Communist Group Hosts ‘Marxist School’ in Chicago

A revolutionary communist group hosted a “Marxist school” over the weekend meant to serve as a “training ground for Bolsheviks studying the Marxist method and organizing to end the capitalist system.”

Yes. You read that right.

The Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) formed in July 2024 to “to carry out the American socialist revolution in our lifetime.”

“We can say with absolute assurance that the United States is headed for revolution,” the groups writes in its manifesto.

“We need to prepare. History is calling on our generation to step forward and fight for the overthrow of capitalism.”

RCA bases its manifesto, strategies and call to action on Marxism.

“If we are serious about winning,” the group writes, “we must base ourselves on the pinnacle of revolutionary theory, summed up in the writing of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”

That’s a real problem, because Marxist revolutionary theory, which RCA calls “the most advanced and scientific worldview humanity has ever produced,” requires violence.

Karl Marx, the father of socialism, believed all history boiled down to conflicts between the oppressed working class and the oppressive bourgeoisie. He thought the working class would inevitably rise up in violent revolution to overthrow their oppressors.

Vladimir Lenin, the father of Marxism-Leninism, or communism, also believed the working class had to overtake their oppressors in violent revolt. Unlike Marx, however, he did not think revolution was inevitable. He believed the working class had to be taught to rebel.

According to its manifesto, RCA, like Lenin, believes the success of its movement hinges on “transforming thousands of communists activists into trained Marxist cadres.”

The group began offering “Marxist schools,” two-day “deep-dives” into Marxist theory, last year.

This year, the group hosted the first of three “Marxist schools” in Los Angeles on October 10 and 11.

Nearly 180 attendees attended sessions on topics including:

• Leading workers in general strikes that “challenge the ruling classes’ right to rule.”
• Understanding history through the lens of class struggles, rather than “a series of random dates, facts and ‘great men,’” as “bourgeois historians” do.
• The importance of revolution, instead of reformation, because true change does not come from “taking hold of the bourgeois state for our own ends.”
• The anti-immigration tactics of “the ruling class.”
• The excellence of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which “was the first time the working class overthrew capitalism and held onto power in the face of bourgeois counterrevolution.”

The group presumably parroted the same material to attendees in Chicago last weekend. Another group of Americans will be indoctrinated in New York on November 7.

The RCA openly ties itself, not just to communism, but the Russian Revolution — a specific, failed application of communism which left millions of civilians dead.

The Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 when Lenin’s majority party, the communist Bolshevik’s, overthrew the tsar.

RCA calls the revolution “the greatest event in world history.” In its manifesto, the group pledges to “replicate that victory in every single country on earth over the next few decades… [by] building a Bolshevik party for our generation.”

But the Russian Revolution didn’t lead to a democratic, communist utopia. It touched off the Russian Civil War a year later.

The Bolsheviks were not opposed by the bourgeoisie, as the RCA claimed in its Los Angeles “Marxist school,” but by several factions with a common enemy. These disparate groups included members of the non-Bolshevik, political left, former members of the Bolshevik coalition which Lenin had expelled, Ukrainian nationals, Czechoslovakian and Slovakian soldiers who had deserted the Austro-Hungarian army, and members of the political right.

The Bolsheviks’ “Red Army” won the Civil War in 1920. By then, upward of 10 million people had died in the war — almost all of them civilians.

The Russian police slaughtered thousands for suspected connections to Lenin’s enemies. Millions more died from disease and malnutrition, due, in large part, to Lenin’s confiscation of food.

But, surely, after this bloody conflict, Lenin and his Bolsheviks ushered in a reign of unparalleled prosperity?

Decidedly not.

After the civil war, the Bolshevik party took total control of what became The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Ordinary workers retained no power in this new society. Only members of the party, which took government positions, wielded any influence.

Lenin ruled over them all.

I am frankly disturbed that any group would want America to experience its own Russian Revolution.

You should be, too.

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