Radical Socialist

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Radical Socialist Such a society will not be a utopia, but a society where humans will gain the freedom to develop themselves. Capitalism cannot be reformed.

We are socialists who stand proudly in the tradition of revolutionary Marxism as
developed and exemplified by Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, and by all the workers and militants who have fought for, enriched and reaffirmed that tradition. Our Commitment to Working Class Self Emancipation and Workers’ Democracy:

We believe that the working class, which comprises the majority of the world's population, is the one social force that can provide the leadership in struggles to bring down capitalism and replace it with a just, humane and truly democratic society: socialism. A democratically planned society has the potential to progressively reduce the burden of work allowing greater and greater participation in the running of society by those that create its wealth through their labour. Such a socialist society will develop through our own struggles, and through theoretical reflections on the struggles, not through blue-prints imposed from above. Socialism is not a dogma created by self-proclaimed vanguards. The crisis of capitalism throws up new challenges all the time, and the struggle for socialism must address all of them. In order to formulate and defend the ideas of working class liberation and to promote the revolutionary organisation of the working class it is necessary to organise the most class-conscious members of the oppressed into a political party that can combat all the other parties of the oppressor classes. The revolutionary workers party must fight for the allegiance of the whole working class and seek by its activity to represent the interests of the whole class. It must therefore reject all divisions and reject turning itself into a sect that defends only some particular theory or tactic which it seeks to impose on the real workers movement. It must learn from the bureaucratisation of earlier worker's parties and defend the democratic functioning of its internal life. This includes the right to free and open debate inside the party and also in front of the whole class. It means the right of party members to form tendencies and factions within the party to promote the debate on party policy and action. Democracy is advanced by all members of the party joining together to implement the policies of the majority so that their ideas may be subjected to the judgement of real practice. Equally, it is advanced by guaranteeing real autonomy of mass working class organisations instead of seeking to turn them into adjuncts of the party. In the same way, the historical lessons show that the working class is divided, and the process of building revolutionary class unity involves recognising the reality of such divisions and special oppressions. We therefore see dalit, adivasis, women workers as specially oppressed groups, and reject the notion that “general class goals” are defined by an imposed norm that sees special oppression as issues to be treated as marginal and to be resolved after the revolution. Such an approach makes the revolutionary class an abstraction, and ultimately reinforces patriarchal, upper caste, and other dominant group norms and contributes to a weakening of genuine class unity. At the present stage, we are not, and do not claim to be, a revolutionary working class party. We are a grouping aiming to build a revolutionary working class party. Our allies and enemies:

We oppose caste and racial oppression, the oppression of women, the oppression of immigrants and the oppression of le****ns, g**s, transgenders and bisexuals. We take part in the struggles of these groups against their oppression, and fight for their right to organize independently. We need class unity, but in order to have genuine class unity based on equality, we call for support to the rights of all marginalised groups within the class. We oppose national oppression and support oppressed nations' right to self-determination. At the same time, we recognize that nationalism, even when a positive sentiment among the oppressed, cannot lead to real solutions leading to abolition of oppression. We therefore stand for internationalism based on equality. We believe that real solutions to national oppression call for full equality, democratic rights, cultural autonomy, and multi-ethnic community building. In the light of twentieth century experiences of building socialism and revolutionary parties, we need to redefine socialism and the socialist struggle. In particular, we affirm that socialism today must be committed to feminism, to abolition of racial and caste oppression, and to socially oriented eco-friendly development models. It is a social system founded on exploitation and brutality through all its history. We believe that the state and its institutions are instruments of the ruling class, and that therefore they cannot be used as tools of the working class. The bureaucratic and repressive instruments have to be smashed, and even the legal-judicial and electoral mechanisms thoroughly reworked. However, the electoral terrain is not an adequate space for preparing the broader class vanguard or effecting social transformation. That is why we fight for revolution, instead of for seeking to merely reform or work within the system. When we fight for specific reforms we do so only with the understanding that in the final analysis real social change can only come about with the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of a workers' government. The historic experience of the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe shows that the establishment of dictatorial party-states do not assist working class self-emancipation. These were bureaucratically degenerated/deformed workers’ states whose rulers ultimately brought about capitalist restoration. Imperialism is capitalism's ugliest and most brutal expression. We oppose it in all its manifestations, including the occupations of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan and threats against Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea and Syria, regardless of our assessment of the regimes in those countries. We oppose it whether it acts openly or in the guise of international organizations, such as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. A Revolutionary Strategy for India

