Over 500 communists from every corner of the globe have gathered this week for the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), with over 7,000 signing up to watch online.
Amidst an electric atmosphere, Rob Sewell officially opened the conference to a wave of applause: “Welcome to the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist International!”
Comrades discussed the class struggle on every continent, with a focus on the central task of the RCI in its founding week: recruiting and training communists for the coming revolution.
The international character of this event was clear from the very beginning. Comrades attended in person from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Mexico, Morocco, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA, Venezuela, and the countries of former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia, Serbia and North Macedonia, and other countries too numerous to name.
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For the first time, this was a hybrid event, with watch parties taking place on every continent, and attendees following the stream in 120 different countries.
The conference began with the announcement of comradely greetings sent by Ivan Pinheiro, the historic leader of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). Pinheiro is part of a group that was bureaucratically expelled by the PCB due to their principled position on war and imperialism and is now organised as the PCBR (Brazilian Revolutionary Communist Party).
The Manifesto of the RCI
In preparation for this conference, we launched our founding document to the world: the Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist International.
The Manifesto has already been translated into 25 languages and represents, at one and the same time, a scientific study of the key processes in the world, and a call to communist workers and youth around the world to organise under this banner.
As Alan Woods explained, this is a text which speaks for itself.
The RCI’s ideas are nothing less than the ideas of genuine, scientific communism, which have retained all their relevance and freshness since the Communist Manifesto was written by two young men, Marx and Engels. This is the tradition that we proudly represent.
While communists may not have the militaries, weapons, navies or air forces that the ruling class possesses, our bold international movement, grounded in the genuine ideas and methods of Marxism, has the potential to completely transform the world.
As Victor Hugo once said: nothing, no army, is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
Shifts in consciousness
The global crisis of capitalism every day confronts the masses with the horrors of war, imperialism and oppression.
Like the enormous pressures beneath the thin crust that separates us from the seething magma of the Earth’s mantle, as that pressure builds and builds, eventually it finds a weakness and explodes in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The same dialectical process is developing among the consciousnesses of millions, preparing revolutionary explosions. With life under capitalism increasingly becoming intolerable for billions, more and more people are looking for the most radical possible break with the status quo.
Israel’s genocidal war, commented on by many comrades, has acted as a massive accelerant in this process.
In the Middle East, the war in Gaza threatens to ignite a powder-keg the likes of which we have not seen since the Arab Spring.
With Israel showing no signs of letting up in its war, a social explosion in this region is on the order of the day. Such a movement would send shockwaves around the world, acting as a revolutionary beacon to workers and youth internationally.
In the United States, ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden’s unconditional backing of Netanyahu has graphically exposed the imperialist nature of the US ruling class. This exorbitant military spending can only further undermine the US working class’ confidence in the capitalist system at a time when the US economy is laden with crippling debt.
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In Britain, a surprise general election has been called in which the public are struggling to distinguish between Sunak and Starmer, both of whom grovel before US imperialism, and have lined up to defend Israel’s war of slaughter. This has caused significant backlash among workers and youth, who have nothing to gain from a victory of either major party.
The furious mood in society helps to explain the staggering impact of the live TV appearance of British comrade Fiona Lali, who demolished the most prominent representative of the Tory right wing, Suella Braverman, exposing her as a liar and warmonger.
Footage of Fiona’s performance has exploded, accumulating tens of millions of views online, on the back of which, the comrades of the RCP in Britain took the exceptional step to run Fiona as a revolutionary communist candidate for parliament.
The comrades’ bold, communist campaign has already tapped into the deep desire for a fundamental change in society, which no other party offers.
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Revolutionary determination
The third day of the conference culminated in a breathtaking collection, where we raised €474,000 to fund the forces of communism internationally. There was a palpable energy in the room, as cheers and applause spontaneously broke out in admiration of the comrades’ willingness to sacrifice.
Staggering donations were received from the developed capitalist countries such as Switzerland, Britain, and Austria.
Movingly, there were also significant donations from comrades living in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as El Salvador, Sri Lanka and Puerto Rico, where workers experience extremes of exploitation and are where the depth of the global capitalist crisis is felt most acutely.
The monumental contributions of all comrades to the founding of the RCI show our political resolve and personal determination to build the world party of socialist revolution.
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Unlike the bourgeois parties, the RCI is not at the beck and call of the billionaires. Our financial independence guarantees our political independence. The RCI is funded entirely by the generous donations of our comrades and supporters.
Thanks to this, the RCI will be launched with an expanded team of dedicated, full-time revolutionaries, able to produce even more vital analysis and theory on marxist.com, in the In Defence of Marxism magazine, and through our publishing house Wellred Books; and to help guide and develop the forces of revolutionary communism around the world.
Yet with the unprecedented growth of our organisation, we urgently need to continue increasing our full-time staff to take advantage of these opportunities being presented to us.
