Introduction
The old world is dying. The ruling class feels its power slipping further and further away, and desperately grips onto its surface, attempting to maintain its destructive hold over the world. Every day, workers are waking up to the reality of this decaying system, driven by the need for a better world, a better life. The bourgeoisie has tried every trick in the book to dissuade all revolutionary sentiments and keep the people trapped in a state of dependency and complacency, and yet, the revolutionary flame rages on. What system, then, shall replace this destructive (dis)order that has ravaged the world? And who will empower the people to take control over the destinies of their lives, the fruits of their labor? The specter of communism haunts not only Europe but the entire world, and it is time that the workers of the world ally to embrace this specter and free humanity once and for all. It is time for a party of scientific socialists who reject every tendency that the ruling class weaponizes to maintain capitalism to rise. That party is the Sankofa Communist Party, and this is our manifesto.
A World In Crisis
We, the youth of Generation Z, have known nothing but a world in crisis. The generation coming after us—Generation Alpha—is already beginning to understand that the world they have inherited is one defined by instability, violence, and fear.
A Cato/YouGov survey conducted in March asked 2,000 American adults a range of questions about U.S. fiscal policy. The survey found that 62 percent of adults under age 30 expressed a favorable view of socialism and and 34 percent of respondents aged 18–29 have a favorable view of communism.
These results are not surprising given the economic instability facing the youth today.
They are growing up surrounded by the constant presence of ICE raids, state terrorism, endless war, genocide broadcast in real time, increasing police presence in schools, and a tidal wave of mental health crises among young people. For many of them, this has never seemed unusual. It is simply the world as they have always known it.
A study published by UNICEF, based on a global survey of more than 5,600 Gen Z individuals between the ages of 14 and 25, found that:
- Gen Z consumes news more than any other form of content, with 6 in 10 feeling overwhelmed by current events.
- 4 in 10 still feel stigma around speaking openly about mental health in schools and workplaces.
- Only half know where to find resources that could support their mental health.
- Just 55 percent believe they have effective coping mechanisms to maintain their wellbeing.
As UNICEF Director of Private Fundraising and Partnerships Carla Haddad Mardini explained:
“This report provides a vital glimpse into the collective unease Gen Z are feeling at the current state of the world, and the persistent gaps in the resources they need to promote positive mental health and wellbeing, which is negatively impacting their sense of agency. This generation of young people have the hope, expertise and commitment needed to build a more compassionate and resilient world.”
But mental health does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by our material reality. And the material reality we have grown up in has been defined by one crisis after another.
Most of us were between the ages of one and fifteen when some of the defining shocks of the early twenty-first century unfolded before our eyes.
There was the Sandy Hook school shooting, where children our own age were murdered in their classrooms.
There was the Arab Spring, when entire populations rose up against authoritarian governments. The U.S. involvement in the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and destabilizing the middle east came back to haunt them, particularly Hillary Clinton. Her hawkish war crimes contributed to her loss to Donald Trump.
There was the killing of Trayvon Martin, a teenager whose death ignited national outrage and exposed the persistence of racial violence in America.
There was the Boston Marathon bombing.
The next era followed into the mix where black consciousness reawakened and the masses took to the streets to protest against police brutality against black and brown bodies.
Eric Garner gasping “I can’t breathe” on camera as police killed him on a New York street.
Michael Brown shot dead in Ferguson, sparking protests that spread across the country that ignited the modern Black Lives Matter movement.
And then the world watched as George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, a police officer kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd repeated the same words that Eric Garner had echoed years earlier:
“I can’t breathe.”
The video spread across the globe within hours. Millions poured into the streets. Cities erupted in protest. For many young people, it was the moment when the illusion that the system would reform itself finally shattered.
The crises continued to unfold.
Flint, Michigan lost access to clean drinking water while politicians debated responsibility. One particular memory was of Obama drinking a fresh glass of water telling them that the water was fine when it certainly wasn't. This dropped morale amongst black people who started to question the democrat establishment openly.
The Ebola epidemic spread fear across continents.
Edward Snowden revealed that the government was conducting mass surveillance on its own citizens and today we have Alex Karp gleefully using weapons of mass surveillance on Palestinians and Americans.
The rise of the #MeToo movement exposed systemic sexual abuse across industries exposing a gender divide between the sexes. While we watched in disgust and horror the rise of red pill, Andrew Tate, and Trad lifestyle movements.
The climate crisis intensified.
In 2021, record-breaking floods devastated parts of Europe, submerging entire towns and killing hundreds as infrastructure failed under the pressure of extreme weather.
Then came the fires.
Entire neighborhoods burned in the Palisades fire in California, one of many catastrophic wildfires that have turned parts of the United States into seasonal disaster zones. What were once considered rare environmental catastrophes have become routine events. Year after year forests burn, homes disappear, and families are displaced while governments debate budgets and insurance companies quietly withdraw coverage from entire regions.
For young people watching these disasters unfold, the message has become impossible to ignore: the climate crisis is no longer a warning about the future. It is the present.
The cost of living rose year after year.
The MAGA movement surged, deepening political polarization across the United States and giving ammo to racism. DEI was rolled back, voting rights act struct down, further radicalizing the black youth who started to question if this country even cares about them. We had a black president, and we believed what our parents told us, that everything was going to be okay: but it wasn’t.
Then came the event that would reshape the world: COVID-19.
Schools closed. Cities shut down. Millions died. Isolation became normal.
In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, igniting the largest land war in Europe since World War II.
The world watched as the genocide, driven by the United States government and the Israeli state, created a humanitarian crisis in Palestine that the UN and much of the world now understands to be genocide. Images of dead, blown-up children filled our social media pages.
