Text presented by the CE. Votes (CPN) : 40 in favor, 2 against, 0 abstention, 4 NPPV (do not vote)
1- The party that we want
1.1- The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and its system of production and appropriation is the driving force of history, as Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. As revolutionary communists, we draw on history, on the experiences of almost 200 years, the struggles, victories and defeats of the working class and all oppressed strata or sectors. But only a proletarian revolution – led and directed by the revolutionary proletariat – is capable of overthrowing the capitalist and imperialist system and laying the foundations for a communist society. We still have to build this revolutionary party, and integrate to our thinking this Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist bicentennial experience while bringing it up to date – an experience that should allow the proletariat to lead revolutions.
1.2- In contrast to the institutional left, which sterilizes workers’ struggles within an immediate and partial framework, when it doesn’t betray them by locking them into the institutional framework, the party we want will give itself the means to amplify the subversive and extensionist power of these struggles through promoting their self-organization and workers’ democracy. In the same way, the party we want will seek, in the name of the proletariat, to take the lead in struggles against all forms of oppression: for we cannot put an end to all these oppressions without putting an end to the power of capital and those who serve it.
1.3- This is why the revolutionary workers’ movement, with a party aiming for these goals, retains its irreplaceable vocation as inspirer and organizer of the coming revolution. Especially as the working class has never been so numerous on the planet, and therefore in a position to play this role. The capitalist society is based on their exploitation, the theft of the fruits of their labor, which feeds capital and profit. But without the workers, nothing is possible: the working class produces everything, can stop everything, paralyze everything, organize itself in a general struggle, until it imposes its own power to replace that of the bourgeoisie, and collectively and democratically decide on everything. The Russian proletariat did this over a century ago, despite far less favorable objective conditions.
For revolutionaries today, one of the tasks is to help raise awareness of the irrationality and violence of wage exploitation (which Marx rightly called « wage slavery »), as well as of the immense power of modern slaves, by virtue of their numbers and their place in society, to destroy the system that exploits them. More than a century after the revolutionary years at the beginning of the 20th e century, during which social democracy and Stalinism undermined revolutionary aspirations and struggles, workers, as well as young people, should renew with revolutionary perspectives through their struggles and political involvement.
2- Building on what we already are
2.1- Our organization, along with other groups in the revolutionary movement, has set itself the task of not only supporting but participating in these struggles – and leading them where possible. Not only to bring to life the perspectives of class struggle, as militant trade unionists do (efforts we support and encourage), but always by helping the emergence of revolutionary political consciousness in the proletariat and its activity in this direction.
2.2- Capitalism perpetuates patriarchy, the oppression of women and the unlimited violence perpetrated against them. This male domination is the basis of multiple oppressions against LGBTI people, including the homophobia and transphobia stirred up by the extreme right. It is this now a global system of exploitation that has concentrated a large proportion of women in factories, offices and farms – alongside men and children. Everyone is cannon fodder for the bosses, and yet differences remain. Hence feminist struggles, for women’s rights, the political rights to vote or organize, the rights to choose whether or not to have children, whether or not to enter into sexual relations – a struggle that is part of the class struggle. Bourgeois women have also organized to assert these rights, with victories always under threat, against the reactionary ideas and prejudices nurtured by their class. But the feminist struggle must also take the workplace as an important terrain – because of the generalization of salaried work: against poorer wages and pensions, against greater precariousness, against lower qualifications, but also against the wandering hands or more of bosses or « colleagues », against the cunning of HR not to hire pregnant women, etc. It’s a necessary political struggle, to be waged with and within the unions as well as directly with colleagues, which also requires confronting the bourgeois law that makes the boss the master within the walls of his company. Women are nobody’s property or object!
