The Marxist Unity Caucus Platform

A group of rs21 members have come together as the Marxist Unity Caucus. We publish their Platform statement in this post.

Earlier this year, a group of rs21 members came together to form the Marxist Unity Caucus (MUC). The following article is their political platform, originally circulated internally in February, which makes the case for a particular strategy and set of priorities for rs21. 

The MUC’s intervention is part of ongoing debates within rs21 about organisation and strategy, and reflects a wider discussion occurring on the left. We are publishing their platform here in the interests of openness and as a contribution to that wider discussion.

Marxist Unity Caucus

A Platform for Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century

At its foundation in 2014, rs21 rejected many of the worst organisational practices of the British left, and instead adopted a somewhat minimalistic form of organisation. This has had many positive effects, allowing rs21 to become a pluralistic organisation capable of creativity, of experimentation, of rethinking outdated dogmas, of building a positive and inclusive internal culture, and of drawing upon ideas from a wide variety of radical traditions.

However, while rs21 has always had a clear sense of what it doesn’t want to be, it has lacked a clearly articulated vision of its own future as an organisation and of its role in the wider movement. Partly this reflects a healthy degree of humility and the kind of self-awareness necessary to avoid the problems that often arise in self-declared vanguards, but it has been an overcorrection. 

The scale of the Palestine solidarity movement and the recent left-of-Labour electoral successes show that there is space for revolutionary politics in Britain. However, the rightward lurch seen in the growth of Reform, and the restrictions of civil liberties, pose serious dangers to those organising for a better world. 

Compared to our organisation in 2020, with around 100 real active members, minimal branch infrastructure and direction, we now find ourselves at triple that size, with facilities and resources, and having become a pole of attraction for a new generation of militants. This poses for the first time since our foundation, serious questions about how we intervene – whether at the branch, fraction, or national level. 

We can’t overthrow capitalism without being ambitious, and that does mean taking our own organisations seriously. This means that we need to review and develop rs21’s internal structures and processes to make sure that our organisation is fit for purpose, and we need to develop a clear strategy for how we are working collectively to help build a movement capable of smashing the British state and overthrowing capitalism.

A. Where have we come from?

A group of us from across different branches within rs21 have been coalescing around a shared political perspective (informed particularly by publications such as Prometheus in Britain and Cosmonaut in the USA) and a shared vision for the organisation. For some time, we have been coordinating informally over motions for rs21’s All Member Assembly and interventions in rs21’s Internal Bulletin. In June of 2024, as an initial attempt to broaden these conversations, we launched the Renewing Marxism reading group with a statement in rs21’s Internal Bulletin outlining our broad perspective. 

We think the time has now come to articulate our political perspectives in a way that reflects the organisation we want rs21 to become: an open, democratic organisation, comfortable with its political differences and its unity in diversity, capable of effectively intervening with Marxist politics at the national and local level. 

We believe that operating openly as a formally organised caucus with a clear platform is a more democratic and more transparent way to engage in the internal politics of an organisation. It is also more inclusive than coordinating informally through personal networks, and we have seen it work well in the US and Ireland in the Democratic Socialists of America and People Before Profit respectively. We would encourage and welcome the development of other such openly declared caucuses within rs21.

B. What is to be done in Britain’s left?

1. Building a mass revolutionary party rooted in the working class

We cannot limit our horizon merely to the formation of another broad left electoral party uniting everyone under a “left” banner. These parties inevitably come to prioritise electoral work above all else, with the revolutionary wing silencing itself or moving rightwards to appease the right and prevent splits. 

We need a revolutionary party capable of merging socialism with the existing self-organisation of the working-class movement. If kept apart, they are each weak on their own. This merger is necessary to raise the working class’s awareness of its world-historic mission to win the battle for democracy and for communism, to elevate the class struggle to the terrain of high politics, and to confront the capitalist state. 

A revolutionary party is also an essential prerequisite for any serious programme of organising at mass scale. The party serves as a national infrastructure facilitating the creation and development of branches across the whole of Britain. Those branches must then act as local hubs for supporting, coordinating, and initiating different campaigns and organisations for advancing the struggle across workplaces and communities. We can’t choose between “party-building” and “community organising” – they have to go hand in hand.

As events develop in the coming year, rs21 will have the question of how it relates to new ‘left of Labour’ initiatives, pushed by the existing far left and those exiting Labour. We must do so in a principled manner, arguing clearly for a revolutionary Marxist politics, and without losing sight of the mass revolutionary party as the organisational horizon. 

It would be premature at this stage to dictate in advance the exact programme of such a party, but its broad defining features would be its commitment to:

(i) The overthrow of capitalism

While we may enter into broader coalitions alongside those fighting merely for reforms within capitalism, it is essential that those of us seeking to overthrow capitalism have our own distinct political organisation dedicated to that long-term goal.

