On 10 June, hundreds of communists will gather in Italy, joined by thousands participating online, to found a new Revolutionary Communist International, to fight for socialist revolution across the globe. Register now, and join us!
Watch the promotional video:
Full script:
Capitalism faces its deepest-ever crisis.
Israel is conducting a brutal massacre of the people of Gaza with the full backing of Western imperialism.
War, poverty and precarity are facts of life for workers and young people everywhere.
We have to suffer from inflation and financial turmoil, while fatcats like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos count their billions.
The earth is burning as the climate catastrophe worsens by the day.
In the poorest countries, hunger, disease and displacement are rampant.
The political representatives of the capitalist class have never been more corrupt and incompetent.
The stupidity of today’s politicians is matched only by their brutality towards the poor and oppressed.
Poll after poll shows widespread hatred towards the status quo.
Every pillar of capitalist rule, from the political system, to the press, the courts, to the police is increasingly discredited and despised.
We have seen huge protests over the past period: from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the revolt of European farmers, millions on the streets against a retirement age hike in France, revolutions in Sri Lanka and Sudan, and tens of millions hitting the streets in solidarity with Palestine.
Students have risen up on their campuses to protest Israel’s criminal war on Gaza, facing vicious state repression.
The working class has also begun to flex its muscles – we have seen big strikes against the cost-of-living crisis.
Why then does the system endure?
It’s simple: workers and young people have no leadership worthy of the name.
The bureaucratic tops of the big trade unions like Unison in Britain, the CGT in France and AFL-CIO in the US have no intention of taking the fight to capitalism, instead resorting to compromise deals to get a few more crumbs from the bosses’ table.
The leaders of the mainstream social-democratic and labour parties pledge the same policies of cuts and attacks on working people as the open right-wingers.
They back imperialist butchery abroad, they curtail trade union rights, and they are totally subservient to the bankers and bosses.
To their left, since the 2008 recession, we saw a wave of politicians like Bernie Sanders in the USA, Tsipras and Varoufakis and Greece, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain who aroused massive support from millions of workers and young people.
They called themselves socialists.
They promised an end to austerity.
They promised us a better deal, by taxing the rich and investing in jobs, schools and hospitals – to reform capitalism without breaking with it.
But this proved impossible, and each was defeated or sold out in one way or another, causing widespread disappointment.
Now, a new generation of class fighters is learning the lessons of past battles.
They’re looking beyond the reformism of Sanders and Corbyn.
They’re looking to the example of Marx, Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
They’re looking to communism.
Over the last year, our comrades have run a hugely successful campaign, with hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers appearing all over the world asking: “are you a communist? Then get organised!”
The response has been terrific, with thousands writing in to join us. But we think we have only just scratched the surface.
Marx and Engels understood that the working class has no country – communism is internationalist or it is nothing.
That’s why they established the International Workingmen’s Association, the first international, in 1864, to organise workers across borders in the common struggle for socialist revolution.
Its rise and fall was brief, but it was followed by the Second International after Marx’s death.
This was a mighty body, with millions of members.
Tragically, it was destroyed by the treachery of its leaders, who voted to send the workers of Europe to slaughter one another in World War I.
That was why the great Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin established the Third International, the Communist International, in 1919.
It was meant as a world party of revolution to organise communists inspired by the explosive impact of the October Revolution of 1917.
But the rise of Stalin, at the head of a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy, saw the USSR degenerate into a dictatorial caricature of socialism.
Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943 as a concession to his imperialist allies Roosevelt and Churchill.
Leon Trotsky tried to uphold the genuine traditions of Leninism and Marxism with the Fourth International, but that also fell apart after his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940.
Today, most of the old Communist Parties, which sullied the name of communism, are shadows of their former selves.
In China and Russia, they restored capitalism – undoing the immense progress made by the workers and peasants to free themselves from bondage.
A new generation of young people is discovering communism, and they need a new banner.
Our comrades in Britain, the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and beyond have been launching new Revolutionary Communist Parties.
Beacons of communist struggle for workers and youth today.
Just like the Communist International of Lenin which went before us, these new parties form one worldwide fighting organisation: an embryo of the world party of communist revolution.
Our upcoming founding conference will be a school covering all aspects of our communist programme: from Marxist philosophy, to our stance on oppression, the role of the state, how to build a revolutionary party, and much more besides.
All the recordings will be made available straight away, so you can watch live or with a delay.
We have published our Manifesto, which will be our foundational document, containing our analysis and perspectives for the future.
Right now, there is a burning fury at the system. The ideas of Marxism are more popular than at any time in living memory.
But as Trotsky said: ideas without organisation are like a knife without a blade.
We once again need a new International.
A Revolutionary Communist International.
And between the 10th and 15th of June, at the founding conference of the RCI in Italy, that is what we will found.
Sign up, participate in this event, and get ready to join the fight for a new, better world.