The Communist Party (CP), with its differential features, is forged and rooted in the revolutionary period in Russia. This party, which has received and receives different names —Bolshevik, Party of a New Type, Revolutionary working-class party...— and nowadays is essentially known as Communist Party, has had national expressions. More than one century of experiences adapted to such realities and to the discussions and dissents within the International Communist Movement (ICM) have caused more or less significant mutations in the Communist Party. These have affected the understanding of the party itself as long as they have manifested changes in its final goal. The temporary victory of counter-revolution in the USSR and the countries with people's democracies in Europe further accelerated those mutation processes, which had already started decades before.

When we will reflect on the role and tasks of the CP within the framework of current reality in the next pages, it is done under the fundamental premise of not losing sight of the main and final goal. We will refer to the goal of a party that should ensure the political, ideological, and organizational independence of the working class, that should guide and lead it both before and after the revolutionary triumph — towards the fulfillment of its historic mission.

In other words, when we talk about the CP, we are talking about a Leninist party, understanding Leninism —according to the classic definition— as Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. The theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution, in general, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in particular.

The development of productive forces has reached a level never before imaginable. The contradiction between the social nature of labor and the capitalist appropriation is more sharpened than ever in history. The contradiction between labor and capital has intensified, and there is barely any sphere apart from the direct exploitation of monopolies and finance capital. This makes the economic struggles of the working class less efficient. 

Imperialism, which is nothing but a stage of capitalism when monopolies and finance capital rule and the export of capitals acquires an outstanding relevance, creates the competition between powers for markets, resources, and areas of influence in a world where the total division between the most important powers has been already made.

This struggling dynamics for new divisions is the permanent source of conflicts. In its current stage, it causes wars in different spots of the planet — being the disputing powers behind them. All of this makes us think that a generalized war with the direct and open participation of such powers could be provoked in a latter stage of further sharpening of contradictions. The examples of the First (WWI) and Second (WWII) World Wars and the conflicts before them are quite clarifying to this respect.

Here, it is important to take into consideration that the rise of the USSR as a strong power after WWII and the creation of the socialist camp managed to exert a significant influence, reaching important advances in the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples and the decolonization processes, even though that could not mean a change in the essence of imperialism. Despite that, and because of a reductionist standpoint, there was for decades a false impression that imperialism was the aggressive foreign policy of the ruling capitalist power (USA) with its allies and economic, political, and military tools worldwide against the peoples building socialism or trying to break the colonial yoke. The so-called Cold War was a struggle between the capitalist-imperialist and the socialist systems, but the struggle between powers did not stop in that time, in spite of the clear hegemony of the USA and being eclipsed by the Cold War. The fast recovery of Japan and its technological specialization, or the process of creation of the EU in its different stages, are evidences of it.

Nowadays, the inter-imperialist struggle —in the absence of the socialist bloc— comes to the forefront, leaning us out again to the abyss of a generalized war in a scenario that includes between the main actors the USA, China, Russia, the EU, and other regional powers such as India, Turkey, and so on. They are competing for the control of trade routes, energy resources, and technological domination. In this situation, the formation of alliances and blocs happens in an unstable and extremely volatile environment, spurred by the capitalist crisis. We already know that the capitalist crises and the imperialist wars go hand in hand.

Advocating today the so-called multipolarity and the alleged existence of a bloc that would represent —just like the USSR did— the interests of the popular classes, and confounding that with the USSR tactical alliances in WWII, means not understanding that the very existence of the USSR as a socialist system was then at stake, and that today the victory of any bloc would just ensure more decades of suffering and exploitation for the working class.

For this reason, stating that we are living in the era of imperialism —apart from being an ascertainment— necessarily defines the nature of our era and the role the CP should play. Imperialism raises the contradictions of capitalism to its final limit. After it, there is only one alternative to barbarism and the possible end of humankind — the Socialist Revolution. Any approach driving the Party away from its duty to prepare the subjective conditions for revolution is an irresponsibility towards humankind in general and especially our class — if not treason. 

Assisting in the placement of the working class under the banners of the bourgeoisie, from one or another imperialist bloc, when the objective conditions for revolution start to be clearer that ever, means not having learned anything from History. It means joining the dark side —the enemy's side—, or it just means the abandonment of the titanic task of the revolutionary preparation.

