 So we, it won't come as a surprise to any of you to hear me say that we're living through really great events. Our lives are going to be defined by upheaval, war and revolution from the environment, the economy, healthcare, education, politics, international relations. There's crisis at every level of society. The old world is dying on its feet. But in almost every country around the world you can see a new world struggling to be born. And mass movements sometimes through the ballot box or through demonstrations or strikes or even revolutions have rippled around the world over the last 10 years. The role of the revolutionary party is to bring together all of those who don't just want to be spectators in that process. But people bring together those who want to intervene in that process to solve the problems which are causing all of these crises in the first place, which are giving rise to these mass movements. In that sense, the revolutionary party is the midwife to the birth of the new world. Now the construction of such a party has been attempted many times throughout history. And we, that is socialist appeal and the international Marxist tendency, are attempting to do the same thing again today. So we are quite interested in the attempts of the past, what worked and what didn't. The starting point is having a clear picture of what it is that we are trying to build. What is this party for? It is not an end in itself. It's a tool to end capitalism and to put power in the hands of the working class definitively and irreversibly. It's a weapon to fight for what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the role of a revolutionary party. The dictatorship of the proletariat, that is the dictatorship of the vast majority of people, the masses, over the tiny minority of those who currently occupy the position of the ruling class. And the dictatorship of the proletariat is to suppress the rights that that tiny minority currently claim, which is the right to exploit and hoard and plunder the planet and degrade the lives of the rest of us. That's the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the role of the revolutionary party. It's to establish that. There are plenty of social democratic parties or other groupings of a left coloration which seek to kind of rebalance things, work within the minds of the system and rebalance things a little bit more in favor of the workers. Organizations like momentum go no further than this and they are not revolution, they're not trying to build a revolutionary party. Other left groups do even less than that. They confine themselves to little more than charity efforts, food banks and that sort of thing, to alleviate some of the worst effects of capitalism without attacking their root cause. And such groups propose to do this by compromising or persuading the capitalist class. And the advocates of reformism of this kind can be found throughout academia, throughout the labour movement and these ideas hold a lot of sway over a lot of people. They are very prevalent ideas. We've all come across them, I'm sure. To combat the enormous pressure of reformism that exists in capitalist and bourgeois society, revolutionaries have to weld themselves together into a party with an independent program for socialist revolution to resist that pressure that is coming from elsewhere. If we're on our own with our revolutionary ideas, we don't stand much of a chance. We have to weld ourselves together into a revolutionary party because without a clearly delineated revolutionary party, our aim, that is to overthrow capitalism and put power in the hands of the workers, can end up submerged in this swamp of reformism. I'll give you an example in February 1917, the Russian masses overthrew the Tsar and what replaced him was a system of dual power. The workers and the peasants expressed themselves through Soviets, councils, workers' councils to which they elected their representatives. Meanwhile, the formal government was a bourgeois liberal one known as the provisional government under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky and both of those sources of power representing different class interests existed side by side, the provisional government representing the interests of the Russian capitalists and foreign imperialists was forced into this kind of uneasy accommodation with the Soviets who were representing the interests of the exploited masses. This is what replaced the Tsar in February 1917. Now Stalin and Kamenev at that time occupy leading positions in the Bolshevik party, Lenin was in exile abroad and Stalin and Kamenev declared the Bolshevik position to be one of support, conditional support, but support for the provisional government for the bourgeois government and Stalin and Kamenev got carried away basically by the euphoria of the situation of the February Revolution and you can imagine it, masses in the streets, overthrow of the Tsar, something that they've been fighting for for ages and they said we'll support the provisional government in and so far as it defends the interests of the workers which of course was in no way whatsoever. What Stalin and Kamenev did, they lost sight of the irreconcilability of exploiter and exploited, the provisional government and the Soviets of bourgeois and proletarian. They advocated class collaboration in that situation but such unity obviously is impossible, there are irreconcilable antagonisms that cannot be smoothed over and one side or the other will get the upper hand sooner or later and press home its advantage. The role of a revolutionary party is not to advocate unity between boss and worker but for the overthrow of the bosses and all power to the workers and sure enough when Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 he came out very hard against Stalin and Kamenev's line. His slogan was all power to the Soviets and that is the revolutionary line, all power to the working class overthrow the bourgeois government and the capitalist class they represent. Lenin reoriented to the Bolsheviks and that's how they conquered power for the workers and overthrew capitalism. That remorseless battle against reformism, compromise and class collaboration that is the essence of a revolutionary party. Where parties have failed to adopt that remorseless irreconcilability they have not been able to play a revolutionary role. During the Hungarian revolution of 1919 the communist party succumbed to the pressure of the reformist social democratic party and they dissolved themselves effectively into a government, a joint government with the social democrats with the left reformists basically in a revolutionary situation. The communist party leaders saw this as a shortcut to building the communist party in Hungary at that time. We'll go into government with the left reformists and that will help us establish our authority a bit more they thought that would allow them to connect a bit more with the masses. In fact it was an attempt to unify what was fundamentally those who wanted to overthrow capitalism with those who wanted to preserve capitalism in a different form in a more palatable form but nevertheless they wanted to preserve capitalism. The result was a government that vacillated between centrism between maintaining capitalism reforming capitalism and wanting to overthrow it vacillated and it ended up ultimately betraying the working class in the interests of that revolution and those betrayals the communists were forced to take responsibility for because they had dissolved themselves into that government with the social democrats and that led to all sorts of confusion then among the ranks of the communists among the working class in Hungary at the time and that that confusion turned to demoralisation which turned to defeat of the revolution and the communist party. In 1926 there was a general strike in Britain and the communist party leaders at that time told workers to put all of their faith in the left trade union leaders and that also was another attempt at unity between those who wanted to end capitalism and those left trade union leaders who just wanted a slightly nice version of capitalism they had no interest no intention of ever actually overthrowing capitalism the general strike was an opportunity to do so the left trade union leaders had no intention of taking that opportunity but the communist party leaders said we should all put our faith in the left trade union leaders and the result was the betrayal of the general strike by those very same left trade union leaders leading to all sorts of confusion inevitably about why the communist party leaders had said that we should put all of our faith in the trade union leaders and that led to enormous demoralisation and enormous undermining of the support of the communist party as a result during the Spanish revolution in the 1930s there was a party called the PUM P O U M whose aim was the overthrow of capitalism but in that revolutionary process they entered into all sorts of electoral pacts with bourgeois liberal parties they participated in governments which attacked workers councils and supported the kind of liberal anarchists at different points and they did say they said because we're too small to influence things in any in any other way a bit like the leaders of the hungarian communist party well we need to find a way to connect with the masses we're too small to influence things otherwise but it remained small precisely because it didn't counterpose itself sharply to the actions of those who were unwilling to break with capitalism all those people they participated with never had any intention of breaking with capitalism and by refusing to counterpose themselves to that or refusing to adopt this like all power to the workers all power to the soviets they they they never managed to conquer the the mass support that they required in each of those cases that have outlined the party failed to wage a remorseless uncompromising struggle against reformism and against class collaboration they gave in to the pressures of the moment the hungarians gave in to the pressures of the social democracy at that time um and the uh the the common the british gave the british communist party leaders gave in to the pressures of the left trade union leaders they gave into the pressures of the moment and lost sight of the fundamental role of a revolutionary party which is to put power in the hands of the working class definitively and irreversibly and the result in each case was the defeat of the revolutionary movement so that is our starting point we're building a party that will fight remorselessly for the dictatorship of the proletariat and nothing less how do you get people to fight remorselessly for something and to fight for it effectively because look it's not like Stalin and Kamenyev for example were not willing to fight in general of course they were the hungarian and british communist party leaders had all been to prison for their uh for their views their beliefs their ideas the leaders of the poem were fighting a civil war at the time these people were willing to fight they just didn't know how to do it effectively the only way to convince people to fight remorselessly for something is to educate them is to study the way the world works the way capitalism works the laws of the class struggle and the revolutionary process in other words it's to prove in theory and in practice why the dictatorship of the proletariat is the only thing that