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This summer, while most people were at the beach or barbecuing, America’s socialists and communists went back to school.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), through The People’s Forum, ran a five-week hybrid “Socialist Summer School: The People vs. Billionaires” while the Revolutionary Communists of America hosted the World School of Communism. Local chapters in Connecticut joined their comrades in the “learning” too. Heck, the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America (CT DSA) even ran a “Socialist Essentials” series of its own this month to help educate the masses on the finer points of socialism.
These aren’t just discussion groups. They are legitimate training programs that present capitalism as the root cause of all the world’s problems and prescribe a socialist/communist revolution — or at least aggressive socialist reconstruction — as the only cure.
PSL’s People vs. Billionaires Curriculum
The PSL/People’s Forum course ran from late July into mid-August 2026, twice weekly online and in-person in New York. The official framing went something like this: the fact that Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire while working families struggled simply proves that capitalism has reached a “breaking point.” Endless war, climate crisis, AI, and “Trump’s escalating assaults” on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran were all presented as “features” of the capitalist system.
Class 1 started off with a bubbly young socialist declaring “the time is so freaking right for socialism.” The module on two Americas at 250 featured The Communist Manifesto and framed the current political landscape as the battleground for our future: “a reckless billionaire class” that “drives the planet toward endless war and ecological destruction” versus “a working class, exhausted and exploited by the hollow promises of the American Dream” that is desperately searching “for an alternative.”
The module on the ruling class taught that the state is not a neutral referee. Quoting Marx and Engels, instructors and readings described the police, courts, prisons, military, schools, and media as “a committee for managing the affairs of the ruling class.” They argued the state holds a monopoly on legitimate violence and uses it to protect property, not people. Trumpism was framed as the latest expression of this, with deep historical roots in white supremacy, racial segregation, and class collaboration. Readings highlighted America’s "imperialist" wars "from Columbus to the Islamic State." The takeaway was the capitalist state must be dismantled, and replaced by one organized around the needs of the working class and the poor.
The module on how revolutions are made insisted revolutions are neither spontaneous nor the work of lone heroes. They require masses of ordinary working people reaching a breaking point, organized forces ready to do the work, and hard lessons from past defeats. The Paris Commune was described as an experiment in proletarian democracy that failed, in part, because it hesitated to seize the Bank of France and "smash the state" machinery. Engels was quoted: the working class “cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purpose.” Students were asked to map their political awakening onto longer histories of struggle and define “revolutionary consciousness.”
The final “Socialism Now!” module declared capitalism is a dead end of major crises—endless war, climate catastrophe, AI-driven displacement—that cannot be solved within the capitalist system. Workers make the world run, so the conclusion is workers should run the world. A socialist U.S. would nationalize key industries; plan production for human need rather than profit; dismantle systemic racism, the patriarchy, and imperialism; and convert the trillion-dollar military budget to meet people’s needs.
CT PSL even held its own “Black and Red Summer” discussion hub education series. The explicit goal of the PSL programs is not academic curiosity; it appears designed to produce activists willing to build the socialist movement.
The Revolutionary Communists’ School
Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Communist International ran its World School of Communism online from August 2–7. More than 20 talks covered Marxist theory, history, and current strategy.
Opening sessions addressed “Imperialist war and class struggle: perspectives on the world revolution.” Other topics included multi-polarity and how communists fight imperialism, whether the world is “going fascist,” the rise and fall of social democracy, Lenin and Trotsky “what they really stood for,” defense of the Cuban Revolution, the Bolivarian process under Hugo Chávez, the 1926 British General Strike, Rojava’s defeat, and the priorities for building Revolutionary Communist International.
The tone was straight-up revolutionary Marxism: capitalism is in profound crisis; the working class must build independent revolutionary leadership; reformism and social democracy have repeatedly failed. American participants were encouraged to reclaim the 1776 revolution as a genuine revolutionary event distorted by the ruling class.
Connecticut has a small but active RCA presence. You can usually find them on the streets in New Haven, aka the Communist Capital of Connecticut, with their oh-so-clever reoriented sickle-and-hammer logo that forms “CT.”
Last week, CT RCA comrades attended a day school program where they “discussed student work, world perspectives, activism vs. Bolshevism, and much more.” Now they’re preparing a “fall offensive” at Southern Connecticut State University to bring RCA’s ideas to campus.
The CT Democratic Socialists of America
While the National DSA did not hold a summer school, local CT DSA chapters did offer several learning opportunities. The New Haven chapter of the Connecticut DSA, for instance, presented a three-part series over the summer on socialist essentials and the practical aspects of organizing to build toward a socialist future.
CT DSA’s Political Education Working Group is also beginning a statewide research and writing project on August 20 “to research various socialist concepts, synthesize the key points of each, and provide deeper reading resources for anyone who wants to learn more.”
In fact, DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly recently said the only thing standing in the way of a socialist revolution in the United States right now is our Constitution.
"So the two things that we're famous for... our commitment to a program and our hatred of the United States Constitution," said Connolly. "What the program does is it gives us a roadmap to revolution and it gives us the obstacle that we finally will have to get over to have a revolution, which is the United States Constitution."
The socialist/communist summer schools trained progressives to see the existing capitalist system in this country as totally illegitimate and to prepare for and engage in a full-on revolution to replace it.
Out with the Constitution, and in with socialist utopia.
And after a summer of studying classic Marxism and Communism, these newly indoctrinated revolutionaries are ready to “fight for the world we deserve.”
P.S. Remember this meme?
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