(ii) Opposition to the British state, entailing:

• Opposition to Britain’s imperialist interventions
• A refusal to enter into government on anything less than a programme capable of establishing working-class political rule and beginning the transition to socialism

It is through the state that the movements of the working class again and again are repressed, neutered, divided, and co-opted. It is essential that the party has a critical analysis of the state’s role in capitalist society, and that we are resolute in recognising that combating the British state is amongst the principal tasks of socialists in Britain.

(iii) Solidarity with all oppressed groups, and a refusal to compromise with chauvinism, particularly in relation to feminism, anti-racism, migrant solidarity and LGBT solidarity

Far from being a distraction from class politics, a principled position on other issues of oppression is necessary for uniting the working class in all its diversity. The class system is always racialised and gendered, and class domination is shot through with racism, gendered violence, border violence, and so on. It is therefore only through such solidarity that we can deflect reactionary efforts to drive wedges within our coalition by stoking chauvinism.

(iv) Class struggle, not mere electoralism

While articulating different struggles together onto the terrain of high politics and intervening in electoral contests are essential functions of the party, it cannot be electoralist in the manner of the Westminster parties. The party must be engaged in supporting and coordinating struggles across communities and workplaces, and its electoral work must always be completely subordinated to the needs of the wider class struggle.

(v) A democratic structure and a lively democratic culture, facilitating broad pluralism within the above bounds

The lack of pluralism, the bans on internal factionalism, and the excessively centralised leaderships of the traditional Leninist model of the party have helped contribute to an endless cycle of splits and ever-increasing fragmentation of the British left. We need to unite around a common programme as a basis for action, but our party needs to be capable of containing different theoretical tendencies and political traditions, and we need to be able to air our disagreements in a healthy and productive way.

In order to build such a party, certain other things will need to be done:

2. Regroupment of existing Marxist forces and political organisations

Our fragmentation makes us much weaker than the sum of our parts, but there is a deeper political problem here. The greater the number of different competing organisations which all claim to be the true inheritors of the flame of revolutionary Marxism, the harder it is for anyone to take their claims seriously, and the harder it is for anyone to take the very idea of Marxist political organisation seriously. 

Far too often, we hear that the British far left is ‘too small, fragmented, and isolated’, without any proposals for how this is to be changed in the medium term – this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Comrades need to be able to answer the question of how we attain a sufficient concentration of Marxists to intervene in politics at the national level – incremental recruitment to our fragmented groups is not enough. 

This requires the following:

3. Active engagement between existing Marxist organisations

The standard mode of operation on the British left is ‘quiet sectarianism’ – where it is rare to mention other groups and political differences are only discussed in private. This is a problem because principled joint work in the medium-term, and unity in the long-term, require discussions, debates, meetings, and written exchanges between Marxist organisations. This does not just mean trying to talk ourselves into unprincipled unity. It will mean serious discussions about our strategic and political differences – which are real. Perhaps it won’t ultimately be possible for everyone to regroup into the same organisation, but without serious engagement across different groups, we can’t even have a clear understanding of our differences. 

In order to engage in effective joint work or to work towards longer-term unity, rs21, as an organisation, must articulate clearly and precisely what is distinct about our politics. We therefore will need collective discussion about our own red lines. 

4. Building unity from below

It won’t be enough simply to get the leaderships of these groups talking to each other. There will also need to be discussion, cross-pollination, and collaboration at the grassroots between members of different organisations, and between those who aren’t members of any political organisation. Partly this is a question of building the organic links that can help to make regroupment possible, but it’s also about putting more pressure on the leaderships of these groups to take the issue of regroupment seriously.

Some of this already happens all the time across the country in trade union branches, in local Palestine groups, and in all kinds of other local campaigns. Many of us are already engaged in these struggles, but we must be proactive about using them to engage with comrades from different tendencies and to push forward the conversation about regroupment.

In a context where people are deeply dismissive of work with revolutionary organisations on the British left, we must reclaim the practice of principled joint work – particularly where Marxists and the broader left are under attack from the right and the British state.  

5. Building forums for political dialogue

While there are some positive initiatives in particular areas, and some media projects actively engaged with the conversations about regroupment, there is not enough. We need to make sure that across the country, at the local and at the national level, there are adequate forums where activists and socialists from different tendencies can come together to have serious conversations about politics. And we need to make sure that regroupment is on the agenda in those conversations. In some areas, this will mean supporting existing initiatives, such as STRIKE! MCR or local Transformed groups, but in other areas it will mean starting new projects.

Part of this will be ensuring that we are seeking to actively bring others within the existing Marxist left into our public events. 

C. What is to be done in rs21

1. Establishing Marxist regroupment and the development of a mass revolutionary party as our key strategic objectives, and developing a practical strategy to work towards those objectives.

2. Reviewing and formalising our internal processes and structures

This will include:

(a) Adopting a written constitution and code of conduct.

rs21 has so far been structured in a fairly loose way. For a small organisation with a positive internal culture, this can work, but as our organisation grows, it will become unsustainable. Having well-defined, consistently applied, clearly accessible rules is particularly important for enabling new members to understand how the organisation functions, and will be essential for retaining our democratic culture as the organisation expands.

