Dell
Capitalism is an interwoven system of economic, political, and state institutions whose influence reaches into nearly every aspect of modern life. Despite repeated uprisings by workers and struggles for working-class liberation in America, many movements have been crushed or diverted from their revolutionary aims. This repression has been carried out through the institutions of the capitalist state and its coercive apparatus: the police, military, intelligence agencies such as the FBI, and the political establishment represented by both the Democratic and Republican parties.
From the 1960s through the 1970s, we saw the last true revolutionary wave among the masses. There were anti-war protesters, communist organizations, the Black Panthers, and various nationalist organizations working together. Despite the repression these groups faced, the anti–Vietnam War movement did win an important victory: the war became so unpopular that the U.S. government was forced to withdraw. Students burned an estimated 25,000 draft cards, the U.S. suffered a catastrophic defeat and lost the moral battle at home.
But despite this achievement, what was missing? Why were the broader demands of the movement not met—ending racism, ending the unequal treatment of women, and calling for an end to Western imperialism? These issues still exist today and, in some places, remain just as severe as before.
Lenin and Trotsky explained that in order for a revolutionary situation to develop, four factors needed to be present:
- The ruling class becomes divided and begins fighting among itself, leaving it unable to govern in the same way as before.
- The upper-middle-class, labor aristocratic, and intellectual student layers of society begin losing faith in the capitalist system and move toward left-wing movements and ideas.
- The working class engages in struggles against the exploitation and oppression it faces in its daily life.
- The most difficult factor: the working class must reach a level of class consciousness where it understands that capitalism cannot simply be reformed, but must ultimately be overthrown.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first three conditions had emerged to varying degrees. The fourth—the development of sufficient revolutionary consciousness and an organized leadership capable of guiding the movement toward revolution—remained incomplete.
Historically, many communist and socialist organizations in the United States failed to construct a genuinely united vanguard rooted in the most oppressed layers of the working class. Many organizations prioritized conservative trade union leaders willing to compromise with capital, minimized or sidelined PGM (People of The Global Majority meaning Black, Brown, and Indigenous) struggles, capitulated to reformism, or accommodated racist practices within organized labor. These failures alienated the most radical layer of workers, creating the conditions for new independent revolutionary movements to emerge outside the traditional left.
The Black Panther Party arose in direct response to these failures. Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, thousands of young Black people were radicalized to a degree not seen before. The Panthers built mass support both nationally and internationally because they understood the material relationship between race, class, and imperialism. By centering the needs, struggles, and self-determination of Black communities, they created a revolutionary organization that resonated with those whom much of the traditional left had failed to reach. Their community survival programs—including free breakfast programs, medical clinics, childcare initiatives, and political education—demonstrated that revolutionary politics must address people's concrete conditions rather than rely on abstract slogans alone.
But the Panthers’ trajectory also reveals important lessons. While it is a wonderful thing to help communities and assist in mutual aid. A revolutionary cadre organization must also maintain its central responsibility: intervening directly in working-class struggle while organizing and educating workers on the necessity of socialist revolution. During the Panthers' years of activity, between 4000-6000 strikes and major work stoppages occurred across the United States. These labor struggles presented opportunities for revolutionary organizations to deepen their roots within the working class by helping organize strikes, supporting rank-and-file workers, and connecting economic struggles to a broader socialist program.
The 1970 U.S. Postal Strike illustrates the scale of working-class militancy during this period. More than 200,000 postal workers walked off the job, shutting down mail service across the country.
