As capitalism’s worldwide crisis deepens and imperialism drives relentlessly to wider and more deadly energy wars, hundreds of millions of workers are questioning capitalism. The crisis will deepen, regional wars will explode into World War III, and billions of workers unable to live in the old way will look for radical alternatives.

Will the workers choose to fight for communism as the only solution to the capitalist inferno? Not unless revolutionary communists now wage a protracted, patient, determined effort to put communism on the agenda of the international working class. This is the task we have shouldered: to win masses of workers to embrace communist ideas and to use them to fight for, win, and build a communist world.

Millions of workers, organized worldwide as one party, will collectively run every aspect of society in our class’ interest. The International Communist Workers Party we are building today is the nucleus of that new world.

Communism means a world without borders or nations. Workers will be welcomed wherever they go. We will replace the bosses’ poisonous patriotism, used to protect their interests and pit workers against workers, with the true internationalism of “one world, one class, one party.”

Only communism can end racism, the cornerstone of the capitalist system. The bosses need racism, nationalism and sexism to maximize their super-profits, to divide and rule over us. Capitalism’s “dog-eat-dog” mentality will be smashed by our egalitarian, collective way of life. As we take the future into our own hands, revolutionary optimism will prevail over cynicism, mysticism, and despair.

Standing on the shoulders of these giants, we can see farther and clearer. We now see that these great victories were reversed because the old communist movement fought for socialism. They thought workers couldn’t be won to fight directly for communism. Socialism is state capitalism, but communists believed they could steer it toward communism. It inevitably turned them into capitalists.

Revisionism means not having confidence that the working class can embrace and act upon the most advanced communist line at any particular time. Revisionism is the pro-capitalist ideology within every one of us. It is an ever-present danger that must be struggled against constantly. Criticism and self-criticism are among our main tools to defeat revisionism.

Today, Russia and China are imperialist powers locked in deadly rivalry with US imperialism on a collision course toward WWIII. We won’t embrace “revolutionary nationalism”, as the old communist movement mistakenly did before WWII, or abandon our revolutionary slogan that “working people have no nation.” Confident that workers can defeat fascism with communist revolution, we reject alliances with any “lesser evil boss” and condemn all “national liberation” struggles.

We warm of the dangers and stress the opportunities in the approaching storms. The First World War laid the ground for the Russian Revolution and WWII opened the door for the Chinese Revolution. Our task now is to prepare to turn the coming imperialist world war into a worldwide class war for communism.

Long-term ties with our fellow workers, especially in the factories and barracks, are key to exposing illusions in reformism and reformist leaders. We use our newspaper Red Flag to build networks of readers and writers, organize action-study groups and recruit to our party. The relationships we build today will sharpen the class struggle, make revolution possible, and become the heart of the communist world we are building.

What blocks the completion of our historic task? The main obstacle is the rulers’ poisonous ideology among our ranks. Racism, sexism, and nationalism divide us. Patriotism and reformism chain us to our exploiters. Cynicism, mysticism, one-sided thinking and individualism paralyze us. We must smash these deadly ideas with a growing communist class-consciousness. We must deepen our understanding of dialectical materialism, our guiding science to liberation. The sooner we do this, the sooner we will smash capitalism and begin the construction of our new communist world. The future is ours! Fight for Communism! Join the International Communist Workers Party! Read, Distribute, and Write for your newspaper RED FLAG!

The deepening world wide capitalist economic crisis and the world imperialists’ unrelenting drive to wider and more lethal oil wars have hundreds of millions of workers questioning capitalism. This crisis will deepen, regional wars will give way to World War III and billions of workers unable to live in the old way, will not only question capitalism but will look for radical alternatives. Will they choose and fight for communism as the only solution to the capitalist imperialist inferno? No, this will only happen if revolutionary communists now wage a protracted, patient but determined effort to put communism on the agenda of the international working class. In order to do this, we must inject our revolutionary communist ideas in every piece of literature and every class struggle in which we participate. Our task is to win millions of workers to embrace communist ideas in order to guarantee that they will fight for, win and build a communist society. It is a monumental historical challenge. We have accepted it with responsibility, humility, confidence in our class and great revolutionary optimism by founding the International Communist Workers Party (ICWP).

Members and friends of ICWP in the US and other countries are determined to build our Party into the new Communist International. We are determined to destroy forever the bosses’ poisonous ideologies of racism, sexism, individualism, patriotism and nationalism. We are determined to fight for a world without borders. We are determined to win millions of workers, soldiers and students worldwide to fight for communism under the slogans of “one class, one flag, one political line and one Party.” We are committed to building a communist world - a world without bosses where nothing will be bought or sold; a world where “from each according to his/her commitment, to each according to his/her needs” will be the universal rule.

It is not an easy task and it won’t happen overnight. However, history has recorded many instances in which our class has overcome overwhelming odds – has “dared to storm heaven” – and won. The Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Defeat of Hitler’s Nazi hordes during WWII and the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s will stand as the last century’s greatest achievements. Unfortunately, the old international communist movement lacked the confidence that the working class could be won to fight directly for communism. It fought for socialism – state capitalism administered by the working class – and inevitably turned into its opposite, that is, back to capitalism. Now Russia and China are imperialist countries rivaling US imperialism for world domination.

Today, standing on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, we can see farther and clearer. We are forever grateful to the founder of Progressive Labor Party under whose leadership the PLP made tremendous contributions to the international communist movement. Nevertheless, we have left PLP to found the ICWP because we consider that the current PLP leadership has taken the revisionist road. We take with us the great lessons and experiences of PLP and its fight against revisionism, especially Road to Revolution 4 published in 1982 which rejects stages and socialism and calls for fighting directly for communism. RR4 calls for a mass party and for winning masses of workers, soldiers and students to communism before, during and after revolution. We take with us the PLP document Road to Revolution 4.5 which confronted one of the main unresolved weaknesses of the international communist movement: understanding the contradictory nature of reform and revolution.

RR4.5 makes clear that it is not enough to say we fight for communism. It makes clear that communists must fight daily, shoulder to shoulder, with workers who are struggling against the bosses’ attacks. However, our main task in these struggles is to constantly introduce our communist ideas, fully confident that many workers can be won to see that communism, not reformism, is the solution to their problems. We undertake this task seriously, participating in class struggle, exposing illusions in reformism and reformist leaders, agitating massively for our ideas in leaflets, building networks to distribute our newspaper, organizing action-study groups and recruiting to our party.

Long term ties with our fellow workers are key to our work, especially among industrial workers and soldiers. Communists who see their main task as winning the reform will inevitably become reformists and end up revisionists, fake communists who destroy the communist movement. This is the road the PLP leadership has taken and they refused to have an all out party discussion of their reformist and revisionist errors. What’s more, they tried to silence the left. We refused to commit the same error as the Chinese Red Guards who, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, fought for communism and against the Chinese Communist Party’s revisionism but failed to break with Mao and found their own party.

The road to revolution will have many ups and downs but the final victory shall be ours. We face the most murderous fascist ruling class in history: the capitalists and imperialists of the world. They boast the most lethal and destructive weapons ever developed. They arrogantly stride the world as if they were all powerful and invincible. Nevertheless, the capitalists are strategically weak.

More than other ruling classes in history, their economic and military might are dependent on their gravediggers, the workers of the world. The rulers’ ideology among our ranks is the main obstacle preventing us from carrying out our historic task. The sooner we in ICWP replace it with communist ideology the sooner the international working class will be on the road to communist revolution and communism. Dare to struggle, dare to win. The future shall be ours. Fight reformism! Fight for Communism! Join Us!

Posted 2-10-2010