 Hello comrades and welcome back to Marxist Voice, the podcast of the Communist. Now as I speak you should be hearing some brand new theme music for the podcast, but that's not the only thing that's new about this episode. In fact we're launching a brand new weekly podcast series called Towards the RCP, which is going to run weekly between now and the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party in May of this year, so about 10 weeks time. Each week we're going to kick things off with a brief discussion about the latest key political events, whether that's in Britain or internationally, and then we're going to delve straight into various questions pertaining to building the party. In other words how communists can connect Marxist ideas to the living class struggle and build an organization around them. So that could be questions including the revolutionary press, revolutionary finance, building communist cells in workplaces, colleges, schools and so on. All of that is going to be discussed in the coming 10 weeks and maybe even past that, who knows. So for this episode, for the first episode, we're joined by Ben Glennetsky, who is a member of the Executive Committee of the soon-to-be revolutionary Communist Party and is also the National Secretary. Hi Ben, how's it going? All right Jack, yeah, all good, thank you. Yeah, you had a good week this week? Yeah, very good, it's been meeting and talking to various comrades around the country, but catching up on my reading, the new Lennon book, I'm sure you're doing the same. How far through are you? A couple of hundred pages in, it's good going, yeah. Yeah, I'm really enjoying it as well and I've heard a lot of good things from the comrades across the section about reading groups and so on. So yeah, I thought for this episode we'd kick things off with basically how to build the revolutionary Communist Party. Obviously we've got over a thousand members across the country as well as many supporters and sympathizers who are now getting their teeth stuck into this campaign to found the RCP. Obviously we've got our founding Congress in May, so it's not long now really, is it? It's how long, 10 weeks? Yeah, 10, 11 weeks, we're 10 and a half weeks. Clock's ticking. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, I mean the first thing I want to ask really, I think our listeners would like to know, why is it that we've launched the revolutionary Communist Party, why are we launching this campaign and why is it happening now? What's to do with the political situation in the world at the moment, isn't it? I mean, you look at the situation, it doesn't take much, you just need to read the newspapers, have a look on social media and you can see in every possible direction all the warning lights are flashing, it's like a plane that's going down and you can see the dashboard is just glowing red with danger. I mean, right now obviously as we're recording this, the Israeli military is imminently going to attack Rafa and that could be the spark that sets the whole Middle Easter light and talking of military adventures and crisis. The Ukrainian army has obviously just had a major retreat and that's a massive defeat for NATO, I think. I think this is going to, I think this is really the, that's a key town, you know, and this is Russia advancing through despite everything NATO and the Ukrainians have thrown at it. This is going to be a big defeat for US imperialism, basically. And that is going to have massive repercussions all over the world and including in Ukraine, because all these people, workers, young people who have been sent to the front lines to die in the interests of US imperialism are obviously going to be absolutely furious. It's going to have massive, potentially even revolutionary implications across a big part of the world. And then, I mean, in every direction economically, environmentally and politically, obviously, the ongoing saga this year is Trump looking to get re-elected again. So, like, there's just crisis in every, every direction that you look and I think the main, it's not just that there's crisis, it's that there is no solution being offered. In no country is anyone standing up and saying, yeah, I've got the answer to this. And no more is that the case than in Britain, in fact. Well, we've got an election this year. The government, obviously, the Tories have nothing to offer. We're very likely, almost inevitable, it seems to get a Starmer labor government. Is he offering anything different? Obviously. I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't take much to realise that he's basically even saying that quite openly. Things, we're going to make hard choices. I think nothing's going to be any different, you know? And completely reneging upon the promises for a green prosperity plan, for example. You know, billions of pounds of investment promised and now it's been scaled back to what Crumbs, basically, which probably won't even see the light of day. Is that like, he's breaking his promises before he even gets into power. So, what is going to happen when he's actually in power? This is what we've got to prepare for. This is the perspective, you know? Like, there's nothing we can do. We are, look, as you say, we're about 1,100 people right now in the UK. We're not a mass political party or anything like this. Yeah, that's the goal. And so, it's not going to, you know, we can't, we can't stop a Labour government. We can't do anything like that. We're not big enough for that. There's going to be a Labour government. I think that's pretty likely. The question is what we're going to do when that happens. What's going to happen when the Labour Party starts attacking