(b) Ensuring better transparency for the Steering Group.

Communication between the Steering Group (SG) and members or local branches is often mediated in practice primarily through personal relationships. Again, this can work in a small organisation, but it will create more and more problems as we grow. Particularly for new members who don’t have personal relationships with SG members, the activities of the SG and the way it functions can be very obscure. 

• Minutes from SG meetings are available in the Google Drive, but keeping these up-to-date and actively circulating them across the membership needs to be given greater priority.
• Summaries of the key decisions from SG meetings should be posted promptly on the Discord announcements channel.
• The members handbook states that members can attend SG meetings as observers. This right should be formally enshrined within the proposed constitution alongside other members’ rights, and a mechanism for enabling members to take up this right should be established and regularly advertised to the membership.

(c) Establishing a clear political basis for membership

Currently there is no clear criteria of the political requirements for membership (i.e. what do you need to agree with in order to join rs21?). Without this being clearly defined, the process of recruitment can be unnecessarily difficult and confusing (both for prospective new members and for us trying to recruit people) – new members risk finding that they have joined an organisation with very different political expectations than what they thought they were signing up to.

Eligibility for membership is worked out quite informally through a phone call between prospective members and our organisers, with the SG entitled to block new applicants on the very vague grounds of “on the basis of a serious clash with political positions that the organisation has made clear through its publications, motions or other interventions”. This is excessively subjective and liable to be interpreted in very different ways by different individual SG members.

In 2024, we passed a motion from our Programme Working Group, establishing the new website ‘About Us’ page as “a key point of reference for defining the politics of the organisation”, but this has no more formal role in the membership process. We should use that document as a starting point for defining a clear political basis for membership so that prospective new members can know what they are signing up to. 

3. Politicising internal elections

Comrades should not be elected primarily based on personal popularity or technocratic ability, but should openly declare their perspective on the political and organisational questions of what rs21 ought to be doing. This is most important for SG elections, given that the SG functions as the political leadership of the organisation.

4. Developing a publications strategy which reflects the organisation’s internal diversity

Our organisation is rightly proud of its democracy and its lack of a strict political ‘line’ forced upon its members from above. This has led to a healthy diversity of opinion within the organisation. We should ensure that this is reflected in our communications, where we should avoid an implicit orthodoxy developing, and instead should consciously seek to reflect the differing views and politics present within rs21 on issues where we lack a formally agreed collective position.

At the moment, our publications are conducted in an ad hoc manner, making it difficult to properly prioritise where our work has particular political importance (for instance, on Palestine solidarity or on trans liberation). 

We should develop a regular publication, or in the absence of this, a strategy for how publication work is to develop over the year, and be integrated into our wider activity. 

5. Developing a serious political education programme

Political education is one of the most essential tasks of any Marxist organisation. It is essential for developing our members and their skills and confidence and capacities, but it is also essential for outwards facing activity.

Having an accessible and participatory programme for education is also essential for addressing issues of diversity. ‘Theory’ is too often perceived as an exclusive preserve for a self-selecting academic (and often male and middle-class) elite – and this can create an atmosphere that is self-reinforcing. Theoretical and strategic knowledge, discussion, and debate, need to be comprehensively democratised.

The work that has already started on rs21’s new ‘cadreisation’ programme is a brilliant start, but this needs to be deepened, expanded, rolled out across the entire organisation, and treated as a major priority for rs21.

6. Developing a strategy for branch activity 

rs21 branches often don’t have a clear sense of what they should be doing, and it can be difficult for branches to get sustained activity going without some support and guidance from the wider organisation. 

We should reassert the importance of the branch as a site of political education, bringing our direct experiences of struggle together with wider political and theoretical discussions. Branches should also become the site for democratic engagement with discussion of rs21’s national policy and activity. Where branches develop to a sufficient number, propagandistic and agitational work should be done in a more concerted manner, on the basis of collective evaluation and agreement about our priorities for political intervention.

We should build on the cadreisation plans presented at the September 2024 AMA, developing individual members through education projects and strengthening internal democracy through rigorous engagement with rs21’s internal politics at the branch level.

Participation in the class struggle is an equally vital educational experience and should be done collectively by the branch as far as possible, or at least fed back for group discussion. This has the benefit of ensuring that branches have a tangible outward effect and don’t become insular.

7. Developing a more proactive strategy for recruitment and the development of new branches

We have always been somewhat shy about recruiting for fear of coming across too much like the SWP and being seen as cynical or self-interested. There are real dangers here, and we are right to be wary, but we have overcorrected somewhat. 

We think rs21 is a valuable organisation, we think it is important for Marxists to join and to be active in Marxist organisations, and we think rs21 can be more effective and achieve more if it has more members. We also enjoy being members of rs21! We therefore think we should adopt a more proactive strategy for recruitment of new members and for establishing new branches.

Developing a serious political education programme and developing a strategy for branch activity will be necessary prerequisites for recruiting more proactively.

Edit 19 June 2025: A reply to this article is now online – How do we build revolutionary organisation?