku), France (where over 50 attended in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and Toulouse), Sweden (Umeå, Malmö, Stockholm, Värmland and Gothenburg), Switzerland (over 100 attending in more than six cities), Pakistan, and over 100 at watch parties all over the US (in New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas Fort-Worth, Minneapolis, and New Haven).
We received reports of thousands of dollars, euros and pounds collected at these watch parties, a testament to the mood that was successfully transmitted from Italy to communists the world over, which raised the total collection to over €500,000!
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New world order
Amidst the completely new world situation, which is turning consciousness upside down and preparing revolutionary events, communists need a crystal clear insight into the processes driving these developments. We need this clarity in order to offer a perspective to the wide layers of young people and workers who are looking for explanations, and to guide our work of building a powerful revolutionary International in the shortest possible time to intervene in these events.
For that reason, the world congress – which is not only the highest democratic body of the International, but a school of communism – devoted two of its five days to a discussion of world perspectives.
The Earth-shaking events of 2025 – Trump’s reelection, the escalating genocide in Gaza, the West heading irresistibly towards defeat in Ukraine, the ongoing trade war and many, many more crises – signify that we are entering a new epoch.
As Jorge Martín explained in his introduction, at bottom, these symptoms are rooted in the organic crisis of capitalism, which began in 2008. However, understanding that the system is at an impasse is not sufficient for revolutionaries. It is necessary to understand why: why are we seeing massive political upheaval, the decline of old parties and the rise of new parties and figures? What is driving the changing balance of world forces, the relative decline of US imperialism and growing inter-imperialist rivalry? And what are the consequences for the class struggle?
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The congress saw a lively discussion of all the key questions that go to the heart of the new world situation. What is the nature of the Trump administration? Where is American imperialism going? The whole world situation is conditioned by the changing relationship of the world’s most powerful imperialist power with the rest of the world: in Europe, in the Middle East, in Latin America and elsewhere. And, finally, what is the nature of the new powers and rivals of US imperialism that are coming onto the scene: Russia, and above all China?
These are absolutely fundamental questions, which the congress strived to achieve crystal clarity on. That, above all, is always our aim: to raise the level of understanding of the whole International. And this can only be achieved through full, free and democratic discussion.
Marxism, like any science, is not a substitute for studying the concrete facts in a new situation. Rather, the theory must be brought to bear in understanding the facts, and must constantly be checked against the concrete situation that is unfolding. And indeed, this was a discussion that was rich in facts, figures and arguments. As comrade Hamid Alizadeh explained:
“We can’t foresee the exact path things will take. Nor do we know what phenomena it will give rise to. We have to carefully study the situation step by step without getting ahead of ourselves. We follow the process as it unfolds and understand that we cannot rely on dead generalisations and labels. The only thing we can rely on 100 percent is the method of Marxism.”
Degeneration of the Fourth International
Now that we have founded the Revolutionary Communist International, the nucleus around which we will attempt to build a future mass world party of socialist revolution, it falls on us to unearth our heritage and the tireless, decades-long struggle that laid the foundations of our International.
Comrades Alan Woods and Ana Muñoz, who for the first time were unable to attend this congress, sent powerful video messages to the congress on its opening day. In his message, Alan related by what efforts that heritage had been preserved and passed on to the present generation of young revolutionaries:
“I’ve been in this movement since 1960. A long time. I’ve seen all sorts, good, bad and indifferent. And in almost all of this time, myself and the comrades that were with me, like Ana, Rob and Fred, were fighting against the stream, confronted with very powerful forces: forces of reformism, left reformism, and Stalinism in particular, which was a terrific, huge obstacle…
“We were completely isolated, we were a small force, struggling as a tiny force against these colossal obstacles. Now this was hard, harder than any of you have got to face with the present time. It was hard, it was desperately hard. But it was absolutely necessary because we managed to do something. We managed to preserve through all these difficult years the essential weapon that we have, which is Marxist theory, the genuine ideas of Marxism upon which we stand at the present time. This is the heritage we have. This is the heritage which we defend and which this Congress will represent.”
This heritage we regard to be invaluable. In the years after the death of Leon Trotsky, its preservation was guaranteed above all by the work of one man: Ted Grant, the founder of our organisation.