Meanwhile the U.S. banking system trembled again as Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank collapsed—the largest American bank failures since 2008.
Political institutions themselves suddenly began to unravel. The Democratic Party entered a crisis of legitimacy after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, a defeat widely attributed to her unconditional support for Israel and the alienation of millions of young voters.
At the same time, the exposure of elite sexual exploitation networks connected to Jeffrey Epstein revealed a ruling class so corrupt that many have begun referring to them simply as the Epstein class.
Across the world humanitarian crises deepened—in the Congo, in Sudan, in Palestine.
And now another storm gathers on the horizon: the war with Iran.
Year after year, crisis after crisis, the pattern remains the same. The bourgeois historians want us to believe that such incidents are isolated, separated from each other, but they are not, they are simply the spectre in the grave simply coming to collect its debt that capitalism must pay. It is the symptoms of a system that is on its deathbed.
This is the only world the youth have ever known.
These crises have forced young people everywhere to question their future. The economy worsens. Wages stagnate. Rent skyrockets. And with the threat of new wars constantly looming, even the price of basic necessities like fuel and food continues to climb. Why is this happening? Why is capitalism not able to sustain us any longer?
When gas prices rise. Inflation follows.
A study published by the World Economic Forum found that unease about the future is widespread among Gen Z and millennials. Respondents overwhelmingly cited the cost of living as their greatest societal concern. Many emphasized the importance of work-life balance, yet fewer and fewer jobs provide it.
Nearly half of Gen Z respondents reported feeling stressed all or most of the time.
Another study published by Bank of America revealed similar findings.
Over the past year:
- 72 percent of Gen Z have taken steps to improve their financial health, such as saving money or paying down debt.
- 64 percent have focused on cutting expenses, with many reducing restaurant visits or buying cheaper groceries.
- Financial support from parents is declining, leaving more young people to survive entirely on their own.
- Roughly half of Gen Z spend nothing on dating each month, and many spend less than $100.
The reason is simple: they cannot afford to.
About 51 percent of Gen Z respondents say the high cost of living is a direct barrier to financial success. Everyday expenses—groceries, rent, utilities—are far higher than they expected.
Many young people have a clear memory of when things felt different.
As one young worker, Comrade Dell, put it:
“I remember going to the store as a child and being able to get a bag of chips, a honeybun, and a bag of hot fries for one dollar in 2013. Now just a bag of chips costs three dollars.”
Even childhood itself has changed.
Once upon a time, childhoods were filled with joy, laughter, outdoor games, and friendships formed in neighborhoods and playgrounds. Today, those connections are increasingly replaced by endless scrolling on phones, day and night.
Another study published by The Guardian found that about one in five teenagers aged 16–18 displays problematic phone use, with many saying they want help cutting down.
At the same time, the rise of social media has given birth to a new and deeply destructive phenomenon: cyberbullying.
Unlike the bullying of previous generations, it does not end when school ends. It follows young people home. It exists on their phones, on their screens, in their messages, twenty-four hours a day.
Humiliation can now be broadcast to entire schools in seconds. Rumors spread instantly. Harassment becomes permanent. Surveillance is expected.
For many young people, there is no escape.
Mental health experts and public health organizations have documented a disturbing rise in youth suicide rates over the past decade. Thousands of teenagers and young adults have taken their own lives after prolonged exposure to harassment, isolation, and despair amplified by online environments.
What should have been tools for connection have often become instruments of alienation. This is intentional.
These are not isolated tragedies.
They are the signs that capitalism has entered a crisis.
A crisis that has become so great that it can no longer even promise its children a better future. What is progress? The democrats have been calling themselves progressives for years, yet we are stagnant and decaying.
And this is all done by the poisonous tentacles of senile world leaders who desperately cling to power, they further try to look for ways to save the system from itself but while only further deepening the crises. In doing so, Capitalism has done something remarkable: it has created its own gravediggers just as Karl Marx predicted in 1848.
The seeds of its downfall were inherent within the system.
And now they are beginning to break through the surface.
Trying to Find the Answers
Due to this pernicious reality, the youth have been seeking a means to end their misery under capitalism. They have searched in various spaces, gone to various places, but none have given the answers they need. This journey has even been hijacked and unscrupulously pushed into the echo chambers of reformism, red pill ideology, xenophobia, racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, replacement theory, doomerism, the manosphere, inceldom, femceldom—we could go on and on.
Make no mistake: this is not the doing of any unforeseen force, nor the fault of women, or some predilection of men, or the fault of any single man such as Andrew Tate. It is the fault of capitalism. To justify the rule of the ruling class, they must conquer and divide the masses with divisive ideologies, weaponizing the media and the system to create conditions that breed these behaviors so that we, the working-class, will fight amongst ourselves, allowing the bourgeoisie to escape unscathed.
The impact of these divides is devastating—sometimes, to the point of ruining class solidarity. But this is not unsolvable or unsalvageable. What is required is a tool, a philosophy, a method to break through the myths of the ruling class, and bring forth a scientific understanding of our conditions and our enemies. In other words, what we need is Marxism.
As a PGM (People of the Global Majority)–led party, Our search for the right answers to our world crises has been especially unique. Given the experience of being Black, you might run into your local retired freedom fighter—someone who battled bravely and courageously during the days of MLK and Malcolm X—telling stories about how they couldn’t drink from the same water fountain, while at the same time, encouraging capitulation to Democrats such as Kamala Harris.
Or you may encounter the Black Israelites shouting on the side of the street that we are the one and only true Jews—despite no scientific data to support such claims—and even then, how would acceptance of this idea end the system of exploitation?
Or you may run into your local community organizer who offers mutual aid, books, community spaces, and educational material which helps to soothe the mind and foster a shared community with your neighbors—but it never seems like you are given the tools to learn how to change your material reality, only your individual one.
