We’ve received a flood of reports, videos and photos pouring from every corner of the globe in the past period, showing comrades of the Revolutionary Communist International participating in historic events, and our ideas are resonating like never before.
In the words of a comrade, speaking at the encampment in Puerta del Sol in Madrid, “Communism is getting more and more popular. These aren’t just numbers from some survey anymore – the communists are here.”
The past few months represent a gear-shift in the scale, breadth and impact of our activity. The world is ablaze. A new generation of class fighters is coming to the fore, looking for answers – and we are winning over more of these fighters than ever!
Spain
A year ago, Europe was struck by a wave of militant struggle, from the ‘Block Everything’ movement in France, to the political general strike for Palestine in Italy. Now, we see a new wave of militancy, spearheaded by the youth.
These explosions have all been triggered by different issues (housing in Spain, education in France, militarism in Germany), but they are fuelled by the general crisis of world capitalism, which has been accelerated by the impact of the Iran War and is particularly acute in Europe.
All of these movements are highly politicised and those on the frontlines are wide open to revolutionary communist ideas.
Comrades of the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria (OCR) – the RCI in the Spanish State – have thrown themselves into the occupation at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, where they’ve established a tent adorned with communist banners, and where their ideas are connecting with and recruiting new revolutionaries. The Spanish comrade quoted earlier describes the situation on the ground:
“The mood is (…) charged with constant political discussion. Our flag with the hammer and sickle is catching everyone’s attention. One-on-one conversations quickly attract a whole audience around our table. We have talked to students as young as 13 who want to fight!”
Comrades of the OCR have been distributing propaganda, day and night, explaining that the only way to guarantee housing for all working people is to expropriate the real estate fatcats, banks and construction companies, and manage their assets under workers’ control.
The comrades’ analysis and programme have been eagerly received, reflected in the success of their regional school on 10 October, which was packed to the rafters! The OCR’s ranks have now swelled by 40 percent in the last year alone.
France
In France, Gen Z is locked in combat with Macron’s regime of the rich. What began as a protest against the dilapidated state of schools has turned into a focal point for the burning rage of the French youth and workers, who are seeing their futures sacrificed on the altar of capital. Multiple joint days of action have seen hundreds of thousands hit the streets, with protestors courageously facing down Macron’s CRS goons.
Our French comrades, of the Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (PCR), have boldly intervened in 12 cities, attracting interest from hundreds of militant youth who are eager to revive the traditions of May 1968 and the Paris Commune!
One of our young comrades appeared on an English-language broadcast of France24, cutting through the smokescreen of bourgeois lies and propaganda to explain why France’s youth are in revolt:
“For the past 20 years and more there has been nothing but attacks from the French ruling class, from the state against young people, against their living conditions, their rights in school, against working conditions, so there is a very strong anti-establishment mood (…)
“I am part of the Revolutionary Communist Party here in France, we’re [part of] an International, a Marxist party in more than 40 countries. And what we see today all across the world is that this generation is a revolutionary generation. Not because they are for violence but because there is a deep distrust against the system that has done nothing but attack their living conditions. And so, they turn to revolutionary solutions!”
Conflagration spreads
The conflagration in Europe is accelerating with unstoppable force and nowhere is escaping our presence!
In Belgium, our comrades assembled alongside tens of thousands of school students, who have taken a lead from their brothers and sisters in France and launched radical protests against austerity measures and the rising cost of education.
In Portugal (which has already seen two general strikes since December last year), comrades from Coletivo Comunista Revolucionário (CCR) joined a nationwide housing protest, primarily led by Bloco Esquerda.
In Porto, the comrades assumed leadership over a local encampment (inspired by the one in Puerta del Sol) before it was broken up by the police. They distinguished themselves from the reformist official organisers with their bold speeches about expropriating the exploiters, and connecting the struggle in Portugal to the battle unfolding in the Spanish State.
The question of militarism has been another motorforce driving young people into the class struggle. An International Youth Strike Against War is planned for 20 November.
German students are rebelling against Chancellor Merz’s plans to conscript the youth. Tens of thousands of youth have mobilised to tell the German capitalists: “we will not fight your wars!” There have already been several school strikes, with another planned for December.
Comrades of the Revolutionäre Kommunistische Partei (RKP) have been making an impact all year, organising a powerful contingent at the May Day demonstrations in Berlin and drawing swathes of the crowd into their bloc with their revolutionary élan and communist slogans.
With these expanded forces, they have intervened in the school strikes and are building for the upcoming strike in December. They are winning the attention of hundreds of radical youth with their programme of turning this student movement into a rallying cry that will draw the working class into a joint struggle against Merz, militarism, cuts and capitalism!
Hijab ban in Austria
In many cases, our comrades have taken the initiative with demands and strategies that have been taken up by the movements erupting around us.