In the Indian context, we recognize that there are crucial allies whom the working class must win over for it to really become the "national class" as the communist manifesto said. They include the exploited poor peasants, the dalits and adivasis. Class unity in India is impossible to achieve unless caste and communal divisions are consistently fought against. We support, in the current situation, the struggle of peasants to retain control over their land against multinationals and Indian big business, both equally rapacious, trying take over such land in the name of development. We oppose land grabbing in the name of development by all forces, including the Stalinist-turned social-liberal left when it is in power. We oppose the fascist forces with their Hindutva ideology, but we reject the class
collaborationist idea that supporting other bourgeois parties can in any way be a method of stopping fascism. Recognizing the divisions that exist on the left and within the workers' movement, as well as the low level of class consciousness that exists among many workers, we seek to form united fronts, and united front type organizations, around specific issues where various groups have agreement with us. In this way we seek to maximize our impact and the number of forces that can be mobilized around a given issue, demonstrate the power and effectiveness of mass action as opposed to symbolic small-scale and individual actions, and expose others on the left and the workers' movement to our method of functioning and our political program. We also see this as the way of achieving meaningful revolutionary regroupment – because it allows different groups to work together and see whether or not they have significant political convergence. It should also be said that while we support the tactic of the united front of the oppressed, we are opposed to popular fronts – multi-class alliances that subordinate the interests of workers to that of a wing of the capitalist class. It is possible that grass-roots struggles at different places will see the participation of bourgeois forces seeking to establish hegemony, and we cannot be sectarian and abstain from struggles using the presence of the bourgeois forces as a plea. But we cannot subordinate the class interests of the workers and the other exploited to the bourgeoisie. Electoral support to bourgeois parties as so-called lesser evils do precisely that. Our aim is to use the electoral terrain as well as any other terrain to build the independence of the exploited from the exploiters, and therefore to not support any bourgeois party. The historical experience of struggles for socialism have shown that all talk of revolution by stages, where the first stage will supposedly involve an alliance with progressive sections of the capitalist class, only damage the independent struggles of the working class and other toiling masses and lead to their defeats. The twentieth century experience has also shown very clearly that socialism cannot be achieved in one country but must embrace every country of the world. From this flows the necessity of international organisation both for Marxists and the working class. The website of Radical Socialist, as well as the journals published by us, will defend the above standpoint and seek to build a revolutionary party along these principles. Membership Criteria:


Membership of Radical Socialist is open to all those who are willing:

* To be in agreement with our basic programme
* To seek to build Radical Socialist as loyal activists
* To engage actively in the work of the organization
* To contribute materially for the organization


Radical Socialist is committed to complete equality inside the organization. Every member enjoys the same rights and duties.

12/08/2026

Unity Statement of RCPI and Radical Socialist, adopted after discussion on 9 and 10 August 2026

Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI) was formed during the India freedom struggle from a split in the then Stalinist and class collaborationist CPI in 1934 initially as Communist League and subsequently changed into RCPI when it became a party. The central leader of the RCPI was Saumyendranath Tagore, an Indian delegate to the 6th Congress of the Communist International, who was to gradually question the Colonial Thesis, the decision to expel Trotsky and the sectarian line during the rise of Hi**er as well as the bureaucratic decline inside the USSR. In the late 1940s, there was a sharp division within the RCPI when Tagore opposed what he saw correctly as an ultraleft and adventurist line of armed uprising advocated by the majority of the leadership under Pannalal Dasgupta. This led to a split. Sudhin Kumar was able to ensure a recovery of that group after steering out of Dasgupta's politics of untimely locality based armed struggle. Subsequently all sides underwent a decline, but the RCPI continues to exist as a left party, and has achieved re-unification.

The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, emerged as a result of a split in the international communist movement in early 1930s against Menshevik, Kautskyan class collaborationist deviation and bureaucratic degeneration led by the Stalinist clique reflected in almost all the countries in the world. In India it was the formation of Bolshevik Leninist party of India and Ceylon, later BLPI that became the Indian Section of the Fourth International. The Indian Section of the Fourth International has undergone several political and organisational debacles and had different formations (as political group) at different times like Communist League, Inquilabi Communist Sangathan, Radical Socialist (RS) etc. but it has maintained a common lineage throughout. RS (as political group) was operating as the section of FI in India.

Both RCPI and the Indian section of FI have some glorious legacies as well as dark spots in their history. Both the tendencies have key commonalities in their formative ideologies, with some differences as well, some of which have faded into irrelevance with the fall of the Soviet bloc and the changes in China. However, the journey together by these two tendencies has never really happened, although some efforts were taken at different times.

In spite of proximity in the formative ideologies there have been certain differences between the two political tendencies in actual practices by them in the last several decades. However, with the changing political terrain and the crisis of the left movement in India, RCPI and RS felt the necessity of coming together and to unite based on their original and formative ideologies as the axis of such unification. While not ignoring the mistakes committed, the dark spots and the deviations in the past by the two organisations (or their predecessors), but considering them as political lessons to be acknowledged, the unified organisation upholds only their positive heritage for their unified journey together in the days to come.