There is no more worthy cause in the world to give money to! If you would like to donate to help us in the fight for communism, you can do so here.
Global enthusiasm
Around the world, this conference has been met with a wave of enthusiasm. Social media has been abuzz with images and videos of comrades following the discussions in North America, the Middle East, Europe, Pakistan and beyond.
Watch parties have been organised in many countries, deepening the profound sense of international unity that this event has fostered, and there are more planned for this week. In Britain, groups of comrades will meet in over 18 towns and cities:
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If there isn’t one near you, why not take the initiative? We invite you to get together with friends and comrades, host a watch party, and post the images online! This could be the basis for a new communist branch or cell.
The algebra of revolution
Across the week, a range of lively, far-reaching discussions were held covering philosophy, our historical tradition, economic analysis, and much more! If you could not watch these live, they can all be watched on YouTube.
Yet all agree that, aside from the first session on our Manifesto, the highlight of the event was Alan Woods’ talk Dialectics: the algebra of revolution.
The pessimistic, eclectic rubbish passed off as ‘philosophy’ in universities today – especially the pernicious trend of ‘postmodernism’ – deliberately seeks to confuse and demoralise young minds, rather than explain the world. This is no accident.
The crisis of capitalist society is also a crisis of culture: of art, human relations, and of thought. The representatives of official bourgeois philosophy have fallen far from the heights of the towering geniuses like Hegel, Spinoza or Leibniz.
As Alan noted, the sole purpose of today’s bourgeois philosophers is to trap our minds in an arid wasteland, where nothing fertile can grow.
In contrast, dialectics, as the Russian revolutionary democrat Alexander Herzen explained, is the “algebra of revolution”. It is a framework for understanding the world as it really is. Rather than taking a collection of dead facts, it draws out the laws of motion of nature, society and human thought. As Alan explained:
“We wish to change the world. And a task as complex as that requires serious study. In order to change the world, you first have to understand it.”
Marx’s great accomplishment was to combine to place the revolutionary dialectic of Hegel on a materialist footing.
Foresight over astonishment
As Alan explained, Marx’s writings are full of facts and figures. However, the dialectical materialist method does not consist of picking out an isolated figure or fact to justify an argument: it is the search for rational insight.
The method of Marxism, “scientific socialism”, seeks to accumulate all the relevant facts about the material world, not for their own sake, but to uncover the underlying laws and processes behind them.
Once we understand how to look beneath the surface of the world around us, we realise quickly that the apparent stability of capitalist society is an illusion. In every country in the world, a seething anger is bubbling under the surface.
Just as the subterranean movements of the tectonic plates lay the basis for sudden earthquakes or volcanic explosions, sooner or later the masses internationally will burst onto the scene in one country after another.
Without dialectics, these developments would take us by surprise. But by mastering this method, we can anticipate and intervene.
The bourgeois cynics scoff that revolution is “impossible – look at the facts!” This “worship of the accomplished fact”, as Lenin put it, means they only see things as they are, or as they appear to be, and not as they will become.
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The task of communists is to make a serious study of dialectics, not only to lay the basis for all of our practical work, but to “raise our sights to the stars”, as Alan put it.
We are seeking not only to win this or that reform, but to win a higher form of existence. The RCI alone has taken a serious approach to this fundamental task.
The session concluded with an exciting announcement by Alan that he is working on a new book on philosophy, to draw out and explain thoroughly, but in the simplest terms that the subject will allow, the philosophy of dialectical materialism.
This is a follow-up to his excellent History of Philosophy, available at Wellred Books. Undoubtedly this text will be an invaluable weapon in the arsenal of Marxists everywhere.
The communists are coming
The enemies of communism often accuse us of being utopians. But as Alan explained, there is not a drop of utopianism in our ideas. The most hopeless utopians are those, on the contrary, who believe that this system can be patched up.
As we can see, explosive events are being prepared worldwide. The ideas of communism are gaining in popularity among a wide layer of youth. The downfall of capitalism is just as inevitable as the feudal system that it once replaced.
But its overthrow must be a conscious act.
Alan likened capitalism to the character of Russian folklore, Koshchei the Deathless who limps on and on, despite the disgusting decay of his body, until one day he is killed.
Capitalism too will not die of its own volition. The working class must consciously destroy it, but to do so it must have a conscious, communist leadership. Towards that end, we are founding the RCI.
As Alan explained: “We must now boldly strike out in a new direction, and boldly raise the banner of a new party and of a Revolutionary Communist International.”
The founding conference of the RCI has already been an immense success. There is still one day left of this historic event, where comrades will report on the incredible work of the communists around the world in the recent period, and explain our plans for the future.
Sign up here to take part. And if you haven’t already, we appeal to you: join us and help us build the Revolutionary Communist International!