2.3- Our fight against racism: it is the system of capitalist exploitation that maintains and exacerbates racism, whose roots lie in the history of its primitive accumulation through colonial slave conquests. The struggle for independence on every continent have fuelled the anger of ex-colonialists or descendants of colonialists, who can be found today in France, for example, in the ranks of the right and extreme right, and in the workings of the army and police force – hence the systemic nature of police violence, which is both racist and anti-worker. Today, we are witnessing a form of state-sponsored racism: Islamophobia against those described as « Muslims » (as if all Arabs were Muslims, and as if some did not fight against religious domination), and openly racist anti-migrant campaigns, institutionalized on a European scale, while European employers are crying out for more immigrant labor (admittedly « chosen »… and disposable by them according to their needs). While anti-racist movements and associations have taken the initiative in mobilizing against anti-immigration laws and acts, here too, workplaces are an important terrain for this struggle. Immigrant workers have led and continue to lead struggles for their regularization. It’s in the workplace that workers of different origins, skin colors, religions and cultures find themselves shoulder to shoulder. For it is this system of capitalist exploitation, which barricades itself behind borders and seeks to instill fear of foreigners, that has stirred up men and women from all over the world, driven them to migrate to the metropolises where they could join the ranks of the working class as never before in history, and it is this system that brought together for struggles and in struggles men and women whose common characteristic is to be exploited, and in a position to, all together, overthrow this society.
2.4- Our environmental battle: it’s the capitalist system of exploitation, ever more thirsty for profits, which submits the whole society to a productivism that destroys both man and nature. Swept away by accidents in the workplace, swept away by fires or floods, swept away by pollution. Fighting for the planet and the climate means fighting capitalism and capitalist property. Indeed, there is no shortage of scientists providing information on the roots of global warming and the depletion of biodiversity. There’s no shortage of ideas on how to solve the situation, nor of new ways of organizing production and social life, far beyond the technological gadgets that make the greenwashing of multinationals so prolific . But they all come up against the wall of money, the power and profits of the capitalist giants, of which Total is the totem. ‘Green processes’ (most often a lie) are only introduced in capitalist sectors deemed profitable, or often against the workers whose jobs are cut. So-called « green » struggles also come up against the wall of capitalism: that’s why we build them and intervene whenever we can, as revolutionary communists who recognize the central responsibility of the capitalist system and set ourselves the goal of confronting it. But for this to happen, the awareness and mobilization of the working class, also on this question, remains central and strategic.
2.5- Our organization intervenes under its own colors and with its own politics: to speak of the central role of workers does not mean that we relegate in the background the various terrains of struggle and politicization – notably against oppression and ecological devastation – which participate in the contestation of the current social order by regularly sparking mobilizations, particularly of the youth. On the other hand, this means that our organization intervenes from a class point of view, defending a revolutionary orientation. We assert that it is workers – in all their diversity – who have the capacity to put an end not only to capitalism and the exploitative relations on which it is based, but also to the oppressions it uses and reproduces.
It is within this general framework, without hiding or denying anything of our policy, that we are involved in mobilizations, demonstrations and rallies and in the unitary collectives that organize them on a national scale (we have seized the maximum opportunities to support these struggles and even to organize them, and intend to continue to do so). Among school-going youth, we must continue our mobilization work, and not hesitate to argument with the currents of the institutional or reformist left, with the autonomous and « autonomist » currents that refuse to see the central role of the working class. This is the main weakness of « post-modern » currents of thought, which do not rely on workers to wage these battles, but mainly on the petty bourgeoisie.
In the workplace, we use our various tools to campaign: our newspaper, our newsletters and our public meetings, such as the « No bosses, no borders » meeting organized with Lotta Comunista in May 2024. The battle to get trade unions to take responsibility for intervention on these issues is central. That’s why, in our trade union work, we have to put our money where our mouth is, working to ensure that workers themselves take charge of these struggles. The social-democratic and Stalinist leaderships of the labor movement have taken reactionary positions on this terrain of oppression, while at the same time fighting any revolutionary perspective. As a result, they have left these struggles in the hands of petty bourgeois movements – who have had the merit of fighting back. Revolutionaries must set themselves the goal of getting the workers’ movement back into the fight. Every discrimination or inequality, every industrial risk represents an opportunity to show through experience that on all fronts, it is through collective struggle and solidarity that we can reverse the balance of power, and that our class can drag other sectors of society along behind it.
3- We did much more than continue the NPA
The split of the former NPA at the December 2022 congress has, on the one hand, accelerated the opportunist drift of the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste (NPA-A), but, on the other, has enabled our NPA-Révolutionnaires to make the necessary political clarifications.
Since 2022, the former majority has been following our own bourgeoisie and NATO in the war in Ukraine, and following the institutional left even more closely. Not content with campaigning for the France Insoumise (FI, related to Mélenchon) at the European elections, the NPA-A rallied a left-wing alliance at the legislative elections, whose immediate vocation was to manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie. The former leadership of the NPA around Philippe Poutou and Olivier Besancenot is gradually abandoning any class compass.
