War and genocide. Climate chaos and catastrophe. Racist violence and attacks on migrants, Muslims, and minorities. AI taking our jobs and sloppifying our culture. The billionaires becoming trillionaires, while the rest of us struggle to pay our rent and bills.
It is easy to understand why many – seeing all of these horrors in society, on our screens and on our streets – are disillusioned and demoralised.
Those going to university this autumn will have been born and raised in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis: a deep, global crisis of capitalism – the impacts of which we are still suffering through today.
This generation has known nothing but misery, hardship, and uncertainty. For them, it makes total sense to be pessimistic about the present, let alone the future.
But this is only one side of the picture. Alongside all this capitalist barbarism, we see an equal and opposite process also taking place: a growing mood of discontent; of rage and radicalisation; of revolution.
This is what we, as Marxists, base ourselves on. This is why we, the communists of the RCP, are revolutionary optimists.
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Eruptions and explosions
In the subterranean depths of society, a powerful pressure is brewing – exploding to the surface at ever greater frequency, like the tectonic tremors and volcanic eruptions that portend a mighty earthquake or geological jolt.
Bit by bit, consciousness is being transformed by the hammer blow of events.
Leon Trotsky, the great revolutionary and Marxist theoretician, described this as the ‘molecular process’ of revolution: the gradual, quantitative change that takes place inside people’s minds, which eventually makes itself known and felt – on a social scale – when workers and youth take to the streets in their thousands and millions.
Across the world, this kind of qualitative shift is occurring more and more. For every instance of imperialist war, capitalist corruption, or incendiary injustice, we see a counter-case of mass protest, insurrection, and revolution.
In 2020 there was the huge Black Lives Matter movement, which spread like wildfire from the USA to Europe and beyond.
In 2022-23, there was the tremendous strikewave in Britain, involving hundreds of thousands of healthcare staff, teachers, postal workers, train drivers, civil servants, and more.
Since 7 October 2023, there has been the enormous movement for Palestine, with millions coming out regularly in Britain to protest against the genocide, and ‘our’ government’s role in facilitating this atrocity.
And this is only a small sample of the titanic events that have shaken society in recent years – a harbinger of the social explosions and revolutionary upheavals that are sure to come in the volatile, crisis-ridden period ahead.
Opportunism and sectarianism
Unfortunately the rest of the so-called ‘left’ do not see what we see. Instead, they are infected with a seemingly incurable disease: that of cynicism and scepticism.
For the most part, when these inspiring events occur, they get swept along in the euphoria. They lose their heads. They dissolve and liquidate themselves into the movement. And they become politically indistinguishable from the moralising, hypocritical liberals when it comes to their slogans and tactics.
Other times, they ignore significant movements, or write them off entirely: because they do not have the ‘perfect’ programme; because they contain confusions and contradictions; because they do not conform to their rigid, formalistic picture of what a revolution ‘should’ look like.
This former tendency is what we mean by the term ‘opportunism’. The latter is what is politically known as ‘sectarianism’.
Both trends were on display in textbook form within the Palestine movement – often exhibited simultaneously by the same groups and individuals.
When the protests against Israeli, American, and British imperialism first erupted, the rest of the left restricted themselves to the same meek, moralistic demands as the liberals. Concretely, this meant appealing to the warmongers in Westminster for a ‘ceasefire now’.
Last October, however, the working class began to make itself felt as a force, when millions of workers in Italy undertook a powerful general strike that ‘blocked everything’ for Palestine.
This accomplished more in a matter of days than had been achieved from two years of impotent A-to-B marches. Yet there was no mention of this shining example from the leaders of the Palestine movement in Britain, because it did not fit with their liberal outlook and strategy.
It was only the revolutionary communists who highlighted the example of the Italian workers, calling on the left and trade union leaders in Britain to follow suit, in order to bring the imperialists’ war machine to a halt through class struggle and militant mass action.
Demoralisation and disdain
The fact is, these tired cynics and sceptics wouldn’t know a revolution if it hit them in the face.
They are completely empirical and impressionistic. Without any sense of proportion or perspective to anchor and guide them, they become elated when the left is on the up, yet full of despair when things go into an ebb.
Their only role is to pour pessimism into the movement, sow illusions in the liberals and reformists, and create confusion at every critical crossroads.
In truth, they do not believe that society can be transformed; that capitalism can be overthrown. And they have no faith in the power of the working class to carry out this task, or even to fight in its own interests.
