15th International Communist Seminar
Historical analysis and exchange of practical experience at the service of Communist unity
Brussels, 507th of May 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
«The working class is the main revolutionary class of the modern epoch» V.I. LENIN
Author: A.K. Cherepanov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Workers' Party / Russian Party of Communists
Dear comrades in struggle!
From the Russian Communist Workers party I would like to greet all the participants of the 15th International Seminar of Communist and Workers parties. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Belgian Workers Party that once again has undertaken the initiative to organise this event and caters for us and co-ordinates the process of co-operation of the communist and workers’ parties of the world.
Comrades!
In December 2005 we celebrated 100 years of the culmination of the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907) – the Moscow armed workers uprising.
As we know, at the beginning of the XXth century there were more than 3 million industrial workers in Russia and approximately 14 million workers in general. About 75% of all industrial workers were concentrated in 17% of the factories, and about 50% were employed in big factories with 500 or more workers; 1/3 was working in the factories with more than 1000 of workers each. The concentration of workers in Russia was the highest in the world. ("Working class and world’s development", Mysl, Moscow, p.176)
During the period of 1905-1907 one of the main social classes was developing in Russia - the working class. It was a big social group of people, who were working directly in the main means of production, who had their own economic organisation and who were playing a decisive role in the country’s system of productive forces. At the same time the working class has shown itself as a powerful social and political force, capable of influencing the state power and the social processes. For the working class the main reason for appearing on the political arena was the attempt to improve their material situation, to change the attitude towards them of the regime and of the owners of the production. The main political slogans of the risen workers were "Down with the autocracy ! Long live the democratic republic!"
The main lesson of the First Russian Revolution for all the fighters for the interests of the working classes was the need to learn the art of the revolutionary organisation, of the revolutionary actions.
We see clearly and should propagate exactly the revolutionary content of the actions of the proletariat and its political party. The proletariat is the main social class that develops, with the help of the workers’ party, its own ideology and organisation, its potential and is capable of using it independently in his own interests.
The workers moved into a new stage of the struggle, from spontaneous actions and long local economical strikes, by organising an All-Russian political strike. The workers rose to the heights of an armed uprising, the highest form of revolutionary struggle and proved their intransigence towards the rotten regime, and that only they were the force capable of heading the Russian revolution towards its successful conclusion.
The workers have created for the first time in history their organs of the working class’ power – the Soviets of the workers’ deputies.
By their brave actions the workers have forced the regime and the bosses of the production not just to take them into consideration, but to change considerably the system of social life in Russia, to allow certain democratic freedoms and rights.
The first Russian Revolution of 1905-1907 was exactly the kind of revolution where the oppressed classes of workers and peasants have risen to the struggle against the monarchy, against the government, have demanded changes in Russia’s political system. It shook the whole Russia, in the first place the holy tsar, and the fat owners of production and land, till the stealing state employees in Siberia. Even though the Revolution was defeated, it has led to serious changes in the power system. The State Duma was created, it included some elected representatives of workers and peasants; recently this Duma has celebrated 100 years of its existence. Trade unions were developing. The Russian working class and its political party, the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, have gained very valuable experience of struggle. V.I. Lenin wrote that the Russian revolution of 1905-1907 "has done extraordinary much for the political education of the masses of workers and peasants" and that is why it became a sort of "general rehearsal" for the victory of the bourgeois democratic revolution in February 1917 and of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Today many are interested to know why the working class of the USSR did not support the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1991. Why the communists themselves did not play an active role in defending the achievements of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the results of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. What happened in the USSR in 1991?
The main reason is that CPSU was no longer a working class’ party, it was no longer reflecting working class’ interests. Thus the CPSU has stopped being a Communist party by its nature. After the death of Stalin (and especially under Khrushchev and Gorbachev) the inequality in the society rose, the workers were more and more distanced from the decision making process and from receiving the real results of their work. Even though formally they were represented at all levels of the party and the Soviets. The cult of hypocrisy and money-making started to flourish. Many workers saw it and distanced themselves from active politics, and some of them took over the petit bourgeois mentality. As a result, some did not see the treachery of the CPSU top, headed by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, while others openly supported them.
Many people do not understand or know what is happening nowadays on the territory of the USSR, especially in Russia, the former main base of the whole world’s socialist camp. The process of restoration of capitalism from socialism is taking place. This is happening for the first time in history, never has been studied in theory and it is seen for the first time in practice.