It is this opportunist policy that explains the attempt by the former NPA leadership to effectively exclude half the organization at the 5th congress in December 2022. This split, which we fought against to the bitter end without being able to prevent it, marks a milestone in what the far left is in France, and a change in our own situation. Since December 2022, we’ve been striving to turn this change into an opportunity, firstly because we thwarted the NPA-A’s prognosis that we’d be split into multiple pieces, and that it alone could appropriate the legitimacy of an organization built together since 2009.
This congress is not the founding of a new party that would be the product of an influx of militants from outside, like the NPA when it was founded in 2009. Nor is it the product of a profound process of recomposition within the revolutionary far left that would mark a qualitative change visible to working people. Nor is it simply a continuation of the NPA or a front of fractions or tendencies. It’s the construction of a new organization that today goes beyond what the congress platform (platform C) was at the split congress, and which has its own experience of construction and intervention.
From this point of view, we’re not aiming for a name change other than the one that corresponds to the current situation: the addition of Révolutionnaires to the NPA’s name. We are not seeking to proclaim what remains to be built before us. That would amount to an abstract refoundation of our organization, based on no concrete experience of construction and intervention. On the contrary, we are developing a policy and a program, based on a shared understanding of the situation and our tasks.
In view of the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste’s shift to the right, we refuse to allow what the NPA has represented, or still represents, in a modest but real way, to be left to them. For the time being, our new name « NPA Révolutionnaires » doesn’t prevent us from doing anything, and certainly not from announcing on the front page of our press that we are communists, revolutionaries and internationalists – a popular way of claiming the legacy of Trotsky.
We don’t deny what we tried and did with and within the former NPA. We are heirs to those struggles, including those against the policies of the former leadership. We’ve gone from fighting against the split to building the NPA-Révolutionnaires: we now take full political and organizational responsibility for a new organization. So we’re doing more than just « continuing the NPA »: we’re taking a modest but very real leap forward.
We want to build a revolutionary and internationalist communist party that is sufficiently rooted in the working class, as well as in the youth, and capable of playing a role in the situation. The NPA-Révolutionnaires is not such a party. We have neither the illusion nor the pretension of being the embryo of this future party, around which it would suffice to add forces. On the contrary, we are deeply convinced that the emergence of such a party will be the product of recompositions and unification of groups and future revolutionary branches. This process will take place in the heat of the class struggle, in conjunction with the new layers of a workers’ avant-garde that has yet to emerge to any great extent today.
In this moment, we are at the beginning of a transition phase. A political transition guided by the idea of a « pole of revolutionaries », which shapes our politics. This transition is already taking shape and in two ways: on the one hand, the unification of our former groups and militants with no branch, through the construction of the NPA- Révolutionnaires. On the other, the desire to reach out to other revolutionary groups in France and around the world.
4- Unify by building the NPA-Révolutionnaires!
The policy of the NPA-Révolutionnaires is already not strictly that of one of the tendencies, groups or fractions. It is neither their simple juxtaposition, nor a lame compromise between them, for it has been elaborated in connection with the construction of the organization and its intervention, which has enabled a « common understanding of the situation and tasks ».
The construction of the NPA-Révolutionnaires is still very limited, as is our impact on the working class and youth. However, this process of unifying groups and militants from different traditions of Trotskyism, the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR) and Lutte ouvrière (LO), is unprecedented.
We have succeeded in maintaining a militant organization capable of intervening in the situation. Yes, we turned the split into an opportunity to put an end to the orientation that led the historic leadership of the NPA to break with the need to build a delimited organization of the reformist left. In the space of a few months, we managed to get a newspaper published (first monthly, then fortnightly), redeveloped a national treasury, won a separation agreement to ensure that our means of campaigning were not completely confiscated, organized national workers’ and summer meetings, and fought to safeguard our social networks, which had been destroyed by the B… These were all bets that might have seemed over-ambitious, but which we have so far won.
On the basis of our shared Trotskyite conceptions and absolute confidence in the ability of the working class to change the world, we chose to respond to the tasks of construction and intervention, i.e. to draw up a policy that we could at the same time implement. This method has already produced, and will inevitably produce, new program perspectives. This particular method has enabled us to build a new leadership, a new organization: the NPA-Révolutionnaires. As part of this construction, the two main branches, Étincelle and Anticapitalisme & révolution, are in the process of unification with each other and, above all, with the organization as a whole. This method is beginning to form the basis of a new political program, which is no longer quite the strict policy of one or other tendency, branch or fraction. We still have a great deal of testing and debate ahead of us before we can synthesize this program into a document, which could be a goal for the next congress.