the workers? What the union's going to do? What are people like us going to say when that situation happens? You can feel, basically, you can feel all the anger there because there's a lot of anger in society about all these different crises that there are. There's a lot of anger and it's kind of, it's beneath the surface like a spring that's getting tighter and tighter and tighter. You can feel it ready to explode. But what direction is it going to go in? It's not going to be through the direction of the Starmer Labour Party or anything like this. So what is the way forward? People are looking for an answer, looking for an alternative. In the past, it might have expressed itself through the Communist Party. I'm talking decades ago, you know? Like the kind of old, traditional Communist Party. They had tens of thousands of members and supporters back in the day, right? Yeah, it used to be this big force. And when people were looking for something to do, some protest, some way to fight the system, they used to, decades ago, look towards that old Communist Party. But today, that is really, I mean, it's a very weak force numerically, but that's beside the point. It's more actually politically extremely weak. It doesn't really offer anything except trying to paint a smiley face on capitalism. It doesn't offer a real alternative. So this is basically, this whole situation is why we're founding the Revolutionary Communist Party. Because there is a crisis everywhere, a crying need for an alternative. No one is offering anything. We have to make a clean break with all of that. We're opposed to the system, we're opposed to capitalism, opposed to imperialism. And we're opposed to the kind of reformist left, the ones who just try and tweak capitalism around the edges and so on. We have nothing to do. Anything that you consider to be left-wing or anything like this, that's not us. We're something different to that. We're the Revolutionary Communist Party. It's a clean break from all of this stuff. We offer a real alternative. That's the idea behind it. Yeah, thanks for explaining that, Ben. I think already this is getting a bit of attention. I've noticed on paper sales recently in the local area in East London, where my branch is, people have been coming up to us and saying, yeah, I am a Communist and I do wanna get organized. I'm talking about young workers, school students, just ordinary people seeing the front cover of our new paper, the Communist, and they're approaching us to join. In fact, last night, some guy just walked up and gave us 20 pounds. No questions asked, he just gave us 20 pounds. And he said to us that you guys are the only hope that we have. I've heard so many examples like that. There's this real groundswell I feel of a yearning for a political alternative. And that, I think, is the proof of this anger that is right there beneath the surface. There's finding no expression. Starmer's not expressing that. The unions aren't really expressing that where they are. It's only in a very partial way. People are looking for something else and that's what we're trying to offer. So obviously, for the past, what is it now? 31 years, since 1992, I believe, our comrades of the international Marxist tendency in Britain have been organized under the name Socialist Appeal. And obviously, we did various things. We did work inside the Labour Party, for example. We produced a journal and a newspaper, all these different things. And the question that I have is what makes Socialist Appeal, what makes the old work that we did different from what we're trying to achieve right now, what is that defining difference, would you say? Yeah, I think that is an important question. I think you can see Socialist Appeal as our prehistory, really. It was founded in the 90s. It was a difficult time to be a revolution in the Marxist collapse of the USSR. Exactly, not unrelated, actually, to why it was the split that preceded the founding of Socialist Appeal in the first place. And that was all part of it. And then you had a boom through the 90s and the early first half of the 2000s. It was a difficult time to be a revolution. Really, the goal, the role of Socialist Appeal was to try and hold things together, keep that flame of Marxism burning, try and educate a new layer, a new generation in these ideas, and sort of assemble a core cader of people at that time. And then, obviously, there was this, we realized that there was a mood, there was an interest in Marxism in revolutionary ideas, especially, mainly among young people, and especially among students, we set up Marxist societies all over the country. And that started with just one or two, and it's come to now encompassed 50, 55 Marxist societies at Unis on campuses around the country. And that was a massive step forward. And that is what allowed us to kind of assemble the basic caders, the prehistory, basically, of our organization was characterized by that. Educating this whole layer of young people in the ideas, like I myself, for example, was recruited through a Marxist society. A lot of the comrades of what is soon to be the RCP came through that route. Now, of course, a lot of those people have grown up and are workers and this kind of thing. And the situation has changed, basically. That's what's happened. Socialist appeal was this kind of period where we were doing patient propaganda work, educating a new generation in the ideas. What we see now is a deepening of the crisis. It's spilling over into every sphere of society and the impact that that is having on the consciousness of a much wider layer of people, causing them to draw radical, even revolutionary conclusions. I think it's a much more profound