Going Against the Tide: A journal charting a path for communist revolution in the US

By OCR Leadership
December 2023

The following manual was developed out of a training session in Summer 2023 for several new cadre in the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (US). The aim of that training session was to synthesize the key lessons from our mass organizing efforts and to help comrades find solutions to the challenges that have come up in these efforts.

What is meant here by mass organizing methods?

This manual codifies and explains our methods of organizing the proletariat into mass organizations waging class struggle, though these methods could also, to some extent, be applied to efforts among other sections of the people. By mass organizing methods, we are not talking about mass work in general; we are more specifically addressing how to bring forward the mass element of the organized subjective forces for revolution. This is in part a recognition of the fact that making revolution is, to some degree, a numbers game, a matter of the communist vanguard accruing the necessary mass following that puts it in the position to precipitate and seize on opportunities for launching revolutionary warfare. That “numbers game,” however, must be properly, not pragmatically, understood as a quality—namely a revolutionary line—taking expression in a definite quantity. And we must also keep in mind that quantitative developments will not just happen incrementally, but also through leaps when we are able to marshal our forces to seize on sharpening contradictions in society.

While our mass organizing efforts will be the main way that quality (a revolutionary line) becomes quantity (masses following a revolutionary line) in a more permanent sense, that should in no way diminish the importance of other forms of revolutionary work, from writing theory and polemics, to all-around agitation and exposure, to developing revolutionary art and culture, to political education and cadre development, to political struggles around various social faultlines, and other tasks. Nor should we expect that all or even most recruitment into the OCR at this stage in our development will happen directly through our mass organizing efforts. However, it is important to deal with the particularity of each task and distinguish our mass organizing efforts from other tasks, including so we do not fall into Leftist schematism, imagining we can magically develop a mass following without the concrete step-by-step work of building mass organizations waging class struggle.

This manual will mainly focus on such step-by-step work in protracted mass organizing efforts rather than opportunities in which, owing to the dramatic sharpening of contradictions in society, it is possible to quickly cohere a section of the masses under communist leadership. We will briefly address the latter scenario at the end of this manual, and many of the methods of the former scenario are applicable to the latter, just in an opposite sequence of events.

Through studying, discussing, and applying this manual, comrades should internalize formulas applicable to different mass organizing efforts, but we should do so without becoming formulaic. The methods explained in this manual need to become ingrained logic—instinct that we can use in many scenarios—but that does not diminish the need to be flexible, to think through the specific contradictions of any particular mass organizing effort. And, of course, like all communist theory, this is part of an ongoing synthesis, and we will keep refining our methods as we get more experience.

What’s the starting point for a mass organizing effort?

The starting point for any communist mass organizing effort is to locate a class antagonism around which it is possible to mobilize a section of masses, and not just the most advanced among them, in class struggle. How do we locate such a class antagonism? (1) Through social investigation, learning directly from the masses, where over the course of many conversations we discover a common problem among a specific section of the masses and its source in the workings of capital and the actions of a particular institution or class enemy. (2) By way of theory and analysis: studying the motions of capital to understand the class antagonisms they are generating.

These two methods need not be walled off from each other, and, ideally, there should be a back and forth between them. Our theory and analysis should be confirmed and fleshed out by our social investigation, and our social investigation should be guided by our theory and analysis so we are not groping around in the dark.

What makes a class antagonism ripe for a mass organizing effort under communist leadership?

While there is no shortage of class antagonisms under capitalism-imperialism, some of them present greater opportunities for communists to cohere a section of the masses waging class struggle under our leadership. Especially when we have a small number of cadre, it is imperative to identify which class antagonisms present such opportunities and focus our efforts there. The most ripe class antagonisms for communist-led mass organizing efforts are defined by the following:

(1) The class antagonism is unlikely to be resolved or dissipate anytime soon. It is a structural rather than merely a conjunctural class antagonism, i.e., a persistent and pervasive one rather a sharp but more temporary one. The longer-term motions of capital will continue to put sections of masses in an antagonistic relationship with those motions of capital.

(2) The entire bourgeoisie is more or less united against the masses on the other side of that class antagonism, which is generally evident in a lack of oppositional discourse or policy within bourgeois politics. Communists have often emphasized splits in the ruling class(es) as creating opportunities for revolutionary advance, and that can certainly be true, especially for building the united front under the leadership of the proletariat and pushing forward the armed struggle. However, this emphasis misses the importance of bourgeois unity in laying bare the fundamental antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and giving the masses no other remedy but class struggle.