Or, if you’re unlucky, you may run into your local Tariq Nasheed type turning up the xenophobia against other black people and denouncing Pan-Africanism (the unity of all diasporic Africans, Latinos, Caribbeans and Black Americans around the globe).
Wherever you go, these pipelines are waiting for you to fall in. They all come to you saying the same things—which you already understand to be true:
Yes, the world sucks.
Yes, the world is in shambles.
Yes, I want to change my reality and stop being poor.
Yes, I can reach out to my neighbors.
But how do I actually understand what is going on—why has capitalism failed us? And how can we change the system?
Before we answer that, we must first ask:
Why do all of these people always claim to have the answers, pointing out the system, push us to the edge of radicalization, yet nothing ever changes?
The answer is: Postmodernism.
Postmodernism
After World War II ended, the United States emerged victorious while Europe was left in utter ruin, further accelerating the long decline we continue to see today. The leading European philosophers of their time looked around in horror and puzzlement. Why had Nazism risen? What philosophy could produce men capable of such horrific atrocities? Something, they concluded, must be wrong with history itself.
Instead of grounding their analysis in material conditions, early postmodernists collapsed everything into ideology and discourse. They drew a vague bridge between capitalism and fascism—correctly understanding that fascism outgrew out of capitalism—but ultimately abandoned the analysis at its most critical point. Fascism was not treated as a specific crisis response of capitalism, but as the logical outcome of all attempts at totality, universality, or systemic transformation.
Under the pressure of Red Scare propaganda, this retreat deepened. Postmodernism capitulated to the poisonous lie of the liberal bourgeoisie: that fascism and communism are equivalent, that all class struggle tends toward tyranny, and that any attempt to remake society in total is inherently oppressive.
What began as an attempt to grapple with the horrors of fascism ended in the abandonment of materialism altogether—replacing analysis with fragmentation, and struggle with skepticism.
Jean-François Lyotard, often called the father of postmodernism, defined it bluntly:
“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”
Metanarratives—those big, universal explanations of the world: Religion, the age of enlightenment, the Harlem renaissance, even Marxism. While incredulity means, unable to believe something.
Postmodernism, at its core, says:
- These “big truths” about our world are not universally valid
- Knowledge is shaped by power, language, and perspective not material reality
- There is no single objective truth
Oh—hail Mary—there is no singular objective truth.
But here! The entire framework begins to collapse under its own weight. If there is no truth, then even postmodernism itself could be considered a metanarrative. So what exactly is Jean-François Lyotard offering?—an insight, or just another opinion floating in the void? How do we know his definition holds any weight? In fact—how do we know anything anymore? What is wrong? What is correct? What is up and what is down?
This is not radical critique—it is epistemological paralysis dressed up as sophistication.
And despite its self-image as something entirely new, postmodernism is not nearly as original as it claims. It is, in many ways, a repackaging of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Postmodernism’s long lost father can be found with Kant’s so-called “Copernican revolution”: the idea that we cannot know things-in-themselves, that reality is filtered through our faculties of perception, and that objects must conform to our modes of representation rather than the other way around.
Once you accept this premise, the tobogganing becomes almost inevitable. If we cannot access objective reality, then knowledge becomes contingent, fragmented, and unstable. Truth dissolves into perspective.
But this is precisely the terrain that Karl Marx had already confronted and moved beyond—grounding knowledge not in isolated perception, but in material practice, social relations, and historical development.
Postmodernism does not advance this question—it retreats from it.
And to carry this retreat forward, a whole layer of thinkers emerged:
- Michel Foucault — reducing truth to power relations and institutional control
- Judith Butler — dissolving identity into performance and discourse
- Jacques Derrida — deconstructing meaning until nothing stable remains
What unites them is not innovation, but negation. Not the construction of a clearer understanding of reality, but the systematic dismantling of the very possibility of knowing it.
What This Turns Into
This school of thought gave way to a new type of liberalism, the same one present in most schools today in America that plagues nearly every classroom. Neoliberalism.
The baseline of their arguments becomes:
We must be suspicious of all claims to universality and reason.
Thinking is generalized and limited—it cannot reach truth.
We must deconstruct language because language controls reality.
All individual ideas need their own movement, higher forms of deeper analysis, movements built around it, separate from class, because history is subjective and truth is truth because others say so and cannot explain all the oppression in the world.
If we claim to understand something, that claim itself becomes an expression of power because claiming to know something leads to a concentration of power, and all ideas are dangerous. "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad." - Michel Fouccalt
Therefore, those who consider themselves to be Europeans, Africans, part of the LGBT community, heterosexuals, adhere to modern scientific thought, Marxism, White nationalism, liberalism, and other scholarly institutions have all imposed their perspective through "biopower" (As Foucault defines it: the various means by which modern nation states control their populations) and narratives—silencing others in the process.
Identity Politics and Its Distortion
The unfortunate sophistry of postmodernism is also its hijacking and degradation of identity politics, which was originally developed by the Combahee River Collective with a clear grounding in class struggle and connecting their struggles as oppressed PGM (people of the global majority) directly to capitalism.
“We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation.” and
“We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives.” - Combahee River Collective
Instead, it has turned their work into a caricature which has become identity reductionism driven by idealism:
Because someone is black we must always give them our support or else we are silencing black voices.
We must change how we think about racism because changing how we think about it will save us.
We must change our language because not using racist language ends systemic structures.
Racism can’t be solved through class struggle only changing how we feel about each other.
We need to build new biopower structures of community networks through this sustainable network we will survive and one day outlast racism.
Only then, we are told, will the power structures of racism change.
The Contradiction
But here is the problem with this logic:
People already know racism is bad. This was proven by the civil rights movement.