process that's going on in society right now. And there's a wider layer of people who are interested in this. That's why we need to found the RCP, is to reach that wider layer. We're not just reading groups and discussion groups anymore on campuses. I think we can keep those up. There's still a lot of interest. But we can also, now the situation is changing a bit, we can go beyond that. And we can turn outwards. We can be a bit more agitational. We can get stuck in to the class struggle. We can be openly communist. People are interested in this. They're looking for an alternative, a radical alternative. We can say we're communist and we can say we're class fighters. That's the main thing. We don't just read the books, although that is extremely important. We take those ideas and we will stand up at a picket line or on a demonstration. We'll give a speech. We'll stand up in our classrooms. We'll stand up at work and fight back against things and try and encourage and educate other people on how to fight back and why it's important to do that and be that point of reference for all these people who are angry, who are out there at the moment. So that's the difference I think between what we were doing as socialists to be on what we're gonna do is the Revolutionary Communist Party. I think we've already seen a couple of examples of this kind of new approach of being, an active fighting organization with the example of Port Talbot in South Wales. I'm sure we'll discuss this, maybe it's in a future episode of this series. But yeah, the comrades there saw that there was this jobs massacre basically impending thousands of jobs at the Port Talbot Steelworks owned by a big multinational called Tata. And instead of just writing an article about it and commenting upon it from the sidelines, they decided, look, we've got dozens of comrades in South Wales. Let's wage a bit of a campaign around this. We'll take this slogan of occupy the steelworks till the town, we'll make a banner, we'll do door knocking, we'll do stalls, intervene and trade union meetings. And yeah, I mean, it's been going for a few weeks now, but the comrades there have, I think had quite modest success, I would say. And that is a really good example, wouldn't you say? Yeah, that is exactly it. That is fully like RCP methods that's very different to what we were doing as socialists appeal. And I think that's the kind of attitude that the RCP needs to have. That's the kind of party we're gonna be, not just one that discusses things and comments on it, but that actively gets involved. And I think that example that we've got in Port Talbot, we need to replicate all over the country everywhere. Workers are under attack and young people having a tough time. There's housing crisis. There's all sorts. Everywhere there's anger, RCP members need to try and tap into that and use that anger to raise political questions, to link all these individual struggles to the broader political point, which is that the capitalist system is in crisis. It cannot be reformed. It has to be overthrown. That's what the RCP is all about. That's what we've got to get stuck into. Yeah, and I think issue two of our newspaper, The Communist is a perfect example of how we're approaching this work, raising political questions. The comrades have been submitting answers to questions that they've heard on the doorstep when they're talking to people. Can occupation really work? What about the environment? All of these different questions. They've been collecting quotes and interviews from the workers at the Steelworks. That's right. It's a tool for getting stuck in basically. It's an actual dialogue between RCP members and the working class more broadly. It's not just us sort of putting out a leaflet or a newspaper and saying, here's what we think. It's listening to what is going on, what are the questions that come out, discussing it through and collectively raising the political questions. And that's exactly what a Bolshevik organization should do. That's exactly what Lenin was striving to do. Back in Russia during the 1900s and 1910s and so on, that's the model that we're basing ourselves on. That's the one. So the next thing I want to ask then is maybe to give a bit more of an international perspective on things. It's not just a thing in Britain that we're doing, launching the RCP, having this bold communist turn in our work. There are also some other examples from our international, from our different sections. So I was wondering, yeah, do you want to go through? I know you've been to the meeting of the International Executive Committee of the IMT quite recently. Yeah, do you have any interesting tidbits to tell us? Yeah, I mean, there's an almost endless list of countries where we're doing something of this kind. So I won't go through it all. I mean, the one that really stands out is Switzerland actually. Because the point is this mood that I described, that we started off by talking about Palestine, about Ukraine, about Russia, about this mood that exists of disgust with the establishment and no real solution being offered. That is the case in every country, more or less, pretty much without exception. So that anger that exists is there everywhere. And so everywhere that our international exists, we are finding the same kind of results when we present ourselves in this way and when we turn out and get stuck into the class, struggle, and openly and boldly call ourselves communist. But the example that stands out to me the most is Switzerland. Yeah, you wouldn't expect that would do the land of the banks and the luxury chocolate and so on. That's exactly why it's such an interesting example. Because there, the