A spectre is haunting the Swiss media – the spectre of the Revolutionary Communist Party! Its launch on Saturday (10/02) by the Spark (the Swiss section of the IMT) has been picked up by all the major media outlets. Blick ran the headline: “Revolution in Switzerland is completely realistic!” The bourgeois paper NZZ went with: “Lenin to rise again in Switzerland”, and 20 Minuten: “Revolution as the target – 250 new communists wanted”.
Despite the cynical undertone, which is to be expected from the capitalist media, they explain what the future Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is fighting for: “They want nothing less than the communist revolution in their lifetime”, they have “no illusion of being able to make capitalism nicer or more humane”, and “don't want to be elected to any office”.
Blick, Switzerland's largest daily newspaper, openly explains what the RCP stands for: “The RCP will therefore fight for nothing less than the communist world revolution by the working class. Humanity, indeed all human potential, would be truly liberated.”
They explain, quite correctly, that the reason for proclaiming the RCP is the historic crisis of the capitalist system. “The coronavirus pandemic, inflation, the CS debacle, mass redundancies, wars in Ukraine and Israel – all these events serve as evidence for the Spark people: capitalism is finished.”
In fact, millions of people around the world are experiencing the crisis first-hand. This is having a profound impact on their political awareness. “According to their data, 35 percent of the Swiss population are already in favour of abolishing capitalism. People want change.” This statistic does not come from us, but from Swiss television channel SRF.
A whole section of the working class, and young people in particular, has concluded that capitalism no longer has anything to offer them. They now want to fight against it – and for nothing less than communism! But because they are isolated, they have so far remained passive. The reason for this? There is “no revolutionary party that would allow them to overcome their isolation and passivity”, to quote Blick itself!
To change this, we are founding the RCP. It will aim to bring people who are ready to fight out of their isolation, organising them in a common struggle. That is our task. “By May, the activists want to convince another 250 people of their idea,” 20 Minuten comments. That is a realistic goal, because these people exist! This was impressively demonstrated to us last autumn: The number of communists organised in the Spark almost doubled after we launched an offensive under the slogan, “Are you a communist? Then get organised!” In the words of the NZZ, quoting our comrades: “The potential is extreme, hundreds of people are writing to us who want to fight – now!” (NZZ).
Blick, Switzerland's largest daily newspaper, openly explains what the RCP stands for: “The RCP will therefore fight for nothing less than the communist world revolution by the working class. Humanity, indeed all human potential, would be truly liberated.”
Marxism: supposedly “old wine in new bottles”
But, of course, these so-called ‘objective’, ‘neutral’ journalists throw their bourgeois prejudices at us. “The counter-programme of the Spark revolutionaries is, so to speak, old wine in new bottles: Communism, planned economy, collectivisation. Everything always leads back to Lenin, Trotsky or Marx, to the October Revolution.”
But the fact that communist ideas are once more so popular proves how topical they are. We live in a world of abundance. Never before has mankind produced so much, never before has technology been so advanced. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people lack good jobs, housing, healthcare and, in many parts of the world, even food, because the entire economy is organised in the interests of a small minority of billionaires. Communism and a planned economy are not ‘old wine’. They are the only solutions for a social system in an agonising crisis! This realisation is forcing itself into the consciousness of thousands. But precisely this realisation must now have practical consequences.
The RCP is straining every fibre to achieve this goal, including learning from the history of revolutionary movements: “The Communists’ model is the Russian October Revolution of 1917, the purest seizure of power by the working class in history,” to quote NZZ. And, indeed, the decisive element in Russia was the existence of a revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks. For decades, this party trained thousands of communists. They were theoretically and practically trained in Marxism, intervening in the various class struggles and taking a responsible lead.
The trust of workers and young people is won by proving that even under great pressure one does not buckle and defends the interests of the oppressed. The Berner Zeitung is also forced to admit that the Spark proved this in the Palestine question: “While parties, organisations and commentators from left to right recognised Israel's right to self-defence, the Spark sided firmly with the Palestinians right from the start. Solidarity with Palestine. 'Intifada until victory,' they proclaimed online, on flyers and at demonstrations.” Israel's ongoing massacre in the Gaza Strip proves that we were absolutely right with this position.
Let’s build the RCP!
What gives us confidence is not the cynical sniping by journalists or the anonymous comment columns online, but the numerous messages we received just a few hours after the articles appeared in the media. Here are the three most recent:
"The parties in Switzerland are only led by capitalists. More politicians should stand up for proletarians and not just exploit them to enrich the already rich. Power must go back to the actual workers."
"I've had enough of capitalism, enough of the rich getting richer and richer through the fruits of labour, enough of workers barely being able to feed their families, enough of living in a system just to work and still not getting anything out of it."
"Enough is enough!!! The world is burning. Just crying about it won't get anyone anywhere. Something must be actively done. Injustice, pain and suffering are on the rise. Instead of maltreating your head alone at home, it's better to get organised and do something together for the future of Switzerland."
The people behind these messages – we have received hundreds of them in just a few months! – recognise the RCP as their organisation. This generation of fighters will fundamentally change the class struggle in Switzerland, together with the RCP.
We are living in a new historical period. Blick quotes us correctly: “In the past few weeks, four major strikes have taken place in Geneva: in the public sector, among bus and tram drivers, at the airport and also among teachers. Of course, all of this was hushed up by the Swiss-German media. The working class in Geneva has entered the class struggle.”
It is only a matter of time before strikes and mass movements arise in the rest of Switzerland. That is why we are building the Revolutionary Communist Party today.
If we take the goal of building a revolutionary communist party seriously, however, we cannot rely on the bourgeois press. We must shout the founding of the RCP from the rooftops ourselves. We must explain the programme of the RCP to our friends, co-workers and fellow students, and show them how they can now take up the struggle as part of this organisation. This is the most important task of communists today so that we might intervene in the struggles to come.