The role of the Party in the clarification of this matter is one of the nodal issues of our time.

The Leninist understanding that socialist revolution is global in its content and national in its form clearly summarizes that, even though it has an international and global nature in its goals, principles and laws, it should adapt to the national conditions and particularities in every country it is being carried out.

In this way, the emancipation of the working class in any country is inseparable from the revolutionary struggle of the world working class in order to end with capitalism and build the socialist-communist society. But socialist revolution cannot be evenly imposed to all the countries — it should rather take into consideration the historical, cultural, economic, and political features of each nation. That becomes evident with unequal historical experiences like the Russian and Cuban ones. In this way, the form adopted by the socialist revolution in each national context will be different, although its essential content of transforming the capitalist system towards socialism is the same one worldwide. 

This duality demands from each party a participating role in the international sphere, played from the necessary effort to advance towards its national consolidation, ripening it and reaching enough capability to ideologically, politically, and organizationally strengthen itself in its own country.

After the temporary victory of counter-revolution in the USSR, there was a mutation in many important parties, the first causes of which can be located in old ideological diversions that took a clearer shape after 1989. The indefinite postponement of —when not the renouncement to— the goal of the revolutionary seizure of power by the working class is undoubtedly one of the essential features of those diversions.

The crisis in the ICM acquired a level unknown until that moment. It left the world working class orphaned from what was the international tool of coordination of the struggle for socialism, which had besides lost its real function since the dissolution of the Third International.

The creation of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) —an initiative of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)— and other spheres for meetings between communist and workers' parties at different levels, as well as the very existence of the International Communist Review (ICR), which serves the goal of building a Marxist-Leninist pole, are turning points. However, none of these existing spaces is yet in a position to exert such role today. There are antagonistic ideological and political contradictions between the parties participating in the IMCWP. In those spaces where this does not happen, the disparity in the organic and political development of the member parties anticipate a long path in the work ahead, in which advances and setbacks are made.

In this sense, the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) is devoting its best efforts in those international spaces and upholds a line of commitment with the strengthening of the most advanced stances within the ICM.

We can say that an international sphere of information, collaboration, and internationally coordinated ideological-political struggle based on a single, developed revolutionary strategy is a strength we do not count with. The role of the communist and workers' parties in the creation of spaces approaching us to the meeting of this need comes, above all, from understanding the difficulties we are facing in this path. A thorough assessment of the historical experiences, the earnest study of the current reality, and a wide approach to the nodal issues of our movement are what can help us in the scientific discussion about the highest model of international unity we can implement today.

For decades, the main and influential communist parties from the most developed capitalist countries carried out their politics in a general framework of peace and bourgeois parliamentary democracy, and at the same time within a so-called welfare system that undoubtedly influenced in the approaches on the role of the party.

In times of economic expansion, when the trade-union struggle was capable of forcing achievements and the parliamentary political action of social democracy superficially seemed to be a promising path for gaining worthy life conditions for the working class in those countries, many parties adopted an ideological shift. The main exponent of this shift was Eurocommunism.

They disregarded that the working class from other countries were paying the bill, although they occasionally disguised such disregard with campaigns in support of the struggles wherever the capitalist exploitation was most ruthless.

Ecstatic in their fetishism with bourgeois democracy, they neither understood that capitalism is a living entity. Its laws of development would eventually place us in the inevitable scene of the sharpening of its contradictions, where no achievement of the working class is permanent against the needs of capital. Today, in a world of almighty monopolies and finance oligarchies, neither the parliamentary struggle nor the trade-union struggle can even slow down the social setbacks by themselves.

Those parties have been falling behind in this path, disappearing or becoming useless for the revolutionary struggle, since they violated the principle of the role of the CP, in each historical moment, as the guide and leader of the working class in the struggle for socialism, not in the struggle for the creation of welfare islands for some sections of the class — islands that stay underwater after the first surge of the capitalist crisis.

The capitalist crisis is bringing war back again, shadowing the times we are living in. The Party has the responsibility to prepare itself for that immediate future already knocking on the door, and it should do it according to the rigorous assessment of what is going to be the role of its country in such future scene in order to take action on its reality. Every Party should make the thorough study of the economy in its country and its most sharpened contradictions, the productive relations and which is the ruling one, the form of government, the correlation of forces, the very history of the working-class struggle, but also the revolutionary experiences that took place all over the world.