can solve the problems of today and why certain methods will bring that dictatorship closer and other methods will push it further away if people are genuinely educated genuinely convinced of those ideas they will fight for them that's the only way you get people to fight is to convince them properly of doing so now Lenin Trotsky obviously they understood the development of capitalism in Russia very well they wrote books like imperialism the permanent revolution about that they understood the impact that that development was going to have on the class struggle in Russia they analyzed the 1905 revolution uh on that basis they fought also to prove the correctness of a revolutionary world outlook against those who wanted to water down Marxist ideas with their writings on the state for example state and revolution materialism and imperial criticism on Marxist philosophy in other words they they put the effort in to educating themselves and the people around convincing them through through theory and through practice that these are the only ideas that are correct that can actually explain the world and that can actually offer a way forward that kind of political education is the bedrock on which a revolutionary party is built because that is the only way that any of us will be able to navigate the twists and turns and the pressures of a revolutionary situation we need to be able to see the revolutionary party needs to be able to see clearly with a clear perspective not to be blown off course not to get caught up in the moment without understanding its significance what it represents and where it's going from here basically to be the Lenin among the Stalin and the Kamenevs that's what we need to construct and to do that we need a very thorough and deep political education now I first got involved in politics at university in 2010 which is when the tuition fees were being tripled I got involved with that movement I actually started off as an anarchist but got quite sick of them as you can imagine at the time Marxism as an organized force among students was extremely weak and far more dominant were these kind of it's a bit much to call them anarchists they had no real understanding of anarchism but they were these kind of anti cuts groups general kind of activist groups mainly loose networks of activists they were they were the dominant groups in universities at that time and those student activist groups did a lot they organized demonstrations they ran occupations up and down the country throughout this movement but they were extremely skeptical and I would say even contemptuous of political theory and education to the extent that they did do it to the extent they put on kind of political discussions in the occupations and stuff like that it was purely a naval gazing academic exercise as opposed to political education that could be a serious guide to action their approach in general I would say was we don't why do we need to waste time having these kind of discussions we need to go and get things done we need to go and we need to go be active we need to go and do things today none of those activist organizations are still exist from 10 years ago not a single one is still around of all the people that I was involved with at that time almost none of them are still involved in politics in any way because they have been thrown over the last 10 years and there's a lot gone on in the last 10 years from well all sorts I don't need to go through it but Corbyn obviously Scottish independence and all that movement various economic crises brexit all this kind of thing all these people have been thrown from pillar to post by those events no understanding whatsoever of what is going on no long-term perspective no understanding of the state no understanding of the national question no understanding of the labor party and trade unions and how the class struggle moves or anything like this because all they were interested in was I would just go get things done never mind talking about those things let's just go and get stuff done the result is none of them are still active the only organization that still exists from 10 years ago is the Marxist Student Federation which is the the student wing of the IMT in Britain and that is the only and the reason is that's the only organization that has taken a serious approach to political education it's thanks to that that we've been able and if I'd still been involved we've been able to navigate the last 10 years if I had stayed involved with those anarchists there's no way I would still be involved in politics that's the point it's because I got involved with the Marxists that I've been able to to navigate along with everybody else in social still in the IMT the last 10 years of twists and turns to orientate people to explain events not only does the Marxist Student Federation still exist it's roughly five times the size that it was back then I'm not equating what we have done to the building of the Bolshevik party there's a long way to go yet but the point is you can see the kind of methods that get results as opposed to those which don't the revolutionary party then in it's in the process of its construction is what we would call a Cader organization a Cader is a military term meaning a small group of people organized and trained to be able to lead and train others and the party needs to be the revolutionary party needs to be made up of revolutionary cadres who have a full and deep understanding of the world and the revolutionary process who can distill that understanding into a program for action and who can convince people of that program and win a leading position for revolutionary ideas in the movement that they are intervening in without cadres you cannot build a