From the economic point of view, today’s Russian capitalism can already be called state-monopolistic and Russia – an imperialist country. According to various evaluations, 70 to 80% of all property in industry is privatised, the concentration of capital and the level of monopolisation of separate industrial branches are very high and are continuing to grow. According to the World Bank, in Russia the concentration of property and the level of monopolisation are the highest in the world. In reality 23 companies are controlling most of the economy and they are the real owners of Russia and its wealth. 85% of the national wealth today belongs to 15% of the population. And half of these 85% belongs to just 1% of the most wealthy Russians. The remaining 85% of the population has only 15% of the national wealth left. But this is not all yet. 80% of the population has just 7% of the national wealth. And the Russian economy becomes more and more orientated on export of raw natural resources (oil, gas, aluminium, wood etc) and their primary processing. High technologies take lesser and lesser part in the Russian economy and the technical level constantly goes down. That affects machine making industry, electronics, aviation etc. There is no renewal of the mains of production, the old Soviet ones are being used till their end (in order to modernise the equipment the investments should be 7 times as much as they are now).
There are several main directions of "capitalisation" of our country:.
- The privatisation of the mains of production that have remained property of the state, is being speeded up. State shares of various companies are being sold, that also affects buildings, constructions, railways, communication nets etc.
- The "capitalisation" of healthcare, education, culture, social services is being forced.
- One of the main tasks of the government – to speed up sell of land, forests and water resources of Russia. Considering the size of our country, one can only imagine the interests towards this perspective from the part of capitalists of all the world.
Today’s state regulation in Russia, as far as it exists, exists in the first place for pushing the above-named processes and directing them in the interests of groups of capitalists, who are more loyal to the government and closer to the power-holders.
Russian imperialism is relatively young, in many ways still weak, dependant from the world finances, it is in contradiction to the foreign capital, but it is still a growing imperialism that already has appetites for an expansion. It’s not just oil, gas, raw resources, it also includes sales of weapons for almost 6 billion $ annually, the desire of Russian capitalists to take part in exploitation of the weaker countries – Ukraine, Central Asian republics, Iran etc. More and more foreign workforce is being used in Russia.
Even under the actual condition of a relative peace, the ruling class feels powerful pressure from the workers who are yet disorganised ideologically and politically. Lenin was 1000 times right when he wrote, answering to the question why this class is so influential and why it is potentially the most revolutionary class: «…The proletariat economically rules the central nerve system of the capitalist economy… the proletariat expresses economically and politically the real interests of the enormous majority of the working people under capitalism" (Lenin, Full Collection of Works, vol. 40, p.23)
The bourgeois reformers in Russia today have started a new stage of sharpening their norms and rules in relation to the main productive force of the society- the working class.
The new stage of land and housing privatisation, of privatisation of the communal system, education, healthcare, plus the introduction of the Labour Code and Housing Code means that the class struggle sharpens and that its forms, sometimes open, sometimes hidden, such as protest acts, strikes, hunger strikes, direct fights of workers with their bosses, have become the main content of our current times.
Regarding the stability, about which our President likes so much to talk about, even the capitalist experts have to confess that stability, social partnership, peaceful co-existence of the hostile classes are just a fiction.
The total number of workers in the industry has become in these years approximately 11-12 million people. As a whole, there are about 30 million of people in our country doing manual productive work.
A very important aspect of the Russian situation today is the fact that there is a big group of migrant workers, who live and work as virtual slaves and are being terribly exploited by the capital. According to some data, their total number is more than 5 million people.
Today the workers of the cities and countryside remain the most exploited and deprived group of the population. There is no significant improvement of their living conditions in the majority of the factories and in Russia as a whole.
By their colossal efforts the workers and their trade unions achieve from their employers agreements to sign collective agreements with minimal social protection measures. But the leaders of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia admit that only 43% of the Russian companies have such agreements.
More than 70% of the workers live beyond the poverty line, thus their monthly income is no more than 6000 roubles (170 Euro) per family member. Workers and migrants working in small towns and in the countryside live even more desperate lives as many of them have an income below the minimum wages of 2800 roubles (80 Euro).
The gap between the most rich (10%) and the poorest (10%) of the population has grown from 10 to 16 times.
One more aspect: the broadly advertised national projects of development of the countryside, of education, of healthcare, of building reasonably-priced housing in reality are no more than PR actions of the President and the party "United Russia", and in no way affect the situation of the working people in towns or villages, because they are aimed at the improvement of the material conditions of the big bourgeoisie and the so-called "middle class".