Something we should remember is that, even if it seems the contrary, the political system becomes extremely weak in times of war. The State is forced to drastically increase its power and control of the society, turning the politics into a ruthless and authoritarian weapon for the interests of the bourgeoisie. This opens a rift in its legitimacy and credibility before the masses.

The need to mobilize resources and workforce for the war effort, the censorship, the militarization of economy, and the suppression of civil freedoms, as means to strengthen the State during the conflict, can be exposed in order to turn them against it, thus revealing the oppressive and exploiting nature of the bourgeois State.

These dynamics open windows of opportunity for revolution, as evidenced by the Great Socialist October Revolution in Russia in 1917.

But let us not fall into the mistake of assessing different situations as similar ones and end up extracting misguided conclusions. The opportune moment might be given, the objective conditions might be ripe, but we would be playing to the insurrection and submitting the really existing Party and the best elements of the class to an extremely painful defeat without a party with the theory and the real capability of leading the masses.

The level of development and the upsurge of the revolutionary movement in the beginning of the past century is not the scene we are today in, even though the working-class masses can rapidly evolve and become conscious when subdued to the suitable conditions and being in contact with the revolutionary theory. In any case, the greater or lesser weakness of party organizations is the nodal element that should be present when defining the tactics in each country. Even though the correlation of forces is not defining this era and we are living in the era of the revolutionary transition of capitalism to socialism-communism, it does define the tactics to be adopted.

The role of the CP under these circumstances is not to play to insurrection, nor make big statements that are not sustained by practical facts. The role is to make the revolutionary stances in each country advance, taking advantage of the greater weakness of the system. In this sense, only a good development of the strategy and the tactics, adjusted to the specific national reality, can lead to a significant advance of such stances, with an accumulation of forces that could enable better conditions to take advantage of windows of opportunity that may be created — or at least favor a further development of the subjective factor.

But the role of the Party is also to plan and get ready beforehand, taking advantage of the most favorable previous conditions, studying and learning from the historical experiences of resistance and struggles in times of legality, as well as structuring and strengthening the capabilities required from the organic viewpoint, studying means for the protection of the militants in their connection with masses, enabling a stable leadership over the time and safe communication links, so the Party can follow its activity under any foreseeable scenario. Logically, not every country has the same correlation of forces, and not all of them are going to participate in the same way when there will be an escalation of conflicts, whether they are local ones or more generalized.

Devoting from now on the biggest effort to the strengthening of trade unions, to the implementation of a wide movement for peace and against the war as well as for the elimination of the causes that create it, and to ensure networks of international solidarity are key features to be developed against the advance of reaction —in both its far-right and/or fascist expressions—, further taking shape while the warmongering messages are dominating the speech of the ruling class, at the same time that anti-communism is becoming a State policy.

The working-class masses are subdued to conditions of existence defined by exploitation, having in common the impossibility of the development of their human capabilities as a result of the alienation they are submitted to.

Under these alienating conditions, under the capitalist system, the worker feels separated from several features of its work and its own humankind. First, the worker does not control the final product of its work, which is appropriated by the capitalist; second, the worker does not control the working process, which is dictated by the needs of the capitalist; third, work becomes an exogenous activity for the worker, it does not let it express its own creative and free nature; fourth, the capitalist system promotes competition and individualism, which leads to a fragmentation of social relations.

Alienation is a result inherent to the capitalist productive system, in which the worker becomes a mere tool for the generation of profits, instead of being a free and self-fulfilled human.

Under the capitalist system, relations between people are distorted and fragmented. Instead of a supportive community, capitalism promotes competition and individualism between workers. The worker feels isolated and separated from the others, without the feeling of belonging to a wider community.

This alienation of the other human beings weakens our social nature and tears us away from the development of significant and supportive relations with our peers.

Such circumstance defines how the Party can group only a minority of the working class, since the most conscious elements of the class are necessarily a minority set of such class within the capitalist society.

The role of the Party is to collectively organize and ensure such consciousness, as well as the conditions to drag after it the working-class masses, giving a suitable political answer in each moment and preventing the tactics to question the strategic goal.