comrades have, yeah, they did what we did last year as well. They put up loads of posters and stickers. Are you a communist? Get organized and so on. And they got an incredible response. I think it is because it's the land of the bankers and all the rest of it. Because there's no, it seems like there's never really gonna be any change. That doesn't stop people getting angry under the surface because living conditions are falling there same as everywhere else. And suddenly up pops our comrades who say, yeah, we're gonna organize a communist organization. And they are absolutely flying in terms of their growth and their development. And they're founding a revolutionary communist party. Just the week after our founding Congress is their founding Congress. And it's not just like, if you and me are surprised about how amazing that is in Switzerland. The Swiss press is also extremely surprised. Every single major newspaper has had it in that website. That's right. Advertising us basically. Yeah, they couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it. A revolutionary communist party in Switzerland. What an outrage. This is what they thought when they put it on their front pages. Everyone will surely be outraged by this. The Swiss comrades have said it's been the best possible publicity for them. They've had loads more inquiries as a result about joining, getting involved and stuff. So yeah, and the thing is, if that is happening in Switzerland, it's also happening in Canada that we can just gone, our comrades in Canada hosted, I think it's the biggest rep Marxist communist event in North America probably, this Montreal winter school that they host. And they had over 600 people there. An incredible thing. And that also had comrades from the US, but across the US, across Canada, and Canada's another country where there's not that much happening in terms of the class struggle, but still they are developing massively on the basis of presenting themselves openly and boldly as communists. And that's the way forward. And if it works in Switzerland and it works in Canada, then I think it's fairly safe to say that there's not really many countries where it won't work, where that anger isn't present that we can tap into. And that's why not just in this or that country, this or that section of the international, but the whole international, we've been known as the international Marxist tendency for a long time, the IMT, but there is a proposal from the International Executive Committee to rename ourselves the revolutionary communist international, to really tap into that mood and characterize this change that we're making in our work. And that's gonna be discussed at a world conference of the whole international in the summer and hopefully voted on, I certainly would be voting for it. And we can kind of give the international this new image, this new approach as the revolutionary communist international. And yeah, just to let our listeners know, yeah, this event that Ben referred to, the World School of Communism, which will also be a conference as well, and that's gonna be taking place between the 10th and the 15th of June. And yeah, our comrades and listeners can find out more about this and actually sign up to attend the sessions at theschoolofcommunism.com, which is an excellent website that I mean, props to the international for reserving that one. So yeah, that's schoolofcommunism.com and it's taking place in 110 days apparently. There's a little counter on the website. So yeah, time to get reading and get preparing for that. So anyway, yeah, I was thinking we could move on then to the real question that I'm sure is on everyone's, everyone's lips, all of our comrades, listeners and supporters who are at home right now. They'd be thinking, okay, great, we've discussed the international situation, the crisis of capitalism, this need for a political alternative and all these examples that you've mentioned, but what can we do about it? What can one person, whether they're in a big city or a village in the middle of nowhere, what can they do now between now and May to help found the RCQ? Yeah, this is the main question. And as you put it, any individual can help us with this because the fact is, I'm certain that we're right in what we say, which is that there is this layer of people. It's not necessarily tens of millions, but I think it is a lot of people in this country are really pissed off with the situation. They are looking for something different, some alternative and they wanna get stuck in, they wanna do something. All you need to do, even as an individual, is make yourself known as a communist. As someone, you just need to stand up and scream it from the rooftops. I am founding a branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party in this place, in this school, in this workplace, on this campus, in this village, in my neighborhood, in my block of flats, doesn't really matter. You just need to get it out there and talk to people about this stuff. There's lots of ways you can do it. You can literally, physically talk to people, talk to your friends. I've had so many stories of people who, they find out about us, they join, they get involved and they say, I wish I'd found out about you a long time before. They tell their friends, who they've talked politics with for a long time and they say, look, I found the organization that we've been looking for, I found the party we've been looking for. And then their mates join as well. That's the way to do it. So talk to as many people as you can about it. What we can do is, if you're on your own, I mean, if you're in a place where we've already got a branch, fantastic, you can join the