revolutionary party when the British Communist Party was founded in 1920 it was composed of I would say some of the best the most radical the most talented workers and trade unionists at that time it was small but it was really the cream of the cream from from that point of view but it always suffered from a lack of a serious approach to political education the British communists relied very heavily on political guidance from the communist international and the result was that as the common turn degenerated and was Stalinized the British communist part participated very little in those debates that were taking place about the future direction of the Soviet Union the debates between Stalin and Trotsky so the British communists didn't really participate and actually the Stalin for that reason Stalin described the British Communist Party as a model party because they just shut up and did what they were told but they didn't really participate in these debates they simply followed instructions from the international rather than think for themselves they were great activists they were incredible trade unionists and the rest of it but they didn't have that political education and that political development and that lack of political led to that debacle in 1926 for the general strike that I mentioned earlier with this just that I'll just rely on the left trade union leaders and that'll sort us out when of course it didn't and likewise when when Rosa Luxemburg and Carl Liebnich were assassinated during the German revolution in 1919 the German communist party really was beheaded aside from Luxemburg there was no one really in that party with a high political level high level of political understanding who could guide the German communists through the turbulence of the revolutionary situation at that time and so they start getting thrown from pillar to post and making all sorts of mistakes because they couldn't develop an understanding of the process and what was happening now cadres don't drop from the sky there are many who believe that a revolutionary organization can be improvised in the heat of the moment in the heat of the revolutionary situation but training professional revolutionaries that's what cadres are their professional revolution training professional revolutionaries takes a lot of time and a lot of patience the Bolshevik party was formed over decades Lenin and Trotsky the Lenin and Trotsky who led the workers to power in 1917 didn't drop from the sky they they they were the product and their ideas and their methods and their approach was the product of decades of years spent studying analyzing debating discussing participating struggling through the ebbs and flows of the class struggle and without those years of preparation the Bolsheviks would not have had the cadres for the revolutionary party which led the workers to power in 1917 and by contrast the Hungarians the Hungarian communist party was formed in November 1918 and was in power by March 1919 the German revolution began in November 1918 the German communist party was formed in December 1918 after the revolution had started no wonder those parties were not able to play the revolutionary role that was required of them because they hadn't had the time to train and educate the cadres there is no shortcut to that and it cannot be improvised in the heat of the moment in terms of shortcuts what we need is people who who are educated convinced of the ideas and trained and practiced in the class struggle now Gregory Zinoviev was a was a Bolshevik and he was head of the communist international the international kind of umbrella organization for all the communist parties around the world he was head of that from 1919 to 1926 and his job was essentially to train cadres to lead the communist parties in all different countries around the world he was supposed to train up the leaderships basically but his methods were the exact opposite of what is required to train cadres and build a revolutionary party he dealt with political problems in an entirely organizational way instead of discussing things out politically he he dealt with political problems by yeah looking for shortcuts instead of patiently convincing people through political discussion he resorted to threats when people disagreed with him intimidation suspensions expulsions securing blind obedience in other words not convincing people and getting them and welding together a party of people who are all convinced together but just dictating to them basically and kicking them out and threatening them if they didn't agree with him he demanded loyalty to himself and and and later to Stalin as an individual or a clique above political principles he based himself on personal prestige instead of political ability those kind of methods are absolute poison to a revolutionary party and they were poisoned to all of the parties of the communist international that Zinoviev infected with those methods those methods don't educate people they avoid serious political discussion and therefore weaken the political understanding and the resolve and the conviction of a revolutionary organization and that rot has seeped down through generations subsequent generations of political activists a man called James P. Cannon he introduced those kind of methods into the American Trotskyist movement and to the fourth international as a whole after Trotsky's death in 1940 and actually it was these kind of methods also which resulted in the collapse of militant which was the biggest revolutionary organization ever built in Britain which collapsed in the early 90s during the second half of the 1980s militants education department was closed down political discussion was replaced by just blind activism orders were issued