(3) Related to the previous two points, the class antagonism cannot be easily mitigated through reforms because the bourgeoisie has neither the ability nor the desire to make such reforms. This in turn weakens the ability of non-revolutionary political forces to gain traction among the masses.

(4) There are no or few reformist forces attempting to mobilize the masses in relation to the class antagonism in question. This gives our organizing efforts freer maneuvering room and avoids “competition” with political forces that have greater access to resources (financial, material, political, etc.) than we do at present. Especially when our numbers are small and our cadre are relatively inexperienced, the relative lack of reformist forces in the field must inform which class antagonisms we decide to organize around.

(5) The class antagonism in question generates broad outrage among the masses, is recognized by them as a collective injustice, and compels them into political motion. The masses, including the intermediate and some of the backward, feel the need to “do something” about it.

(6) Class struggle will deepen the class antagonism. In identifying this as a favorable factor, we are taking a “Senderista attitude,” welcoming opportunities to go into, intensify, and drag out (for now political) battle with the enemy. While winning victories in the class struggle is certainly important at giving the masses a taste of their potential power and boosting their morale and weakening some class enemies, our main goal should be to advance the class-consciousness, organization, and fighting capacity of the masses.

(7) We can come up with a clear program and set of tactics for organizing the masses in class struggle in relation to the class antagonism. If all we can do is come up with exposure and agitation around the class antagonism and have some good conversations with the masses about it, that will not suffice for a mass organizing effort (though it can be important for our overall political work). We need a clear plan for how to mobilize the masses, such as concrete demands and concrete mobilizations aimed at achieving those demands.

(8) We have the forces under our leadership to initiate the mass organizing effort, and our forces are practically able to do so. On the former aspect, we will always be straining against our numerical limitations, but we need to have some confidence that the forces we can assign to a mass organizing effort can accomplish the task, even as that task will be accomplished principally by bringing forward more forces from among the masses. On the latter aspect, our forces must be practically able to carry out the task, including speaking the language(s) that the masses we are organizing speak and being able to be where those masses are with enough frequency.

These criteria are a general guide for what makes a class antagonism favorable for a mass organizing effort under communist leadership. But no class antagonism will meet all these criteria perfectly and we should never wait around for the perfect constellation to appear in the sky. The best we can do is make judgment calls, based on our social investigation and analysis, of which class antagonism is most ripe for a mass organizing effort, commit to that effort, and then sum up at regular intervals whether that effort is bearing fruit and why or why not.

How do we unfold a mass organizing effort?

As we start to identify a class antagonism ripe for a communist-led mass organizing effort, our effort should unfold through the following steps: (1) Social investigation and exposure/agitation, linked together, where what we learn from our social investigation becomes fodder for our exposure of and agitation around the class antagonism, and our exposure/agitation draws forward more information from the masses.

(2) Gathering contacts among the masses, following up with them (in the form of phone conversations and follow-up meetings), and through that process identifying who are the most advanced, the most willing to fight the enemy. Our cadre need to be exceptionally well-organized, putting the “professional” in Lenin’s concept of professional revolutionaries, when it comes to getting, storing, following up with, and making good use of contacts. The biggest weakness in our work has been not consistently and persistently following up with contacts, but organizational chaos in relation to contact lists has also been a significant problem.

(3) As we develop a growing list of contacts and start to cohere the advanced among them into a leadership core, and as our agitation starts to resonate with the masses, we should start mobilizing the masses through direct calls to action. This could take different forms—a speak-out, a protest, a confrontation with a class enemy or institution, a strike, visible displays of taking a collective stand, etc.—and the most appropriate form(s) will depend on the circumstances. The important thing is that we are not just having conversations with people, not just carrying out agitation, not just gathering contacts, but finding ways to move the masses into class struggle.

These three steps have been presented in a schematic order, but steps 1 and 2 should be more or less carried out at the same time, and we should not wait too long before moving to step 3. Cohering a core of advanced often comes together only by carrying out step 3. And if we stumble on a situation where the masses want to take action immediately, we should not hesitate to start with step 3 and follow it up with steps 1 and 2.

In any event, these three steps are the basic starting points of any mass organizing effort. But once we have gotten initial experience through carrying out these three steps, we need to deepen our work if it is to go beyond an opening salvo of class struggle, even if we achieve a strong opening salvo. Deepening our work will generally involve the following (not in any particular sequential order):

(1) Consolidating a mass organization under our leadership—we will address this in its own right below.