The CP is a detachment of the working class and should be its vanguard detachment in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

Talking about the vanguard role of the Party is not a mere epithet. It should be the practical implementation of an organized attitude to work the features that should characterize it as a vanguard. The necessary and broad knowledge of the life and labor conditions of the working class is to be found between such features, as it enables the rigorous definition of the goals for the struggle in each moment and the prospect of the advance of revolutionary stances for the defense of their interests.

On the other side, a narrow link with the class and the masses, enabling to exert a guiding and leading role, is required. This is because the working class needs the exercise of such role in order to reach the class consciousness required to carry out its historical mission. In this, the Party should not only give its experience to the masses, but learn from them and know at every moment what is its willingness and preparation, avoiding to mistake the level of determination and will of masses with those of the Party and even its leading cadres.

All the aforementioned has to be completed with a level of consciousness, courage, and combativeness that enables the fulfillment of its tasks under whatever conditions it must intervene in. Neither should it forget that it is the very working class and the popular strata who should directly —although with the Party— defend its interests and reach emancipation.

The class-oriented independence is a necessary precondition for the working class to be capable of developing its consciousness and struggling ability. The working class should be aware of its class interests at every moment and its historical role as the revolutionary class. It should be able to take action in an independent and autonomous way in class struggle, not letting the influence or co-opting by other classes or social forces, submitting to them. Being the alliances with other movements or sections possible, they should be considered always from the standpoint of independence and autonomy, without renouncing to their class interests.

The role of the Party should be to ensure such independence by providing an organizational structure, a political platform, and an ideology, seeking to take the working class to the fulfillment of its historical mission as the gravediggers of the capitalist system.

Throughout history, the working class has provided itself with several organizations. The CP is not the only class-based organization, although its political leadership should be effective in all these organizations. 

The need of all these mass organizations to consolidate and advance the class-oriented stances places in the agenda of every CP the work to earn that role as the single leadership in all of them. This should be made by establishing organic links with the Party, turning it into the conscious political leadership of the mass movement and coordinating their action with the revolutionary strategy and tactics.

The role of the CP should be to confront and dispute the domination wherever the social democratic as well as other reformist and opportunist trends have the majority, but also against the leftist trends that isolate us from masses and restrain us to connect with their specific demands.

Working inside of mass organizations —especially in trade unions—, even though such trends are currently dominating in them, is required if we do not want to abandon the most politically backward working-class masses. Not doing so would mean losing the vast majority of the working class, which is today under the influence of the ruling ideology and does not have a well-defined class consciousness.

The Party is not only necessary, but irreplaceable. The organizational features do not have a minor relevance as they serve to ease or hinder the role assigned to the Party.

A paradigmatic example is evidenced by the Spanish experience, when the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) changed its cell-based structure by the structuring of groups based on a territorial division. Once they renounced to the revolutionary nature, a structure ready to organize the Party within the framework of local electoral constituencies was imposed. This actually turned the basic organizations of the PCE into an electoral structure at the service of its institutional representation. It became the electoral apparatus for parliamentary seats that support —and even participate in— allegedly left-wing or progressive governments because of its dependence on the bourgeois institutional possibility. 

The structure, as we see, does not only have to do with the tactical moment, but also with the strategic vision. In this sense, the structuring in cells organized mainly at workplaces perfectly fulfills both needs. 

The workplace is the strategic space for the direct intervention of the Party, both in the revolutionary moment —as it enables the transfer of property and the workers' control of companies, the reorganization of production in order to meet the needs of the population, facing sabotage, and the development of new forms of workers' organization and participation— and nowadays —since the organization of the working class in productive units enables the defense of its interests, the rise of its class consciousness, and the development of its transforming potential—. In this sphere, trade unions and the party organization complement each other and are irreplaceable. One of the main roots of the “workers' shift” policy carried out by the PCTE since its 3rd Conference on Workers' and Trade-Union Movement is based on such reflection.