from a clique at the top and those who raised criticisms were expelled and that led to the decline and the degeneration of that organization because you cannot hold a revolutionary party together with those kind of methods it can only be done by convincing people of your ideas history shows us then that without Caders there is no revolutionary party think back to what Alan Woods said yesterday without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement so uncompromising revolutionary aims and a solid Cader base are the fundamentals of building a revolutionary party but a clear understanding of Marxist ideas on their own and in the abstract is not good enough the revolutionary party also needs to be able to connect those ideas with reality it needs a program to take those ideas to the masses and the history of the Bolshevik party contains episodes where the program has been very well thought out and well executed and others where it has not during the 1905 revolution in Russia the the masses the working masses created of their own initiative workers councils the Soviets these were mass organizations representing the will of the mass of the revolutionary masses now the Russian Marxists at that time very small very inexperienced also lacking Lenin's guidance he was abroad at this time they actually viewed the Soviets with hostility because they said well they're not they're not Marxist organizations with a chemically pure Marxist program and so they sent a delegation to the Saint Petersburg Soviet for example with an ultimatum they said either the Soviet accepts the Marxist program or it disbands itself immediately and obviously the the masses the revolutionary masses looked at this tiny little group of Marxists who were making these kind of furious angry demands at them and just shrugged their shoulders and and said all right you guys crack on and they walked out and the Soviet carried on with its business because it was the mass organization this tiny little group said accept our demands or we're leaving and so they said all right off you go then um Lenin obviously when he learned about this kind of sectarian this is pure sectarianism and uh when he learned about this he was really tearing his hair out that is not a serious program for taking revolutionary ideas to the masses it doesn't put forward serious demands it doesn't have a strategy for action it's just shouting from the sidelines basically and without that without a serious strategy without uh without demands and a program action you cannot win over the masses of course all you do with that kind of behavior is cut yourself off from the movement now in 1917 a few years later the Bolsheviks took a different approach during that revolution they participated energetically in the soviets even though at the beginning of 1917 they were in a minority the Mensheviks had controlled the soviets at that time but the Bolsheviks didn't turn up and say you Mensheviks accept our our position or we're leaving they participated as a minority and and spent the whole year basically patiently explaining their ideas and advancing a program in the soviets which implacably defended the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat and seizing every opportunity to partially advance their aims win any victories they can to win more people over basically now the methods of 1905 as I said resulted in Marxism being cut off from the revolutionary movement but the methods of 1917 resulted in the marxist winning leadership of the soviets and of the revolutionary masses and conquering power now in 1921 the german communist party which of course was still very inexperienced at this point and lacking in cadres Zinoviev was head of the common turn and true to form he was looking for a shortcut in to revolution in Germany he didn't he couldn't be bothered with the patient training and education of cadres so in 1921 he encouraged the communists to an armed uprising he said you should just have an uprising and then demand that the masses follow you in this armed uprising basically and this is this was known at the times of theory of the offensive and it was put into practice in march 1921 it was a grotesque misreading of the mood of the masses the workers did not follow the communists into battle the communists launched these in so armed themselves and launched these insurrections and the masses bit like the soviets in 1905 just looked at these communists and thought well we're not really not really into that at the moment to be honest and and that march of that infamous march action 1921 it resulted in hundreds of deaths thousands of people imprisoned the action in fact widened the split between the communists and ordinary workers who were still at that time unconvinced of the need for an armed insurrection and within a short time 200 000 members of the german communist party had left that party in disgust at that theory of the offensive at the march action because a revolutionary party obviously doesn't just demand armed insurrection at every possible opportunity irrelevant of the circumstances it learns to understand the situation and the mood of the masses and tailor its tactics and its slogans according to that and after the march action of 1921 Lenin initiated a discussion throughout the common turn about ultra leftism about about tactics to correct these mistakes that were being made not just in Germany but in one country after another about how you take Marxist ideas and connect them with the existing mood of the masses and the documents of the third congress of the communist international which was held in 1921 are very helpful and worth reading for formulating revolutionary tactics today but unfortunately there aren't many organizations today