Main monetary resources of the state, of the local government and private investments are spent on rise of income of the civil servants, bureaucrats, small and medium size businessmen and also some doctors, teachers and high officers. The possibilities of workers to get good professional education, or higher education, to get proper medical treatment and rest, to get or to buy an apartment remain very limited. The percentage of highly qualified workers in the industry constantly falls – according to some, to 10-15% per big factory, even though their work remains required and the need in workers of this category even grows. This situation forces the authorities to discuss the situation with primary and secondary professional education. In the near future (3-5 years) the country might be needing up to 5 million of workers that it will not have – today this need is approximately. 2-3 million. This is being partially fulfilled by the cheap labour force from migrants from the ex-Soviet republics, but the capital does not intend to invest into this force.
In this way the poverty and degradation of the working class – both relative and absolute poverty – grows, especially in small and medium size towns and in the countryside. Criminality and amorality grow, alcoholism became a mass problem.
Robbing social reforms - the so-called "cashing" of privileges for veterans, "optimisation" of education, of healthcare, of culture have not led to a massive rise in protests, but remained practically unnoticed if we consider the level of political involvement of the working class as a whole. In the last 2 years, the people who took into the streets to protest were rarely connected to industrial production. Why ?
And today a new rise in protests is caused by the new Housing Bill. But the workers remain mainly inactive. The main reasons for this political "silence" are in the system of suppression by the bourgeoisie. Economic suppression goes along with the powerful psychological pressure and ideological brainwashing based on anti-Communist, anti-Soviet propaganda, by spreading of new branches of various bourgeois parties and total implantation of church and religious influence. The workers feel hard pressing from their direct bosses. The workers do not go for confrontation because they are afraid to lose their jobs – their only source of income.
We can expect a higher activity of the workers when their economical situation improves. Only 1-3 % of all workers took part in strikes in this period (1991-2005). If we take into consideration that the number of strikers grow with the passing of time, we can conclude that this level of participation is quite a high one. Especially because the state statistics do not register all such activities of workers.
The possibility of social explosions is determined by the depth of the deprivation, the growth of the discontent, the level of orientation on protests and the real practice of collective actions by workers. In modern times, the workers have proven their ability to organise quickly and radically, to act decisively. The workers movement in Russia is on the rise, not on defeat.
This process develops with contradictions, with great difficulties. In the last 5 years there were signs of the fall of the activity, the main reason for that being the growing distrust towards the official trade unions, such as the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, who had led the workers strikes previously. But this silence is deceptive.
Today we can state that in Russia we have experience of organising the first full-scale consciously planned strikes. The dockers of St. Petersburg sea harbour started first, the initiative was taken over by the seamen of Portflot, then by workers of the All-Volga company "Ford Motors" and also by "Skania-Peter", "Caterpillar", "Heineken", in other regions – by the "Yantar" factory in the Kaliningrad region, by oil production workers in Megion, Tyumen region, by workers of Pervouralsk in the Sverdlovsk region etc. Some might ask: didn’t you have the strikes before, starting with the famous "rail war" and up to work stoppages because of unpaid salaries for many months, in some cases – for many years? Yes, we had, of course. But these strikes were on a very different level, they were more simple and unsophisticated in their organisation, in the way people were mobilised into action. Everything was clear and simple, even more or less spontaneous: they don’t pay you – strike. Even according the law you can write a note and simply stop working.
Organising strikes for pay rise, for the rights of the trade unions, for your work places – this is already the struggle for dignity. This struggle requires a far higher level of organisation, knowledge of laws and technology of the striking process, one needs to have a ruling body for the strike and even to know how to lead this process.
Firstly: the dockers were really fulfilling a constitutional task. The right to strike is written into the Russian constitution. When the miners from Khakassia (the Eniseiskaya mine), who were on hunger strike at that time, were invited into the Russian Parliament in 2004, the politicians of "United Russia" themselves (Mr. Isaev in 2004) were shouting there that "the strike is better than the hunger strike". That is what we think too, and our task is to teach all the Russian working people how to use this proletarian weapon – being organised.
Secondly, the dockers have formulated the main demand of their strike correctly and very carefully: "Not to allow the decrease of the real value of the wages of workers". This demand is suitable for writing it into any collective agreement of any company. It is also strictly constitutional, because according to Constitution, normative acts, that in reality lead to worsening of the plight of the citizens, are not allowed. Inflation hits every normal common person in Russia, and to index the wages in no less proportions than according to the inflation rate is a demand very clear to everybody (plus the dockers posed the question about the connection between the rise of the wages and the rise of the labour productivity)
Thirdly, the dockers demanded to preserve the rights of their trade union, including the right of the compulsory consultation with the trade union in case of any dismissal of workers (and not just simply taking the opinion of the trade union into consideration). If the trade union has no forces and no rights, it’s very bad.
