School of Communism 2026

In July 2012, the Kurds living in northeastern Syria, led by the Syrian section of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), declared their autonomy in what became known as the Rojava Revolution. For the first time in their history the Syrian Kurds became masters over their own lives and destinies, and ruled their own homeland.

The Rojava Revolution at its peak was celebrated by some as a living example of anarchism in practice. It attracted the attention and raised the hopes of many radicalised youth on the left around the world.

Now, tragically, most of the gains of the revolution are being undone, under the blows of the Islamist regime in Syria. Although local councils were elected, and an armed militia composed of both men and women was formed, the revolution never proceeded to expropriate the landlords and capitalists.

Fred Weston will explain how all this unfolded, analysing how the ideas of the leader of the PKK – and its offshoot in Syria – Abdullah Öcalan, contributed to the stalling, and subsequent defeat, of the revolution. We need to learn from this experience and draw out the lessons for revolutionary communists.

🫵 Join the Revolutionary Communist International:
https://marxist.com/join-us.htm
📚 Marxist literature:
https://wellred-books.com/
📸 Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/revcomintern/
💬 Twitter:
https://x.com/revcomintern/

Scientific socialism did not spring from the mind of the young Marx like Athena from the head of Zeus. The development of Marxism – its method and fundamental ideas – was the result of a process driven by a combination of factors.

The major events of the first half of the nineteenth century in Europe; the feverish development of capitalism in Great Britain; the first independent mobilizations of the working class in France (and elsewhere); the influence of the ideas of Hegel, Feuerbach and the “utopian socialists”: these were the main premises Marx’s doctrine.

This talk – given by leading member of the PCR in France, Jerôme Metellus – will focus on his philosophical method, for it is upon this that the entire body of ideas of scientific socialism depends. Marxism marks a profound break in the entire history of philosophy. As Marx emphasized in the 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach, our philosophy seeks not only to interpret the world, but to transform it.

🫵 Join the Revolutionary Communist International:
https://marxist.com/join-us.htm
📚 Marxist literature:
https://wellred-books.com/
📸 Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/revcomintern/
💬 Twitter:
https://x.com/revcomintern/

We are often criticised by Maoists, or those at least sympathetic to Mao, as being nitpickers subjecting real revolutions to unrealistic purity tests. They say that in doing so, we effectively side with western imperialism, and fail to recognise the heroic anti-imperialist work of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.

If Mao was such an exemplar of anti-imperialism, how do we explain the Sino-Soviet Split, in which the world’s two largest planned economies fought against one another instead of uniting against imperialism? How do we explain Mao’s resulting embrace of Nixon and the precursor to the EU as part of his struggle with the USSR?

Why did these strange events take place, and what do they tell us about ‘Socialism in One Country? Why does Mao have such a strong reputation as an anti-imperialist if he collaborated with imperialist countries? Is China’s rise as an imperialist power a contradiction of Maoism, or a logical consequence? What are the relevant lessons for today’s epoch of imperialist proxy wars and the rise of China as imperialist? This talk by Daniel Morley will answer all these questions and more.

🫵 Join the Revolutionary Communist International:
https://marxist.com/join-us.htm
📚 Marxist literature:
https://wellred-books.com/
📸 Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/revcomintern/
💬 Twitter:
https://x.com/revcomintern/

The 1929 Wall Street crash was a defining moment. It precipitated the slump of 1929-31, the deepest slump ever experienced by capitalism. Of course, the bourgeois economists attempt to cover up the real reasons for the slump. The aim of this talk is to explain not only what happened but its causes in the endemic crisis of capitalist overproduction.

Rob Sewell in this talk will explore the consequences of the slump and how it also ushered in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Above all, we need to learn the lessons for today, which have never been more relevant with many of the symptoms of the crash emerging at this time.

👉 www.marxist.com/join
👉 https://www.youtube.com/@revcomintern

Marxism is often caricatured as a dull, grey theory, narrowly focused on politics and economics.

In fact the opposite is true.

As revolutionaries we are not only fighting for bread, but to emancipate the enormous cultural treasures of human civilisation which, today, are in the hands of a small minority. As Leon Trotsky put it, “not by politics alone does man thrive”. Communists must take a keen interest in art and culture, which are integral parts of the development of human society.

In this talk Alan Woods, leading theoretician of the Revolutionary Communist International, will examine some of the great revolutions in art and society, and the role of art in the emancipation of mankind.

👉 www.marxist.com/join
👉 https://www.youtube.com/@revcomintern