1. The Communist Party
This is the epoch of socialism-communism, and communists must therefore be committed to its establishment. Throughout the world, capitalism and imperialism have created the material conditions for this development, but the absence or weakness of working-class organisations has progressively transformed this objective reality into a distant vision. However, the ever-increasing exploitation and alienation of the working class cannot help but provide new motivations for the struggle against capitalism and the need for its final defeat.
To achieve this objective, there is a need for a Communist Party – a revolutionary organisation acting as the vanguard and leader of the entire working class. The Communist Party has the duty to unite theory and praxis through the application of scientific Marxism-Leninism, with the main aim of organising the working class for the revolutionary seizure of power. To do so, the Communist Party must produce a political programme capable of analysing the objective tendencies of national and international capital and, from this analysis, clarifying how the need for a revolutionary transformation of society can be translated into a strategic plan.
The task of the Communist Party also includes developing relationships with the labour movement and other popular forces so that when the situation becomes objectively revolutionary, both the working-class vanguard and the majority of the workers are ready to fight. The Communist Party should also enable workers, particularly its most oppressed sections – such as women and migrants – to participate fully in the membership and leadership of the organisation, ensuring a correct class perspective.
The Communist Party is not a mass organisation but a cadre organisation. Only in this form can it correctly apply democratic centralism, which guarantees both freedom of criticism and unity of action. Cadres are the main pillar of the Communist Party. Their duties include educating themselves on capitalism and scientific socialism, clarifying central political questions for the working-class movement, establishing roots in labour organisations, and developing the necessary theoretical and practical foundations for a revolutionary transformation of their country. A cadre organisation does not mean that the Party should not seek to mobilise the masses through other mass organisations dedicated to organising workers, women, migrants, and students, for instance.
The Communist Party is devoted to proletarian internationalism, seeking to establish relationships with like-minded organisations in other countries and, alongside them, develop the principles of scientific socialism, defend the history of socialist construction, and mature a common understanding of capitalism and imperialism. For this purpose, the Communist Party must struggle to contribute to the formation of a new Communist International, capable of leading communist parties from a unified and central position.
Although many organisations claim communism in their name, they are often inadequate, as the communist ‘identity’ has been misused to pursue opposite objectives of reformism and revisionism. Many so-called ‘communist’ organisations limit themselves to tailing progressive factions of the bourgeois movement (such as bourgeois feminist, anti-racist or environmental groups), or attempting to shift to the left bourgeois or petty-bourgeois parties (like Labour or the Labour left). In both cases, they achieve nothing but the ideological subjugation of the working class to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois worldviews, fundamentally betraying the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism.
It is not the size or the age but rather the correctness of its views and the firmness of its determination that make the Communist Party true to its name.
2. Capitalism and imperialism
Since the end of the 19th century, capitalism has entered its imperialist phase, famously defined by Lenin as parasitic and rotten. Despite the massive social, political, and technical changes that have occurred since, we still live in this period, as the capitalist mode of production persists through imperialist exploitation and oppression, making the economies of imperialist countries ever more parasitic and rotten.
The process behind imperialism is straightforward: as capital becomes more concentrated and centralised, it forms monopolies while merging industries and banks into what Lenin termed financial capital. As this development tends to reduce domestic profits, companies begin exporting capital to other states, seeking more profitable investment opportunities abroad. Imperialist capitalism is thus parasitic because it has exhausted capitalism’s progressive role, leading to the establishment of a financial oligarchy entirely disconnected from production and exclusively characterised by the possession of money. It is pointless for the working class to endorse the previous, less monopolistic and arguably even more exploitative phase of capitalism – imperialism is an irreversible phase, which can be interrupted and defeated only by a socialist revolution.
Imperialism is a world system: every capitalist state must play by the same rules, in which the extra profits of one are the misfortune of another. However, not all states are in the same position. A few are at the top of this system, as the profit they extract from other states largely outweighs what they pay. The vast majority of states occupy different tiers in a middle position, where the surplus value they import and extract are in comparable proportions. A few states are at the bottom, lacking sufficiently developed monopolised or financialised capital to benefit significantly from this mutual working-class exploitation. However, for these bottom states – as well as for all others – within capitalism, there is no alternative but to plunder other economies in the imperialist system and struggle to secure the surplus value produced by the working class worldwide. Because of the uneven development of capitalism, this diamond-shaped hierarchy is never stable; it is constantly altered through economic changes, technological innovations, social and political processes, and wars.
Two opportunist positions most dangerously hinder this understanding. First, the so-called ‘collective imperialism’ argument claims that the progressive internationalisation of capital has weakened its ties with individual states, supposedly alleviating the imperialist drive toward international competition and wars. Secondly, the belief that ‘multi-polarity’ – i.e., the coexistence of multiple leading imperialist centres – might create the conditions for long-lasting peace and equal development. This argument is based on the notion that certain capitalist states (e.g., China, Russia or conversely states that sit at the bottom of the imperialist hierarchy) play an ‘objectively anti-imperialist’ role, as their fight against the dominant imperialist centres aligns with the struggle for the liberation of the international working class.