Fourthly, it were not the most deprived and humiliated workers who took part in these first properly organised strikes, but the opposite – the highly qualified workers, who were paid well and respect their labour. (Dockers are paid on average about 25.000 Roubles (0r 800 Euro), Ford workers – 15.000 Roubles (or 500 Euro). These possibilities allow the dockers and other collectives to maintain their trade union organisation on a reasonable material level, with professional trade union workers who are being paid for that work, with their own solicitor, their own newspaper and good communication system.
Fifthly, all these strikes were organised by non-official, real class trade unions. In Leningrad, and in Russia as a whole, a solidarity campaign with the dockers’s struggle was organised. More than that, dockers, along with the Fund of the Workers Academy and the newspapers "For the workers’ cause", "People’s Truth", "Working Russia", "Pravda" and "Soviet Russia", have managed to win the psychological war from the owners of the harbour – the millionaires of Lisin’s financial group who have tried to win the hearts and the minds of the people of the city by producing and spreading a free newspaper "Metro" (tens of thousands of issues) where they tried to portray the dockers as self-seekers and representatives of the group egoism.
Sixthly, it is very important for practical activists of the worker's movement to study the plan of going on strike. When the decision was taken to start not with a complete, but with a partial strike – work stoppages according to a special schedule, not everybody could understand: why partial? Later they found out that this gave at least some opportunity to feed the families, as the striking funds did not exist yet, and this also didn’t provide the opportunity for strike-breakers to take over the jobs. Plus, the schedule of partial work stoppages was made in such a way that the striking time in one part of the company was causing standstills in other, operating parts of it. And involuntary standstill, according the law, should be partially paid for.
These little "military tricks" were used in Russia for the first time and the dockers did well by widely spreading the gained experience of their struggle. Of course, it is especially valuable for those who have chosen the way of struggle, and do no just limit their action to complaints and moaning and begging. I will repeat myself again and say that not by coincidence this experience was soon used in all in the companies of our city and region near the harbour, whose workers had the opportunity to familiarise themselves in person with this experience, and also to take part in solidarity actions with the dockers.
The level of class conscience of the workers grows as a result of their lost illusions about being "co-owners" of the companies, and the acquired psychology of a purely hired worker. The workers are more and more able to see that they have different interests than their bosses, employers, owners; they are more and more capable of realising their own goals, proper to their situation.
The Russian working class today is a conscious class, that adopts its own rules of behaviour, not those of the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie today acts aggressively, it does not mask its goals and aims, even though sometimes it is forced to cover them up with the slogans of "caring for the wealth of the nation".
The result of this is the poisoning of many workers’ minds with nationalistic ideas and feelings of opportunism (social partnership with bourgeoisie).
The main task of today’s workers movement is not to play according the bourgeois scenario’s, but to play by our own rules – just as the Russian workers did in 1905 and in 1917.
The main task of the Communist party is to manage to convince the workers in this and to help them in their self-organisation, in the development of their class struggle for their liberation.
The communist workers movement in modern Russia, under new historical conditions, should repeat and surpass the achievements of the industrial proletariat in 1905 – in particular, to form their own social economic organisation (trade unions, factory committees, mutual support funds etc) and political organisation (Soviets, revolution committees, fighting units, revolutionary army, structures of a Bolshevik workers party) – that is to say, the party aims at fulfilling the historical goal: to create their own class organisation, a system of structures capable of taking over the power and to manage production and state affairs. The Great October has proven that such organisation was one of the main factors of the victory. The communists of our party intend to use the Bolshevik’s experience and to re-unite with our own class, to bring her into new revolutionary heights in ideology and practical affairs.
How to achieve this? The experience of the last 15 years of struggle shows that the workers can and will defend their economic interests, only through creating their "own" - that is - class professional trade union, where there is no place for representatives of the employers or administration. For example, the well-known trade union "Defence of Labour (Zashita Truda)", that is active today in over 40 regions of Russia, has managed not just to create regional structures, but already to unite them with similar structures of trade unions of pilots, air traffic controllers, railway workers, builders etc – into the New Trade Union Federation of Russia, as a direct alternative to the notorious Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, which is led by the bourgeoisie and openly betrays workers’ interests.
