Leadership meeting focuses on Party Collectives here ♦ Growing Party Collectives here ♦
ICWP meeting in South Africa
ICWP Leadership Meeting Focuses on Party Collectives, the Building Blocks of Communism
February 8—“More people we know are more open to communism than we probably assume,” commented a new Party member to her Los Angeles (US) collective. If her statement is true, what is next?
Since the founding of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) eleven years ago, the conditions in which we fight to bring about a communist revolution have markedly changed. Despite the pandemic and lockdowns, tens of millions globally have taken to the streets to fight racism and police brutality. Our comrades in India are fighting with millions more during the farmers’ revolt. The bosses’ fascist response is no longer a possibility, but a reality.
But if we rely on these changed conditions to build our party and lead us to communist revolution, we will be sorely disappointed.
The report from a Los Angeles (US) collective kicked off the ICWP leadership meeting in February. It emphasized that the collective is the basic unit of the party. It is the place where we can carry out the key struggles over our relationships with broader masses.
We must focus on the kinds of relationships we have with those “more open to communism than we assume.”
The struggle to form communist relationships may start with a comrade and their base but can’t end there. This—like everything else in communism—must progress to a collective struggle.
The base built by each party member should be the collective responsibility of the local club and ultimately, the whole party. One long-time Party member noted excitedly “this was the main point of the LA report and it is key for building the Party internationally.”
Every party member needs to be part of a party collective. Every collective must build broader collectives such as study-action groups.
The LA report proposed refocusing on how clubs function. Each collective—particularly those at a concentration—should write a report and send it to Red Flag. These reports should contain plans to expand the communist relationships the collective has with the people around it.
Other collectives talked about changes they have made to improve and solidify communist relations. For example, the El Salvador collective worked out how to arrange their schedules to meet with maquila workers on each shift. Each member is struggled with to meet workers outside of the factory.
International Collectives: Opportunity to Expand Communist Work Everywhere
The India report started with a thorough presentation of the conditions of class struggle in the last few weeks. As the discussion continued, comrades advocated solidifying and expanding a collective of Bay Area (US) comrades and friends.
A number of potential participants are Dalits from India who have lived and worked in the U.S. for the last 5-10 years. They, like party comrades, have ties to Indian auto and garment workers.
Many have attended Black Lives Matter rallies. They identify with Black and Latinx workers in the U.S., having experienced the oppression of the Indian bosses’ caste system.
The next step is for this collective to establish close relationships with workers in the U.S., even as members and friends in this collective help the work in India.
The follow-up discussions helped clarify what communists mean by international collectives. We go beyond the liberal designation of allies. We are one international working class with one goal everywhere: communist revolution.
A similar international collective is being strengthened to further the work in South Africa.
The Clubs Help Determine the Shape of The Future
The meeting ended with plans for a Zoom forum on Saturday, March 20 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The workers’ seizure of power then came out of years of patient organizing and political struggle, similar to our work today (see back page).
But the ICWP aims to mobilize the masses for communism and nothing less. Today, this means that each party collective must concentrate on building communist relationships with those around them. This struggle will lead us to communist revolution as well as to the success of our future communist society.
Growing Party Collectives: Key to Communist Work
The day after the US Capitol riot, our party collective welcomed a new member. She had been joining our weekly Zoom discussion group, online chats and international Zoom forums for almost five months. She was taking responsibility for certain tasks.
Then she asked a comrade, “How does someone officially become a member of ICWP? Am I a member yet?”
“Certainly, we consider you a member,” he replied. “There is no protocol. Only the decision that you want to fight for a communist society and contribute as you can. It doesn’t matter if there are still disagreements or the desire to understand some things better. Things get clearer as we go along.”
Before diving into the fascist coup attempt, we tried to get clearer about what it means to belong to a party collective.
We understand that party work depends on “networks” of friends, relatives, co-workers. We encourage them to read Red Flag and other literature. We discuss communist ideas with them and ask them to circulate Red Flag to their own networks. Our new member had just sent it to 40 people
We agreed that the party needs “concentrations” that are strategically key to mobilizing for communism.
But we are still struggling for clarity about groups the party organizes. One idea, presented at an international forum, is that “party collectives” should mainly be discussion groups where we connect with newly-interested people. This idea sees “study-action groups,” in contrast, as being made up of “all people who carry the work into the world.”
The leader of our collective presented a different, contradictory idea. She said that party collectives (sometimes called cells or clubs) are for both discussion and carrying out the work. These are interrelated. Members of party collectives commit to discussing current issues, theory and practice. From these discussions come concrete plans for action.
Different members contribute to carrying out these plans in different ways, as they are willing and able. We are committed to evaluating this work as frankly and objectively as we can, through criticism and self-criticism. We improve our plans and our work.
These plans often include discussion or study groups that meet the needs of members and friends at a particular time. Our collective’s weekly Zoom group was an example. Also,
we usually invite some friends (who are not yet members) to join meetings of the party collective.
The collective, not the individual member, is the basic unit of the party. Each collective should have specific responsibilities connected with one or more concentrations. Members of our collective have helped “from the outside” with the transit concentration. Most of us have responsibilities around producing Red Flag. But we are still seeking a workplace, community organization or other concentration where we can work together to build the party.
Our collective generally agrees with this (second) view. It will become clearer in practice. We discussed what we are and aren’t willing or able to do. We planned for three members to start a new “Collective Liberation” book club, and for the discussion group to continue biweekly.
We live in critical times. We need to win more young people to work with us instead of relying on the Democratic Party.
Sharpening contradictions of capitalism, including the political fight in the US, make it increasingly important that every party member participate actively in a party collective that builds the party and expands our work. We welcome more discussion of what this means and requires.
—Party collective in Los Angeles (USA)
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