which pay attention to these lessons from the past last month in Myanmar there was this self-proclaimed interim national unity government there's lots of protests I don't know if you've been following what's going on in Myanmar but there's been lots of protests basically and this kind of self-proclaimed national unity government called for an armed insurrection online they just said right it's time for an armed insurrection everyone armed themselves enough we go we're going to overthrow the military junta but it was it was all the way back in February and March of this year that the workers were on the streets really struggling fighting with the police and all the rest of it that was several months ago since then the movement has ebbed a lot an armed struggle cannot be launched at this point when the movement is in an ebb an attempt to do so would be pure adventurism so to make that kind of call it has real echoes of the march action of 1921 and and we've got to remember all the all the terrible consequences that came from that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it and many of those organizations that claim to be revolutionary organizations they have not learned anything from the history of the revolutionary movement up until this point I'd say the early years of the communist party of Great Britain are an example of how they are actually a very good example of how a revolutionary party can effectively transmit its ideas to the workers movement with a serious program the communist party at that time I'm talking I'm talking early 1920s in Britain developed a series of very good demands not just shrill denunciations of everyone who did who didn't agree with them but positive demands for the movement to take up so they demanded that the trade union congress be organized as a proper parliament of workers with a slogan of back to the unions they began to revive local trades councils as local coordinating groups for the class struggle and that was very successful campaign they established something called the national minority movement within the trade unions and that was a kind of organization that fought to bring together all the rank and file of the trade unions to fight for industrial in the industrial struggles basically and and that was also extremely successful august 1924 they had a huge conference of the national minority movement 200 000 workers were represented there and the demands coming out of that conference were an extension of the communist party's demands at that time including the setting up of factory committees developing trades councils as coordinating centers for working class action and and they were talking about a general strike strengthening the the trade the tuc general council in preparation for a general strike they envisaged ultimately the development of the class struggle and and and using the any the national minority movement to raise the site working class towards ideas that would towards the idea basically that change within capitalism was utopian if we want to fight these industrial battles and win them and win the rights for us actually it's a it's a more fundamental question not just an industrial question or an economic question it's a political question of what kind of system we have and they wanted they were using the the national minority movement to raise to intervene in the strikes that were actually taking place bring these workers together and issue demands that raise that kind of perspective that the communist party's industrial work in that sense had a political character now those that that is what allowed them to connect throughout 1924 with the uptick in industrial action that was taking place in Britain at that time it was a serious program a strategy for action had a political content and political character to it that's how you build a revolutionary party as I say 1926 it all went down the pan and it was wrecked by the Stalinization of the common term but that bit of the national minority movement that bit of the history of the British Communist Party is a great example and a great lesson to us that's how you build you take Marxist ideas you connect them with the living struggle of the working class you aim to build a bridge between the immediate demands the partial demands of the moment of the struggles of the moment and the overall goal of overthrowing capitalism which is the root cause of the problems that we face that are giving rise to these struggles that is the revolutionary program and the revolutionary program Trotsky said is the essence of the revolutionary party now developing such a program as I mentioned before it requires deep roots in the masses the party needs to be able to read the mood and the consciousness of workers at any given moment in order to successfully link up with it to fight for link those demands and the consciousness with the fight for socialism and for that it needs to the party needs to unite all the most advanced elements of the workers movement under its banner under one banner to coordinate all the different struggles and link the various partial demands the part the parts of the class struggle to the whole fight against capitalism one of the failures one of the reasons for the failure of the 1905 revolution in Russia was that different layers of the working class moved at different times so first of all in that period you had the vanguard move in in Petersburg and so there was this big movement in St. Petersburg which was then pushed back after that after as the movement in Petersburg began to ebb the workers in Moscow began to move and they called on the workers in Petersburg to join them in their struggle but obviously the movements were moving at a different pace at a different pace