'Incoherent, dogmatic': Near collapse of international communist movement

By Harsh Thakor* 

The international communist movement today lacks coherence or organizational unity. Many groups worldwide identify as communist, Marxist-Leninist, or Maoist, but most promote dogmatism, reformism, or capitulation, using revolutionary rhetoric. Some trace their origins to historical betrayals, like Trotsky’s efforts to undermine the Soviet socialist transition or the 1976 coup in China that restored a bourgeoisie under Deng Xiaoping. Others focus on online posturing rather than mass engagement. Small communist organizations exist in places like Turkey, South Asia, and the Philippines, where Maoist-led struggles continue. No international forum unites them, and no entity can forge one.

From 1984 to the mid-2000s, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) provided a framework for global communist unity. Formed after the 1960s revolutionary wave faded and China’s socialist project collapsed, RIM united communists from oppressed and imperialist nations. It analyzed lessons from proletarian dictatorship, upheld Mao Zedong’s theoretical contributions, and published A World to Win, a journal for global communist debate for over two decades. RIM’s participants led people’s wars in Peru, under the Communist Party of Peru, and Nepal, under the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), both contending for state power, and supported imprisoned revolutionaries like Chairman Gonzalo. However, RIM’s approach to unity–struggle–unity faltered, advocating a new Communist International without sufficient global communist development. Its dogmatic tendencies, rooted in the intellectual weaknesses of the 1960s and 1970s Maoist movement, grew after the 1992 capture of Gonzalo and the Peruvian revolution’s setback, fostering a rigid interpretation of Maoism that expected a “century of people’s wars” leading to communism.

RIM collapsed in the mid-2000s due to disunity, organizational disintegration, and dogmatism. Some participants, like K Venu’s Central Reorganization Committee in India, abandoned communism for bourgeois democracy during the anti-communist wave of the 1980s and 1990s. Others faded without reflection, and disputes over RIM’s 1984 Declaration emerged early. The capitulation of Prachanda and other Nepalese Maoist leaders, when state power was within reach, ended RIM. Surviving factions diverged: Avakianists pushed Bob Avakian’s “new synthesis” as a universal solution, failing to advance revolutions; European proponents of protracted people’s war (PPW) declared Mao’s strategy universal but never applied it practically, issuing statements detached from mass struggle. Other Maoists, behind the Maoist Road blog and Two Line Struggle journal, focus on irrelevant polemics rather than revolutionary theory or practice.

Outside RIM, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI(Maoist)) sustain people’s wars but cannot lead a global movement. The CPI(Maoist), formed in 2004 with RIM’s assistance but not joining it, mobilized Adivasi communities in India’s Dandakaranya forests by the mid-2010s, resisting state repression. It faces challenges adapting Maoist strategy to India’s urban population, informal proletariat in slums, evolving feudal and capitalist exploitation, and Hindu fascism. The CPP, after its 1992 Second Great Rectification Movement, corrected errors but has vacillated. It hesitated to condemn China’s 1976 coup and softened its stance toward the revisionist USSR in the 1980s for arms and support, missing opportunities during the 1986 Marcos regime collapse. The CPP’s international approach, through the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS), formed in 2001, unites revolutionaries with revisionists and Trotskyites, weakening their impact. The NDFP’s 2023-2024 conferences on imperialism, economic crises, and national liberation platformed revisionist forces, and the ILPS failed to advance global struggles, such as the movement against the US-Israel war on Gaza, supporting opportunists who restrained militancy.

International communist efforts often turn to pageantry. The International Communist League (ICL) issues statements mimicking revolutionary rhetoric but lacking substance, appealing to online subcultures. The International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), led by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, prioritizes unity without ideological struggle, hindering progress. Rebuilding an international communist movement requires rejecting dogmatism, revisionism, and opportunism, assessing RIM’s legacy, and applying Maoism to contemporary struggles. Tactical alliances, like those the CPP might form to break encirclement, must not compromise principles. Debate within revolutionary lines and clarity on ideological differences are needed for progress. The Organisation of Communist Revolutionaries provides a perspective on these challenges.

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*Freelance journalist