Taiwan: Revolutionary Communist Party of Taiwan founded – forward to the East Asian and world revolution!

On a profoundly historic weekend, nearly 20 revolutionary communists and sympathisers from across Taiwan, together with comrades from the International Centre of the Revolutionary Communist International in London, gathered in Taipei for an intensive, tightly organised, and politically rich series of discussions. These discussions not only raised the comrades’ theoretical level, but also set out a clearer and more forward-looking direction for our work ahead internationally, and in Taiwan.

On the morning of the first day, greetings from over 20 sections of the International were read to the congress, especially heartwarming were the video messages from Britain, Denmark, and Finland. The comrades then watched a retrospective video of our own work together in Taiwan.

From the very beginning, when there were only two or three comrades, through patient organising, solid study, and relentless struggle, the organisation has grown to its present scale. This is an achievement of which every comrade can hold their head high with pride.

The congress opened with a powerful introduction to World Perspectives delivered by a representative of the International. He emphasised that World Perspectives is not about memorising daily news, but about identifying the forces behind it.

The increasing chaos of today’s world is not due to a rise in accidental events, but because capitalism has reached an impasse. Profits are thinning, competition is intensifying, and the great powers are resorting to tariff wars, military threats, and proxy wars to seize markets and resources, exporting crises outward, and forcing the costs onto the working class. The so-called ‘rules-based international order’ exists only insofar as it serves the interests of the strong.

This also reminds us that we cannot, like the mainstream bourgeois parties in Taiwan, reduce everything to cross-strait camp-choosing or diplomatic maneuvering. Rising prices, low wages, widening inequality, and even escalating risk of war have never been uniquely Taiwanese ‘exceptions’. They are the concrete result of the global capitalist crisis taking shape in Taiwan.

Only by placing Taiwan within a broader international context, through understanding how imperialist competition, trade conflicts, and war mobilisation penetrate our everyday lives, can we truly grasp Taiwan’s predicament and the possibilities emerging within it.

As comrades went on to note in the subsequent discussion on perspectives for Taiwan: in Taiwan, the social fabric is being torn apart. Crisis piles upon crisis, cost of living pressures continue to mount, and political turbulence is accelerating.

On the surface, daily disputes revolve around the Blue, Green, and White camps (the colours of the three principal political parties in Taiwan), unification versus independence, and electoral maneuvering. But beneath the surface, what is truly boiling are class contradictions: wages cannot keep up with prices, soaring housing costs devour an entire generation’s future, welfare systems edge toward collapse, and workers’ sense of security is drained away bit by bit.

So-called ‘economic growth’ has not made life better for the majority of people. It has only allowed conglomerates and big corporations to reap enormous profits, while placing the costs and risks onto the shoulders of workers and youth.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party wraps their inability to deliver for the masses in the language of national security and confrontation with China; the Kuomintang masks their impotence with parliamentary theatrics; and the ‘third force’ myth of the Taiwan People’s Party has collapsed amid scandals and parliamentary horse trading. Bourgeois politics as a whole resembles an endless circus: deafeningly loud, yet incapable of solving anyone’s real problems.

Yet, as one comrade incisively concluded in the final summary: what the masses want are not new empty slogans, but a way out of the current crisis. When the old order no longer has the capacity, let alone the willingness, to take responsibility in pushing society forwards, the dissatisfaction of the working class and youth cannot be suppressed indefinitely.

The question of the social explosion ahead is not ‘whether it will erupt’, but ‘in what form it will erupt’, and whether we are prepared to recognise it, participate in it, and give it direction. This was precisely the central theme of the discussion on building the organisation, held on the second day of the congress.

In these discussions, we reached a common conclusion: Taiwan’s crisis is not accidental, but a result of the impasse of the capitalist system – and furthermore, it is a crisis of revolutionary leadership and organisation, which alone can pose the way forwards. Although our membership has grown from a mere handful to double-digits, we must honestly acknowledge that in a society of 24 million people, we remain a drop in the ocean. There is still a long road ahead before we can play a decisive role in shaping events.

For this reason, the resolutions emphasised the need to break with the amateurism of small circles and make party-building the highest priority. We must expand our ranks, train cadres, deepen our understanding of Marxist theory, and establish disciplined and routine work. What’s more, we must hold more offline meetings, politicise finances, maintain regular paper sales, break with substitutionalism, and fight to secure our first full-time revolutionary. We have broken ground – but victory will not fall from the sky. It can only be built, brick by brick, and seized through struggle.

At the conclusion of the congress, all comrades unanimously raised an emergency motion, the final motion of The Spark–Taiwan Revolutionary Communists: to formally reorganise as the Revolutionary Communist Party of Taiwan. In the presence of a representative of the RCI, this congress marked the rebirth of our organisation – transforming from a loose amateur collective into a revolutionary party determined to lead the masses in winning the class war. As the representative of the RCI said in their closing remarks: we do not aim to be spectators of history, but a subjective force of revolution.

In different languages, we passionately sang The Internationale. In Taiwan’s past, many students and workers faced brutal repression and were massacred by Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorial regime, for their devotion to the cause of proletarian revolution. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Taiwan will carry forward their legacy, fighting shoulder to shoulder with comrades of the Revolutionary Communist International to overthrow capitalism.

Bring the international revolution to Taiwan!

Bring Taiwan into the international revolution!

Workers of the world, unite!

We have a world to win!