Instead, they cling to the crumbling status quo, and to the crooked establishment that attempts to uphold it. As a result, they become the biggest defenders of capitalism – constantly calling for utopian efforts to patch up and regulate this rotten, dog-eat-dog system.
That is why we turn our backs on these people. They are an active barrier in the fight for a socialist future: poisoning the minds of the youth with their so-called ‘realism’ and ‘pragmatism’ – that is, with their doom and gloom; their demoralisation and disdain; their scornful, sneering attitude towards the working class and, above all, towards the idea of revolution.
Class war
These pessimistic ladies and gentlemen jump on every instance of reaction to wring their hands and wail about the coming political apocalypse.
For them, the threat of fascism and dictatorship is constantly lurking around the corner. The best the left can hope for, therefore, we are told, is the supposed ‘lesser evil’ – a Burnham, Biden, or Macron, in place of a Farage, Trump, or Le Pen.
Left to them, the working class would tie itself hand and foot to the liberal establishment. That is to say, the workers’ movement would lose all and any political independence. Instead of fighting for our own class interests, we would be beholden to the whims and desires of the capitalists and their representatives.
By contrast, the communists aim to give workers and youth confidence in their own strength. We say: No trust in the liberals! No to ‘popular fronts’ and ‘progressive alliances’! No to class collaboration!
Workers and youth must trust only in themselves; in their own organisation and mobilisation. Our power comes from our class unity; our weight and position within society, not from clever tricks or ‘deals’ with those at the top.
To fight the right, we need to struggle with our own class-based methods, in pursuit of our own class programme. That means waging a class war to overthrow the billionaires, bankers, and their decrepit system.
World turned upside down
As capitalism plunges ever deeper into crisis, intense events are flaring up that show the potential for world revolution.
In Minneapolis, at the start of this year, we saw how the culture war can be cut across by class struggle, with working-class communities organising en masse to defend migrants and kick Trump’s ICE agents out of the city. And all of this in the ‘belly of the beast’, at the heart of the capitalist system.
In Italy, as mentioned, we saw how workers can mobilise as a class against war and imperialism.
And with the ‘Gen Z revolutions’ – from Sri Lanka and Serbia, through to Nepal and Indonesia, to Morocco and Madagascar – we are seeing how similar conditions of inequality, inflation, and corruption are producing similar revolutionary results across the globe.
All of these developments are concrete confirmations of our Marxist perspective: showing in living struggle the correctness of our communist ideas; demonstrating how things can and will turn into their opposite, as the world is turned upside down by the crisis of the system.
Them vs us
Most significantly, in all of these events, we see how consciousness is being shaped and transformed.
Above all, there is an increasing development of class consciousness. Everywhere you look, there is a growing recognition that society is, above all, divided into classes; that it is a case of ‘them’ – the elites – versus ‘us’, the downtrodden and exploited masses.
In turn, ordinary people are beginning to connect the dots. War, racism, the cost-of-living crisis: ever-larger numbers are correctly concluding that all of these are a product of the same stinking system, presided over by a degenerate ‘Epstein class’.
Of course, such conclusions are rarely reached in a completely clear, conscious way. Rather, for most workers and youth, it is more a case of a semi-conscious sentiment or ‘vibe’; an inarticulate feeling that does not find any genuine, explicit expression in mainstream politics.
Instead, therefore, such moods are reflected in all sorts of partial or distorted ways: by the shooting of CEOs and burning down of corporate buildings, as seen in the USA; by the AI-generated anti-Trump propaganda put out by the Iranian regime; or by populist figures on the right and left.
All of these examples – to a greater or lesser degree – are a reflection of the molten class anger in society, desperately seeking an outlet.
And it is the task of communists to recognise and connect with this mood, in whatever form or outward appearance it takes.
Our role is to bring out the progressive and revolutionary kernel contained within these confused and contradictory developments; to acknowledge the essence, meaning, and implications of these real, living phenomena and events; to act as a catalyst for consciousness, offering a scientific Marxist explanation that helps workers and youth connect these dots, and understand the root cause of their problems.
Join the communists
On this basis, we can build a revolutionary leadership that can provide the movement with a theoretical compass; with a clear perspective to orient us and show the way forward.
This is the foundation for our revolutionary optimism: the ability to recognise and explain, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, how every revolution seems impossible until the moment when it becomes inevitable.
So to the youth of today, we say: don’t despair; don’t remain isolated, or allow yourself to be beaten back and burnt out by the seemingly endless nightmares that capitalism throws our way.
Instead, get organised. Join the communists. Be realistic: demand the impossible – demand the future.