In the face of the challenges posed by the former NPA leadership at the 5th congress, we reaffirm our attachment to the right to be organized in a tendency, including in the context of this unification.
5- For a pole of revolutionaries
We’re fully aware that we can’t build a revolutionary communist internationalist party on our own. This is self-evident. Less obvious, and less commonly accepted on the far left: we believe that, without waiting for the inevitable future recompositions, we need a compass, including for the here and now: the « pole of revolutionaries ».
It has the advantage of expressing a perspective, i.e. both a direction, a horizon, and a way of thinking how to get there, taking into account where we are today. So it’s the opposite of a hollow formula, a rattle, which would serve more as an identity marker. It’s the very imperative of seeking to think the situation and our intervention in relation to it, in relation to other militant forces on the far left. It’s the real search for militant links, for confrontations of ideas and analyses, for opportunities to express ourselves or appear in common whenever possible.
On the one hand, because in today’s fast-moving times, this real confrontation, while not a guarantee, is undoubtedly a major asset for navigation. Is this dialogue not possible within the existing frameworks? By reading the press of other organizations, by « debating » once a year at the Lutte Ouvrière party or at the RER, by discussing in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our universities? We think not. Firstly, because while these points of contact are essential, they could be greatly strengthened and systematized. Secondly, because it’s by seeking to intervene together, inside or outside struggles, that a real exchange can take place.
Secondly, because of the signal that a pole of revolutionaries would be likely to send out. The political landscape in France is dominated by three major options, three major « poles »: the far right, the Macronist « center » and the institutional left. We have no illusions about the ability of our organization alone to make the working class emerge as a force capable of asserting its own interests. That’s why we’re campaigning for the emergence of a pole of revolutionaries with the capacity to hold its own against the enemies and false friends of the workers.
A brief historical overview is in order. The idea is not new; it has even marked the history of Trotskyist groups in France. From 1968, when LO’s policy of regrouping revolutionaries ran up against the obstacle of its very small numbers, to 1995, when LO’s policy of calling for a party excluded other far-left groups from the initiative, notably the LCR, to 2008, when it was the LCR that called for a party – with LO refusing to take part, hiding behind vague programmatic limits. That said, common frameworks for intervention have marked the history of these organizations, on the electoral terrain – most recently, the joint LCR-LO European elections in 1999 and 2004 – but not only. So, our concern for the future has a long history and permeates the different branches of Trotskyism that are to be found in our NPA-R.
And the prospect is not illusory. The revolutionary far left has demonstrated its ability to win significant militant and electoral weight, and to gain popularity in public opinion. Between 1995 and 2007, the electoral scores of the extreme left, particularly in the presidential elections, helped it to raise the profile of workers’ spokespersons such as Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot, who have the ear and even the sympathy of hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers.
The militant weight of the extreme left in France is far from negligible, relative to other countries. A number of revolutionary groups claiming to be Trotskyist and existing on a national scale have a small but visible presence in the working class, as well as among young people. Extreme left-wing activists are not completely marginalized from the organized workers’ movement, and sometimes even occupy leading positions. The revolutionary left is not condemned to play a marginal role.
However, the idea of a pole of revolutionaries is now being posed in a renewed way. Faced with the increasingly bitter class confrontation resulting from the crisis of the capitalist system, revolutionaries can no longer be content to combine good electoral campaigns with a militant routine carried out each in his or her own lane, like Olympic runners. We need to demonstrate our usefulness to our class, our ability to influence the balance of power. Bringing together the forces of revolutionaries in militant action and public appearance would be an essential asset. But such a project needs to be formulated, and a political struggle waged to that end: that’s the sense of our orientation in favor of a pole of revolutionaries.
Without ignoring any disagreement of orientation, we are pursuing a policy of giving priority to the revolutionary organization that is both the closest politically and the largest numerically, namely Lutte o uvrière. This policy is embodied by our systematic participation in their party, having offered to take over joint NPA-LO debates. It was also expressed in proposals for a joint electoral campaign in 2024 for the European elections and then the legislative elections, in joint debates at our two rencontres d’été révolutionnaires, and in the proposal for a joint internationalist meeting, including with the Parti des travailleurs (PT), on May 1st, last May. Lutte ouvrière’s attitude towards us has evolved: from a refusal of any relationship beyond the minimum granted to any organization stamped revolutionary, to a certain embarrassment in justifying a posteriori separate lists for the legislative elections on the grounds of « lack of time ».
