Every successful attempt at socialist revolution presupposes a Communist Party that is developed and hardened in the class struggle, a fighting party of a new type, an organization of professional revolutionaries. The Russian Bolsheviks proved this with the socialist October Revolution. Bolshevization, therefore, means applying the party concept they developed and their revolutionary method of working to the conditions in imperialist Germany in a living way and making it the foundation of party building.
Such an organization cannot be created out of nothing. The necessary bolshevization, i.e., the development of an organization into a fighting party of a new type, must be approached in a consistent and disciplined manner from the very beginning of the party-building process.
Unity of the Organization
A key prerequisite for party building is the greatest possible ideological, political and organizational unity of the organization on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. Without this inner unity, which must constantly be fought for anew, no successful party building can succeed.
For the united and disciplined struggle, the development of a unified ideological and political party line, binding for all members and guiding them in all situations of class struggle, is an imperative condition.
This applies equally to a unified organizational structure based on the model of democratic centralism and the preservation of the greatest possible inner-party democracy even under the most difficult conditions. This also includes consistent and unsparing criticism and self-criticism, top-down and bottom-up control, and the fight against arrogance, complacency and criticality (Kritizismus).
Professional revolutionaries as the backbone of the organization
The building of a Communist Party in Germany requires the education of professional revolutionaries who are developed in all aspects. Professional revolutionaries are cadres who devote themselves fully to the revolution and break their chains that bind them to the bourgeois system.
A fighting organization needs such professional cadres who see revolutionary work as their life’s work, overcome the division between political and private, are ready to make the greatest sacrifices for the revolution and fulfill the needs of the party.
In order to develop appropriate cadres, we must fight our bourgeois personality, traits and behaviors and gradually replace them with the formation of a communist personality and all-round class consciousness, which will guide our revolutionary thoughts, feelings and actions.
Without the systematic development of trained and experienced professional revolutionaries in correspondingly necessary quality and quantity, the building of the party can neither be successful, nor can the party successfully fulfill its vanguard role in the class struggle. In order to successfully advance the women’s revolution, the development of professional women cadres takes on a special significance.
The Communist mode of work
Successful party building presupposes a communist mode of work, which is based on voluntary and conscious discipline, planning and control on the basis of concrete development goals, in order to be successful. From the very beginning, it is necessary to educate all members of the organization to work independently and responsibly and to be politically reflexive on the basis of the general political line of the organization. Such a communist mode of work must be established in all areas of work.
The development of a communist mode of work also includes deepening the methods of working in the working class and professionalizing agitation and propaganda. We must use all methods at our disposal to carry our ideas, analyses and slogans to the class. But our emphasis must always be on direct and personal work in the class.
The development of mass communist work to organize the most advanced sections of the working class into the Communist Party is already a necessary condition for the success of our work in party building. Beyond organizing them, it will be necessary to develop the comrades thus won into cadres and to find the appropriate place for them in the revolutionary movement.
Overcoming false traditions
Successful party building on the basis of Bolshevization must also involve overcoming false traditions and ideological-political deviations. If we want to achieve the goal of successful socialist revolution, we must wage a consistent struggle against economism, „left would-be revolutionism“ and all other varieties of opportunism in our own ranks and in the communist movement.
In practice, this means that we must declare war on widespread sectarianism, groupthink and narrow-mindedness in political work and especially in our alliance work. On the other hand, however, this applies just as much to the fight against amorphousness and blurring. We must organize on the basis of our revolutionary ideological and organizational principles and align our political practice with them. This means, above all, orienting all our politics toward anchoring ourselves in our class, rather than dominating the political resistance movement.
Preparing for the class struggles ahead
The task of constructing the party that lies ahead of us becomes all the more urgent in the face of the class struggles and inter-imperialist contradictions that are coming to a head around the world.
The better we do our revolutionary work in the coming class struggles on the national and international level, the sharper the class enemy will react with its repression against us and our structures. So let us prepare ourselves today at the political, ideological and organizational level for these attacks and clashes in order to emerge stronger from them, and let us take the necessary steps in building the party. These include the creation of an organizational framework that already operates covertly, as well as strict adherence to a uniform, continuously technologically evolving security concept throughout the organization.
It is also necessary to strengthen our moral compass. No matter how many comrades are torn from our midst by repression: By developing strong comradely relationships and unfolding revolutionary optimism, we can throw ourselves into the coming struggles with a sense of victory.
