The Political Leap: Communist Strategy Today

One of the simplest premises of class composition theory is that changes in the shape of capitalist social relations must lead to changes in the political expression of the working class. Just as the strategies of Chartist workers who marched up onto the moors of England to discuss the fight for suffrage were defined by the experience of living and working in the cotton mills and slums of industrial Manchester, so the strategies of the working class today must be defined by our current experiences of working, renting and getting by. And yet all we can see around us are political strategies that have failed to adapt to changing conditions.

Our previous eighteen issues have focused on using the method of workers’ inquiry to understand ongoing shifts in class composition. Inquiry, however, is only ever a moment in a wider process of struggle. We inquire in order to understand how we should act. Therefore, in this issue, we focus on a different theme than usual: communist strategy today. In doing so, the articles inside both reflect on our own political practices as editors, as well as drawing on the experiences of others within the broader communist movement. All of these articles respond to the class composition that characterises our new, deteriorating conjuncture. Capitalism is in the throes of numerous crises – political, economic, climatic. We must find a political strategy that is adequate to this moment. Rather than ignoring the implications of the crisis and sticking to what we know, we are willing to break new ground. This issue aims to contribute to this process: attempting to turn ‘revolution’ from a throwaway phrase into a serious horizon.