President Richard Nixon was forced to deploy troops in an unsuccessful attempt to restore operations, but they could not replace the workers. Moments like this presented enormous opportunities for a disciplined Marxist organization capable of uniting workplace struggles with a revolutionary political program. Yet because of ideological fragmentation across the left, confusion surrounding Stalin and the Soviet Union, and an overreliance on guerrilla tactics among some organizations, no revolutionary party was able to provide unified leadership to the movement. Assata Shakur herself wrote about this problem in her autobiography:
“I felt that the Party was dealing from an emotional rather than a rational basis. Just because you believe in self-defense doesn’t mean you let yourself be sucked into defending yourself on the enemy’s terms. One of the Party’s major weaknesses, I thought, was the failure to clearly differentiate between aboveground political struggle and underground, clandestine military struggle. An aboveground political organization can’t wage guerrilla war anymore than an underground army can do aboveground political work. Although the two must work together, they must have completely separate structures, and any links between the two must remain secret. Educating the people about the necessity for self-defense and for armed struggle was one thing. But maintaining a policy of defending Party offices against insurmountable odds was another. Of course, if the police just came in and started shooting, defending yourself made sense. But the point is to try and prevent that from happening.” [1]
Lenin too himself spoke of why dispersed isolated acts of violence only leads to serious disorganization due to the balance of forces not being on the side of the revolutionary organization:
“That a discrepancy of this sort exists cannot be doubted by any conscientious person who has even the slightest acquaintance with the movement. And if that is so, it is evident that the present-day terrorists are really “economists” turned inside out, going to the equally foolish but opposite extreme. At a time when the revolutionaries are short of the forces and means to lead the masses, who are already rising, an appeal to resort to such terrorist acts as the organisation of attempts on the lives of ministers by individuals and groups that are not known to one another means, not only thereby breaking off work among the masses, but also introducing downright disorganisation into that work.” [2]
Additionally, the Panthers faced their own internal challenges, compounded by contradictions within the organization, male chauvinism, COINTELPRO repression, political fragmentation, and unresolved debates surrounding nationalism, coalition-building, and strategy. These vulnerabilities weakened their ability to consolidate long-term revolutionary capacity despite the Party's profound political impact.
Lenin explained that while the working class can develop socialist consciousness through its immediate struggles, a revolutionary party is necessary to advance consciousness and give direction to the movement:
“If every strike were a conscious step towards socialism, there would be no need for leadership or a party... the party must be able to work out organizational relations that will ensure a definite level of consciousness and systematically raise this level.” [3]
Lenin’s understanding of the vanguard party remains essential today. The task of a revolutionary organization is not to wait passively for a spontaneous uprising, but to intervene consciously in the class struggle—to raise workers’ understanding of how capitalism functions and what must be done to abolish it. A basic level of class consciousness can emerge through workers' everyday experiences of exploitation and economic struggle. Revolutionary consciousness, however, must be consciously developed through organization, political education, revolutionary theory, and participation in collective struggle. This is where the cadre plays its indispensable role.
A cadre is a group of committed, organized, disciplined, and professional revolutionaries who share a common political outlook and strategic goal. Cadres have historically existed in politics, militaries, and businesses. The term has not always referred to a special military force, even though, at certain stages of the class struggle, Marxists have historically played those roles when the material conditions favored and required it.
A Marxist cadre is someone well-equipped with the tools of Marxism, having spent years studying and training to wield its three pillars: dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and Marxist economics. A Marxist cadre can be dropped into the middle of the working class and crystallize a group of leaders around them, lead strikes, organize their community, organize protests, organize their workplaces, and provide strategic vision, guidance, and oversight. Cadres exercise expertise and dedication, communicate effectively, and remain adaptable and flexible.
Think of a sports team: you may have a core group who have played for 6–10 years, alongside newcomers. The cadre trains, mentors, and develops those players to ensure their efficiency and effectiveness. Marxist cadres are also important for their intellectual insight, guidance, and knowledge. If the organization experiences terror, repression, or anything that could dwindle its commitment to the working-class cause, cadres—carrying institutional knowledge—can disperse, regroup quickly, and carry on party work again.
The ultimate aim and purpose of a cadre is to assist the working class in its struggle against the system and the ruling class. It is to encourage workers' development and help further radicalize them—because, make no mistake, as Lenin emphasized: “All power to the soviets” (soviets being workers' councils).
The organization can never substitute itself for the masses; it exists to help guide and advance their struggles, aims, and demands. The cadre seeks to understand the world it exists within, identify the different forces, tendencies, reactions, and contradictions present within the workers' movement, and struggle to develop those forces in a manner consistent with Marxist principles.
We are not here to talk down to workers, tell them what to do, or act with arrogance. We must patiently explain our ideas, as Lenin emphasized, bring workers together, and help them understand the conditions they are confronting. We must always remain professional, respectful, and committed to telling the truth.