In 2005 Zashita Truda organised its 4th Congress in Arzamas and executed the proposal of the 4th Congress of the Russian Communist Workers Party to register the Unified Workers' Trade Union "Zashita". In November 2004 the Congress was held of all known structures of the workers' resistance and of the representatives of the political parties, that deal with the workers' movement. The next Congress is planned in the second half of this year.
The working class’ trade unions did not remain outside of politics, did not become "party-less", because the realisation of economic interests demands the use of political tools, the participation in political life and also a high level of organisation and steadfastness. All of this is impossible to achieve without an experienced and educated staff, dedicated to social and political work, without party activists. Party membership of trade union workers was defined in process of practical actions: in reality there is only one party that acts for the interests and deals with the problems of the working class, and that is our party. Our party has no other goals and interests than those of the working class, and she defined for herself from the beginning the organisation of the workers into a revolutionary class as the main content of her practical work.
The main task in this difficult and at this stage not very effective work is to raise and educate workers activists, workers leaders who would be loyal to the interests of their class, intransigent towards the bourgeoisie and would prepare the working class to the revolutionary battles ahead.
Naturally, the party continues to work simultaneously, creating party cells among workers, involving workers to join us and also forming other political class structures (Soviets, committees etc).
We should mention that all the main known political forces in Russia today are trying to push the working people off that path of struggle, tested by the workers throughout the years. Both the so-called "left wing patriots" from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and the "centrist patriots" of President Putin, as well as the reactionaries from the right-wing parties, the Orthodox church, the pro-bourgeois intelligentsia and the official trade unions. All of them are screaming loud about the people’s problems and suffering, and all of them offer their almost useless remedies to solve these problems for the workers . All of them agree on the main thing: not to allow the proletariat to organise themselves for the revolutionary struggle. All of them force upon workers the same slogan: "We’ll come to power and we’ll give it to you!" For example, the leadership of CPRF that has declared people’s patriotism as the main national idea and the main idea of the party program, which is sinking into parliamentary political games, rejects the idea of the proletarian revolution and any more or less significant independent revolutionary actions by workers. At the same time its leaders consciously ignore the working class as an objective reality, as a potential revolutionary force, trying just to use the workers in the interests of their parliamentary struggle that limits significantly the horizons of the political struggle.
We were and are saying, on all levels:" Dear comrades in struggle for socialism! Let’s unite our efforts, based on Lenin’s ideas of revolutionary struggle, on the interests of the working class and of all the working people of our country! Let’s unite in the struggle for establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat – the most democratic and the most progressive form of state on our planet!" And we get this response: "Your views are outdated. You are calling us back, etc".
Our point of view about "outdated" views and new developments in theory and practice of the class struggle is explained in our party program.
Today, at the beginning of the XXI century, the new historic conditions are different from those of the beginning of the XX century, and that, of course, demands an adapted program of struggle.
Deep qualitative changes happened within the productive forces, that became more developed in the sense of quality of the workforce, appearance and usage of new, highly productive instruments of labour, new technologies. The general development and education level of the workforce is growing. New social problems have arisen: ecological (Weapons of Massive Destruction), dangerous production industries, over-population, mass migrations of millions of people from less developed countries into the more developed, terrorism, provoked by the bourgeoisie, mass epidemics etc
At the same time the international, global bourgeoisie became more experienced and grows its influence on human beings and on nations and states. After great victories, the USSR and the world socialist system were defeated and destroyed; the working class, the communist and worker’s movement are at the stage of ideological and political fragmentation, the influence of revolutionary ideas has diminished etc. In general, the report of class forces is at this stage still in favour of the bourgeoisie.
So there are new conditions of life and struggle for the working class, new in many ways and aspects. But has capitalism really changed its nature? Have the ideology and the practical policies of the main imperialist states and of the Russian bourgeois state, in relation to the oppressed classes, changed? Has the basis for the relations between the classes, the main class interests changed – their goals in relation to the mot important questions of life: power and property?
As we see it, the nature of capitalism, of its highest and last stage – imperialism, has not changed. The general crisis of capitalism continues also under the conditions of globalisation and informational and technological revolution. Its main properties are the deepening of the gap between the rich and the poor, the growth of social problems, wars and armed conflicts, growth of crime etc.