Far from focusing solely on the electoral terrain, our policy towards LO includes proposals for regular meetings between leaders, as well as between activists in sectors where real influence exists. By coordinating their efforts, revolutionary militants who have built up a foothold can change situations. Combining the strengths of our organizations in this way could have a qualitative impact beyond the simple addition of our forces.
Other revolutionary organizations in France claim to be Trotskyist, notably Révolution permanente and the Parti des travailleurs. While we seek to develop relations with all organizations claiming these principles, this does not imply a systematically similar policy.
Révolution permanente (RP) did not run in the European elections, and only in one constituency in the legislative elections. As part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people, RP’s policies were integrated into the Urgence Palestine movement. In the post-election sequence, RP and the PT sought to challenge the NFP on its left, on the issue of breaking with the Fifth Republic and its institutions.
Until now, intervention in struggles or in trade union work has never made it possible to go beyond one-off reports.
Being an activist for this pole does not imply any form of restraint in the construction of our organization. On the contrary, the NPA-R is a necessary instrument for this pole, insofar as it is currently the only far-left organization in France that makes this perspective a strategic axis for the balance of power between classes, as well as for the construction of a revolutionary party and a revolutionary international.
6- Our organizational priorities for moving towards a « small party of the proletariat »
At the NPA’s 5th congress in December 2022, our vision was to « become a small party of the proletariat in all its diversity », « a real tool for our class »: « The committees that form the basis of the party in towns, neighborhoods and workplaces must be a place where more and more workers, of all ages and all types of workplace, find their place. Big companies and small, permanent or unsecure jobs, isolated workers. And where they can discuss their daily lives and their individual and collective struggles. Where they can also discuss politics, and above all the revolutionary perspectives that their class should carry, both nationally and internationally. »
We insisted on parts of the working class where we are less established. We wanted to break out of a certain comfort zone: « The working class is multifaceted, covering an infinite variety of ages, sexes/genders, countries of origin, trades and training, status and degrees of precariousness, types of companies and sectors, public or private, which are increasingly difficult to distinguish… to which must be added workers whto are permanently or temporarily unemployed, and retirees. The committees could make it a priority to explore and bring together in their ranks or around them the maximum of this immense human wealth. In this way, we could become a small party of the proletariat in all its diversity: from the trade unionist at Renault or the SNCF, to the saleswoman on fixed-term contract at Décathlon, via the contract worker in the national education system, the bus driver or the home help … So many worlds to discover, to help organize to defend themselves, to train for the success of future struggles to change the world. »
6.1- Where do we stand?
Today, we have succeeded in overcoming the turbulence caused by the split. Our congress should serve to discuss and agree on a collective framework for structuring our organization.
Our main strength is our youth. There are many young comrades even among company activists in the best-off branches.
Digital development is a sine qua non for securing our future. How can we achieve this growth without losing consistency?
We need to make it a priority to strengthen and monitor all the « regional » groups, which are the only way to give our intervention a national dimension.
We operate in a wide range of business sectors (transportation, healthcare, social services, postal services, industrial chemistry, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, electronics, energy, water, commerce, logistics, IT, public administration, local authorities, aeronautics, etc.).
The reality of our presence among young people means that we can calmly envisage a twofold task: strengthening our presence in the blue-collar sectors where we are already present, but also genuinely envisaging our presence in industrial sectors where we are much more vulnerable, such as the automotive, chemical, microelectronic and aeronautical industries.
The proportion of women comrades in our organization, our leadership, must be a permanent political concern.
We want to build an organization with more « professional » militant requirements, focused primarily on the proletariat, and also on youth. Forging an organization of revolutionary cadres is a task for today, so that tomorrow we can seize the opportunities that will enable us to make the leap to the proletarian mass party. We must therefore strive to become autonomous and politically independent militants, capable of intervening in the very diverse situations offered by the class struggle.
This requires us to set priorities, because a small organization can’t do everything at once.
