Contribution of Communist Revolutionary Party of France

The tasks of communists in organising the Communist Party in workplaces and working-class neighbourhoods

 

Intervention of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France for the ECA conference, 3 May 2026.

Dear comrades,

The Revolutionary Communist Party of France would first like to thank the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain for organizing this important conference on the theme of organizing communists in enterprises and working-class neighborhoods. This conference is important because it involves greater mutualization and enrichment of the different parties of the ECA in their methods of struggle and organization, advancing in the direction of the debates during the last plenary meeting of the ECA. This conference is also important for our young party in construction, due to its difficult position in the communist movement in France.

Indeed, as we will explain later, the question of the continued Bolshevization of our young party, whose forms the organizational, political, and ideological basis, is a central issue on which we believe we will return after this conference, strengthened by the contributions of other fraternal parties at different levels of development.

Dear comrades,

At our second congress in June 2025, our delegates adopted the slogan for the next five years: "For a party in the working class!", reflecting the orientation of our party's construction toward the productive class in France as its immediate and privileged objective. This centrality is explained by various factors, those pertaining to the classics of Marxism-Leninism, as well as those related to our particular situation in France thru their intertwined histories.

The Third International, born from the first proletarian revolution and the young USSR, set itself the goal of providing a common structure for communist parties, not merely aiming at ideological debate or technical assistance, but to frame and drive the definitive break with social-democratic principles of organization. The international tactic expressing this objective is the so-called "class against class," the essence of which was condensed in 1925 by the executive committee of the Communist International under the name of the theses on the bolshevization of the communist parties. Bolshevisation required a long and constant effort from the various member communist parties to apply Leninist principles to their own situations: the creation of an illegal Party apparatus, the establishment of communist cells in factories instead of neighborhood organizations designed for elections, and decisions and debates of the Parties based on democratic centralism. The creation of communist cells in enterprises held particular importance within the various aspects of this process, being for our party the party's task in organizing within enterprises.

This centrality is explained for our party by three interdependent reasons.

The first is organizational, as the cell in enterprises is the basic organizational form adapted to the Leninist party, the vanguard party of the working class. The task of the Communist Party is indeed to unite the members of the proletariat who are committed to Marxism and to working for the revolution; in this regard, it cannot unite the entire class, even if it aims to win over the active (and not merely arithmetic) majority of the working class and workers at the time of the revolution, as a condition for it. In order to be this organized vanguard, the cell in the workplace allows the cadres to live daily within the working class, to know how to organize the workers committed to communism, as well as to demonstrate day by day the leading role of communists for all the workers at the site. Without such a form of organization, the party cannot then organically connect with the class whose interests it seeks to express, nor can it train the vanguard cadres.

The second reason is ideological, the enterprise cell allowing the link between theory and practice specific to Marxism-Leninism. The cell provides daily insight into the role of various monopolies, informs about the members of the direction of the enterprise, the profits and imperialist plunder of the monopoly, awakens class hatred against the entire capitalist system, demonstrating that exploitation is collective, that the cause of suffering and injustice is unique; the most decisive being the political anti-capitalist work, denouncing bourgeois and reformist parties, their maneuvers, their alliances, patiently spreading the necessity of socialism as the only popular response, analyzing the path leading to revolution, which involves the work of materialist explanation of the State as an organ of class dictatorship. All these elements constitute a demanding theoretical work, of which the party's newspaper is the primary tool, taking place within the cell. It is thru this organizational framework that the subjective Bolshevization of each party cadre is linked to the objective Bolshevization of rooting in the working class.

Finally, the last reason is political, with enterprise cells forming the foundation of the party's action toward the revolution. Indeed, by anchoring itself in the key sectors of capitalist exploitation on a national scale, the party can gather a vanguard recognized by the entire class as capable of reorganizing all aspects of social life thru the revolutionary path. Without such a long, patient, and difficult anchoring in sectors like industry, petrochemicals, or transportation, for example, the Communist Party cannot equip itself to be able to lead the social revolution across all economic sectors. The creation of a communist newspaper for the enterprise is a strong means of connecting with employes.

Thru these three elements, not exhaustive but essential in our view, we observe how the cells in companies then form the skeleton of the Communist Party, its base around which the social alliance for socialism with the various oppressed sectors can take place. Without this primary and material base, the social alliance then transforms into an electoral, principled, or territorial alliance. An alliance incapable of mobilizing, thru the root of exploitation, all the social forces interested in the revolution, such as women, progressive intellectuals, or the declassed petty bourgeoisie.

The creation and strengthening of enterprise cells within a communist party is therefore not just a matter of programmatic decisions, but a concrete process with ebbs and flows. If the party is destined for revolutionary overthrow, it does not operate under conditions that favor the preparation for this overthrow, in fact, at both the subjective and objective levels. Therefore, this long and difficult work of organization in the companies is necessary, in order to accumulate the forces of the vanguard and prepare them for the revolution, despite the various political and ideological attacks from capital, which even attempts to speak of the disappearance of the working class, to destabilize the party, to distance it from the working class, in short, to make it disappear as a communist party or even as an organization. The cell in the company is both the first form of organization for the revolution, as well as one that allows for the defense and strengthening of the party and its identity in non-revolutionary conditions.

Today, the worsening of subcontracting, uberization, self-employment, temporary work, and the change in the proportion of technicians and engineers does not mean the end of workplace cells, but rather their necessity, in order to better root ourselves in a dispersed working class, with a low level of organization and an attacked class identity.

In order to achieve the objective of building cells in companies, our party currently has a Workers and Enterprises Commission. This commission operates at the national level and is tasked with continuously providing our federations with updates on the various ongoing workers' struggles in order to promote the initial steps of establishing contacts in companies, such as messages of support and solidarity to workers. This commission has also finalized an internal guide to assist in deploying to companies for each and every one of our comrades at the operational level, detailing how to scout a site, what equipment to use, and how to intervene (including in connection with the working-class neighborhood), as well as providing assistance in evaluating each step taken or not taken in the creation of the cell. Finally, it is also a whole national propaganda effort allowing the pooling, by each of our federations, of the successes and work of others thru, for example, interviews and video reports within the companies in struggle. This commission is intended to be the backbone of our party, allowing for better centralization in the task of building cells and the various forms of organizations or work suitable for them. Each department must appoint a local worker correspondent and set annual objectives.

In a previous ECA conference, our Party already mentioned the particular sources of opportunism in the French labor movement and the obstacles noted, including by the communist international, to the necessary Bolshevization of the communist party. The writing by our Party of a brochure "Union Work and Work in Enterprises, the ways of Party Construction" was made necessary on the subject. Our workers' committee is currently producing a study of the contemporary working class in France.

Comrades, Marx and Engels discovered that the starting point of social revolutions lies in the means of production.

Even the cause of the crises of capitalism, increasingly close to its imperialist stage, without visible phases of recovery or growth, lies in fixed capital and its renewal. How, in this case, could a communist party not have a thousand real connections with the industrial proletariat and the working class? How could a party's central committee not tend to be composed of a majority of workers? The enterprise and industry are the natural places for understanding the socialist organization of production.

For a party within the working class!

Long live the Revolution!

Long live proletarian internationalism!