We are living through a revival of socialism as a political movement. The rise of a new socialist party in the United States, for all its own limits, signals this revival. However, the socialist movement remains strictly limited to its own national terrain. Today, the overwhelming majority of socialists see the task of making socialism as having firm national limits, and either imagine separate national roads to socialism, or a domino of sequential national revolutions. This methodological nationalism reflects a profound immaturity in our movement.
The chief obstacle to workers power and socialism is not the individual capitalist classes of this or that capitalist state. Nor is it the state apparatus itself, with all its ideological and repressive powers. Rather, it is the system of capitalist nation-states and the world market that are the final guarantors of the capitalist system of production. Within this system, the modern state serves as a kind of joint-stock corporation of the capitalist class, a cartel that is managed chiefly by the bond market. This state system serves to discipline and regulate the activities of each of the individual parts of the states within it, in much the same way a national market regulates and disciplines the activity of its constituent firms. It follows that socialism in a single country is as absurd as socialism in a single city, or socialism in a single factory. As such, any socialist revolution must be pursued as part of an international revolutionary strategy. Today, no such strategy presents itself, nor is there a political space within which a strategy can be hammered out.
There is no force in the world today that can claim to represent the workers internationally. The states binding the communist movement(s) together by sheer prestige and power have either been dissolved for longer than the average communist has been alive, or are by their own admission pursuing an international policy that has no place for world proletarian revolution. With the Communist Party of China unwilling to assert leadership over the international proletarian movement, we are left to fend for ourselves.
What remains is a swamp of oil-slick internationals, cominformesque and personal-cliqueist statement mills, reformist regional alliances, informal and interpersonal ties, and individual organisations with varying amounts of success. There is no worldwide strategy, discussion, or exchange of experience. In short, there is no worldwide movement. Even on the national level, there is hardly anywhere a unifying organisation of the communists. Where there is such an organisation, it is reformist, tailing reformists, deeply undemocratic, or a combination of all three. The division of these forces between a variety of international groupings means that the question of party unity cannot be resolved on a national, case-by-case basis. Rather, it must be waged internationally.
It is not enough to wait for a successful revolution in a powerful-enough country that can once again bind the communist movement to its state. This revolution could not succeed without a strong international movement to protect it from class enemies abroad. Thus, we must build the international party that we so desperately need ourselves.
Cominternism
The Cominternist theory of the revolutionary wave has proven to be a mirage. While it is indeed possible for revolutionary waves to spread from country to country, there is no guarantee that these revolutions will produce a proletarian, socialist content. As seen in the Arab Spring, spontaneous waves of revolutionary activity cannot be relied upon to deliver a victory on their own. It is only when combined with systematic, pre-existing revolutionary organisation that such a wave is possible. Indeed, it was the pre-existing internationalist organisation in Europe that made the post-1917 revolutionary wave possible. In turn, the South East Asian domino effect so feared by the imperialists in the 1970s was the result of parties that had been part of a single international movement in the recent past. Indeed, in both cases, these waves found themselves exhausted long before they could break.
The last attempt at the formulation of a world strategy can be credited to the Maoist-Third World trends of the 1970s. The view that the global countryside would surround the city, and that a third world revolution would slowly exhaust and destroy the imperialist colossus, once had many adherents. However, the end of the Maoist period in China and the defeat of the Third World have left this tendency high and dry. Today, most of its adherents have largely abandoned Marxism for nationalism of one form or another.
In the absence of a world strategy, the socialist movement simply defaults to the theory of the national revolution. Even the Trotskyists, who still claim to defend internationalism, simply argue that these revolutions might happen consecutively, persisting in the methodological nationalism that afflicts the reform socialists and the Marxist-Leninists. What is needed is an international strategy of patience, by which the working class movement coordinates its activities closely, and prepares for the seizure of power in coordinated offensives against the capitalists. However, such a strategy cannot be theorised in the abstract. It must be the product of actual joint work and systematic organisation of communists on an international basis – it must be an international of tasks first and foremost.
Where We Stand
The Soviet Union is dead. Hoxha’s Albania is dead. China, whatever its state-form may be, has no interest in supporting the international communist movement. Cuba is weak, suffering under a US blockade, and is moving towards a privatisation of the economy. Laos and Vietnam are small and integrated into the world market. North Korea has adopted an ideology of revolutionary nationalism. In short, none of these states is able or willing to unite and lead the global communist movement into an International, even if the worldwide movement would follow them. They wouldn’t, nor shouldn’t. The experiences of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Comintern show us that centralised control by one workers’ state over the international and over the tactics its various national sections employ is not a winning strategy for such an organisation. The Comintern had not held a World Congress for 8 years at the time of its dissolution in 1943, and no enlarged plenums of the Executive Committee (ECCI) for 10 years. In practice, it served as a tool of Soviet foreign policy, and in the end, it was illegally dissolved at the behest of the liberal imperialist powers.
What of today’s internationals? In short, none of them is fit for purpose. The Progressive International is a personalist media project with no democratic organisational apparatus. The International People’s Assembly is a cominform-esque outfit, an information exchange that functions mostly through Zoom calls. Both contain important organisations of the international left, as well as a hodge-podge of left nationalists and progressives.
The European left parties, Party of the European Left and European Left Alliance, are reformist electoral alliances of national parties, each promoting its own national road to socialism. They were created to receive funding from the European Union by forming fractions in the European Parliament. The São Paolo Forum, which was once the crown jewel of Pink Tide internationalism, can now rightly be asked: “what do you do?” Even Chávez knew that a new communist international would necessarily surpass it. In any case, they do not want or can become the world party we need.