6.2- Political training for militants
The training of activists is fundamental to our organization’s ability to intervene. The commitment required to build a revolutionary movement in a period that is not yet revolutionary means that our choices and lifestyles must be consistent with our perspectives. This means that the organization must pool resources and make them available to all supporters and activists, so that they can be trained on an ongoing basis. It’s also a democratic requirement: training gives all militants the means to question the policy of the entire organization. It’s certainly not a catechism to be learned by heart, but a political capital of reference, to be updated as a tool for today’s struggles.
Up until now, training for militants has been handled almost entirely by the youth sector at central level, via national training weekends (WEF) and local or national courses and reading days.
Our mandate between now and the next congress is to take charge of training for all party members. This involves training courses adapted to different backgrounds and levels. The courses are different for students, comrades-turned-workers and workers who have joined our organization.
A first objective could be the development of specific courses:
– two training courses, one introductory and the other more in-depth, run at national level on fixed dates for newly-integrated comrades.
– a course for comrades wishing to gain experience and become more involved, preparing them to take on responsibilities in the organization’s various local and national bodies.
We also have a certain requirement in terms of common political culture, knowledge of the history of the workers’ movement and the history of Trotskyism. A common base of books, even if limited in number, with the necessary theoretical and practical discussions, would seem to be the right thing to do in this respect. The training of militants is also made up of their real experience, their ability to have an environment around them, necessarily linked to militant practices, an orientation and a political attitude in our concrete intervention towards the outside world. The pooling of all kinds of attempts to intervene in the class struggle is therefore essential, and forms the basis of our formation.
A national formation commission, elected by the CPN and in liaison with the Worker’s Commission, should be set up to ensure that the resources required for this policy are made available to local and national management teams.
6.3- Criteria for joining the NPA-Révolutionnaires
This congress should serve to pool the political criteria for integration, even if these remain to be fully defined. We’re not starting from scratch. First of all, we have the texts that we have all defended in the NPA, in particular Platform 5 of the 2021 presidential national convention, or more recently Platform C of the 5th NPA congress. We also have all the resolutions and declarations issued after the 5th congress and in recent months by the NPA-Révolutionnaires, the situation in Palestine and Ukraine for example. The first two editions of our RER were also an essential framework for developing the political foundations of our organization.
This congress should also serve to pool the training material used by all to date: reference texts, reading lists, reports on interventions in the struggle of class , etc.
For those who want to join us, we also insist on the militant nature of our organization. This implies participation in a committee meeting (the frequency of which should become weekly to encourage real intervention and implementation), as well as payment of a monthly membership fee and subscription to the journal Révolutionnaires. Membership of our organization also depends on actual experience and activity.
At this stage, integration is decided at committee level once political agreement has been reached, based on geographical criteria or intervention criteria.
Already, new comrades have joined us since the split. And already, discussions on common methods for their integration into the organization have multiplied in local committees and leadership bodies. It is on the basis of these experiences of the real construction of the NPA-Révolutionnaires, of the debates on integration choices that are shaping the organization we are building, and that are taking place in committees or any other structures, that we will be able to determine criteria and a common method for the future.
6.4- Establishing a foothold in the proletariat
We want to build a workers’ organization. That is to say, an organization with a political reputation, with credit, within the working class. In the long term, to be able to play a role and seize opportunities. To achieve this, there are no shortcuts: we need to strengthen our influence directly within companies.
Starting from where we are, we already have our work cut out for us. First of all, we need to give ourselves the means to centralize and structure our existing workforce. This means centralizing workplaces newsletters/ bulletins, setting up national branch meetings and structuring new branches where possible.
The second aspect concerns newly-hired comrades who are just beginning their militant involvement. We need to make it a priority to monitor and train all these comrades, to ensure that they find their place among the workers, in the union structures and in the struggles of tomorrow that they will have to lead. We have the political capital to build strike committees and organize struggles, a type of intervention against the bosses of course, but also against the union bureaucracies, that we want to pass on to this generation already active among us.
Thirdly, we need to expand into new strata of the working world. It is by projecting ourselves in the direction of small or large struggles, or even simply by developing political activities from the outside, that we can establish contact with a new working-class milieu. It’s a concern that should be at the heart of every committee’s discussions.
Last but not least, we encourage the hiring of young comrades who wish to join us and discuss the matter in targeted companies, in particular to strengthen our foothold in major industrial groups, the heart of the bourgeoisie’s economic and political power. It’s an exciting choice, but one that requires collective involvement of our organization and its political leadership bodies.
