On Saturday, July 5, Socialist Horizon, Firebrand, the International Socialist League and Socialist Alternative (Australia) hosted a meet-up titled “Rebuilding Revolutionary Socialist Organization” at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago.
By Puntorojo Editorial Collective
The objective of the meet-up was to argue for the necessity of building a revolutionary party organization. This refers to a socialist organizational model that endeavors to unite and group revolutionary socialists together, to develop and train new generations of class-conscious militants to participate, coordinate, and lead in the class struggles of today and those to come, and to ultimately support the process of uniting the vanguard–or the leading, most militant and organized, and most class conscious sectors of the working class–into a mass revolutionary socialist party that can ultimately lead the working class in the struggle for power against the capitalist state and ruling class.
This is the project of revolutionary regroupment that Socialist Horizon, Firebrand and others have been discussing in the US over the last several months.
The success of the event, attended by 90 people, as well as other activities over the weekend, not only confirmed the urgency of building such a project now. It also showed that it is possible. The political space is there with thousands of radicalizing people open and willing to organize around a revolutionary perspective.
Why we need a revolutionary party…
The ruling class, led by Trump has launched all out war against the working class and oppressed people in the United States and around the world. Their project intends to impose an authoritarian regime and intensify exploitation and oppression in the country and bolster US imperialist power abroad.
The Los Angeles anti-ICE rebellion and the millions that marched across the country on June 14 for the “No Kings” rallies show that a resistance is emerging and demonstrating the potential for fighting back and defeating the Trump regime. But building movements of mass resistance will not be successful if we limit our hopes and efforts to merely restoring the Democratic Party back into power. While the Democrats may use less vile rhetoric and overtly authoritarian methods, they are just as dedicated to enforcing the prerogatives of US capitalism and imperialism as Trump and the Republicans. This is apparent in how the Democrats are providing no tangible opposition to Trump’s attacks, have no viable alternatives to offer, and are instead accommodating to the far rightwing political shifts taking place at the top of US society.
Even if we are able to build an independent working class party out of the mass struggles that inevitably lie ahead, it would fail to achieve real change if it lacked a revolutionary socialist program and strategy to lead the working masses into power through class struggle.
The process by which a mass working-class revolutionary party can be built depends on the level of organization of its most militant and organized sectors and the trajectory of the class struggles moving forward. It will also necessitate an organized political struggle against the current dominance of liberal reformist ideas that seek to confuse, constrain, and ultimately undermine working class consciousness and prevent militant class struggle. Revolutionary socialists have to confidently intervene in the political battle of ideas within the class struggles to come. Revolutionaries need to vie for leadership and strive to give direction within the class struggles by consistently applying, diffusing, and demonstrating revolutionary Marxist theory and practice that ensures the greatest possibility for winning the struggles at hand.
The current weakness of working class organization, and marginalization of revolutionary socialist ideas within the working class has led some on the socialist left to argue against the idea of building an explicitly revolutionary socialist party organization. Instead, they emphasize that we should limit our efforts to supporting, strengthening, or re-building ‘existing working class organizations’ (primarily labor unions), and supporting efforts to build ‘infrastructures of resistance’ that can help teach the working class to fight back. They attest that any attempt to build a revolutionary party organization before mass working class organizations are rebuilt is counterproductive.
That perspective has a number of problems. For starters, it sidelines revolutionary socialist politics altogether, as it is predicated on the assumption that there is not sufficient class consciousness and class organization for workers to reach or attain socialist consciousness. Instead, it encourages accommodation to working within the framework of the liberal reformist ideologies that already dominate these institutions. It lowers expectations for how workers can be radicalized in struggle, break with liberal and reformist ideas, and gravitate towards anti-capitalist conclusions and join radical organizations. Furthermore, it offers no vision, pathway, or vehicle for organizing for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. This is put off until some unknown point in the future.
This perspective also fails to take stock of where we are at. Revolutionary socialists are more scattered and disorganized than they have been in the past. While many more people today call themselves revolutionaries, the number of people trained in revolutionary theory and practice—and the politics of many of the existing cadres—has regressed. Questions of entering the Democratic Party, supporting one form of imperialism or another, and even opposition to open political intervention as revolutionaries in the class struggle have surfaced — questions that once had long been resolved through painful experience.
