For many, the world seems to be going mad. Every day in the news there are stories of genocide, war, climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and political scandals. There is a growing feeling that everything is getting worse.
A YouGov poll from this summer showed that 80 percent of respondents in the UK replied that Britain is in a “very bad” or “fairly bad” state.
The majority of people are feeling dissatisfied with the way things are – and more are asking themselves what can be done about it.
Revolution
A growing number are looking towards the ideas of communism, as it offers a clear alternative to the capitalist system – not just a diagnosis of capitalism today, or a thought experiment of a different future.
Just like Karl Marx famously said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” The ideas of Marxism allows us to see beyond the surface of things. They explain why there is this turbulence, instability, and crisis in society – and how a socialist revolution can grow from this.
Marx explained that when a social system is no longer able to develop its productive forces, it enters into crisis and a period of social revolution opens up. This is the kind of era we live under now.
Capitalism cannot develop the economy, science, technology, or industry. Instead, economic growth is stagnating. Employment and rising living standards cannot be guaranteed.
All over the world, we are seeing social unrest, outbreaks of political movements, and revolutions. Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and the Palestine movement are just a few examples from recent months.
The system itself is radicalising millions of people all around the world. Big events like the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, war, and genocide have massively shaped people’s consciousness.
The same process is happening here in Britain too. It’s not a question if a revolution will take place, but when.
History
Unfortunately, a revolutionary movement on its own is not enough to get rid of capitalism.
When workers and young people involve themselves in mass movements and flood onto the streets in protest, they know what they don’t want. Some even draw very far reaching conclusions of the need to overthrow capitalism.
But that doesn’t mean that they know how to do it. This is why we need a revolutionary party.
History is not an automatic process. If it was, there would be no need for any kind of struggle against capitalism – we could all just sit back and wait for its inevitable demise.
Our historic role as a party is to consciously formulate what the working class comes to understand in a semi-conscious or unconscious way: the need to sweep aside – once and for all – the system that makes our lives miserable.
The revolutionary party needs to function as the historic memory of the working class: a leadership that has learnt the lessons from past revolutionary movements, and can in a clear way put forward the ideas of socialist revolution and how to achieve it.
The party is therefore always first and foremost about its ideas and perspectives – and the programme and methods that flow from this.
Our only right to exist as a separate party, as Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, is our ideas and our capability to bring them into the movement.
Bolsheviks
During crucial historical moments, political leadership can be just as decisive a factor as the role of a chief commander during critical times of war.
Leon Trotsky, the great revolutionary leader, explained that: “Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box.”
This was the exact function that the Bolshevik Party played during the Russian Revolution in 1917. The main demands of the revolution were: bread for the hungry; land to the peasants; and peace to end the slaughter of WWI.
Through patiently explaining, the Bolsheviks were able to convince the workers of the truth – that the only way they could achieve these demands was through socialist revolution.
What was needed was to smash the old capitalist state, expropriate the landlords without compensation, and nationalise the banks and big factories under workers’ control.
The Bolshevik Party, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, was the decisive factor for the success of the revolution.
Join your party
A party like theirs – with the understanding, authority, and reach necessary to win the trust of the Russian masses – could not be improvised in the heat of the moment. It had to be built before the revolution, to be ready for when these titanic events came.
This is the task that we in the RCP have set for ourselves. We want to build the vital tool that the working class needs to see a victorious revolution.
As a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, you are training yourselves up to become a future class fighter, capable of leading mass movements.
The RCP has made promising steps forward. But we are still too small to play this decisive role in the class struggle.
We urgently need to grow the party. Our aim is to reach 1,500 by the end of the year, and then 2,000 members by our next annual national congress in May 2025.
So if you are a communist and a revolutionary, and you want to change the world, then you need to get organised – and that means joining us in this fight.
