The CP, the Sixties, the RCP, and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us.

By the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries

The following study guide was compiled by the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (US) (OCR) to assist comrades in developing into communist cadre by providing them with a grounding in the communist tradition, key communist principles and concentrations of revolutionary strategy, and operational principles for functioning like communist cadre. The texts marked “supplementary” need not all be studied at once, but can be used to deepen and expand your development after the initial study course is completed. We especially suggest that comrades study our Manifesto in detail early on in the process, treating it as a document to guide all our practice, and then restudy individual sections of it in combination with the supplementary texts. The texts marked “overall” provide comprehensive concentrations of communist principles, and should be treated as overarching background to the material as a whole.

This study guide is best used in a collective study group that is trying to apply the lessons learned in practice. If you are serious about becoming a communist cadre, in addition to taking up this study, that means linking up with the OCR and, when the time is right, applying to join it. As such, collective study should be taken up in person, avoiding using phone and internet communication to organize it, and certainly not conducting it via the internet (such as Discord servers), which can be easily surveilled.

Our Tradition

• Declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (1984; 1993 edition)
  
  Supplementary:
  • Hinton Alvarez, “Exceptionally Serious Responsibility: Some Notes on the History of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and Prospects for Unity in the International Communist Movement Today,” kites #4 (2021)
  • “Against the Tide of Counterrevolution: An Interview with Comrade Kiran (Mohan Baidya) of the Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary Maoist),” kites #4 (2021)
  • Kenny Lake, “On Infantile Internet Disorders and Real Questions of Revolutionary Strategy,” kites #1 (2020)
• OCR, The CP, the Sixties, the RCP, and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us (2023)

Communist Principles and Revolutionary Strategy

• OCR, Manifesto (2020), Part 1: “Who Are the Greatest Criminals in the World?”
  
  Supplementary:
  • Kenny Lake, The Specter That Still Haunts: Locating a Revolutionary Class within Contemporary Capitalism-Imperialism (2015), Part 1: “The Proletariat: What It Is, What It Ain’t”; Part 2: “Things Done Changed” (published in kites)
  • Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
  • Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (1913)
• OCR, Manifesto (2020), Part 2: “Communism”
  
  Supplementary:
  • Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
  • Mao, On Contradiction (1937)
  • Mao, On Practice (1937)
• OCR, Manifesto (2020), Part 3: “Strategy for Revolution in the US”
  
  Supplementary:
  • OCR, The CP, the Sixties, the RCP, and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us (2023) (yes, you should read this twice)
  • Kenny Lake, The Specter That Still Haunts: Locating a Revolutionary Class within Contemporary Capitalism-Imperialism (2015), Part 3: “When We Ride on Our Enemies”; Part 4: “Picking the Ripest Fruit for Harvesting a Revolutionary People” (published in kites)
  • Kenny Lake, “Revolution Has Vanished,” kites #5/6 (2022)
  • Kenny Lake, “Malcolm X Didn’t Dish Out Free Bean Pies: Distinguishing Charity and Social Work from Revolutionary Strategy,” kites #3 (2021)
  • Lenin, What Is To Be Done? (1902)
    Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920)
  • Mao, Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War (1936)
  • Mao, Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan (1938)
  • Mao, Current Problems of Tactics in the Anti-Japanese United Front (1940)
• OCR, Manifesto (2020), Part 4: “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Socialist Transition to Communism”
  
  Supplementary:
  • Zhang Chunqiao, On Exercising All-Around Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie (1975)
  • Mao, On the Ten Major Relationships (1956)
  • Mao, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (1957)
  • Lenin, The State and Revolution (1918)
  • Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918)
• Overall: Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877–78); Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

Operational Principles

• Membership Constitution of the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (2020), available at ocrev.org
• OCR, Drawing Blood: A Guide to Communist Agitation (2021)
• OCR, Looking Back to Face Forward: The Role of Summation in the Revolutionary Process (2021)
• Mao, Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership (1943)
• Mao, Combat Liberalism (1937)
• Mao, Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party (1929)
• Overall: Quotations from Mao Zedong, AKA the “Little Red Book” (1966)

The Objective Situation

• José San Miguel, “Theses on Capitalist Crisis and Class War,” kites #2 (2020)
• kites editorial committee, “Kick ‘Em While They’re Down,” kites #3 (2021)
• “The Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today,” the final part of OCR, The CP, the Sixties, the RCP, and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us (2023) (yes, you should read this a third time)