In this context, the National Worker’s Commission (CNO) must continue to carry out the work it has done so far: preparing the RNOs (annual meetings to discuss workplace matters), workshops specific to the RERs, and the various tasks of identifying, centralizing and exchanging information. If the follow-up of young recruits or young workers is to be a matter for the whole party, the CNO must centralize our establishments and pool our experience, which should be of benefit, in particular, to the youngest or isolated, at the time of recruitment and then during their first steps in the company. In this respect, the organization of Local Worker Meetings (Rencontres Locales Ouvrières) can address some of the very real concerns that arise in our day-to-day work. If necessary, the Commission will be responsible for organizing these meetings in conjunction with local management. The Commission will have to be elected by the CPN in its mandate for all these tasks.
But taking charge of our workers’ policy must be at the heart of our organization; it is the concern of all comrades, and in particular of local and national management bodies. This means that specific, even priority, time must be set aside on the agendas of meetings of these bodies, right up to the Commission, to take on this work.
6.5- Structuring the organization into local groups
Given our militant reality and the surface of our sympathizers, we could make both a quantitative and qualitative leap, whether in youth or the working class. This means structuring groups that can be responsible for party policy at local level.
In areas with a high concentration of militants, such as the Parisian region, this process has already begun with the creation of three Parisian federations, each with a body that meets on a weekly basis.
In some towns where several committees are grouped together, town board or something equivalent exist to lead or coordinate militant work, even if they are not always true political leadership.
The challenge is to further this structuring. Given our geographical fragmentation, it will inevitably be unsatisfactory and will not be sufficient in itself, especially as the geographical areas covered will be vast. But it is an indispensable step in our present state. The discussions at the congress should lay the foundations for the structuring work that the future CPN will have to carry out.
These groupings will meet at General Meetings, in particular to discuss CPN reports, and will set up coordination structures to ensure links with national management bodies and the implementation of the policy described in the congress texts.
6.6- The material means of our existence (finances and premises)
None of this would be possible without the sinews of war: financing our activities. We need to raise money, through membership fees, subscriptions and any other means possible. We’re not starting from scratch, and we’ve demonstrated our organization’s vitality and ability to raise funds: two subscriptions, two national elections (European, legislative) and a separation protocol that enabled us to keep the NPA’s historic premises. We still need to improve things, and in particular to introduce monthly payment of our subscriptions by direct debit. Political incentives and the generalization of the new dues scale adopted at the CPN must become the norm in each of our committees.
The acquisition of a national office in Paris should enable us to turn the page on the dilettante practices inherited from the old NPA. It will serve the Paris region, of course, but it’s also a premise for the whole organization, whose operation and financing we’ll have to manage collectively. It will be a formidable sounding board for the politics and construction of the NPA-Revolutionnaires.
6.7- Orderly service
(To be written)
6.8 Developing a militant revolutionary press
At the end of the 5th congress, we set up a new press system, since the NPA-L’anticapitaliste had left with all its previous press apparatus: website, social networks and newspaper.
Every week, the Publication Committee discusses the major orientations of our press. As early as the day after the 5th congress, it produced weekly editorials aimed at militant intervention in companies and neighborhoods. By the end of 2022, we had a website to develop more diversified and elaborate points of view. Since May 2023, we’ve also had a newspaper, Révolutionnaires (journal of the NPA-Révolutionnaires, for a workers’, communist and internationalist party). We felt it was essential to bring out a paper journal as soon as possible, as this form of press not only allows for political discussion and verification when writing articles – which any other form of press would also have allowed – but, above all, gives party structures the chance to project themselves outwards through public sales, and enables each militant to offer the journal to his or her milieu in hand-to-hand sales. A press system is an organizer at every level, and that’s exactly the role it played.
The editors of the website and journal are not limited to the members of the publication committee. The latter plays an important role in inviting members of the organization to write. In this way, it develops links with the various local committees and groups, commissions and branches. In parallel with the work of producing the journal, a distribution system has been set up, structured around press correspondents – often by committee, sometimes by federation. Both the Publication Committee and the press correspondents are thus essential bodies in the life of our organization, and play an important role in the process of political discussion between activists, whether they are new to or come from different political traditions.