and the workers in St. Petersburg were in a bit of an ebb they've been pushed back they've been defeated and and so weren't in the right place weren't in the right mood the right consciousness to join the workers in Moscow and after the Moscow movement was pushed back and defeated strikes continued into 90 on into 1906 but these were effectively rearguard skirmishes the main battle had been lost because you had this dislocation between all these different elements of the these different layers of the working class now in 1917 a similar situation arose actually in July the soldiers and the workers in Petrograd were exasperated with the vacillating of the Menshevik leaders of the Soviets and and they spilled onto the streets there was a demonstration of half a million in July 1917 in St. Petersburg demanding the overthrow of the provisional government and the Bolsheviks at that time were a lot stronger than they had been in 1905 they were able to influence events a little bit and they understood that the Petrograd workers at that point were ahead of the rest of the country and they had learned the lesson from 1905 and and if they moved and they understood if they moved in Petrograd they moved to seize power now they would be cut off from the rest of the working class isolated and defeated before everybody else was ready to move so the Bolsheviks participated in those demonstrations with the aim of holding them back with the aim of saying wait a minute we've got to let everybody else catch up we've got to let everybody else get into the right position for this movement that is also the role of a revolutionary party it's to bring into one party all the localized and partial struggles and weld them together into a weapon which can strike as one at the root cause of all of the problems during the Egyptian revolution of 2011 to 13 the absence of a party that could do that was extremely clear during those years there was probably not a single factory or institution or workplace that didn't have some kind of act of disobedience against the ruling class there were hundreds of demonstrations and protests by workers and students mass strikes taking place and so on and these things were all loosely connected obviously but not bound together as part of a single coordinated effort to bring down capitalism in Egypt if those strikers for example from the industrial city of Mahalla and and the youth who were occupying Tariah Square and all the other elements in the front rank of that revolution they could have been welded together under the same banner of uncompromising struggle for power to be put into the hands of the working class we would be talking about socialist Egypt today but the revolutionary party with roots in the masses and the program to unite all those advanced elements didn't exist and the revolution went down to defeat now the revolutionary party as this as this vehicle for Marxist ideas in the workers movement is also a practical thing and it is also the role of revolutionaries to do the thousand and one small tasks that go into building that vehicle it's not all giving grand speeches from the top of barricades there's lots of small tasks that go into building a vehicle for socialist revolution in 1901 Ledin was trying to professionalize the revolutionary movement in Russia and weld it together as this serious vehicle for Marxist ideas among the workers and he argued one of the key things that he argued at that point was the need for a newspaper not just he said not just to get the ideas out there although that was important to but as a tool around which the party could organize itself he linked he likened the newspaper to scaffolding around a building a building under construction he said the paper is effectively that he would he said he said it would bring systematic planning preparation regularity professionalism in other words to the work of the marxists and at that time it was a real polemic he faced stiff opposition from those who basically preferred the revolutionary movement to be a kind of vague loose discussion club or an activist group of people who just dip their toe in from time to time whenever they fancied it and didn't want a kind of professional outfit with a with a regularity that the production of a paper brings eventually it ends position one out of course and the revolutionary newspaper became a key plank in the building of the Bolshevik party the building of a revolutionary party also requires funds to produce literature to meet other expenses and so on and that need increases as revolutionary events develop in 1901 and 1902 the budget of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks together was just a few hundred rubles but in 1905 in the heat of a revolutionary movement in Russia the budget had grown to tens of thousands of rubles a year and how that money is raised is an important one for the revolutionary party the the Baku committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was a Menshevik dominated and and they received just in 1905 they received the Baku committee received three percent of all of its donations from workers the rest were large individual donations from wealthy sympathizers three percent from workers the rest from wealthy sympathizers and by contrast in the Bolshevik stronghold of Ivanovo Vosnesk apologies for pronunciation the figure there though was 53 percent from workers and the rest from individual donations and and that was the product of a conscious effort on the part of the Bolsheviks to base themselves on the pennies and small donations of the workers because that provides political independence for the revolutionary party from those wealthy individuals if they hold the purse strings then they can dictate the political