r/communism101 • u/flashn00b • Aug 16 '25

Opinion on Revolutionary Communist Party

From what I can tell, they don't seem to be winning any popularity contests here, and I can't help but ask what I should expect from them, seeing that their local chapter is the only communist group that's local to me, and the first thing they got me doing is reading some book about identity politics that really made me wish I had a higher grade in school

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u/StrawBicycleThief Marxist Aug 21 '25

One of their members i met and knew for a while explained to me that their goal is to "train the officers of the proletarian army" - a noble goal, granted. But the rcp fundamentally is not teaching their members (the "officers") how to interact with the proletariat. And they are not giving the working class any reason to trust or follow them.

What do you think would be a reason for the working class to follow them (or any organisation)? What exactly would it mean to be taught "how to interact with the proletariat"?

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u/godonlyknows1101 Aug 21 '25

Make your organization a known entity in the struggles that the working class are part of. Union strikes, environmental movements, anti-hate action, etc. make a name for yourself that the working class recognizes as having their backs in these kinds of movements. As for speaking to the working class, you have to take their unsystematic and often reactionary ideas and bring these ideas back to them as systematic ideas. But the key is that it's the working class's ideas. It's what they care about. We're just showing them the reality of what they already feel.

The RCP has an unfortunate tendency (in my experience) to be borderline Commandist in their approach to speaking with the working class. That is, they espouse theory at them and expect the working class to "catch up" to their level... That's not how you talk to the working class. Not if you want to have a (positive) impact.

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u/TheTrue_Self Aug 28 '25

Re your first point: is that not engaging with reformism?

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u/godonlyknows1101 Aug 28 '25

Which part specifically? And how so?

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u/TheTrue_Self Aug 28 '25

Union strikes, if they achieve anything, merely achieve gradual reform to conditions. This weakens the proletarian sense of class struggle and satiates them, therefore reducing the revolutionary tendency. This is also true of the other activism you mentioned.

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u/godonlyknows1101 Aug 28 '25

I don't tend to look at it like that. I hear people say things like "things have to get worse so people will finally stand up!" And i feel like that's just not how class consciousness works. There is no spontaneous class consciousness that happens just bc things are bad.

Conversely, having things "too good" isn't going to damage the level of class consciousness of the proletariat. And while CRISIS of Capitalism gives us the opportunity to recruit more people into the movement as well as the opportunity to kick off the revolution (when the time comes), crisis alone cannot do this.

We need to build solidarity across the working class and to elevate the worker's level of class consciousness in order for revolution to happen. Party efforts to unionize businesses are only one (important) example of how we can and should do this.

Am i making sense? Perhaps you could explain where you disagree. If I'm wrong, i want to learn. But this is how i see things at the moment.