(2) Producing propaganda that deepens the masses’ understanding of the class antagonism, the motions of capital behind it, and their potential as a force against those motions of capital. Agitation will continue to be important, but developing propaganda that addresses the contradictions in a deeper way, in their historical context, and in their motion and development is crucial to developing the class-consciousness of the masses, steeling their resolve as a fighting force, and not letting them get duped by reformists.

(3) Synthesizing and systematizing a set of slogans, methods of exposure, data from social investigation, and our contacts lists (all aspects of applying the mass line). Doing so will allow us to carry out persistent agitation and to draw from everything we have learned from the masses, and know how to best mobilize the contacts we have gathered.

(4) Developing various tactics and events to further and deepen the struggle. There will need to be some experimentation and a lot of learning from the masses to figure out what will work best at any given moment in the struggle, and with whatever tactic we decide to employ or event we organize, we will need to win the masses over to it (even if it was their idea to begin with). The point is to develop a repertoire of tactics that we can choose from, and with those tactics develop a longer-term program and plan for the class struggle based on how the class antagonism is unfolding.

Throughout this process, the class struggle will go through high tides and low tides. While our ability to concentrate forces to make breakthroughs can cause high tides of struggle, high tides are mainly going to come about by processes objective to us: the motions of capital and the political machinations of the bourgeoisie, with our work affecting but not solely determining how the masses respond to that. We need to be good at recognizing when a high tide is coming, when the structural contradictions become conjunctural, and make the most of the high tide. We also need to be good at shifting our tactics during a low tide to consolidate the most we can and continue the class struggle at a low tide, even if that just means keeping the waves flowing.

While being systematic is crucial to any mass organizing effort, and we should have solid agitation, propaganda materials, and follow-up methods—and generally “have our shit together”—equally important is the revolutionary spirit we bring to these efforts. We need an orientation of stepping into class antagonisms with determination and confidence, in the masses and in ourselves, and a relentless, conquering spirit. We need to create favorable new conditions through struggle.

How do we consolidate a mass organization under communist leadership?

Mobilizing the masses in class struggle requires organization, not just of the advanced but also of the intermediate and even some of the backward, and such is the purpose of a communist-led mass organization. To that end, the basis of unity of such mass organizations should be aimed at uniting the broadest number of masses in relation to the specific class antagonism in question. However, that should not be confused with a “lowest common denominator” approach, and the politics of our mass organizations should work to intensify the class antagonism while militating against coming under the wing of reformist politics. And Leftist and postmodernist politics should not be allowed any breathing room within our mass organizations.

To cohere a mass organization, forging a core of the advanced who are down to take responsibility to lead it is key. Those advanced will come forward through the work enumerated in the previous section, and we need to take a very collaborative approach in carrying out that work, doing it alongside the advanced masses. Holding back this collaborative approach have been two errors: (1) Just putting tasks in the hands of the masses rather than doing those tasks with them and training them in the process. (2) Not putting tasks in the hands of the masses and instead just doing them ourselves. Getting the right synthesis will always be a moving target, recognizing the necessity to “get shit done” while striving to get shit done the communist way.

In addition to a collaborative approach that trains the advanced as mass leaders, we also need to prioritize ideological and political work in its own right with the advanced to deepen their class-consciousness and more systematically train them as leaders. Too often, we have not carved out the time or made enough effort to study and discuss OCR documents, especially our Manifesto, and communist theory with the masses we are working with, instead relying on the spontaneity of the class struggle and our conversational skills to generate class-consciousness, which will only ever go so far. Ultimately, if we are to lead and sustain mass organizations, we will need to recruit individuals within them into the OCR and train them in our political line.

Beyond developing leaders, cohering a mass organization also requires broad political education and building a sense of collective identity. On the latter, name identification, visible signs of identity (including apparel that people wear to “rep” the mass organization), and a social life and culture around the mass organization all need attention in their own right. The masses need to feel like they are part of both a struggle and an organization, and we have to develop structures that give material expression to that feeling. That sense of collective identity, in turn, should be part of creating an identification with the international proletariat as a class.

On the former, political education, both in relation to the particular class antagonism and concerning other questions, should be consistent through our mass organizing efforts, conducted during mass meetings and in conversations, and through various mediums of agitation and propaganda. It should be aimed at developing and deepening class-consciousness among the masses broadly, not just the advanced. Political education is, in effect, an independent variable that can shore up the masses during high tides of class struggle and help them to deepen their commitment and persevere through low tides. Where and when we fail to carry out consistent political education, the masses are more likely to fall away from our efforts.