line and the revolutionary party can never allow itself to be in that kind of position we have to learn from that method today as well things like the newspaper or fundraising or any of any one of the kind of thousand and one small little tasks that go into building a revolutionary organization it's those kind of things it's not the grand speeches from the barricade it's those kind of tasks which is how revolutionaries are formed in the 1930s Trotsky was trying to build the fourth international under heavy fire from Stalin on all fronts progress was very slow conditions very difficult and Trotsky's writings from that time are all about those thousand and one little tasks not all about there's a lot though about those thousand one little tasks about the need for a meticulous attention to detail about the need for good bookkeeping the need for determination and sacrifice of time and money in 1929 he wrote the following he said comrades who are capable of initiative and personal sacrifice are revolutionaries or can become such because it is in this way that revolutionaries are formed you can have revolutionaries both wise and ignorant intelligent or mediocre but you can't have revolutionaries who lack the willingness to smash obstacles who lack devotion and the spirit of sacrifice this is the practical side of building a revolutionary party and we should remember that while we study and discuss and debate Marxist ideas the point is not just to interpret the world but to change it and we are building a weapon with which we can overthrow capitalism we are not building a discussion club it's a weapon to overthrow capitalism and that requires centralism it requires discipline it requires self-sacrifice also I'll quote again from Trotsky 1929 again he said the following he said there are those for whom socialism is a side issue a second class occupation accommodated to their leisure hours these are class enemies we must steer our course on those proletarians for whom the idea of communism becomes their whole life and activity there is nothing more disgusting and dangerous this is still Trotsky by the way not me there is nothing more disgusting although I agree with it there is nothing more disgusting and dangerous in revolutionary activity than petty bourgeois dilettantism conservative egotistical self-loving and incapable of sacrifice in the name of a great idea those who in peaceful everyday times are incapable of sacrificing their time their strength their means to the cause of communism will oftenest of all in a revolutionary period become direct traitors that is advice to every single one of us we are not playing games with what we're trying to build here the building of a revolutionary party is not the subject of a nice discussion for a sunday afternoon it is as Trotsky says the whole content of our life and our activity and that means we have to draw certain conclusions on a personal level about what it is to build a revolutionary party and invite you all here to seriously think about what that requires of each of us what we're building today is a is a is an international revolutionary party which stands in the tradition of the first international of Marx and Engels known as the international working men's association that revolutionary party was an international not for sentimental reasons but because capitalism is international the struggle of workers around the world obviously has no borders all of those struggles are partial expressions of the international struggle against the capitalist system against the exploitation that we all suffer under and the role of revolutionaries is to bring all those partial struggles into one and that's why we need one world party now i've dealt a lot with a lot the history of the revolutionary movement there's more i could have said i have skipped over a few notes but the reason i've done that is because the revolutionary party is the memory of the working class it remembers how what the lessons from revolutionary situations that've come before how revolutionary organizations have been built how they've been undermined what we can learn from that and we can we are in a better position than any organization before to learn those that's because we have 160 years of history which Marx Engels Lenin Trotsky themselves never had we can learn the lessons from them and we can incorporate it into the building of our revolutionary party today the first organized socialist political party in Britain was the social democratic federation and it popularized this slogan educate agitate organize and that in a nutshell is how you build a revolutionary party we have to educate ourselves about capitalism and socialism reformism and revolution so that we can argue our position for the seizure of power by the working class with no compromises and no half measures that education is how we build cadres which is the bedrock of a revolutionary party then we have to learn to agitate quoting long passages from the communist manifesto is not enough we're not academics we need a program that can connect those ideas to the living struggle of the working class we can't afford to be cut off from the masses shouting from the sidelines or talking amongst ourselves and we have to organize ourselves by welding together a revolutionary party composed of the most advanced elements of the class struggle across the world above all the youth I would say young people in particular and that involves practical tasks self-discipline and and self-sacrifice so educate agitate organize that is how you build a revolutionary party that's the party that we are building today and it will be the midwife to the new world which is struggling to be born there is nothing that you can do more important than that