People have already changed their language around racism—often using covert forms because they understand overt racism is unacceptable.
So if language has changed, wouldn’t that mean racism should be weakening? Shouldn’t it be fading away?
But it hasn’t.
The power structures of racism still exist.
Because only the changing of our material reality—by overthrowing capitalism—can achieve the end to all systemic oppression.
Foucault
Foucault is one of the most recognizable and prominent postmodernist thinkers.
Like modern professors, he puts together historical facts like an unfinished Rubik’s cube, often from medieval to early modern periods, and connects them through a shared theme, usually related to controversial institutions: prisons, marriage, sexuality, mental health.
He bobs and weaves between time periods, drawing on obscure law, early science, religion, and medicine to create a murky, impressionistic narrative about how these systems emerged.
This is how he convinces people. Unfortunately, due to the low level, sorry excuse of education in American schools, this propaganda is used to turn us into little good capitalist wage slaves. History isn’t taught properly, and so, Foucault uses history to shock the reader and expose real injustices, and then calls it radical.
But he is not radical.
He cherry-picks history. His analysis lacks coherent material grounding.
He himself states:
"it is not so much the history of the true or the history of the false as the history of veridiction which has a political significance.”
At the end of the day, it remains unclear what “history” actually is in his framework. It appears as though the only mechanism where power operates is through ideas and subjective history.
Why Did This Happen?
Why has this philosophy spread so widely?
Because it was useful.
As Frances Stonor Saunders documents in The Cultural Cold War, the CIA:
“committed vast resources to a secret programme of cultural propaganda… a battle for men’s minds… to counter the appeal of Marxism.”
This was not just opposition—it was the reshaping of the intellectual left itself.
In the Final Analysis
Defenders of postmodernism will say we haven’t engaged deeply enough, or that we refuse to “deconstruct metanarratives.”
And yes—it is true that claims to universality have often masked power interests. It is also true that oppression exists across race, class, and gender and that we do not do enough to understand these issues - but that is only one part of the puzzle. If there is no leadership to guide the masses into thinking critically about these issues, then an organized collective effort to defeat these types of oppression cannot happen.
Deconstructing language without transforming material reality will never liberate the working class.
We can analyze systems all day.
But the root cause remains:
Capitalism.
And the solution is not endless analysis.
The solution is overthrowing it by applying ourselves concretely to the changing conditions.
Will the Left Save Us?
To understand how we got here and where we must go, we must start with hope. Particularly, a hope that tricked many into believing that a better world was to come. 2008. Yes We Can. Change We Can Believe In. Barack Hussein Obama. Generations of young and old witnessed what seemed like an impossibility—a black man becoming the President of the United States, built on a campaign of radical change. A black man who tapped into the desires of working-class Americans across multiple demographics, and in turn, convinced the masses to come out in record numbers and put their faith in the electoral system.
Soon after, the Obama administration proceeded with the destabilization of Libya and the killing of Gaddafi. On American soil, mass shootings increasingly happened, the cost of living continued to rise, and the infrastructural collapse of the deep south continued alongside the poisoning of water in Black American communities. Obama also completed the most drone strikes of any American president in history, while intensifying the Israeli occupation as all other previous presidents had, which laid additional groundwork for the impending Palestinian genocide; the signs were undeniable. The hope Obama had given so many at the beginning of his campaign had now been replaced with skepticism and hopelessness among many working-class Americans. The faith they put in him and the Democrat party as a whole was breaking apart at the seams as the realizations of how horrible their living conditions continued to be, all while the top 1% grew richer and richer. And what now? Who were the working class going to put their faith in next? Who did they believe could save us?
Bernie Sanders and the New Left
We all remember where we were as children—looking up at the TV in awe, watching Bernie Sanders.
The words splattered across your screen: Democratic Socialism.
According to Vox, “Sanders absolutely dominated young adult voters, in a way that even Barack Obama couldn’t in 2008.” Eighty-four percent of voters under thirty, and 58 percent of voters between thirty and forty-four, cast their ballots for Sanders. More generally, as countless articles have noted, younger voters are shifting left, embracing ancient taboos like socialism and other heresies.
Everywhere, media sources were puzzled by the rising tide of socialism amongst the youth. But how could the youth not accept Sanders’ program? He was advocating for Medicare for All, raising the minimum wage, paying teachers more, tuition-free public college, and a Green New Deal. The youth soared in the crowds at his rallies. There was hope. You were proud to call yourself a Bernie bro.
And then something shocking happened: he conceded to Hillary Clinton—a neoliberal warhawk.
DNC emails leaked showing the sabotaging of his campaign:
Everywhere, the youth wept. What next? Who will fight for us?
As of today, we can see now more clearly than ever—it was never going to be him. His refusal to call what is happening in Israel a genocide, his lack of care or concern about Black workers, his “Zionist caricature of socialism,” and his consistent support for what many view as pro-war leadership in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris speak loud and clear.
The consistent betrayal of the Democrats, who always wave the “lesser of two evils” in front of you—we are sick and tired.
As Leon Trotsky says:
“A political struggle is in its essence a struggle of interests and forces, not of arguments. The quality of the leadership is, of course, far from a matter of indifference for the outcome of the conflict, but it is not the only factor, and in the last analysis is not decisive. Each of the struggling camps moreover demands leaders in its own image.”
And Bernie Sanders was exactly that—an expression of the mood of the masses, of what we wanted: better wages, the American dream promised to us. The ability to buy a house with a white picket fence, retire early, afford to raise a family, receive social security and pension benefits, take three vacations a year, and get the best education in the world.
Another expression of this today is Zohran Mamdani. At 34 years old, with an inviting, warm smile—the DSA golden child. He also ran on a program of reforms, but unlike Sanders, Zohran had a fresh new method and program.
