The Red Spectre

The Red Spectre
Abbreviation	RS
Leader	Horizontal leadership based on democratic centralism
Founded	15 May 2021 (as a journal) 10 November 2023 (as an organization)
Dissolved	December 2, 2024 (reconstituted into CLO)
Succeeded by	Communist Labor Organization
Student wing	Red Spectre Academy
Publication	Red Spectre Journal
Political orientation	Communism Marxism–Leninism (claimed) Anti-revisionism (claimed) Hoxhaism (until early 2023)
Type	Non-party auxiliary Marxist–Leninist organization

The Red Spectre (RS) was an international communist organization which nominally adhered to anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist ideology, but in actuality assumed various ultra-left positions. The organization focused on the education of the working class in revolutionary theory. They also published articles relevant to historic and modern topics and held programs to train and organize aspiring activists and revolutionaries, which most notably included Red Spectre Academy and Revolupedia. In late 2024, the Red Spectre was reformed into the Communist Labor Organization.

History

Poster promoting the Red Spectre and its revolutionary positions.

Early development

The Red Spectre emerged as a GitHub repository on May 15th, 2021, alongside with its first release, a modest collection of reprehensible fascists, dictators and war criminals aided by the West. Originally meant as a 'source-crowding' board where people may contribute their own knowledge on topics, the project failed to take off due to the founder's lack of experience, alongside a lack of an established and experienced Marxist userbase.

On December 21st, 2021, The Red Spectre published its first ever article, "Against Dengism", and has restructured itself as a theoretical journal. While the project yet suffered from amateurism and 'growing pains', the quality within the articles themselves remains evident. Priding itself first and foremost on its trustworthiness and verifiability, sourcing each of the claims made by it. In that time and despite its shortcomings, The Red Spectre nevertheless went to extents such as using declassified, obscure CIA documents to refute the post-Second World War narratives pushed for by the West, and curating a list of 262 distinct times Lenin attacked Trotsky by name in his writings, each linking to the original work.

Restructuring into an organization

The project itself remained small (and in all likelihood highly obscure). This ended on November 10th, 2023, when the journal reorganized itself into a real organization, accruing enough resources (specifically, in the form of membership) to do so. The organization's citation archive (also known as "The Red Spectre archive") had been opened on the same day.

On December 13th, 2023, The organization's website has been released, and is where its members published their newest articles and other works.

On May 20th, 2024, The Red Spectre created the Red Spectre Academy, largely hosted on the archive. In it, Red Spectre members held study sessions and assisted the Academy members in studying Marxism, its theory and principles, in order to raise new Marxists who are eager to learn to the level of cadres.

Later developments

On August 6th, 2024, the Red Spectre published an article entitled Against Hoxha, which marked the organization's turning point into an openly ultra-left formation. This article employed a number of dogmatic arguments and had the effect of isolating the Red Spectre from other anti-revisionists.

On August 15th, 2024, the Red Spectre published its first organizational constitution after being ratified on August 9th, 2024.

On December 2nd, 2024, the Red Spectre formally reconstituted itself into the Communist Labor Organization. This was in the aftermath of a split with an opportunist clique which had manifested in the organization and sought to dismantle democratic centralism. On February 22, 2025, the Communist Labor Organization would formally disband, bringing an end to the final form of the Red Spectre.

Ideological line

The Red Spectre upheld the revolutionary framework of Marxism–Leninism, and regarded Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin as its leading theorists. It also followed the theoretical contributions of other Marxist thinkers such as Georgi Dimitrov and Rosa Luxemburg. The organization took on a firm anti-revisionist position, understanding the 20th Congress of the CPSU and de-Stalinization in 1956 to be major setbacks in the communist and working class movement. The Red Spectre opposed all forms of discrimination and chauvinism, including racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments.

By August 2024, the Red Spectre would begin to adopt multiple ultra-left and dogmatic stances, focusing its efforts on attacking all instances of supposed "Hoxhaism" (which encompassed most non-Maoist anti-revisionists), to which it considered to be a revisionist tendency comparable to Khrushchevism.

Further reading

• Toward Rectifying the Errors of the Red Spectre (March 2025)