The third day of the congress was therefore devoted to discussing the history of the Fourth International and the role played by Ted Grant in defending and developing the ideas of Marxism amidst the postwar upswing and the degeneration of that organisation.
As Rob Sewell explained in his introduction, Trotsky’s last struggle was devoted to the foundation of the Fourth International. By then, the Second (Socialist) and Third (Communist) Internationals had both proven totally bankrupt and had become counter-revolutionary obstacles in the way of the socialist revolution.
An alternative revolutionary leadership was required, one fit for the revolutionary tasks posed by history. This was, in Trotsky’s opinion, “…The most important work of my life – more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other.”
The Fourth International was founded in 1938. Unfortunately, however, its leaders were not up to scratch. After Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist assassin in 1940, the International was effectively beheaded.
Before the Second World War, Trotsky had predicted that the war would lead to an even more devastating period of capitalist crisis and decline, the discrediting of the Stalinists and reformists, and a revolutionary wave that would catapult the parties of the Fourth International to the head of the workers’ movement.
However, Marxism is not a crystal ball. We can make a conditional hypothesis of what we think is the most likely development, but ultimately we must verify our perspectives based on the concrete facts. After the war, Stalinism expanded across half of Europe, the Communist and socialist parties were strengthened, the wave of revolutions which surged across Europe was betrayed, and, rather than precipitous decline, the biggest development in the history of capitalism followed, which lasted until the 1970s.
The leaders of the Fourth refused to look reality in the face. As delegates explained, instead of studying the actual course of events, they could only parrot Trotsky’s perspective of 1938 as if it were dogma. This led them into all sorts of bizarre and false ideas, and ultimately to the destruction of the Fourth International. Prestige played a big role in preventing the leadership from admitting its mistakes. And to justify one mistake, new mistakes were made.
As one delegate explained:
“If you can’t explain reality, if you can’t give a clear sense of perspective, if you can’t show comrades their place in history and the class struggle, what other methods remain but prestige and intrigue?”
Ted Grant stood apart from these methods. He devoted his life to mastering the spirit and method, not just the letter, of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Like them, he studied the real development of society and the class struggle. He alone, therefore, gave a scientific and accurate appraisal of phenomena like Stalinism, the eastern European regimes, the nature of the postwar boom, and the development of the Chinese Revolution, among others.
We highly recommend our readers read the document, The Degeneration and Collapse of the Fourth International: In Defence of our Heritage, and the reading list we prepared in advance of this congress.
It was Ted Grant alone who handed down the genuine ideas and method of Marxism to a new generation. His writings are a treasured heritage that we will preserve and carry forward, beginning with the publication of the third and fourth volumes of Ted’s collected works in the year to come.
As Rob explained, Ted himself was not particularly sentimental. He didn’t talk about his past. “He thought it was the now that mattered, and the future!” Rob concluded :
“This is not about a dead man! This is about the ideas of the emancipation of the working class!
“The Fourth is dead and buried. It was betrayed by its so-called leaders. We embody the genuine ideas now, the genuine ideas of Marxism.
“Now put these ideas into practice – build the party on solid foundations!”
Building the Revolutionary Communist International
Our last congress in 2023 marked the launch of the Are You a Communist campaign across the International. Sensing the radicalisation of a layer of the youth, we made a bold turn towards them with an open, communist profile. As a result, our ranks have ballooned.
On the basis of this successful campaign, most of the national sections of our International have transformed their profile, and in many cases have been refounded as Revolutionary Communist Parties. In 2024, we founded the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI).
That process was captured in a documentary made by members of the RCI, which premiered at the congress. Not only is it a time capsule of that year – which represented a complete internal revolution in our work – it is a visual revolutionary manifesto, which explains our programme, philosophy, and the developments in the class struggle that ultimately underlie our success. The documentary will be released to the public in the near future.
Now, as a result of that turn, we have grown from 4,551 members in 2023 to 7,127 members, organised in 24 sections and 19 groups.
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The First Congress of the Revolutionary Communist International was a means to take stock of our successes and draw lessons from the last two years. Whereas 2023 was characterised by rapid growth, the last year has been an opportunity to tighten our ranks, to train new cadres, and to prepare the firm foundation for renewed growth.
