The real and potential circumstances ushering in 2024 are the following: as local elections lay ahead, an array of possibilities awaits. If these opportunities can be utilized properly, they are likely reveal themselves to have been the first step towards a fruitful season of spring between March and May 2024. To think of these months in terms of a comprehensive and systematic tactical plan with political and organizational dimensions, and concentrating and managing the forces in the most effective and efficient way to realize this plan is the basic condition for revolutionary success.
We are embarking on a new year of struggle, bringing along the conditions and experiences accumulated in the last year.
2023 consisted in form of two primary political conjunctures. The February 6 earthquake and the elections determined these two paths and therefore the total conditions of the class struggle. The earthquake fundamentally shook the hegemony of the political Islamist fascist regime and the bourgeois order as a whole. The contradiction and rupture between the state and the people deepened significantly. Despite promising conditions — the laboring left managed, with all its factions, to realize a politics of people’s solidarity —the aftermath of the earthquake went the opposite direction during the elections.
The 2023 elections were a moment of the reactionary-fascist hegemony over the working class and the oppressed. Majority of the laboring left movement backed up the bourgeois opposition, turning on the oppressed. It rendered its political independence and its very reason for existence even, meaningless. The re-election of political Islamist fascist autocrat Erdogan created a new political climate. He did not hesitate to increase political and economic terror after his election victory. Imposing policies of tax raises, he condemned the working class and the poor to the incredibly miserable conditions. Tens of millions of workers who clung to the hope of change and relied on the bourgeois opposition found themselves in even harsher economic and political conditions than before.
Political subjects, oppressed social classes and segments of society who have been struggling with the political Islamist fascist regime throughout 2023, began raising their voices and organizing actions again, in protest against steadily worsening economic, political and social living conditions following the election period. Working class organizations stood up and resisted against fascism and capital, against the deteriorating and increasingly unbearable living conditions and for the right to organize. Student youth stood together in thousands to protest against the terrible conditions of KYK dormitories, where death and suicide have occurred more than once. Our people remained by the side of the oppressed Palestinian people against Israeli Zionism, which wanted to stifle the revolutionary efforts of the Palestinian national liberation organizations with genocide. Women demonstrated a strong response in form of the November 25 protests against the ‘sacred family’ and Erdogan’s policies— protests that demand allegiance. And the Kurdish people took action to stop the fascist’s colonial war, occupation and absolute isolation on the Imrali prison island.
2024 started in light of these dynamics, which had steadily gained momentum and expanded over the past twelve months. 2024 will certainly be a new, yet difficult year of struggle for our people and the laboring left. The discontent and anger of our working class and the people towards the economic and political terror of the political Islamist fascist regime continues to grow, day by day. The year 2024 lays before us like an open-ended timetable waiting to be completed, with all its revolutionary possibilities and ideo-political risks. It gives our entire laboring left movement and the revolutionary socialists the time and opportunity to reproduce and amplify themselves politically. Ultimately, the we must ask ourselves: How can we win 2024?
The answer to this question will undoubtedly differ, depending on the standpoint of those asking an those responding to the question, it may vary according to different political and organizational needs. We will try to provide the answer to this question from a concrete standpoint, excluding political perspectives of all other denominations, representing revolutionary socialists and considering the needs of the revolutionary vanguard.
In What Should Be Done, Lenin emphasizes that
“Without a strong organization that is adapt at engaging in political struggle under all conditions and at all times, there cannot be a systematic plan worthy of being called tactics, enlightened by sound principles and carried out with determination.”
and ties the relationship between organization and tactics to precise criteria. In the same work, he underlines that the tactics of an organization that is “well-established and has effective forces” will differ from those of an organization that is not. Lenin boldly outlines the minimum organizational structure and framework necessary for a revolutionary tactic.
There is a measurable difference between revolutionary socialists acting as a unified tactical force as opposed to acting as an independent and stand-alone tactical force. Likewise, the tactical efficiency of Marxist-Leninist communists in different geographies of struggle are different and unequal. These conditions are therefore a prerequisite for implementing ‘tactics as a plan’. Proceeding from here on: winning 2024 can only be realized through a series of tactical policies based on the revolutionary dialectics of possibility and reality. In the relationship between possibility and reality, two aspects must be considered. The first is the organizational situation of the communist vanguard. The second is the situation of the oppressed surrounded by certain political conditions.
In any case, winning 2024 is a matter of ‘tactics as a plan’. Revolutionary socialists can transcend their given organizational reality and develop into a meaningful tactical force solely by responding to the multifaceted needs of the political struggle and taking on a leading position by doing so. This is the path of development of all revolutionary parties. Like every new political conjuncture, the the new year is presented to us with various revolutionary possibilities. Selecting the opportunities that we will count on for revolutionary development, working them into a tactical plan and adamantly implementing this plan will lead to revolutionary success. The real and potential circumstances ushering in 2024 are the following: as local elections lay ahead, an array of possibilities awaits. If these opportunities can be utilized properly, they are likely reveal themselves to have been the first step towards a fruitful season of spring between March and May 2024. To think of these months in terms of a comprehensive and systematic tactical plan with political and organizational dimensions, concentrating and managing the forces in the most effective and efficient way to realize this plan is the basic condition for revolutionary success.
Revolutionary socialists have the mission and responsibility of utilizing opportunities in the best and most efficient way and must act accordingly. Local elections bear the opportunity to reveal all the possibilities and tools of localization in revolutionary politics. Establishing new meaningful and close ties with the oppressed and poor masses is not only entirely possible, but facilitated even by the given conditions that grow more and more favorable by the day. Revolutionary socialists can win 2024 by becoming vanguards on a line of localization, popularization, massification and —as the concrete equivalent of all these— organizational development and growth. Local elections should be understood as the organizational and tactical plan to reach localization. The local elections, where relations with the working masses will be established, should be organized as a process in which the vanguard joins with the masses in making politics. Gaining local power positions is the main goal of this type of election work.
The political and social themes of local policy and localization should be determined very well. For example, the decay of the ruling order and the decay of society as a dimension of it are reflected in the working classes in a reality of drug trafficking and mafia. A meaningful relationship and cohesion with workers cannot be achieved by overlooking this burning issue in the localization strategy. The awareness against corruption, mafia and drugs, which is under strong popular demand in the working-class districts, is our basis for political and organizational development. On the other hand, the earthquake issue covers large masses as well, opening similar opportunities where possibilities of localization and organized politics accumulate. Organizing the demands of the masses and raising them hand in hand, relying on all the achievements of the past year in this regard, can and will make revolutionary socialists a material presence among the masses.
The revolutionary socialists must make an organizational and tactical plan to win 2024 a subject of targeted work that will increase quality and capacity of the vanguard. To recruit new forces and form a party, to regain lost positions and areas, to gain and improve the political and creative style of work, to increase its tactical power and capacity, to gain qualifications in all respects…
On duty to win 2024 on behalf of the vanguard and the working masses!
*Editorial of the 149th issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated January 5.