Past and present events expose the flawed foundations of these theories. They demonstrate that imperialism still drives states into wars against each other; that multi-polarity only escalates conflicts and destruction; and that supposedly ‘objectively anti-imperialist’ states are themselves imperialists, albeit with lower economic power. These states fight imperialist powers not for the liberation of the working class but to advance their own capitalist interests and climb the imperialist hierarchy – achievable only through intensified exploitation of both their own working class and that of their rivals.
Imperialism is, therefore, neither a policy that states can adopt or abandon at will nor merely an aggressive military stance. Policy and military developments are merely the most visible expressions of a process rooted entirely in the economic sphere, which defines the current creation of value.
Within this context, as Lenin recommended, the role of communists is to fight their own imperialism. This does not mean supporting every richer or poorer capitalist state whose economic interests oppose that of an imperialist power, as this would merely lead the working class to align with another imperialist force. Understanding the global, reciprocal, and all-encompassing structure of imperialism – and locating every economy within it – is a necessary precondition for a successful struggle against imperialism.
3. The Working Class
The working class is the social force that, deprived of its own means of production, is exploited under capitalism. As only workers have the capacity to create new value, their exploitation is the necessary precondition for capitalism’s existence, as this is what allows capitalists to extract surplus value and accumulate capital. The working class’s objective position in the labour process thus creates an antagonistic contradiction between workers and capitalists, which cannot be resolved within capitalism. Because of this contradiction, workers have an objective interest in socialist revolution and, perhaps even more importantly, they constitute the only class capable of guiding this revolutionary change. Only the liberation of the working class would, in fact, lead to a different mode of production – socialism – capable of establishing the foundations for the liberation of all humanity.
The entirety of the working class is exploited under capitalism, in which every worker is deprived of part of the surplus product they create in the labour process for the sake of capitalist accumulation. However, although united by exploitation, the working class is divided by the diverse working and living conditions experienced by its different sections.
One of the most crucial divisions affecting long-term imperialist countries is the existence of the labour aristocracy, a stratum of relatively privileged workers that imperialism was and is able to bribe thanks to surplus profits made abroad. Already highlighted and attacked by Engels and Lenin, the concessions obtained by the labour aristocracy serve to improve the domestic stability of the capitalist system, as economically, socially, and politically privileged workers betray solidarity with the rest of the working class and actively fight any revolutionary development. However, while the opportunism of the labour aristocracy cannot be underestimated, it should also be remembered that even privileged workers are exploited workers; that their concessions were and are also the result of the working class’s capacity to fight for its own interests and alleviate its dire working and living conditions; and, finally, that these concessions are never permanent, but are continuously threatened and eroded by the general law of capitalist accumulation – that is, the greater the social wealth, the greater the social misery.
On the other side of the spectrum from the labour aristocracy, one can find the lumpenproletariat, which also tends to increase due to capitalist and imperialist development. Unfortunately, the most radical economic, physical, and mental affliction does not result in a spontaneous increase of class consciousness, as the marked disillusionment with capitalism tends to be reflected in an equal disbelief in collective action and organisation.
These and other divisions among workers are not resolved by the trade unions, which have historically represented one of the strongest barriers against the exacerbation of class conflict – and continue to do so today. By fostering the integration of working-class interests within the capitalist system, trade unions have contributed to the spread of opportunist views in the working class, prioritising short-term material benefits and immaterial privileges over the fight for socialism. At the same time, trade unions constitute spaces where workers’ interests can be discussed, articulated, and defended; where their class consciousness can develop; and where their fight can more easily threaten the main drive of the entire capitalist system – profit and accumulation. This is why it is absolutely central that, despite their political limitations, the Communist Party must develop solid relationships with trade unions, critiquing opportunist leaderships while supporting class-conscious and conflict-oriented members.
Other central divisions affecting the unity of the working class are those related to gender and nationality. Women’s inequality, not created but strengthened by capitalism, originates in their reproductive capacity, which in turn results in their partial or continual exclusion from the labour process. Working-class women are objectively oppressed, as they experience lower employment rates, lower salaries, and lower job security; consequently, they have little capacity to defend their interests within their households, either due to financial dependence or additional domestic labour. Migrants face a very similar condition. As they often have different educational qualifications or skills and a more precarious citizenship status, capital is able to objectively oppress them, lowering their wages and worsening their working and living conditions. This is in turn used by the capitalist class to worsen the reproductive conditions of the entire working class, fuelling anti-migrant sentiments among non-migrant workers.
