2025 L.A. Marxist School: building an American Bolshevik Party

In a world on fire with revolutionary uprisings and mass movements, 165 communists from across the West Coast and beyond gathered in Los Angeles on October 11–12 for a landmark weekend of Marxist education.

[Originally published at communistusa.org]

Large contingents from Seattle, Phoenix, and L.A. were joined by comrades and guests from nearly two dozen other cities for the 2025 L.A. Marxist School, the biggest communist conference the West Coast has seen in recent memory.

Communists descended on the country’s second-largest city from the Bay Area; San Diego; Ventura; the Inland Empire; Sacramento; South Pasadena; Stockton, CA; Tucson; Albuquerque; Dallas-Fort Worth; Denver; Salt Lake City; Logan, UT; Bellingham, WA; Boise, ID; Portland, OR; Medford, OR; Chicago; New York; Waterloo, Ontario; and London, UK.

It’s the first of three Marxist schools the RCA is holding this fall, with similar events scheduled for Chicago on October 25–26 and New York on November 8–9.

In August, the RCA launched a “fall offensive” recruitment campaign on over 50 campuses across the country. Since then, we’ve recruited 230 new members! The task now is to train them in the theory and method of Marxism. Comrades came to L.A. determined to gain the political clarity necessary to explain the crisis and decline of capitalism to coworkers, classmates, and neighbors—and win them to the banner of revolutionary communism.

Crisis and revolution

The school opened with Antonio Balmer speaking to a packed room on the worldwide wave of class struggle from France to Nepal and Italy to Indonesia. The global economy is bogged down with mountains of debt, and the ruling classes in countries across the planet are forcing workers to pay through attacks on living standards and social services. Mass movements in Europe are linking opposition to the genocide in Palestine with the crisis of austerity, unemployment, and exploitation at home. The discussion deepened comrades’ understanding of the decline of world capitalism—and the urgency to build a revolutionary party steeled in Marxism to overthrow it.

On Saturday evening, Joe Attard, host of the Specter of Communism podcast, discussed why communists take an interest in film, as well as other art forms and human culture in general. We’re fighting not only for the economic and political liberation of the working class, but also for the artistic and intellectual liberation of humanity from the clutches of the decrepit capitalist system and its profit motive.

On Sunday evening, John Peterson, executive editor of The Communist, introduced the final plenary session, diving into the philosophy of Marxism. Dialectical materialism is a comprehensive method for understanding the world as it is—not in the abstract, but in its concrete change, contradiction, and development. Without it, we stand no chance of intervening in the historical process and connecting with the masses, helping them reach revolutionary conclusions. We must master the dialectical-materialist method to understand how events and consciousness can change dramatically in the course of the class struggle—and so as to intervene in events to change the course of history.

Joe Attard, host of the Specter of Communism podcast, discussed why communists take an interest in film, as well as other art forms and human culture in general / Image: RCA

School of communism

In addition to the three plenaries, there were six commissions covering a range of theoretical and historical topics. A lot of buzz preceded Mia Jimenez’s talk on “Communism and Women’s Liberation.” The book stall sold out of Women, Family, and the Russian Revolution before the session even began! Mia explained how women’s oppression is fundamental to the existence of class society and can only be overcome through a united struggle of the working class.

In her talk, “The Myths of Stalinism: What Lenin and Trotsky Really Stood For,” Charlotte Papin explained how the international isolation of the Russian Revolution allowed the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy to destroy the workers’ democracy that Lenin, Trotsky, and the Russian masses fought to build.

A session on the Spanish Revolution of 1936–1939 showed how the lack of a genuine communist leadership led to defeat and the rise of fascism. The events of this revolutionary period are not a dead letter, but a living trove of lessons for revolutionaries today.

Other discussions included Erika Roedl outlining Bolshevik strategy and tactics in a talk on Lenin’s classic “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Chase Birkeland explaining laws by which capitalism operates and why it inevitably goes into crisis, and Jake Thorp drawing out the lessons of the 2011 Arab Spring which swept from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

Call to action

Throughout the weekend, the halls were filled with comrades bouncing ideas off one another between sessions and during the evening socials. Suitcases and backpacks went home stuffed with over $4,000 worth of Marxist literature from the book stall.

Perhaps some attendees came thinking they were in for a simple educational event. What they found was not education for education’s sake, but a call to action: we need to build an American Bolshevik party on the rock-solid foundation of these ideas.

Comrades described how they had never heard such clarity about the chaotic world situation we’re living through today. One non-member attending the school joined the party during the event, pledging to pay a full day’s wage in monthly dues! Several others are planning to meet with a comrade this week to discuss becoming members to build the party with us.

John Peterson, executive editor of The Communist, introduced the final plenary session, diving into dialectical materialism / Image: RCA

Revolutionary leadership

In his concluding comments, Antonio Balmer described the long years of hard work spent patiently building the party in California. Nine comrades attended the first-ever California Marxist School in 2013—a time when interest in Marxism was low and it was difficult to find recruits who understood the need for revolution.

Now consciousness is shifting. The crash of 2008, the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and the relative decline of US imperialism have produced a new generation looking to tear the entire system down. At the end of Antonio’s remarks, the room broke into revolutionary song.

The main thread running through the school was the urgent need for revolutionary leadership. When events push the masses to fight back, a communist party with roots in every workplace, neighborhood, and campus can explain how they can take power and run society themselves. But only if we understand the system we’re fighting against and the kind of world we’re fighting for. As Lenin put it, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”