branch and you can help to develop it. And the aim of that, the aim of every branch that we currently have, and we've got about 120 of them, the aim of every branch that we currently have needs to be to build another branch wherever they are, split into, recruit enough people that we can split into two and have a second branch and develop new fields of work and new peripheries and so on, new places that we can get stuck in and spread our ideas and our methods and stuff. But if you're in a place where we don't have anything, then get in touch and we will send you some copies of our newspaper, we'll send you leaflets, we'll send you posters you can put up in your window or whatever, we'll send you stickers, for example, advertising the party. You can, we'll send you everything you need to reach as wide a layer of people as possible. We'll give you advice on even like stuff to post on social media and where to post it to try and get the biggest reach, to meet as many people as we possibly can. It's, we've even got, we advertise as a starter pack for building a cell of the Revolutionary Communist Party. That's papers, stickers, leaflets and also a copy of the magazine as well. Theoretically arm yourself and educate yourself to be able to raise these ideas confidently. So yeah, there'll be a link in the show notes of this podcast to find the Communist starter pack, the Communist cell starter pack. So definitely check that out if you haven't already. So yeah, I mean, we've got plenty of examples that we can go through, I think, of this kind of work. I'm sure in the future actually we'll have an episode perhaps on how to build a cell in your school or your workplace and so on. But yeah, I mean, do you have any examples of that spring to mind of this kind of work? I mean, one thing that I read recently in issue two of The Communist was an example in Lancashire where there is a junior doctor who joined very recently, I think two or three weeks ago on the back of, you know, seeing the relaunch of the organization, seeing the paper and so on. He joined and then immediately he set to work, you know, bringing the paper into his workplace. He works in various hospitals around Lancashire and in the space of two or three weeks he's managed to recruit, I think, two people now. He's sold about six papers in his workplace. He's now, you know, discussing in his workplace and even actually working on producing an agitational leaflet, you know, calling on his colleagues to, you know, campaign to kick capitalism out of the NHS to reverse privatization, for full nationalization, all of these different things. That's just a glimpse, I think, of what can be achieved given the current conditions, given the current, especially in somewhere like the NHS where there's a massive amount of discontent because people, yeah, just pissed off at things basically feeling like they're falling apart. So, yeah, I mean, are there any more examples like that that we can point to to inspire our listeners? There's so many examples like that. You could say the same. There's a lot, I've heard of quite a lot of schools where, you know, for example, there's a school in South London where a young lad met us on a, I think the comrades were just selling papers on the street, whatever, just holding a little recruitment stall outside a tube station. And he came up and was asking a bit about, specifically about Palestine. And then he came with us to some of the Palestine demonstrations, and he joined, and then he went to school and he started talking about Palestine and this kind of question with his teachers. His teachers were interested in what he had to say, offered him the opportunity to give, I think actually I was told a series of assemblies to his school on this question. He's talked to his mates at school, he's sold them the paper, he's arranged a kind of meeting group, a little discussion group or a kind of group of communists, basically at the school. And they found a sympathetic teacher who let him use his classroom for meetings and so on. That's the kind of thing that is possible. I mean, that's one school in South London. I've heard a similar report from a school in West London. You can point to these things everywhere. And you can say the same for universities. We're having a go at something in, we've just set up a new cell actually of the RCP, soon to be RCP in Kingston, South West London, where again, like there's a big university there, it's not a place where we've really had anything before, but the doors are wide open. It's so easy because people are so into this kind of stuff, as long as presented in a clear way, in a radical revolutionary way, which is what our ideas are. People are looking for that. You just got to go about it with a bit of energy and yeah, Kingston, South London, Lancaster, Port Talbot. Anyway, you can find people who are interested in this stuff and who say, yeah, I want to build a cell of the RCP, a branch of the RCP. We're getting it. I mean, there's endless examples. In the East of England, we've set up between five and seven cells in the last couple of months alone. Like there's people left behind centre looking for this stuff. Yeah, excellent. I think what really shines through through all of these examples is that, yeah, the key is audacity. It's not about being embarrassed or trying to hide it or being a bit sneaky about it. It's just going out there, understanding that other people are looking for these kinds of things. I think that is important. Look, the Swiss comrades said this as well when I was talking to them. They said, the Swiss national character is similar to the British. They're in that, you know, it's shy, it's reserved, it's