The unified organisation is a NEW IDENTITY carrying forward the revolutionary ideology of RCPI and RS, naming themselves as RCPI, because of its continuity in maintaining the name, which is absent in the case of the Indian Section of the Fourth International.
The RCPI, as hereafter we shall call ourselves, stands for the following principles:

That socialism, our endeavour and goal, is possible and desirable but not inevitable. It will be built by the self-emancipation of the working class, leading behind it all the other exploited and oppressed categories—national minorities, oppressed genders and sexualities, castes, adivasis, and, in certain cases, oppressed religious minorities, without ignoring class realities.

A working-class-led revolution must inevitably result, if successful, in establishing the rule of the working class, supported by its allies through institutions of the broadest democracy, cutting out from the beginning bureaucratic and authoritarian institutions that curtail democracy. This was what Marx meant by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not the rule of one party and its bureaucratic leadership, or even one great leader or the Ek Nayak.

We reject both Popular Frontism (strategic collaboration with bourgeois parties) as well as ultra-left versions of Stalinism, where minority heroism and armed action are promoted against mass mobilisations and mass struggles.

We reject the idea of revolution by stages. A revolution led by the working class cannot stop at some arbitrary point short of seizing the means of production from the current ruling class; it cannot stop at an imagined National, People's or New Democratic stage. We agree that there persists as a consequence of the uneven and combined character of capitalist development in India tasks that in the 19th century could have been called tasks of the democratic revolution. While this needs special attention, we reject the view that this means a separate stage of revolution. Political power, the essence of a revolutionary overturn, must be under working class leadership, whatever pre-capitalist remnants and capitalist distortions need to be tackled.

For us, communism is learnt from the experiences of nearly three centuries of working-class struggles, successful and failed revolutions, from the revolutionary practice of proletarian organisations since the Communist League of 1847, the first three Internationals during their periods of greatness, and other progressive social struggles and teachings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Lev Trotsky and Saumyendranath Tagore and many other Marxists thereafter. That is why our Marxism is also a method to incorporate the lessons of concrete material reality for social change. For this reason, we want to highlight that a contemporary revolutionary programme must take into account the developments since the 1940s.

We hold that the collapse of the USSR and the Transformations in China mean the restoration of capitalism in present day China and Russia. While we continue to see US imperialism and NATO as the leading imperialist threats, we oppose any alignment with Russia, China in the name of anti-Imperialism. BRICS containing as it does many imperialist-sub-imperialist powers of its own, is not an anti-imperialist bloc

We are all aware of global warming and other ecological issues. But we need to bring them explicitly into a socialist, class-struggle framework. The struggle against climate change must therefore be made coherent with the struggle for socialism.

What we stand for in today’s world and today’s India, are gender justice, the rights of ethnic national entities, the full emancipation of oppressed castes from Brahmanical and upper caste oppression, and the linking of Adivasi rights with ecological concerns. We do not support extreme forms of identity politics, but we recognise the reality of multiple oppressions and identities. Identities are real, and exploitation, oppression, alienation, based on them trample all human rights. There is no advance to socialism without addressing these, because the worst victim of identity-based division and oppression are the working classes themselves. We do not consider that all organisations fighting for identity rights should be rejected. We must draw close to progressives among them.

We propose a transitional programme, a bridge between the immediate economic and other partial struggles with the struggle for a socialist alternative. It is important to combine the global perspective with immediate and localised demands. To win people away from the capitalist system, to encourage them to resist, successful struggles are needed that give courage and demonstrate that partial victories are possible. Successful struggles require better organisation. This is always true in principle, but today—in times when organised working class struggles are weakened and the left is fragmented—it is important to promote practical cooperation in a non-sectarian way, especially among the anti-capitalist left, and at the same time to support workers in their self-organisation.

We need concrete programmes and recognition of what we have failed to do for women and sexual minorities—participation in women's rights and LGBTQI+ struggles, recruiting them, ensuring more space for them in party meetings and party leaderships. In the same way, we need concrete programmes and recognition of a specific orientation to the multiple oppression and exploitation of Dalits and Adivasis and recruiting them, cresting more space for them not just in the membership but the leadership of the party.
We are for building of a Leninist party, which is not a structural prescription of the organisation, but a fundamental political pillar of socialist revolution and void of any Stalinist or social-democratic distortions. For us, the significance of democratic centralism is political and is much higher than its organisational dimension and is not some fixed format in the changing or escalating dynamics of class struggles. The right of all sections of the party to have their views communicated to other sections, unity in action when decided in consistency with the programmatic understanding, the right of minorities to question the majority, right to act separately when decisions contradict the basic programme, regular publications, conferences, meetings including virtual etc. are some common practices.

‘Workers of the World Unite’ is not a mere slogan for chanting but for practicing internationalism. We therefore concluded as our wish to obtain the status of a ‘permanent observer’ of the Fourth International. We shall also strive to collaborate with like-minded organisations all over the world.

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