For example, in Austria, yet another protest movement was provoked by a federal ban on school students wearing the hijab in class. Comrades from the RKP raised the idea of coordinating the students’ action by organising strike committees, which was enthusiastically adopted. Strike conferences are now planned for Vienna and Graz on the weekend of 17-18 October.
The strike kicked off on 9 October with a vibrant demonstration in the capital. Our comrades have intervened in over 80 schools across the country, including 10 in Vienna alone. We have been sent the following eyewitness account:
“3,000 gathered in Vienna on Friday – the vast majority of them school students. The atmosphere was extremely youthful, and I would say the people we spoke to were angry, yet there was a mood of optimism. Some as young as 11 could be seen shouting slogans on megaphones, and giving speeches about their own experience (…)
“There was a strong feeling of international solidarity – the main slogan throughout was ‘Hoch die internationale Solidarität’ [long live international solidarity]. One school student we interviewed told us explicitly that the same problems which the French students are protesting against (underfunded facilities, overstretched teaching staff) can be found in the schools in Austria (…)
“In building for this strike, our comrades constantly emphasised the need for the students to self-organise. This was the only way that the strike could be a success. All the students who worked to win over their classmates and coordinate across their strike committees were extremely uplifted by seeing the turnout at the demonstration.”
The Austrian comrades are now receiving dozens of new queries from students eager to join the RKP!
The question of racism is also animating big protests in Denmark. 5 September saw a major right-wing mobilisation called by a Facebook group called ‘Det Danske Folk’ (The Danish People), including a hardcore of far right elements and fascists. Another such march is planned for 17 October.
Off the back of a school student strike for Palestine organised by the Socialist Youth Front (SUF), which brought 1,000 high school students to Copenhagen, the Revolutionært Kommunistisk Parti (RKP) called on students to mobilise a counter-demonstration on 17 October.
The comrades have already won support from individual trade unions, such as 3F Copenhagen, while the Student Council at the University of Copenhagen (KU) is co-operating in planning the counter-demonstration. The KU is capable of mobilising thousands of students, potentially setting up an extremely powerful show of force.
In the Belly of the Beast
The crimes of imperialism are a major factor in the class struggle and nowhere is this more true than in the ‘belly of the beast.’
Comrades from the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) have done an exemplary job of galvanising radical youth, workers and the left in defence of the Cuban Revolution, which Donald Trump is determined to strangle.
The RCA organised a nationwide day of action on 3 October, with solidarity rallies in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Seattle and Los Angeles. These were prepared with a political campaign, including a special episode of the RCA podcast, explaining the legacy of yankee imperialism in Cuba and the gains of the revolution.
The comrades produced a solidarity video that has been viewed over 800,000 times on Instagram, and received endorsements from such prominent figures as Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls and former socialist City Councillor for Seattle, Kshama Sawant.
The day of action filled a vacuum on the US left. No other organisation has taken serious measures to defend the Cuban Revolution. Notably, the US comrades were interviewed by Cuban editorial collective Punto Y Aparte, showing how their principled opposition to Trump’s predatory imperialism is recognised by their class brothers and sisters on the island.
Meanwhile, the RCA in New York City brought 65 comrades to a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attendance at the UN General Assembly.
The comrades soon found they were the biggest and best-organised contingent at the demonstration. Drawing the attention of the press, 40 different media outlets captured the RCA contingent, transmitting the image of communists at the forefront of opposition to the genocide in Gaza – including Trump’s favourite network, Fox News!
Youth fight the right in Brazil
And in Brazil, where Lula’s underperformance in round one of the presidential elections raises the prospect of the Trump-supporting reactionary Flávio Bolsonaro (son of jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro) being elected in round two, the youth have mobilised in massive numbers.
The first round result, while creating a mood of despair amongst supporters of the reformist Workers’ Party (PT), has stoked anger and alarm amongst big layers of workers and youth, who are not waiting for their marching orders.
Our comrades hit the streets during the monster protest in Sao Paolo organised by the students, and they’ve connected with the combative spirit by launching an online form inviting people to join their ranks, which was flooded with over 300 applications!
The comrades also took the details of 200 people at the demonstration in São Paulo and called a public meeting to discuss how to combat Bolsonaro, which was attended by 20 newcomers, three of whom agreed to join on the spot.
Our comrades’ confidence and resolve stands in stark contrast to the pessimism and disorientation of the ‘official’ left, and is much more in line with the consciousness of young people pouring into the streets to defend their futures.
British communists bear the brunt of state repression
As the RCI is growing, we are entering the spotlight more and more. Over the past week, our section in Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party, has drawn the attention of far-right ‘activists’ like Tommy Robinson, and then, over the weekend, of the Metropolitan Police who brutally attacked our bloc at the Palestine rally in London.
Since the events erupted in France, RCP national spokesperson Fiona Lali was accused by Tommy Robinson of “inciting riots” after she welcomed the idea of the Gen Z movement in France coming across the Channel.
