The purpose of Communist Caucus is to develop and nourish communist mass work organizing practices that are appropriate to our on-the-ground situation. We want to see new communist organizers and militants experiment with organization, immerse themselves in the struggles around them, and advance the potential of our class to change the world.

Want to join? We are currently only signing up new members via intentional recruitment. Why?

Why intentional recruitment? That’s because we put a premium on developing local cadres full of capable mass work organizers. As it turns out, building mass work cadres is harder than you may think. It takes considerable integration within our communities, workplaces, and DSA chapters to do this work. It also requires that new members recruit new cadre as they conduct their organizing.

The best thing to do if you want to join is to seek out local CC members and talk with them. If a member recruits you, you can fill out the form below using the password.

Want to contact us? Email us at onboarding@communistcaucus.com

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More info on getting started…

1. Be sure to read and found agreement with the caucus statement.

2. Try to have a particular organizing project in mind. 

This project is the activity that binds together a local chapter of Communist Caucus. Starting a project includes an assessment of your surroundings, an inquiry of those with whom you’d like to organize, and a rough plan for how to proceed. Many present socialist formations have disfigured themselves in order to survive 30 years of counter-revolution. Some have degenerated into disturbing factory-like operations that produce social movement managers. Others simply generate ideologues who engage in debate with other leftists. In distinction, we want to create healthy and productive organizations that are outwardly oriented to the broader class. Here are some guidelines:

Mass Organization
Our projects will never begin as mass organizations, but they must aim at growing by organizing the unorganized. This requires us to get beyond activist networking, and to start speaking with and organizing people who do not identify as part of the left.

Politics of the Everyday
Projects must allow working class people to organize around and directly intervene against agents of capital. This means organizing in a manner that allows working class people to protect themselves in the short-term, and eventually launch anti-systemic attacks in the medium to long-term.

Build Power, Not Access Power
Our organizational structures should help build power rather than access power. The ability for today’s working class to intervene outside of official politics has atrophied during the long neoliberal period. What the working class needs is independence in a holistic sense. This means that an electoral campaign lies outside of the purview. Similarly, mutual aid programs cannot be the main activity of the project.

Inquiry
We may subject what we know to analysis, but we cannot assume to know the basic details of people’s lives. Thus we want inquiry to become an ongoing tool that is used for building organizations and advancing politics.

Examples
Possible ideas for a project could include: a tenant union; worker committees within a workplace; high schoolers against cops; retail workers collective; transit riders union; a workers union based on an area (e.g. downtown) rather than a shop; homeless encampment defense; university student organizations; immigrant defence leagues; workplace organizing initiatives; etc. Here are some real-life examples of projects: Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), Anchor Steam Union Drive, New River Valley Target workers organizing, Tenant and Housing Association of Worcester (THAW), Tech Workers Coalition, LA Tenants Union, Philly Socialist Dignity Project.

Wondering where to get started? See Strategic Approaches for 2020 for a more detailed look at strategic approaches to communist organizing.