From counterrevolution to revival: Communism and the primacy of the international situation

Editor's note: Central to our ideology is the idea that in order to understand and prepare for the class struggle in the U.S. we must first take the global situation into account, understanding that the interconnectedness of global and national politics is primary and dialectical, constantly changing and bursting with contradictions. In this document we assert this thesis and undertake an examination of the global class struggle as it has ebbed and flowed from 1945 until the present. We look at the upsurge of socialist and national liberation struggles from 1945-1979 and their impact on the class struggle in all countries, before turning to the era of counterrevolution that we find ourselves in today. We conclude with a few remarks on moving from counterrevolution to revival, which we believe are particularly important given the election of Donald Trump. The following was initially written as an internal document to facilitate discussion within our party as we headed into our 2nd Party Congress in 2013. As such, it does not account for the changes in the global situation that have taken place since then. The historical arguments and the general theses put forward, however, regarding the primacy of the international situation, the periodization of the global class struggle, and the relationship between global and national politics still hold. When Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 they and the other young revolutionaries in Europe (Marx was 29 and Engels was 27) believed that continental Europe was on the verge of revolution. The revolution would of necessity be directed against the monarchist regimes of the old ruling classes. They anticipated that both the proletariat and the liberal bourgeois democratic forces would be in the streets and at the barricades. They were not wrong.