Basebuilding

Basebuilding, in some select Marxist usage, is the concept of winning masses of working class people to a communist organization by forging strong, long-term ties of friendship and mutual respect with individuals, rather than viewing them just as potential recruits. It includes work on the job and in community groups that can help people more clearly understand the anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-labor motives behind Marxist-Leninist organizing. The idea of basebuilding flows from the perspective that any working person can be won to communist ideas and to participate in communist decisionmaking, and that a small "cadre" core of committed 'professional revolutionaries' will never be enough to sustain a true proletarian revolution or its resulting worker-run society.