While revolutionaries must certainly play a role in building labor and social movement organizations, their development largely depends on the dynamics of the class struggle, not on the initiative and actions of revolutionary activists. As Marx said, we don’t choose the conditions of our struggle, but we must fight to create conditions that are more favorable to our side.
We cannot “will” strong working-class unions, organizations, and parties into existence. However, building a revolutionary organization capable of intervening in the broader movement and eventually fighting to lead it with a revolutionary strategy depends exclusively on our initiative.
Furthermore, if we wait for a stronger working class movement to arise before building such an organization, we will have even less capacity to influence its politics or perspectives. We are already seeing the danger of revolutionaries becoming passive or waiting on the sidelines. Socialist reformism and neo-Stalinist campism are filling the vacuum developing in the widening spaces on the left today.
The histories of struggles in this country and around the world are littered with failures because revolutionaries couldn’t effectively counter the liberal reformist ideas and other bad faith politics that ultimately worked to derail the class struggle, recycle the capitalist system, or otherwise disorganize and demoralize working class movements. The success of mass struggles and movements, let alone revolutions, depends on revolutionary socialist politics winning out over ideas proven to be dead-ends. To do that, revolutionary ideas must be crystalized into a material force and given organizational expression. Revolutionaries need a strong and wide-reaching organization of dedicated cadres working collectively and with a clear political program. Only an interventionist organization like this can hope to have any chance of winning leadership from reformists, campists, and other non-revolutionary forces.
Such an organization cannot be built overnight. We need to begin now.
…And how to build it
There are no shortcuts but there is also no time to lose. We need to begin building a revolutionary organization today. In other words, we need an organization whose central strategy, the guiding star of its entire activity, is advancing the construction of a mass working-class revolutionary party, and one that acts in international solidarity with socialists across the globe striving for the same goals.
The process of building a revolutionary party logically has various stages of development and is not linear. But the development of a distinct organization of revolutionary militants is essential. This organization must be grounded in firm principles of revolutionary strategy, class independence and internationalism. It must be structured with dedicated and independent-thinking political cadres, an internal method of democratic discussion and united intervention, and a collective, principled and accountable leadership. It must have the tactical flexibility to build political and social movements of the working class and the oppressed without sectarianism, and with the strategic and political firmness to push the class struggle forward at all points.
Our starting point is small; the task at hand is immense. For our existing organizations, our immediate priority is training dedicated cadres — revolutionaries with both solid theoretical knowledge and practical experience in struggle. But there are many revolutionaries, organized and not, and many more radicalizing workers and students in the US today who could join such a project.
That is why we propose a process of revolutionary regroupment as one way forward at this stage to lay the basis for the revolutionary organization we need. This is not a proposal to unite for the sake of uniting. What we do mean by revolutionary regroupment is making a serious effort to bring together organizations and individuals who agree that we must begin building a revolutionary party in the US and internationally today, and agree to do so around a core set of principled political points of unity.
The political basis of this revolutionary regroupment project is an ongoing discussion open to contribution by all participants, but we can outline the central elements of this discussion in the following points:
Working-class revolution. As Marx said, “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.” Only the revolutionary mobilization of the working masses can overthrow capitalism and begin to build the foundations of a socialist society, one in which workers exercise their democratic control of the means of production and determine all economic and social objectives and policies. We strive to advance all struggles toward socialist revolution and a workers’ government.
Revolutionary party. Mass revolutions overthrow rulers and regimes, but they cannot build something better in their place without a revolutionary leadership. Such a leadership does not arise spontaneously nor can it be built in the heat of revolutionary upheaval. Our key permanent strategic task is to build an organization dedicated to building a revolutionary party, limited to active members on the basis of a clear political program and a structure of democratic debate and united action. Building an international revolutionary organization is a necessary aspect of building a revolutionary party in the US.