The aim for the coming months is to widen the audience for our press system. On the one hand, by increasing sales and subscriptions to Révolutionnaires. And on the other by making a special effort to reach many more via our social networks: it’s a whole job that involves an articulation between the enhancement of our website’s content, efforts to make our spokespeople more visible and the production of special content adapted to RS (videos, visuals, community management). Our presence on the social network is far below our production of ideas and our real militant weight. This low audience partly explains our very poor access to the mainstream press, even during election campaigns. It’s a shortcoming we must take steps to rectify.
7- The youth sector of the NPA-Révolutionnaires: an achievement
The young sector of the NPA-Révolutionnaires, the NPA Jeunes révolutionnaires, played a crucial role in thwarting the attempted split- exclusion and turning it into an opportunity to turn the corner. How? By providing an available militant reserve capable of taking on the tasks of intervention and construction of our organization (retraites, Palestine, European and legislative elections, capacity to face repression, to take on tasks of securityand tasks of construction in its own right…). The youth sector and its existence are therefore an asset for our organization.
Over the past few years, our youth sector has been building momentum, and we’re determined to keep it going. At our scale, this bears witness to the politicization that exists among young people, the potential for our ideas to gain ground there, and the potential for our organization to expand. The CNJ (National Youth Conference) adopted a platform summarizing the youth sector’s activities since the 5thcongress, analyzing the political dynamics in the youth sector and providing it with a political orientation.
The vast majority of the young activists are organized in youth committees. Indeed, wherever possible, we prefer to organize d d young people directly at their place of study to discuss their recruitment and activities towards their milieu (university or high school). Not only because it’s easier for young people to recruit others, but also because in building « their » committee, young comrades take on responsibilities, including organizing a multitude of tasks and interventions. With this in mind, the youth sector has set up coordination and management bodies elected under the NPA statutes, such as the Parisian Secretariat (SRP), the National Youth Secretariat (SNJ) and its executive committe (BSJ).
This autonomy of the youth sector does not mean political independence from the rest of the organization: the activities of the youth sector are discussed throughout the organization, from federation offices or local teams to CPNs and CEs. However, the existence of a youth sector provides a framework in which to discuss the political and intervention issues facing young people today, particularly those in school, and to produce specific material (weekly editorial, four-page spread, stickers, posters, brochures, youth page in the newspaper, etc.). Other NPA-Revolutionary committees (particularly in cities) need to consider how they can help and support our work with young people (distribution to high schools, for example).
At at present, our youth sector is mainly based in universities (and to a lesser extent high schools), and is being built up in the wake of the politicization and mobilization phenomena that have swept through school-going youth in recent years, and which are unlikely to abate in the months ahead. We’re asking ourselves how we can reach young workers, including through certain training or apprenticeship centers.
Many young people are revolted by capitalist society. Our aim is to win them over to revolutionary communist ideas and the need to organize around them. Hence our desire to train young people interested in our perspectives in our Marxist program and its fundamental ideas, so as to enable all our militants to grasp the political stakes of a given situation and to have the means to convince those around them and intervene to play a role. This training takes different forms: from regular individual discussions, to the organization of « topos » and public meetings, as well as training weekends and reading courses . It’s in our interest to make these events as popular as possible , as they also serve to publicly display our revolutionary communist profile, and to feed our social networks, which enable us to make contact with a wider public.
This training goes hand in hand with our desire to seize opportunities to intervene and take initiatives in social and political mobilizations. We are seeking to build frameworks (collectives of un-registered students, Palestine committees, national student coordinations) that enable us to put forward our perspectives, but also allow movements to be led by those who make them happen. This is all the more necessary as youth mobilizations sometimes succeed in reaching out to working-class circles. The NPA Jeunes révolutionnaires, with its small credit in youth organizations, is a point of support for defending our policy and advancing the possibility of unitary initiatives (as recently on the Palestinian question). On an international level, it is also a way of reaching out to other groups, like the comrades of the GKS in the Basque country, and of contributing to the regroupment of revolutionaries on an international scale.
Our recruitment of pupils/students contributes to our construction towards the working class. Not only because young people help with our interventions in the working class from the outside,, but also because some of our youth sector activists, often at the end of their studies, are choosing jobs driven by the desire to carry out political and grassroots activities there. We need to support these comrades, in conjunction with the organization’s governing bodies.
Texts of platforms
- Platform 1 : For a world without borders and bosses, urgent revolution! Building the NPA-R as a tool for a pole of revolutionaries
- Plateform 2
- Plateform 3