But soon after he won, he started to backtrack from his promises. Abolish the police? Now wanting to work with them. Saying Israel was committing a genocide? Now saying Israel has a right to exist. Saying billionaires shouldn’t exist? Now saying private property apartments need to be transferred into the hands of a nicer bourgeoisie.
And of course, the Democratic Socialists of America, as usual, has learned nothing and continues to be Democratic Party-lite, funneling voters back into the Democratic Party.
The Communist Party USA, which was once the greatest and largest communist organization in the United States with over 300,000 members, capitulated to reformism, adopted fancy white-collar offices, abandoned the working class, and today stands embarrassed after dropping the goal of revolution many times throughout its history.
The RCA? A new, young, fresh layer of inspiring youth making its way through the streets of America—except if you are a person of color like me, your issues are merely dismissed as “identity politics,” and they remain isolated from the black and brown communities they claim to serve.
You look to your left, you look to your right, and the only so-called ‘left’ options for you are reformist or Democrat-lite, or libertarian-lite, or, you are pushed to the side by white liberals, opportunists, and “color-blind” communists.
Now, of course, we support any reforms that workers can win today—whether it’s higher wages, childcare for children from pre-K through fifth grade, or improved working conditions and benefits. But we must build a transitional programme that bridges these immediate demands with the understanding that socialist revolution is the only lasting solution. The recent limiting of the Voting Rights Act and attacks on reproductive care only reinforce what Marxists have long argued: reforms won by the working class can be granted with one hand and stripped away with the other, at any moment the bourgeoisie finds itself in crisis.
That is why the working class needs its own party. It needs an advanced layer of the proletariat from all backgrounds, brave enough to stand up to the bourgeoisie and be fully class independent.
Where is the party that will finally stand up for workers and the youth in the face of imperialism, capitalism, racism, and sexism?
That party is Sankofa Communist Party, guided by the genuine ideas of Marxism.
What Marxism Gave us
Marxism provided the method, tools, and direction in which to not only harness our anger at the beneficiaries of our oppression, but also to fight for a liberated world built on people’s NEEDS instead of profit. As people of the global majority, we needed an alternate language, a different mode of understanding that challenged the disgusting lies of our ruling class that this failing, wretched, (dis)order was the best that we could hope for. We needed to see a challenge to the mythology that unending exploitation of our labor, brutalization of our Black and queer and gendered bodies, was the natural order of our world. Reading the works of black radicals such as Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, Walter Rodney, and Fred Hampton showed us the necessity of tying racism to capitalism, understanding that our freedom lies in the elimination of not merely racist attitudes and hiring ‘better trained’ police officers, but in completely dismantling the material basis upon which racism relies. Through reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky and combining their teachings with those of the Black radical tradition, it became apparent that we, the people, needed the philosophy of Marxism in its genuine form to liberate ourselves from the tyranny and oppression of our current world order.
When Karl Marx wrote the communist manifesto in 1848, he told us, “ A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: pope and tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.” The words have never been more true than today. Except this spectre is now haunting America—once again.
The resurgence of communism in America was inevitable, as Marx brilliantly predicted in his body of work, Capital. According to Capital, capitalism goes into crisis because bosses never pay their workers enough to buy back what they produce, inevitably leading to boom-and-bust cycles, and with each boom, a crisis would emerge graver than the one before.
It was only natural that we arrived at the door of the hammer and the sickle. With no other solution to our agony, pain, loss, depression, and even sadly, suicidal idealizations, the only answer was Marxism.
We came to Marxism through our lived experiences as PGM (people of the global majority)—through the racism, the heartache, and the constant awareness of being treated differently because of the color of our skin. We also draw from the long tradition of socialism across the Global South, the Middle East, and Africa. While many of these revolutions ultimately reverted back to capitalism, we recognize and commend the masses in these countries for waging a militant and sustained class struggle against imperialism throughout the 1930s–1970s.
The Bolsheviks proved, in practice, that capitalism can be overthrown. Their revolution stands as a historic turning point in the struggle for workers’ power. We aim to carry that legacy forward and liberate workers across the world. We call upon all workers, across every background, nationality, and race, to join us in a militant class struggle against capitalism and its horsemen—the bourgeoisie.
To Go Back and Get It
After two periods of World War, there was a postwar boom of massive industrialization in the United States. Millions of Black Americans left the South in what is known as the Great Migration, moving to cities in the East, West, and Midwest, looking for opportunities. Along with this migration, the economic and political landscape in America was changing.
The war in Vietnam was taking place. By 1965, tensions had escalated, and U.S. troops were deployed. The U.S. had spent $50 billion on defense; by 1968, it had increased to $82 billion. Adjusted for inflation, $82 billion in 1968 would be roughly $775 billion in 2025 dollars—almost a trillion on war. Later, in 1971, Nixon, partly due to war-related pressures, removed the U.S. from the gold standard. All of these decisions quickly led to rising inflation.
By 1970, prices were about 30% higher than in 1960; by 1975, they were 60% higher than in 1960. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Then the oil shock happened from 1970–1975: stagflation began (rising prices, slow growth). Real wages stagnated or fell despite nominal wage growth, and unemployment rose sharply, reaching 8.5% by 1975. For the Black community, this number was 13%. Right now, as of today, it is 7%—almost half of us are unemployed.
At the same time as this student radicalization was taking place, so was workers’ radicalization, as well as the radicalization of Black youth. The Black Panther Party, existing at that time, was able to grow its numbers—this was their peak growth from 1969–1971. Many events had unfolded at this time.