The reason is that today, just as 100 years ago, the same laws act in the bourgeois society: the law of private property, the law of surplus value, the law of creation and power of monopolies, today at a global scale. The laws of exploitation of a men by men remain active, they are not smoothed out by social hand-outs; the other laws, such as the deepening of contradictions between capital and labour, between the bourgeoisie and the working class, are also intact. These laws are acting because they are universal for the capitalist social economic formation. The same main classes in society have opposed interests: the bourgeoisie and the working class, the proletariat, be it more developed, better educated and having higher life standards. The laws of class struggle and proletarian revolution, and the conditions for there ripening, are all intact.
And the essence of the drastic changes, that all conscious people dream of, is nothing less than a new proletarian, socialist revolution. And only the working class as the most oppressed class, can again be its main revolutionary force, as only this class is interested in the root changes of his situation, that is prepared to go till the end in the revolutionary renewal of the society.
The main issues of the revolution remain the same: power and property.
The strategy of the proletarian revolution has been tested in practice and is also universal. Its goal is to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. .
As we understand it, only the tactics, the forms and the means of the revolutionary actions will be new, that means will be relevant to the moment in time and various depending on external and internal conditions of the development of the society and revolution itself
And let the sidekicks of bourgeoisie talk about "outdated Marxism", let them chatter about "limits on revolution". The reality clearly shows that in society the conscience grows of the need for deep changes. And that means that the communists are obliged to start the direct preparation of the revolutionary class to the general political strike as the highest form of the peaceful revolution.
1. The nature of modern capitalism and of its main contradictions at the beginning of the XXI century remains the same. In modern capitalist Russia a general system crisis is developing, and as a result of it – the preconditions of the new proletarian revolution. The ruling class can’t manage all the social, economic, political and spiritual problems of the society, because it creates them itself and re-creates them over and over again. The system of production and other social relations under capitalist rule becomes the obstacle on the way of development of the productive forces and that pushes the working class and other working people to seek the methods and the means in order to overcome this obstacle.
2. One of the main material preconditions of the future revolution is the working class. It has a powerful potential of struggle as the most numerous and the best organised class; more than 70% of it is concentrated on big factories, thus economically it is well organised and concentrated in the main industrial and transport centres of the country;
- the majority of the workers are highly qualified, well-educated, some of them have degree level education;
- on thousands of factories the workers go through the school of economic struggle, gain the experience of resistance against bourgeoisie, experience of self-organisation and workers solidarity.;
- despite the aggressive pressure from bourgeoisie, the contradictions within the development of the working class, its infection by social diseases and opportunism, the workers movement in our country develops as a new organised social institution, class, workers’ trade unions are active in practice, along with Soviets, committees and other organisations that defend workers’ interests.
- the structures of workers’ movement develop its own support systems: scientific, material and financial, technical, information (mass media, internet), staff and international relations.;
- there is a tendency towards the left in the political mood of workers;
- the political party of the worker’s class – the Russian Communist Workers party- Russian Party of Communists (RCWP-RPC) acts as a base for the future revolutionary party and works directly on developing workers’ movement;
- under conditions of deep deprivation, growing tendency towards absolute and relative impoverishment, the working class realises more and more its humiliating position in the society, its discontent grows, along with its desire to organise and to struggle. The working class is the most oppressed social class, that is why it objectively reflects the interests of all working people and it is interested in changing the social relations to the benefit of all working people.
3. Communists who aim to be together with the working class and to fight for its interests, understand that the bourgeois reforms suppress and destroy the working class, that the bourgeoisie will not change its course, that it is the enemy of the workers’ class, an obstacle on the way of progress and that it will not give up voluntarily all it has stolen from people, that is why the Communists can be only Revolutionaries!
The main task of communists is not the perfection of capitalism and bourgeois parliamentarism, but the struggle outside of the parliament.
The main task of communists is the organisation of the workers into a revolutionary class, their education and preparation towards the proletarian revolution under the new conditions of work and living, based on the eternal ideas and principles of the Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution. This is what life itself and history teach us.
The Vth Congress of our party that took place 22-23th of April this year gave us the main task : organisation of workers’ movement should become the central task of every party’s cell. This work should become the main criteria of effectiveness of our party’s work. Under conditions of growing police control this work should become the main condition of the survival of our party, of its preparation for clandestine work. Work aimed at organising the proletariat into a class is the main sign of the revolutionary intentions of a party. And the other way around, all the talk about the faithfulness to revolution without organising the workers is just revolutionary phrase-mongering. This work is the main way towards the growth of influence of party organisations and of the number of party members. Finally, this work is the only possible perspective of realising revolution and victory.