quiet. And it's a fear of social awkwardness and embarrassment and so on. It's not like, I don't know, other national characters that you might get a more Latin kind of national character or I think the French. The French. Yeah, this kind of thing. And they said a really key thing that they've been working on is getting over that. Like drop that shyness, basically, that social awkwardness, that embarrassment. They've been saying they've been getting up on their campuses, getting up on the tables at the cafeterias and just shouting about giving a little speech about communism, going down the tube trains and talking about communism to people, offering them the newspaper and saying, would you like to join the RCP? Just get over it. As if we're going to hold back the development of the revolutionary party that could actually change the world because of a little bit of social awkwardness. No, we're not having that. We've got to get over that. We've got to get out there, be bold because they're all these people out there isolated, hating the world, angry at the world, looking for some way to change it. We can connect with them but they have to be able to find us. They have to be able to see us. That's why it's important to stand up. How on earth are they going to find us if you're not bold and open and willing to discuss with people? That's what's needed. That's what the RCP's got to be all about. That's how we're going to find it. Just like the French revolutionary George Danton said, audacity, more audacity, always audacity. So yeah, I think that's a pretty good place I think to round things off unless there's anything else that you want to say. Yeah, so what will we discuss next week, do you think? Next week, we're going to talk about how to use the newspaper, how to use the communists to build the RCP. What role can that newspaper play? I mean, this example you gave of this doctor in Lancashire is a really good example. We're going to develop that kind of thing. Yeah. And we'll wrap things up there, but before you go, just a few quick announcements. So if what you've heard today in this episode has inspired you to go out and build a communist cell of your own, then you should get in touch with us immediately. Head to communist.red, our new website, where you can apply to join the Revolutionary Communist Party and we'll put you in touch with your nearest branch. And if there isn't a branch near you, then we'll provide you with the support and the resources you need to set one up. And in the meantime, if you'd like to prepare yourself politically, then we'd encourage you to subscribe to our newspaper, The Communist, which we're striving to build into a genuine worker's newspaper, a voice for the working class. If you head to communist.red forward slash subscribe, you can find all the information you need. We also have a special full communist combination deal, which includes our theoretical magazine, Indefensive Marxism, which contains more in-depth, long read, theoretical and historical articles. It's an essential tool to have in your arsenal as a communist. The latest issue features an array of articles on the life and ideas of Vladimir Lenin, including articles covering his philosophical studies, as well as his and Trotsky's struggle against the growing bureaucracy in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. So definitely check that out. And if you'd like to support our campaign to found a revolutionary Communist Party, then we would encourage you to give a strong financial foundation for the RCP by donating to our special party launch fund. We've set ourselves a target of raising 20,000 pounds in public donations between now and the May Congress. We've currently raised about 5,000 pounds due to the determination and sacrifice of our supporters and members, but we need to do a lot more. So we would encourage you to first of all dig deep, give what you can. We've had plenty of amazing donations, including 100 pounds, 200 pounds and even 400 pounds. This is the kind of sacrifice that Bolsheviks based themselves upon. And once you've done that, we would also encourage you to ask your friends, your family, your coworkers, anyone who's sympathetic to the cause of communism to also consider donating. This is perhaps the most important thing that you could spend your time and your money on. So if you want to donate, head to communist.red forward slash donate, where you can also set up a regular donation as well. And one last call out before we bring things to an end, we want to hear from you. Just like the Communist newspaper is brimming with reports and questions from the branches and from individual comrades. We also want this podcast series to feature questions and reports from the branches. So if there's a question that you have about building the RCP or a report about a successful day school or an intervention at a demonstration or a picket line that you think that other comrades could learn from, then please do get in touch with us. If you head to communist.red forward slash submit, there'll be a special category on the submissions form to submit questions and reports to the podcast. Please send in any submissions in the form of a recording, like a voice note, and we might play it on the show and respond to it. So yeah, all of those things that I've mentioned, you can find the links to those in the show notes of this podcast. And yeah, before we end, thanks very much to our listeners for tuning in. Make sure you stay subscribed for regular episodes, covering Marxist theory, revolutionary history, current events, and now also party building as well, brought to you by Marxist voice, the podcast of the communist. See you next week.