Already, the British section has managed to recruit over 200 in the last three months. As many reports from sections like the Austrian, Swiss and Danish sections – who are also preparing ‘Autumn recruitment offensives’ – verified, the key is to learn, listen and think, in order to recruit people who perhaps do not yet know they’re communists.
A special session was devoted to the work of our section in the belly of the beast: the Revolutionary Communists of America. As the US, the bastion of world imperialism, enters deeper into crisis and decline, an abundance of potential revolutionaries are being produced: as Antonio Balmer reported that, over the course of the congress, the section received a write-in roughly every two hours.
Like the whole International, the section is overwhelmingly young and looks with optimism to the future. What attracted them to us, and what is transforming them from raw recruits into Bolsheviks, is the one thing that sets us apart as an International: Marxism. Antonio Balmer explained the attitude of these pioneering young communists:
“Comrades are organising their lives around Marxism. They have caught a glimpse of its irresistible powers. It’s all they want to talk about.”
The foundations of our American section were laid by decades of dogged, persistent work. It took 15 years to build from one to 100 comrades. Now we have leapt from 320 to 820 in just two years.
But, as one delegate said, so long as we have cadres, the necessary determination, and the support of the International, the growth we have seen in the US is possible everywhere.
A high point of the whole congress was the voting in of a new section in Ireland, which, over the last two years has climbed from just five comrades meeting online into a lively organisation of 64, meeting in branches all over the country. But this is only the beginning. As Andrea, the first full-time revolutionary of the Irish organisation, said:
“To represent the RCI in Ireland is a great honour as much as it is a great responsibility. Our International has planted the flag in Ireland. But now the real struggle begins: to build an organisation that can carry through the revolution that James Connolly started 109 years ago!”
The Irish comrades were unanimously accepted as the newest section of the RCI.
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In all our national organisations, big and small, our secret, in the words of a Mexican comrade, is “clarity in ideas, militant sacrifice and determination, and learning from the methods and experiences of the other sections of the International.”
The power of internationalism The practical importance of the International was on display in our special commission on our campaign to free the arrested leaders of the Awami Action Committee-Gilgit Baltistan. Since Eshan Ali and 13 other leading activists from Gilgit Baltistan were arrested, the International has been organising protests outside Pakistani embassies all across the world, as well as raising awareness about the comrades’ plight, collecting signatures and messages of solidarity from trade unions and prominent left-wing politicians and activists.
Our campaign has scored important successes so far. As of writing all but two of the leaders are now free. But it is not over, and the protests will continue until the remaining leaders have been released.
The commitment of all comrades to the development of our International was reflected in our collection. Sections from across the world, as well as watch parties tuning into the congress, raised a collective €502,000. Similarly, the ravenous thirst of the comrades for theory was demonstrated by a record of 753 books sold, worth $5,000. The most popular of these were History of British Trotskyism, a collection of writings by Trotsky and Ted Grant on Democracy, Bonapartism, Fascism and China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution, which represents the overwhelming interest in the burning questions of the day and in our heritage.
It hasn’t always been like this. Fred Weston recounted that, when he moved to London, the international centre consisted of Alan Woods and Ana Munoz, a typewriter and a few desks. Now our international centre consists of 25 full-time staff, with two more on the way. At the last congress, the sacrifices of the entire International enabled us to purchase a centre in London. After years of hard work, a number of our sections are approaching 1,000 members, and we are starting to become a small reference point for the revolutionary youth in a number of countries.
Both now and then, the only thing that has guaranteed our development is our stubborn focus on education in training in the methods of Marxism. As Hamid concluded:
“The most important thing we do is sharpen our weapons, sharpen our minds and deepen our understanding so that we can meet this new period not as aliens in an unknown land, but as pioneers breaking new ground.
“We make the world ours so we can change it. And most importantly, we take this knowledge out to the new generation, who are looking for answers as well.
“We’ve been through a lot. We’ve come a long way, and we’ve made huge advances. Nobody else has been able to do what we’ve done. But we’re not satisfied. As Alan said, what we want is to turn the world upside down. And we’re building a great lever for that.
“We cannot take our eyes off this task. We are building the Revolutionary Communist International in every country and in every city. And if we stick to our theory and our ideas, nothing will be able to stop us.”