The Black working class was becoming proletarianized. In 1967, 40% of the United Auto Workers were under the age of 30, and in the mid-60s, strike levels began to climb. This wasn’t just happening in the United States—it was happening globally: Germany, Italy, France, Britain—everywhere, you see the same trends. Between 1967 and 1971, the number of workers taking part in strikes in the U.S. doubled, due to the pressures of capitalism.
Between 1955 and 1967, industrial workers’ weekly hours went up, and corporate profits in the same period were up over 100%. In those years, the capitalists doubled their profits. The number of hires of industrial workers in that same period went up 30%, but output went up 90%, so they were squeezing more out of the working class.
Here is a historical movement of the Black working-class against civil rights discrimination, the growing militancy of the working class, particularly the youth and the young Black community, protests against the war, combined with the oppression of the state, shooting and killing students. All of these elements came together to produce a very radical situation in the United States, which led to the rise of leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Before Martin Luther King died, he was organizing a strike among 1,300 Black sanitation workers in Memphis. Black sanitation workers were routinely humiliated, denied promotions, and forced to work in unsafe conditions. When King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the nation cried. The workers still went on strike in honor of King, and President Lyndon B. Johnson was forced to recognize their union and improve their wages and conditions.
Malcolm X was assassinated just a few years later, but in the period leading up to his death, his views were rapidly evolving. After his break with the Nation of Islam and his travels abroad, he began to move beyond narrow nationalism and toward a more internationalist understanding of struggle. He understood the need for the entire diaspora to come together and unite first and eventually meet White people along the road to revolution.
Through these experiences, Malcolm X began to recognize that the struggle of Black Americans was inseparable from the global struggle against imperialism and exploitation. Marxists understand that while nationalism can be progressive, particularly as a tool against colonialism and imperial domination, it has its limitations and can either lead back to Capitalism or go towards Socialism.
Unfortunately, the radical movements of that period were squandered and smashed by the state, in large part because there was no cohesive revolutionary leadership. There was no militant, organized, hegemonic party rooted in workplaces, unions, and among the masses that was capable of unifying struggle and taking power. Too many white communists themselves were isolated from the broader masses and the revolutionary movements that were happening amongst the Black working class. Luckily, the Civil Rights Movement, spearheaded by the efforts of Black people, was the most successful within that era and ultimately achieved one of its objectives, which was to integrate into society for better opportunities and helped give wins to the rest of the working class as well, but racism was still not overthrown because, as Malcolm X said, “You can’t have racism without capitalism”.
As the 1980s and 1990s unfolded, we saw a steady decline in class consciousness and political education among Americans. The bourgeoisie, determined to ensure that this revolutionary tide would not rise again, intensified repression while restructuring society to its advantage. Black communities were devastated through mass incarceration, economic abandonment, and the spread of drugs, while concessions were extended to more privileged layers of workers to stabilize the system.
At the same time, imperialist intervention continued to destabilize regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Workers were fed neoliberal ideology as common sense, and militant trade unionism was systematically weakened through anti-labor laws, bringing an end to an era of sustained class struggle.
The Power of Philosophy
This is why we need a philosophy. Prayer circles, crystals, and revolutionary BBQs will not save us.
Whether man or woman, doctor or welder, Queer, teacher, or computer engineer, we all have a way in which we see the world. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said that the dominant ideas of society are those of the ruling class. To maintain and justify its rule, it will use every means available to warp the perception and consciousness of workers.
We have seen this through how the media portrays Black people on television, how Black bodies have been commodified. As Assata Shakur once said: “The media has always portrayed Black people as criminals… It’s psychological warfare, and it’s extremely effective.”
The bourgeois philosophy is one of racism, sexism, abuse, theft, exploitation, and genocide.
Before defining our philosophy as the Sankofa Communist Party, let us make it absolutely clear what it is not. We do not condone any form of bigotry amongst our ranks: there is no tolerance for racism, sexism, queerphobia, xenophobia, classism, and so on. We believe that in order to mobilize a multiracial, global working-class movement to overthrow the capitalist system, no class of worker should be left behind, especially the most oppressed layers of the working class. Necessarily, we wholly reject any form of class-reductionist or identity-reductionist politics.
We recognize the ruling class’s intentions to weaken working-class solidarity and consolidate their power, and at every turn, we reject their manipulations and distortions through fighting to end every form of oppression, right down to its material basis under capitalism. Marx and Engels worked out the brilliant method of dialectical materialism—the scientific study of motion, contradiction, development, and social processes. We identify things through how they change and develop, not in the static way of empiricist thought, which often examines things only in their life and death. And why is this important?
Because with this philosophy, we know that change is possible, that revolutions are inevitable, that those who are in power and wish to subjugate us forever are not infallible, invincible beings, but instead, are representatives of an outdated mode of society, whose grip on power loosens every single day that more and more of the masses are woken up to their revolutionary potential. Therefore, our philosophy is one of class solidarity, an end to racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression. True equality and the right to basic necessities such as healthcare, education, housing, and water. Whatever calls for the unity of workers and strengthens class relations, we support. Whatever cuts across that unity, we reject!
Why We Are Marxists?
After the economic collapse of 2008, things have not been quite the same, and it once again vindicated many of Karl Marx’s criticisms of capitalism. The bourgeoisie scrambled to bail out their banks amid an open crisis. Even some of their leading economists began, however cautiously, to revisit Marx.
The Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an article in 2009 praising Marx’s analysis of inequality.
George Magnus, a senior analyst at UBS, wrote “Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy.”
Even Nouriel Roubini, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal during the crisis, acknowledged that “Karl Marx had it right… at some point, capitalism can destroy itself.
Marxist ideas are not just sitting in books anymore. The economic theories of Karl Marx have spread like wildfire amongst the youth, with communist and radicalized youth movements emerging across the world. Across the globe, youth are stepping into struggle in ways that feel immediate and real.
