by the Editorial Staff of Railroad, March 2025

Some contextualizing remarks are in order for our publication of “(N)CPC-CC Reply to the OCR’s Red Salute.”

“(N)CPC-CC Reply to the OCR’s ‘Red Salute’” was produced as a response to the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (US)’s “Red Salute on the Formation of the (New) Communist Party of Canada and the Publication of its Party Program,” which was published at kites-journal.org in February 2024.

When the (N)CPC published its Political Program in January 2024, the OCR’s “Red Salute” followed within a couple weeks of it. While a laudatory statement in many ways, “Red Salute” also constituted a serious intellectual and political challenge to foundational aspects of the just-released Political Program of the (N)CPC. Furthermore, “Red Salute” was not only a public criticism but one published by the theoretical collaboration that the (N)CPC was associated with—and it came from fraternal comrades. “Red Salute” warranted a comprehensive and equally-public response. Only, its “Reply” triggered the end of the kites project, closing off the debate (at least in kites) and leaving the outstanding public criticisms unaddressed—not the outcome that the (N)CPC had intended or hoped for.

With the publication of the (N)CPC’s Political Program in January 2025, the OCR was eager to differentiate itself from certain lines in the new Political Program of the (N)CPC that were in tension with strategic lines of OCR’s that had been running through previous volumes of kites, and that differentiation came in the form of a public criticism of the program. What comrades of the OCR perhaps did not expect was that the (N)CPC might actually have a fulsome response to the criticisms issued to it. In the process of the exchange that ensued, unity could not be found on how to carry on with the theoretical collaboration of kites given the very distinct political lines that had emerged from within it. And so, it is here, in the inaugural issue of Railroad, that the “Reply” is finally being published.

This pair of documents, “Red Salute” and the “Reply,” encapsulates an important debate that arose between our two revolutionary communist organizations over the course of our collaboration in kites. While unity was cultivated across the pages of kites and between the two organizations backing its publication, differences also emerged and sharpened through the work. As anyone who studies the “Red Salute”–”Reply” exchange will see¹ these differences pertain to questions of class analysis and revolutionary strategy, including how we define the labour aristocracy, the lower and deeper sections of the proletariat and the proletariat as a whole and where we draw lines between it and the petty bourgeoisie, as well as how we analyze the industrial proletariat and its role in the revolutionary struggle for socialism in the US and Canada today. Basically, entirely legitimate questions to be up for debate among revolutionaries today.

Our Editorial Staff has waited until now to release the (N)CPC’s “Reply” not only so that Railroad was launched and operational but also for when more material was available from the (N)CPC that addresses some of the key questions and matters arising in the “Red Salute”–”Reply” exchange. Topmost among these is the question of workers’ centrality, which we now have a much deeper elaboration about in the form of the (N)CPC-CC’s new labour line, “Long March Through the Unions: Forging a revolutionary working class on shop floors and the streets.” Whereas our Party’s “Reply” laid down its position within the long-running labour-aristocracy debate, staking the position that “communist revolutionaries can…” and must “begin contesting the domination of the labour aristocracy over the working class,” the new labour line from the (N)CPC is the materialization of the will toward that revolutionary task. “Long March…” builds on the “Reply” by advancing the analysis, strategy and tactics to orient communists toward their revolutionary tasks in the labour force, unions, industry and the working-class struggle for power.

The Editorial Staff of Railroad appreciates that each side of the kites project has given rise to new communist organizations that seem equally oriented toward proletarian revolution in North America. These are very positive developments in the regrouping of and unity-struggle among new communist forces in the imperialist countries. (And we’re looking eagerly to comrades in Europe, outside of a limited few specific countries, for news of comparable developments!)

One of the most important aspects in these developments is the furtherance and maturation of the struggle for the correct strategic line and analysis in the imperialist countries—and this is precisely what this pair of documents represents: a struggle for the correct strategic line. This is why we believe their study is important for communist revolutionaries elsewhere, particularly those in the imperialist countries facing the exact same questions.

Our Editorial Staff looks forward to a fruitful and comradely exchange on these matters with all fraternal communists who dare to build the vanguard that will drive and lead the second wave of the international proletarian revolution, which precisely means to make proletarian revolution for the first time ever in the declining, crisis-ridden western-imperialist countries and the Anglo-American Imperialist Alliance once and for all!

Endnotes

1 Our Editorial Staff certainly encourages people to read the OCR’s “Red Salute” as well (available at kites-journal.org) if they haven’t already done so and to do so before reading the “Reply”.