Opposition to ruling class capitalist parties. Here in the United States we reject both the Democratic and Republican parties as they serve the interests of the ruling class and elites. We also oppose so-called independent bourgeois candidates. We always organize independently of both parties. We do not believe socialism is achievable through elections or the institutions of the capitalist state. However, we are in favor of revolutionary socialists running for office and using parliamentary seats as a platform to advance the class struggle and expand the reach of socialist ideas
Internationalism against imperialism, colonialism, campism. We oppose colonialism and imperialism in all of its forms. We believe Israel is a Zionist settler-colonial state, and that the liberation of Palestine is the quintessential anti-colonial project. We reject campism in all forms. No imperialism is progressive, thus we oppose and retain complete independence from US and European imperialism, as well as Chinese, Russian, and all other imperialisms. We fight for international working-class solidarity against the international ruling capitalist classes.
Prioritizing the struggle against all forms of oppression. The fight against oppression is central to the fight against capitalism. We cannot diminish or eliminate racism, immigrant repression, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism without attacking capitalism. We believe that the oppressed and the working class must lead the fight to build a new revolutionary organization. We must stand up against ICE, the carceral system, and the state violence against all oppressed peoples. White supremacy, white nationalism, and xenophobia are toxic barriers to international working class solidarity. We demand full bodily autonomy including free abortion on demand and free gender affirming healthcare for all. We believe women and queer people, and fight against all forms of sexual assault and harrasment conducted by individuals or the state. The liberation of the oppressed and the liberation of the working-class are two sides of the same fight.
Against Stalinism and Reformism. Capitalism is an international system of class domination. We support and fight for reforms that advance the liberation of the oppressed and working-class, but believe that capitalism can only be abolished through revolution. Revolutions that do not advance toward the democratic rule of the working class, the expropriation of the capitalists and the destruction of the capitalist system will inevitably regress, fail or be defeated. Socialism is not possible in one country. Even a victorious socialist revolution in one country will inevitably stagnate and face inevitable counterrevolution or defeat if it does not succeed in expanding the revolution internationally until defeating the capitalist class at a global scale.
Anti-Fascism. We believe that fascism is the attempt to resolve crises in capitalism through the use of a petit bourgeois movement aimed at smashing working class organizations and atomizing the working class. It uses state violence, attacks on workers and the oppressed, elimination of all democratic practices, and the creation of internal enemies who must be eliminated. Because fascism emerges from the capitalist system, the fight against fascism must always be anti-capitalist. We believe that the best way to fight fascism is through building a United Front .
Stopping Capitalist Ecocide. We know that capitalism sees the world and its people as raw material for profit. Building a socialist society is the only alternative. We need a world where people, nature, and all of human life is valued over the creation of wealth.
In addition to our meetup, the Socialism 2025 conference hosted another positive event. A meeting sponsored by Tempest, Workers Voice, Socialist Horizon, Solidarity, and Socialist Humanists aimed to launch a united front of the left for mutual defense and joint action. This is a positive development that could strengthen the broader left and the struggles we will face in the coming months and years. We support this united front and will participate in its development.
The revolutionary regroupment we propose is something different but not contradictory to this effort that we are also a part of. United action with the broader left is necessary to fight in greater strength. At the same time, our revolutionary regroupment aims to unify those who agree on the more strategic task of building a revolutionary party organization of dedicated members and cadre while we intervene in the class struggle, whenever possible in unity with broader forces.
We seek to work with all revolutionary socialist organizations and individuals who share our commitment to regroupment and building a new revolutionary socialist organization.
To that end we are holding a public two-day Revolutionary Socialism Conference on September 6-7th organized around the theme of “Toward a Revolutionary Party.” The conference will feature speakers from revolutionary organizations around the world.
We will advance a new set of ideas about how to build a revolutionary socialist organization in the U.S. Register for the conference at: bit.ly/revsoc2025
Join us by following our publications at https://www.puntorojomag.org and https://firebrand.red
If you’d like to join us, affiliate, or build your own revolutionary socialist organization, reach out to us at contact@puntorojomag.org, contact@socialisthorizon.org, and firebrandcommunists@gmail.com.