In Bangladesh, what many called a Gen Z-led uprising saw students and young workers take to the streets in mass protest. Groups like Students Against Discrimination helped organize, but much of the movement grew organically through social media, where people coordinated actions, shared information, and documented events in real time. The state responded with violence, killing over a thousand people and attempting to shut down communication, drawing condemnation from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In Madagascar, similar unrest emerged from everyday conditions. What began as anger over water and electricity outages quickly grew into broader demands around corruption, unemployment, and the cost of living. Protests spread, people were killed, and once again young people relied on digital tools to organize without centralized leadership.
What we are seeing is not isolated. From one country to another, young people are finding ways to connect, organize, and push back against systems that are failing them. With faster communication and access to information, the youth and working class now have tools that previous generations did not. The question is not whether people will resist, but how far that resistance can go.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the weakness of the bourgeoisie was exposed. Millions died. The productive forces stalled once again. Inflation rose. Everywhere you look in every major city, there is a homeless crisis, a water crisis, a climate crisis, a housing crisis and at our neck hairs rides the tease of fascism by the bourgeoisie.
As a famous Marxist once said, fascism is the painful lesson of the masses when they fail to take power.
Long ago, during the Enlightenment, the bourgeoisie played a progressive role. They helped usher in science, modern institutions, higher education, electricity, the steam engine, and industrial development. But they can no longer play that role today. Instead, they preside over endless wars and repeated atrocities, despite once promising that humanity would never again see horrors like those under Adolf Hitler. That promise was a lie.
Then came Donald Trump. A working class pushed to the brink, exhausted and desperate, looked for a way out. Trump presented himself as that answer. He promised lower prices, a stronger economy, and a return to stability. But instead, the result has been deeper division at home and growing isolation abroad.
At the same time, regional wars and global instability continue to threaten food and energy supplies. Tens of millions face hunger, not because the world lacks resources, but because those resources are controlled for profit.
As Karl Marx wrote:
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.”
Capitalism can no longer develop the productive forces in any rational or humane way. The system produces abundance, yet distributes scarcity.
When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, they were observing a system still in development. Today, that system has reached a scale they could scarcely have imagined. Monopolies dominate global trade. Multinational corporations hold more wealth than entire nations. And still, workers are denied even the most basic necessities.
Our conclusion is simple. In a world of such abundance, no human being should be forced to suffer deprivation.
We are Marxists because we believe that the revolutionary potential of the masses can and will be transformed into revolutionary power, and in order to do so, the right approaches must be used to achieve our anticapitalist aims. We are Marxists because we know that idealist thinking, while not unimportant, is not sufficient enough to transform the material conditions that we live under. As Marx writes in The German Ideology, “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”.
We are Marxists because we take this realization further and expose that the history of humanity is one of class struggle, of different classes forming based on the mode of production and the exploitative relationship between the producers and the owners in each stage of human history.
We are Marxists because we extend this analysis to the current world order, watching the world sink deeper into the abyss as capitalists amass millions and billions of dollars in wealth. We are Marxists because we see that the contradiction of such a world, so heavily socialized in its production yet so heavily privatized in its ownership of the fruits of this work, is reaching its boiling point, from the Americas to Asia to Europe, to Africa, and the conditions are ripe for socialist revolution.
We are Marxists because we know that a successful, socialist revolution requires the leadership of a structure that raises the political consciousness of the people, connecting the seemingly isolated issues that people face into a systematic understanding of the modes of oppression we experience due to our condition as the heavily exploited proletarian class, and using this as a force to propel an international working-class solidarity to overthrow capitalism. The need for that structure is at the core of why we are Marxists, writing this manifesto–our value to you in fighting for the liberation of the working people of the world is in our existence as a communist party.
Why the Party?
But why would the working class need a party? Don’t revolutionary uprisings occur with or without a central leadership at the forefront? It is true that throughout history, working-class people have revolted against corrupt governments and leaders, pushing forward necessary demands for justice and punishment of those who committed such grave injustices against the people without a party.
Such is currently being demonstrated in Bolivia. However, it is also true that leadership is a fact. Without organized revolutionary leadership, the masses have often slipped back into the barrel of reformism, disorganized chaos, or into a situation where none of their demands are met.
There is a key difference in demanding that the leaders of a corrupt regime must go, only to be replaced by yet another ruling-class representative of the system, versus workers overthrowing capitalism and transforming our society into one ruled by the workers of the world. Revolution requires scientific theory, strategy, and tactics.
In 1902, Vladimir Lenin published What Is to Be Done?, laying out tasks for communists of his time. His central argument was that the working class, through economic struggle alone, can fully develop socialist consciousness, but that this consciousness must be organized, educated, and developed through a revolutionary party, or else it becomes isolated and prone to degeneration without the constant agitation and clarity of a professional party.
That is what the Sankofa Communist Party aims to achieve.
Founded on January 5th, 2026, with years of organizing experience behind us, we, as the Sankofa Communist Party, are committed to not only raising the political consciousness of the people as a whole, we have committed our time, research, labor, and finances to building a genuine Marxist-Leninist party and a Marxist Academy inspired by the Black Panthers, Bolsheviks, and PGM struggles past and present. We wish to realize the full aims of the proletarian revolution by training the most advanced, revolutionary layers of the working class into cadres, the backbone of our leadership, in order to unify day-to-day struggles with the long-term goal of dismantling capitalism.
We understand that our party must be an organism that weeds out all opportunist and sectarian possibilities and centers on a class-independent, democratic structure built to empower the working class, moving from divided, individualized sections to a unified force strong enough to overthrow capitalism.