Our presence at workplaces makes easier for the Party to fulfill its essential role to support the trade-union or economic struggle and to give an anti-monopolistic and anti-capitalist guidance, thus reinforcing the political and ideological struggles, Because class struggle is fully manifested in those three struggles and none of them can satisfactorily advance without the others. With the dominance of monopolies and finance capital, the working class is doomed to the fluctuations of a relentless setback in rights if it does not have its Party — even if it does have a wide and well-structured trade-union movement. The role of the Party is to show the limits of capitalism and weave the unity of the workers' and trade-union movement under the banners of the class-based independence.

The CP should count with basic structures on which —at every moment and because of the needs to adapt to the outer reality— the adjustments required to optimally keep on the activity of the Party among the masses can be made. They might absorb or restrict the volume of militants and ensure the generational relay beyond the contributions made by the Communist Youth (CY). The Party should be an organization capable of maintaining the establishment of regular contacts between the central leadership and the territorial centers, and also between these latter and basic organizations. This should enable the provision of the relevant and timely information required for party work and action, and also the supply of journals and the general guidelines for the agitation. 

A structure that makes the continuity and stability of the central leadership possible, that enables the study of reality and the elaboration of policies within the framework of the Party theses and program, and also basic organizations totally embedded —primarily— at workplaces, with an expression of their action wherever the working class lives. A structure that enables the direct intervention among the masses at the same time it maintains an organized presence to intervene through other organizational expressions of the working class.

Therefore we are talking about a structure at the service of the revolutionary strategy, with the temporary features at the service of the tactics that may be required for its development and strengthening.

We are talking about a Party organized to be capable of answering to every specific scenario and to be the organization capable of struggling under all circumstances. Therefore a party that assesses the possible future situations in the current world and keeps in mind that, in a situation of extreme weakness, it should answer to the extreme violence that such weakness will create, by all the means at their reach — the means that have proven to be effective throughout history.

Nowadays, many issues for study have been arising in the heat of the rich revolutionary experience of our movement. We count with a vast compilation of works by the most relevant thinkers. However, there has been serious problems to continue the study since the temporary triumph of counter-revolution, because of both the weakness of our movement and the influence of non-revolutionary trends within it.

Nevertheless, a number of parties have managed to consolidate theorizations on nodal features of our movement that have placed the revolutionary path back in the present. The question is whether we are being able to translate all these theorizations and studies —and also the theoretical conclusions we are drawing from them— into practical elements for the activity in both inside and outside of the Party. 

Including the training in the daily activity and giving the militant assets the theoretical tools required for practical work goes not only through the separated study of the main works of Marxism-Leninism, but also through the assimilation of new developments. Not doing so would put us at the risk of future misunderstandings and possible disengagements between the central leadership of the Party and its militant assets.

Training thus reveals itself as a nodal task of the Party, and especially a training and specialization of cadres enabling a division of work in order to optimize the forces and resources we count with, abandoning the artisan work methods under which everybody does everything. To do so, every militant cadre should be devoted to the task it can better develop and embed it into the work of the ensemble of our parties, in an effort to reinforce the ideological-political capacity and use the experience for the alternation of cadres and the taking of responsibilities

But specialization should not restrain a wide knowledge of the mission of the Party, its program, its Marxist-Leninist theoretical body, its policy, and how such policy meshes with the program. The role of the Party in this sphere is to train all-round militants and cadres whose activity is specialized according to their qualities, highlighted by practice, i.e. communists that act and see in each of their actions what is their place within the revolutionary project. Not doing so can lead to turning Party cadres into mere social cadres, or into bureaucrats and technicians alienated from the reality of the class — therefore, in both cases, more sensitive to the influence of alien ideologies.

Class struggle requires revolutionary cadres, professional militants, devoted to the political activity. These cadres should be carefully selected and trained, and they should be given a solid theoretical and practical training in Marxism-Leninism. The revolutionary cadres are the engine of revolution, and their selection and training is a primary task for the Communist Party.

The PCTE is today committed to this task. We need a Party capable of training these cadres as the reinforced skeleton of the structure. The skeleton of a body that trusts in the working class and its revolutionary nature, that has a high level of ideological-political surveillance, has a powerful front against opportunism and dogmatic stances, unconnected to the reality of class struggle. This body is aware of the causes of the difficulties of our class as an inescapable effect of the capitalist development, and it is willing to follow the long path leading to the revolutionary overcome of a mode of production that has reached its historical limit.