The cadre also needs to connect working class struggle to struggles across the globe, help workers to understand that what is happening in Palestine, Sudan, Congo and Lebanon is connected right here at home and overcome religious, ethnic, and other distinctions that prevent working-class unity. A cadre org should also help show the working class the transitional bridge between reforms and revolution. Help them to understand that their struggles can’t just end with a few reforms, that it has to continue pushing for more wins and to prepare for revolution, because reforms can be given with one hand, and taken away with the other. To stop this, the workers must have a sense of militancy instilled back into their unions and self organizations, to be able to fight to abolish the Taft Harley Act and call for strikes.
For C.L.R. James, the other task of a cadre organization is to “observe and record.” That is, it should observe working-class struggles and record them (via a newspaper) so that the working class can see for itself what it is doing and the radical nature of its struggle by documenting strikes, protests, organizing campaigns, and workplace struggles, a revolutionary newspaper allows workers to recognize that their experiences are part of a broader national and international movement rather than isolated events. Cadres should cultivate strong writing, public speaking, organizing, administrative, and artistic skills. Every one of these abilities contributes to building a revolutionary organization capable of serving the working class.
Cadres also develop strategy. They remain tactful and flexible, always coming up with new ways to reach the masses, outsmart the system, develop political analysis, and carry themselves professionally and ethically. And let us be clear: cadres can’t make a revolution, nor does a cadre automatically lead one. Instead, cadres work to win the leadership and authority of the working class, and can only do that by rooting themselves in communities—working alongside other organizations, helping in strikes, building trust with workers, and helping to organize working-class struggle.
Make no mistake: a cadre organization differs fundamentally from a broad mass organization like DSA, an anti-war committee, or other activist groups. It is united by a common political program, shared theoretical foundations, and disciplined organizational practice. Every great revolutionary devoted themselves to studying history, economics, revolutions, and class society while actively participating in working-class struggle. They wrote, debated, revised their ideas, learned from setbacks, and placed those lessons back into the hands of the working class. Sankofa cadres will work alongside other organizations while always maintaining the Party's independent political program and organizational discipline. After all, a party is ultimately a set of programs, ideas, values, and a political line expressed through its members.
In Sankofa Communist Party our aim is to build towards 100 well trained cadres in Minneapolis and then eventually spread to Maryland, Chicago, and Georgia. An organization of one hundred well-trained cadres would possess a tremendous capacity to organize workplaces, assist workers in struggle, educate communities, develop new leaders, and expand revolutionary influence throughout Minneapolis and beyond. People are hungry for genuine Marxist ideas, but we can only meet that demand by patiently building our organization, rooting ourselves in our communities, universities, and workplaces, and continually developing both ourselves and one another.
The road to becoming a cadre is not an easy one. Comrades must stand shoulder to shoulder, support one another through victories and setbacks alike, participate actively in organizational work, demonstrate good character, and practice genuine comradeship. As C.L.R. James argued, the defining quality of a revolutionary leader is not simply intelligence or talent, but character:
“Now, for the last, knowing all this, I want to speak about a particular political person in the United States. It is clear that I attach immense importance to the abilities, character and personality of a political leader of any political organization. I believe that more important than ability is character. It is obvious that was what Lenin thought. Because ability—you can always get ability, if you have the character. You follow what I mean? It comes. You can manage. You mustn’t be a fool of course. Character in the sense of broad humanity, capacity to meet with people, to integrate, etc. Shakespeare thought the same. Lenin, it is clear, knew that that, more than anything, was what was required, and that is what everyone he knew had.“ [4]
This is what makes a Sankofa Warrior. That is what makes a Marxist Cadre.
Sources:
- [1] Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987), chap. 15, 293.
- [2] V. I. Lenin, “Revolutionary Adventurism,” September 1, 1902, in Collected Works, vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1961), accessed July 11, 2026,
- [3] V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (1902), in Collected Works, vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1961), chap. 2, accessed July 11, 2026,
- [4] C. L. R. James, “Perspectives and Proposals,” in Marxism for Our Times: C.L.R. James on Revolutionary Organization, ed. Martin Glaberman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999).