Morality and feelings—whether revolutionary or reactionary—are not enough to defeat a system of exploitation. That is why we named ourselves Sankofa, an old Akan word meaning to go back and retrieve what was lost. We must learn from history. We aim to study the history of class struggle, deepen our political consciousness, debate fairly and friendly, and prepare for the serious task ahead. We understand the bourgeoisie will use every trick, weapon, and slander against us. They will call us crazy, dictators, extremists, and worse. But these are weak blows from a class that was defeated by the Bolsheviks.
There will be events that will test us. New situations we have not yet encountered, and reformists will emerge with more bread and circuses than before.
But we must continue to spread the truth amongst the masses and analyze conditions concretely. Explain the objective reality before ourselves. Raise the consciousness of workers. Train cadre. Build our numbers from the hundreds to the thousands, to the tens of thousands, and millions.
Finding Peace Between Apathy and Revolution
Bourgeois historians have distorted communist history for generations. They say communists advocate only violence, dictatorship, misery, and absurdities. These are foolish lies.
At the same time, their media floods us with headlines about unaffordable groceries, housing crises, collapsing wages, and endless despair—while licking their blood-stained lips at our suffering.
They want you hopeless, lost, divided, and apathetic so that this dying system can continue.
But we must remain optimistic.
As Lenin said, we must patiently explain to the masses. At first, our programs may be mocked. Papers may be torn in our faces. People might even yell at us. Some may quietly accept our literature and never call back.
But eventually they will as events prove us correct.
Before the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks endured the same hardships. Yet they remained optimistic.
That is what Sankofa offers: Revolutionary optimism. Here you will find a true kinship amongst your people. Comrades who are willing to pull you up when you are down, and comrades willing to fight beside you at every opportunity and hurdle thrown our way.
As conditions worsen, understand that society ripens further for change. We are microdosing revolution.
More than 300 years ago, the great bourgeois revolutions had their time. Today, they dehumanize us and are decaying.
The Sankofa Manifesto
Capitalism has made Marxists out of us.
We live in a world of immense wealth, dazzling technology, and productive power beyond anything previous generations could imagine. Yet millions live paycheck to paycheck. Workers labor endlessly while rents rise, wages stagnate, healthcare is rationed, education is buried under debt, and homelessness spreads through every major city. We are told there is no money for human needs, yet endless money appears for war, bailouts, police expansion, and corporate subsidies.
Capitalism now offers crisis after crisis: economic collapse, climate catastrophe, racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, imperialist war, loneliness, despair, and the constant degradation of human dignity. It creates abundance but distributes misery. It hardly advances science anymore, stirring paranoia, skepticism, and fear amongst workers while dragging politics backward. It promises freedom while chaining working people to insecurity.
We are Marxists because we know poverty is not natural. Racism is not natural. Exploitation is not natural. Homelessness in a world of empty homes is not natural. Hunger in a world of overproduction is not natural. These are social problems created by class society, and what has been created by human hands can be abolished by human hands.
We are Marxists because history proves that ordinary people, once organized, can transform society. All the rights workers have ever won—unions, weekends, civil rights, public education, social programs, safer workplaces—were fought for through struggle. Nothing was gifted to us. Everything was won.
That is why we are building the Sankofa Communist Party.
We do not exist to be a social club, an internet aesthetic, or a debating society. We are building an organization of disciplined, educated, class-conscious professional revolutionaries rooted in the working class. A party that studies seriously, organizes consistently, speaks honestly, holds each other accountable and fights relentlessly.
We will never shy away from the hard topics surrounding racism and sexism, either. At every step of the way, we will take inspiration from people like Malcom X and tell it like it is.
We take the name Sankofa because we understand that to move forward, we must recover what history tried to bury. We learn from the revolutions, victories, defeats, errors, and sacrifices of those who came before us. We draw from the traditions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Malcom X, Walter Rodney, Assata Shakur, the Bolsheviks, the Black Panthers, anti-colonial struggles, labor militants, and every oppressed people who stood up and fought back.
We remain consciously open to other ideas surrounding Marxism as well. Whatever can help us to learn and advance the struggle forward, we will always have open ears.
We reject the poison that keeps workers divided. We reject racism, sexism, chauvinism, and all forms of oppression used to weaken class unity. We reject the politics of empty symbolism with no material change. We reject parties that beg the rich for crumbs while workers starve. We reject people who try to tell us that identity politics has no place in Marxism while downplaying black, indigenous, and brown meaning and history.
We fight for every reform that improves the lives of workers now: higher wages, housing, healthcare, childcare, education, labor rights, dignity, and peace. But we also tell the truth: none of these victories will be secure so long as the capitalist class controls society.
Our final aim is socialism.
A society where production is planned democratically for human need, not private profit. Where no one is homeless, hungry, or denied healthcare. Where labor time is reduced and human creativity expanded. Where science serves humanity. Where culture flourishes. Where the planet is protected. Where workers govern collectively and consciously. Under socialism, workers would consciously direct society. Production would be planned. No human would go without basic needs. Humanity would have time for art, science, culture, and discovery. Racism would lose its material foundation. Men, Women, Queers, and Children will finally be able to stand as equals.
This future will not arrive on its own.
It requires organization. It requires courage. It requires study. It requires sacrifice. It requires a party.
If you are tired of being lied to…
If you are tired of choosing between the two-party servants of capital…
If you are tired of watching brilliance wasted and communities abandoned…
If you are tired of surviving when humanity could be thriving…
If you want discipline instead of chaos, theory instead of confusion, struggle instead of cynicism, and revolutionary optimism grounded in action—
Then join us.
Join the Sankofa Communist Party.
Study with us. Organize with us. Build with us. Fight with us.
History is not finished. The future is still being written.
Let us write it together.
Let us go back and get it!