The perpetrator of these oppressive conditions is not merely sexism or racism, but capitalism, which obtains material and political advantages from the objective oppression of working-class women and migrants. While working-class men might have a short-term petty interest in the oppression of women and migrants, their oppression ultimately strengthens capitalism, leading to the more ruthless exploitation of the entire working class.
While feminism and anti-racism often propagate a classless understanding of these issues, liberation from capitalism can only happen by uniting the entire working class in the fight for socialism. Racism and sexism obviously exist, but they are by-products of capitalist exploitation and oppression. As much as it is important to fight for better conditions for working-class women and migrants, it is also crucial to recognise that only by defeating capitalism will sexism and racism lose their material basis and begin to disappear.
Not immediately part of the working class are other popular strata, which in highly developed countries mostly include urban self-employed or petty bourgeois households not employing wage labourers. These classes are wavering, as they have contradictory interests: on one side, their survival can only happen via the expansion of their activity, leading them to appropriate surplus product from workers; on the other side, capitalism, and even more so imperialism, tend to eliminate this possibility, as an increasing number of independent producers are forced into wage labour. Once again, while these popular strata’s short-term and subjective interest lies in workers’ exploitation, their long-term and objective interest is in the elimination of the capitalist class. It is thus the responsibility of the working class to win these popular strata as allies in the fight against capitalism.
4. The State
The state is an instrument that one class uses to oppress another. In capitalism, the bourgeoisie uses the state to enforce and exacerbate its oppression of the working class. The state ensures that workers’ labour is consistently exploited by the bourgeoisie and that the working class is forcibly or spontaneously kept in subjugation through social, political, juridical, cultural, and environmental domination. Through its extensive military apparatus, the state also wages class war against both the national and international working class – starting first with its best-organised sections.
In addition to maintaining the class contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie, the state also fulfils another key class function: it reconciles the competing interests of different sections of capital. Since the age of imperialism, the state has enormously favoured the interests of monopoly capitalism, yet it still acts as an ideal collective capitalist, ensuring that the entire bourgeoisie, and not just one of its factions, can accumulate capital. To this end, it facilitates the political organisation of the bourgeoisie, primarily through electoral and juridical mechanisms designed to protect capital’s interests under specific historical circumstances.
Despite its ever-expanding economic, political, and military associations, the capitalist class remains organised around the state. This is why, in the fight against capitalism, workers should not primarily target abstract international institutions but should focus on dismantling their own national state power, which serves as the collective representative of their exploiters and oppressors.
Even when it appears to act in the interests of the working class, the state’s primary function remains to create the best possible conditions for capital accumulation. For example, when financing welfare provisions such as public health, education, or housing, the benefits for the working class are only a by-product of the state’s real objective: lowering labour costs and stabilising conditions for profit maximisation in times of crisis.
The state is not a neutral institution whose control can be won through elections, nor is it capable of being transformed in a way that would favour socialism. Even if working-class representatives were to gain electoral victories, the state would not lose its bourgeois character; instead, it would neutralise unfavourable political outcomes through its vast coercive apparatus, which exists precisely for this purpose. This is why it is futile for any communist force to believe in the gradual introduction of socialism through engagement with the bourgeois state – an assessment that remains valid even when considering so-called anti-monopolist or anti-imperialist states.
Democracy does not exist in a pure form but only as a class democracy. However, even though rights and freedoms proclaimed by the state serve primarily the bourgeoisie, this does not mean that workers and communists should not seek to exploit them. Political and individual rights provide significant tactical advantages in pursuing strategic objectives, and they also represent the outcome of long-term working-class struggles. The same applies to public services that mitigate the physical and mental oppression of the working class. While these rights and services must be defended and expanded, communists must remain clear that the bourgeois state will never be capable of truly sustaining them. The only path to the liberation of the working class lies in the fight against capitalism and its political institutions, culminating in the establishment of a socialist state.
5. Opportunism
Since the time of Marx and Engels, capitalism has attempted to parasitise the historical materialist worldview coherent with the working class, corrupting it with bourgeois ideology. The essence of opportunism lies in separating the economy from politics and arguing that the long-term work required for a revolutionary overturn of the mode of production can be replaced by supposedly ‘easier’ or ‘faster’ political manoeuvres.
Opportunism always has a left and a right wing, as different in their strategies as they are similar in their outcomes. The opportunist right wing abandons the aims of revolution and socialism in exchange for gaining short-term improvements for the national and international working class. In this way, they not only promote the false principle that capitalism can be managed and improved, but they also lower the level of workers’ consciousness by promoting slogans demanding abstract and illusory achievements (such as ‘fair job’ or ‘just pay’).