The International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties (IMCWP) and the sub-Cominforms, like the Cominform, do not have power over member organisations (nor do they really have member organisations) and are not world parties. It is a talk shop which the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans use to cultivate allies in this or that country. Surely it is useful to them but not to the international proletariat. The most we can say of the IMCWP is that, horizontally to it, the Greek KKE exerts control over European official communism, like Moscow used to do.
The Fourth International and its bastard children have gone in the complete opposite direction to the cominformists, though the same direction as the informal KKE-international, preferring the by now well-known centralised control of one section over the entire international and tactics of all other sections. These internationals are “oil-slick”, in the sense that in the mother-section they are quite strong, and other sections are weaker and smaller. Examples include the International Socialist Tendency, which has its mother-section in Great Britain in the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the Revolutionary Communist International, also a product of that cursed isle. Each major Trotskyist grouping has its own mothership – the Lutte ouvrière has the International Communist Union, the Spartacist League has the ICL, and the Socialist Alternative (US) has the International Socialist Alternative. When one of these international tendencies splits, it produces a series of splits in a dozen countries, if it is lucky enough to have so many sections. The various left communists, anarchists, and Maoists are similar, each with their own micro-sect internationals.
What of the orthodox Marxist trend? The partyist communists maintain a web of interpersonal relations between individuals and informal contact between the organisations. This has so far been largely sufficient to carry out the minimal tasks of international activity. However, it is not enough to reforge international communist unity. There are currently few avenues for hammering out international strategy, no real means by which tasks (such as support for political prisoners) can be coordinated, or any clarification of international perspectives. Much work is done doubly, triply, quadruply, etc. We constantly reinvent the wheel on issues already solved in other organisations, or even on issues solved by the Comintern. Theoretical and strategic conferences are organised by the national organisations, and other organisations are usually invited, but these are hardly international events. Only a few people from organisations that are not the organisers attend. Even international conferences, such as the anti-NATO summits the previous two years (2025 in the Netherlands, co-organised by the RSP and 2026 in Turkey, organised by the TİP), are, as far as we know, not very well known or read about in the wider membership of the organisations (except the organisation that organises them).
The World Party We Need
The illegal dissolution of the Communist International broke the chain of proletarian internationalism. With it, the notion of an international communist strategy was marginalised, a marginalisation we are yet to overcome. The First World Congress had established the International by a democratic vote of the delegates from the member parties. This same World Congress elected the first ECCI. The ECCI had, according to the statutes of the Comintern decided at the second World Congress, no power to dissolve the Comintern, since the Comintern was created by the first World Congress and the ECCI was subordinate to it.1 It did so anyway.
Our aim must be a refounded world party of the proletarian revolution. This is a widely acknowledged fact amongst much of our tendency – it is even the stated aim of many of the democratic socialists! We should set our long-term goals out clearly. We must aim for the refoundation of the communist international with a world congress. This world congress must reject the historical ban on factions and amend the 21 conditions, ensuring a balance between the necessity for international coordination and the need for national and regional flexibility. In turn, we must seek regional and continental coordination of communist parties. A Pan-Asian communist movement, and a Communist Party of Europe that can contest the European elections as a single party apparatus, is just as important as an international organisation.
We are not anywhere close to realising such a refoundation congress. However, without making our aims clear, we cannot hope to realise them. Importantly, this process of international regroupment cannot be delayed until the struggle for unity is achieved at the national level. The struggle for international unity, and the struggle for unity in each country, is intimately linked together. When the Second International convened, only the German social democrats had succeeded in forming a united party. It was the struggle for international unity within the Second International that would forge united socialist parties in America, France, and Russia.
Where Now?
We cannot simply declare a new international into existence. This would only repeat the sectarian errors that birthed a dozen oil-slick internationals and sub-cominforms. In turn, these oil-slick internationals create yet more divisions at the national level – with each local organisation adhering to this or that international line, making unity all the more difficult. We must proceed from the existing forces of the world movement, and can only come about through the fusion of existing internationalist forces.
The task before us is essentially twofold. Firstly, the forces that are in favour of international regroupment on a principled Marxist basis must establish systematic fraternal relations. We must share resources, translate our materials, and work together on common practical tasks including solidarity campaigns and joint publications. On this basis, we can establish a correspondence committee to allow for permanent communication between organisations and trends. Through this effort, we can begin to hammer out an international strategy and perspective. Growing from this joint work, our aim should be the organisation of an international campaign for a new international – and based on this international campaign, consolidate a pole to unite Marxists in an international faction. Such a faction could not organise as a distinct organisation, separate from the world movement. Rather, it would be a fighting formation within and amongst the existing international formations, waging a campaign for a new communist international.
Much of this work has already begun, albeit in uneven and non-systematic ways. However, it must be deepened and broadened, drawing forth all the principled Marxist forces of the world movement, and allowing regroupment of our scattered comrades.
- Excerpt from the statutes of the Comintern:
“4. The supreme authority in the Communist International is the world congress of all the parties and organizations which belong to it. The world congress meets regularly once a year. The world congress alone is empowered to change the programme of the Communist International. The world congress discusses and decides the most important questions of programme and tactics connected with the activities of the Communist International. The number of votes to which each party or organization is entitled shall be fixed by special congress decision. 5. The world congress elects the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which is the directing body of the Communist International in the period between its world congresses. The Executive Committee is responsible only to the world congress.”
↩︎