As it turns out, Fiona was far more in touch with the mood of the British youth than Mr. Robinson, given the popularity of the chant “Tout le monde déteste la police” [everyone hates the police] at the 10 October protest for Palestine. We can see how the youth of the world are looking internationally for inspiration about how to fight back against their own ruling classes.
The RCP made an enormous impact at the 100,000-strong march, assembling a contingent of 700 comrades: the biggest communist bloc seen on the streets of London in decades.
This was a testament, not just to the meticulous planning of this particular intervention, but years of patient work to build and educate our forces, coupled with the growing enthusiasm for communism amongst the new generation!
The strength of the comrades’ bloc did not escape the notice of the Met Police, who found a pretext for arresting one of our young comrades and slamming him against a Battle of Britain war memorial. Rather than be cowed, the comrades immediately went into action and tried to stop the arrest.
The police responded with a vicious assault, arresting 11 comrades in total, trampling wreaths at the bottom of the war memorial in the process. Fiona, from atop the memorial plinth, called out the cowardly character of the police through her megaphone:
“State repression is a sign of weakness, not strength!”
All of our comrades were ultimately released on bail, without charge. The gutter press immediately went on the offensive, inverting the facts and accusing “far-left thugs” of “trampling poppies” at the Monument.
The bourgeois politicians echoed these scandalous falsehoods, with former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith raving that: “People who stamp on the memory of the heroes of the past are not fit to be in Britain.” Meanwhile Tory Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said: “There is no word for these people but ‘scum’.”
From people such as these, this can only be considered a compliment! We have no regard for their ‘opinions’. Much more telling was the fact that, since the Palestine demonstration, the British comrades have made almost 50 new recruits since the weekend: an average of one every two-and-a-half hours! They are winning these new fighters thanks to their courage, conviction and clarity of ideas, as summed up by one of the arrested comrades:
“No handcuffs or bail restrictions can halt an idea whose time has come, and it is in that knowledge that I say I am confident that we will win. I won’t let my arrest stop me from building the party of the future, the RCP.”
Communists take freshers’ fairs by storm!
The beginning of the university year is always an important time for our International. But this time, with our inspirational World School behind us and with the class struggle reaching a fever pitch everywhere, our incursion into campuses has been unlike anything we’ve seen before. Not only in terms of the number of student recruits, but the quality of these recruits.
The RCP in Britain had their best-ever freshers’ intervention, meeting over 2,000 students across 52 universities. One first-year student in Birmingham, who bought a copy of the RCP paper, was asked if she was a communist, immediately replying: “of course!” When asked to elaborate, she said:
“Well, I have eyes and ears, don’t I? Look at everything around us! I bought this paper yesterday. I read through it last night and I thought wow. Here were people finally saying the things I’ve been thinking since I was 13.”
The US comrades’ ‘Fall Offensive’ is still well underway, with inspiring reports flooding in from campuses in Washington D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston and many more besides. Despite having to navigate pushback from university bureaucracies, the comrades have had hundreds of sign-ups already, with 122 students giving their contact details in LA alone.
The comrades report a high level of seriousness from this new crop of students, who are demanding answers on such diverse questions as the Sudanese Civil War, the Cuban Revolution and our attitude towards New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Across the northern border, comrades of the Revolutionary Communist Party/Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (RCP/PCR) have spoken to thousands of students across 35 campuses in Canada and Quebec, plastering their walls with 25,000 posters and stickers.
Similarly to reports from Britain and the States, the comrades report a hunger for ideas and substantive explanations, rather than empty sloganeering:
“After passing by [our table] a group of five young women came back to us to have a discussion. Starting from who Marx was, we went to the history of the October Revolution [and]… why we need Marxist ideas more than ever… At the end of the conversation, the first girl said, ‘I feel like I’ve learned more in this conversation than I have in the last five years,’ and eagerly bought a paper.”
The comrades’ efforts have paid off, with 100 applications to join in the space of five weeks!
In Mexico, our comrades’ ‘Fall Offensive’ coincided with demonstrations for the commemoration of the kidnapping of the Ayotzinapa students on 26 September; the anniversary of the 1968 student massacre on 2 October, and for Palestine on 10 October. The Parti Comunista Revolucionaria (PCR) assembled huge, militant blocs at these events, carrying the energy forward onto university campuses.
There is much more that we could say. We are faced with the enviable problem of having too many successes to relate in a single article! All over the world, it feels as though history is rising to meet our International, which has never combined such an excellent dynamic of growth with a deeper seriousness towards theory and political understanding.
But in reality, there is still much more to do. One need only look at the state of the world to understand the urgency of our task.
If we are to liberate humanity from the nightmare capitalism has created, we need to build a mass, international party of communism capable of leading the working class to victory. We cannot be content with our conquests or rest on our laurels. It is our duty as communists to press on and build our forces even further.
For anyone who has yet to join us in this great task, we can only quote the immortal words of the Communist Manifesto: you have nothing to lose but your chains – and a world to win.