Finally, building a mass organization requires that we get good at leading mass meetings. There is an art to leading a mass meeting that involves the right combination of well-structured leadership and mass participation, including in the form of the masses speaking bitterness about their exploitation and oppression. Often we have erred in not having enough of the former, or had to resort to too much of the former to deal with the fact that we let the mass participation element get too unwieldy and directionless.

Well-structured leadership of a mass meeting requires a combination of coming up with an agenda in advance that grabs hold of the key contradictions to focus on in order to push the class struggle forward while also thinking on our feet, recognizing the principal contradiction in the room as the meeting unfolds, and finding a way to move those in attendance through that contradiction. People coming to a mass meeting we are leading need to see us as having our shit together, having answers to their questions, and knowing how to run the meeting. They also need to see us listening to them, taking them seriously, and enabling them to figure out how to advance the class struggle.

At mass meetings under our leadership, we will inevitably have to contend with the way that the masses have been trained, by nonprofits and politicians, to approach mass meetings as complaint sessions, where you complain about your problems to someone in a position of power and hope that they will do something to remedy those problems. Class struggle is not a spectator sport, and while we should encourage the masses to speak bitterness about their exploitation and oppression, we should challenge them to get organized for collective struggle, not wait for someone else to do something.

Practically speaking, our mass meetings should generally: (1) allow some time, but not too much time, for speaking bitterness; (2) present summations of recent efforts and plans for next steps; (3) strategize and plan those next steps in the class struggle with the masses; (4) conduct a brief political education session to advance the class-consciousness of the masses; and (5) give masses who are new to the struggle and organization an explanation and orientation of what it is all about—this should generally be done separately from the rest of the meeting. Everyone who comes to the meeting should have a chance to get some apparel to rep the mass organization and make a contribution to it, leave with propaganda materials to distribute and other tasks to carry out, and, of course, be signed up on the contact list. People should always leave our mass meetings with something to do, even if that something is small and simple.

Should we let friendly petty-bourgeois elements participate in our mass organizing efforts?

Communist-led mass organizations should be bastions of proletarian authority, where the masses learn their potential strength through waging class struggle and develop their ability to run the future socialist society. If those mass organizations are to be part of the subjective forces for revolution, then we need to actively keep non-communist organized political forces, even ones we might ally with, out of the leadership of our mass organizations except in special circumstances. Opportunists must be actively driven out of not only our mass organizations but the class struggle in general.

There are, however, positive and productive ways to involve friendly petty-bourgeois elements in our mass organizing efforts, so long as they are subordinated to proletarian leadership. Progressive journalists can give favorable media coverage to the class struggle. Lawyers can defend our cadre and the masses when the class struggle inevitably has us facing charges. Religious leaders can provide spiritual support, righteous indignation in the face of injustice, and, perhaps most important, meeting space in their house of worship. Intellectuals and experts can contribute research and knowledge. These are all important contributions we should foster, as they can strengthen the resolve of the masses and spread the impact of the class struggle more broadly in society. At crucial junctures in a particular class struggle, it will become necessary to spread the struggle more broadly in society by enlisting the support of broader sections of the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie so that the struggle, and the masses waging it, cannot be isolated and crushed by the bourgeoisie. However, the center of gravity of our mass organizing efforts must be the proletarian masses themselves taking history into their hands.

Don’t let the dam obstruct your view of the reservoir

All of our mass organizing efforts confront the fact that there are a lot of obstacles standing in the way of the masses taking history into their hands, from bourgeois-democratic illusions to the chaotic conditions of proletarian life to backward ideas to the social war for survival among the masses. These obstacles, besides being frustrating for our cadre and for the advanced masses who are constantly running up against them, constitute a dam holding back a reservoir. At beautiful moments called revolutions, the dam breaks and the reservoir of the exploited and oppressed bursts forth to sweep away the old order.

The reservoir, however, is there even when the dam is holding strong. Where we are persistently and consistently working on the reservoir, we will affect it in ways that may not immediately yield tangible results, and we will be able to draw from it in our calls to action. Indeed, the anxiety of “who will show up to this mobilization we have called for?” has sometimes been answered by the reservoir of masses we have built up through our protracted mass organizing efforts, even if those masses have not been active for some time.