At the other end of the political spectrum, the opposite extremism is represented by left-wing opportunism, which denies the importance of building up the necessary forces to overturn the capitalist system in favour of short-term radical actions. They reject the need for economic or political improvements, work in non-radical unions, or participate in local or general elections, which they consider a compromise with capitalism. Consequently, their slogans discard any reference to concrete and immediate aims, escaping into unrealistic demands (e.g., ‘socialism’), which are generally incomprehensible to the largest section of the working class.
Despite their differences, these two forms of extremism are not only complementary but also mutually compatible, as many organisations exhibit signs of both. The reason for this is that revisionism and opportunism are not due to individual or moral weaknesses but are grounded in the social character of two groups contiguous with the working class: the labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie.
Due to the benefits it receives from imperialism, the labour aristocracy will always side with right-wing opportunism, aiming to extract further benefits without challenging capitalism’s status quo. Despite its minority character, the labour aristocracy plays a pivotal role in the political and ideological leadership of the working class, steering larger sections of workers away from revolutionary principles. Conversely, split between the ambition to maintain its propertied status and frustration over having lost it, the petty bourgeoisie can contribute to both right- and left-wing opportunism, at times seeking to slowly reform capitalism or rapidly abolish it. This is also true for all the different sections of the petty bourgeoisie, which include students, artists, and intellectuals.
The fight against opportunism is an all-encompassing struggle and should not be mechanically directed outside the organisation. On one hand, not all members of opportunist organisations are opportunists themselves; for instance, organisers who fight in the interest of the working class within such organisations should not be equated with them but rather won over to the communist cause. On the other hand, no organisation can ever consider itself immune to opportunism, which can infiltrate through traces of bourgeois consciousness present in both new and long-standing members. Historically, opportunism has infiltrated the international communist movement in the form of Trotskyism, Browderism, Maoism and Dengism among others. Also, for this reason, the Communist Party must not only combat opportunism theoretically but also work to establish solid roots within the working class, as the class consciousness of its most advanced sections is the only natural antidote to the dangers of opportunism.
6. Socialism
Socialism is the mode of production that the working class establishes after taking over capitalist production. For centuries, capitalism has squandered the social and technical development of productive forces through profits, crises, and wars, creating the precondition for its overthrow. Socialism is objectively the mode of production that can best employ the level of productive forces globally, utilising labour to guarantee the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of society as a whole, as described by Stalin.
By socialising all means of production, socialism finally resolves the main capitalist contradiction between the social production of wealth and its private appropriation. A central function in this process is played by central planning, which removes production from the anarchy of individual corporations or producers and organises it in advance to best respond to the needs of the working population.
The social character of socialist production fundamentally revolutionises the main features of capitalist production. Accumulation of capital and exploitation of labour, the main drivers of capitalist production, are impossible because there are no capitalists. For the same reason, surplus product is not transformed into surplus value but remains in the form of collective social wealth. As this wealth is collectively owned, it is not exchanged on the market, meaning there are no commodities and no law of value to regulate their exchange.
While developing from capitalism, socialism also inherits its weaknesses, meaning that the transition to the next phase of production, communism, must be constructed over time. Socialism faces significant challenges in its first phase of construction: for instance, difficulties in the socialisation of production mean that the law governing the distribution of wealth is not ‘to each according to their needs’ but ‘to each according to their labour.’ Some contradictions of capitalist production – such as those between mental and manual labour, men and women, city and countryside – may persist, while the law of value could be maintained in certain secondary industrial branches where the state cannot immediately socialise production. These challenges do not change the revolutionary character of socialism and do not make the transition to communism a separate revolution, as socialism and communism share the same mode of production and the same ruling class. Socialism merely represents an early, immature phase of communism, in which some of its laws have not yet been fully established. This is why socialism-communism should be understood as the first and sole aim of the revolutionary struggle.
In socialism, power is organised under the dictatorship of the working class. The new socialist state is, first and foremost, a class instrument, protecting the working class and expanding its economic, social, political, and cultural possibilities at the expense of traditional bourgeois rights. In a socialist state, it is not the Communist Party but the working class that exercises power through the bodies of democratic participation that distinguish it. The Communist Party plays only the role of supporting the working-class political and socio-economic organisation by serving as a centre for developing class consciousness and combating opportunist and revisionist understandings, which capitalism and imperialism will always attempt to spread.
The working class is the only class that exercises power in the socialist state. Initially, other classes that do not have irreconcilable contradictions with the workers – such as small property owners and independent producers – can be included in the organisation of the state as allies; however, in the long term, the socialisation of production will necessarily absorb their individual conditions, leading to a socialist state composed solely of workers.
The law of uneven development makes the existence of socialism in a single state a likely possibility. While the ambition of establishing socialism worldwide remains, this must be pursued by defending the socialist revolution in one country and supporting the social, political, and military struggles of national communist parties worldwide. In any case, the establishment of one or more socialist states does not conclude the revolutionary process, which continues both in constructing the socialist mode of production and in working toward its transition to communism.
Communist Vanguard 2025