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Lenin and Trotsky are the two outstanding figures of the Russian Revolution. Despite differences of opinion over the course of their lives, after the October Revolution the two men were so widely identified as the leaders of the Bolshevik Party that it became colloquially known as “the Party of Lenin-Trotsky.”

However, after Lenin’s death, the Stalinist counter-revolution dredged up any disagreements between the two, stripped of context. They also invented all manner of lies and slander in their war on so-called Trotskyism. This culminated in Trotsky’s exile and eventual assassination in 1940 by a Stalinist agent.

As Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick from the RCI’s international leadership explains, Trotsky defended the authentic ideas and traditions of October, which is precisely why the Stalinists were compelled to discredit him. In reality, Trotsky fought a courageous battle to preserve Lenin’s legacy and ideas.

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In the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian workers and peasants took power with the Bolsheviks at their head, but Lenin understood that socialism could not be built in Russia alone. 

That’s why he and the Bolsheviks founded the Third, Communist International – or Comintern – as a single party of world revolution, bringing together and assisting the development of communist parties in every country.

In this talk, Fred Weston from the leading body of the RCI explains how the Comintern was built, what it accomplished, and the reasons for its eventual degeneration – leaving behind an absence of revolutionary leadership that we strive to fill with our new International.

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The Bolsheviks did not simply spring into being fully formed. The party was built painstakingly over the course of many years, chiefly by Lenin, to serve as an instrument for the revolutionary workers and peasants when the time was right. 

As Antonio Balmer, one of our leading comrades from the USA explains, the history of Bolshevism was one of unrelenting ideological struggle against different political tendencies in Russia: from the terrorist methods of the Narodniks, to the reformist opportunism of Bernstein and the Economists.

The Party had to clarify itself internally as well, with Lenin patiently winning his comrades to the correct course, eventually building a revolutionary party worthy of the tasks of history. 

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The degeneration of the Soviet Union into a dictatorial parody of socialism, at the hands of Stalin’s counterrevolutionary clique of bureaucrats, is one of the great tragedies of world history.

Today, our critics use this example to argue that communism always results in a small clique at the top controlling everything.

But as Jerome Mellatus, leading French communist, explains: the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy was a product of the backwardness of Russia and the failure of the world revolution. Lenin spent the last years of his life fighting this degeneration in vain. 

To avoid repeating history, we must build communism on healthy foundations.

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We are often told that the fall of the Soviet Union was incontrovertible evidence of the failure of communism. 

This concerted campaign of slanders and lies, which falsely ties communism to the bureaucratic crimes of Stalinism, is spread by the ruling class and their cronies in order to undermine the struggle to overthrow capitalism today. 

In this talk, Niklas Albin Svensson from our international leadership explains how and why the USSR collapsed. He demonstrates that it was not communism, but a bureaucratic deformation which failed.

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In order to transform the world, we must first understand it. In this speech, the RCI’s leading theoretician, Alan Woods, explains dialectics: a revolutionary school of thought, which holds that nothing is fixed or static. 

Taking his starting point from the great idealist German Philosopher Hegel, Karl Marx placed dialectics on a sound materialist basis. 

This great philosophical revolution developed into dialectical materialism – a revolutionary philosophy that explains the most general laws of motion of nature, human society and thought itself.

This remains the most powerful theoretical tool communists have at their disposal for understanding the world – the prior condition for bringing about its complete transformation.

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Communism is international, or it is nothing. This was clearly understood by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, who all recognised the necessity to unite the struggles of workers, regardless of all national divisions against their common enemy: capitalism.  

Today, that message is more relevant and necessary than ever.

The capitalist system is in a deep crisis worldwide. Everywhere the workers are threatened with collapsing living standards, unemployment, wars and endless suffering. 

Millions of workers and youth are looking for a way out of the crisis. The reformists have no answer. They no longer stand for meaningful reforms, but counter-reforms and cuts.

A clean break is necessary.

In this talk, Alan Woods, lead theoretician of the RCI, explains why the time is ripe for launching a new Revolutionary Communist International and outlines the tasks that lie ahead for communists today.

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In June, hundreds of revolutionaries from all over the world gathered in Italy for the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist International, with thousands more participating online.

In addition to officially establishing our new International, the conference was a school of communism, with around 20 sessions on all aspects of our theory, history and thought. 

This podcast series provides recordings of all of the speeches from the founding conference of the RCI. 

You’ll find episodes about our philosophy, our perspective on the most pressing issues facing workers and youth today, and answers to common slanders about what communists stand for. 

Together, these talks represent the complete programme of our international. If you’re inspired by what you hear, and agree with our point of view: join us at marxist.com/join-us.htm

Links and information about getting involved are included in all the episode descriptions, and you can learn more about the RCI on our main website: marxist.com. You can also listen to our main weekly podcast series, the Spectre of Communism.  

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