Key to working on the reservoir is wielding the weapon of exposure. If we are persistently conducting exposure around the class antagonism in question, in the most public ways possible and through different mediums, this will have an effect on the reservoir of masses even if that exposure does not make them move in struggle at that moment. Where we have built up substantial contact lists through our mass organizing efforts, we should find ways to regularly engage our contacts—not call them every week unless the situation warrants it, but not lose touch with them either even if they are not active at the moment. And we should not underestimate the importance of spreading a sense of collective identity, with the class struggle and the mass organization leading it, among the reservoir even when the reservoir is relatively still at the moment. Maintaining a consistent propaganda vehicle at the center of each of our mass organizing efforts, in print and online, can function as a crucial hub for the class struggle through high tides and low tides, engaging the masses with exposure and political education and fostering their sense of collective identity.

Bringing our full communist politics into our mass organizing efforts

While working to mobilize the masses in relation to a particular class antagonism, we should not hold back from injecting our full communist politics into the struggle, not as a dividing line, but as a pole of attraction and a challenge to the masses. If we fail to do so, we will not be able to turn the best fighters among the masses into communists, we will not build the OCR through the course of the struggle, and we will allow reformist “solutions” and bourgeois ideology to hold sway among the masses. Furthermore, planting a red flag amid the class struggle and within mass organizations creates a healthy tension with the more conservative sentiments among the masses and gives answers to the deeper questions about why the world is the way it is and what we can do to change it. The masses should think that we are just a little crazy—but not too crazy—with all this talk about revolution and communism.

Planting this red flag within our mass organizing efforts will require concrete attention and specific plans, such as distributing the OCR’s Manifesto and discussing it with specific individuals, and developing communist answers to questions that come up in the course of the class struggle. We may need to decide on a specific division of labor for doing so, having some portion of our cadre involved in a mass organizing effort devoting more time to promoting our full communist politics among the masses, but we should never view that as only a task for the specific comrades assigned to it. It is the responsibility of all our comrades to work to convince the masses of the need for communist revolution, even if we are neck-deep in the particularities of a specific mass organizing effort.

Reversing the sequence during mass upsurges of class struggle

In contrast to protracted mass organizing efforts are those moments when large numbers of masses are driven into class struggle due not to the efforts of any political organization but by the sharpening up of class antagonisms in society. In those situations, instead of a protracted period of social investigation and agitation, contact gathering, forging a core, and then mobilizing the masses, the first phase will be a condensed period of mass upsurge in which we intervene and attempt to lead in the most revolutionary direction possible. Our agitation and mass organizing skills are what will distinguish us as leaders to follow. But to really get to the head of the mass upsurge, we will need to quickly develop an immediate program for struggle, and cohere masses around it at mass meetings and on the streets, through our actions and through our speeches, slogans, symbols, and written propaganda. Moreover, since a variety of political forces flock to mass upsurges, we will need to contend with other programs and prove to the masses why ours is the correct one to follow.

Winning over a significant number of masses to our program and under our leadership during the initial wave of class struggle, however, will not be sufficient if our objective is not just to lead a brief mass upsurge, but to develop the class-consciousness, fighting capacity, and organization of the masses for the decisive battle ahead (revolutionary civil war). We will need to follow our immediate gains with deeper propaganda and consolidate mass organization and mass leaders. To that end, the methods outlined above apply.

To put us in a position to successfully intervene in all the spontaneous outbreaks of mass upsurge in the future, we will need to develop cadre who are experts on particular political questions and class antagonisms. We may not have the ability—the numbers—to develop mass organizing efforts around these questions and antagonisms at present, but we need to develop cadre who are addressing them in agitation and propaganda and “waiting in the wings,” ready to become mass leaders when there are masses looking for leadership.

Building a Party of skilled mass organizers, compelling agitators, engaging propagandists, and relentless recruiters

This manual laid out methods that, if internalized and mastered through practice, should turn our cadre into skilled mass organizers capable of seizing on a class antagonism, developing a program of class struggle around it, and mobilizing the masses with that program. Mass organizing, however, is not the only task for communists to master, and we all need to strive to also become compelling agitators, engaging propagandists, and relentless recruiters who can draw the advanced masses forward as communists themselves. While none of us will be equally adept at all the essential skills needed at this stage of the revolutionary process, we should rely on the collectivity and leadership we have in the OCR to develop the abilities that the masses need from us. And we should be eager to learn the new skills of commanding a revolutionary army and governing a socialist society when those skills become necessary. The future is bright, the road is tortuous.