Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to our Frequently Asked Questions section! Here, we try to answer questions in a way that’s approachable. If you don’t know what a word means, try looking at our glossary. If you already have a good grasp on theory, you may want to read our Points of Unity. If you are looking for more in-depth reading you may want to look at our Reading List (coming soon!).

Last updated April 2, 2026

Who are you?

We are Red Star Peoria. We are Communists in Peoria, Illinois, who practice scientific socialism. We have been living here, some for years and some for months, but we view this city as our home and want to help the people of Peoria and organize the working and oppressed masses towards revolution against the capitalist-imperialist world system, starting with our own locality.

What is socialism? What is communism?

Socialism and communism are terms which refer to a post-capitalist society and to the idea of working towards it.¹ Socialist/communist refers to people who want to achieve socialism/communism.

Today, many people use the terms interchangeably, or they regard socialism as “soft” and communism as “hard.” Scientific socialism, also known as Marxism, is a school of thought pioneered by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx and Engels didn’t invent the idea of a post-capitalist society, but what makes Marxism different from other types of socialism is the emphasis on a scientific worldview, class struggle, and the role of revolution which changes society itself in making a new socialist world.²

What is imperialism?

Imperialism refers to the final, dying stage of capitalism. It is characterized by parasitism where the majority of the global population is exploited for the benefit of a tiny minority, by large monopolies dominating economies, by new and ongoing imperialist wars for new markets and new territories, and by a general social-economic-political crisis that brings together all issues of society.³ Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have been living in a world where the United States has hegemony- meaning that it has the ability to force its will on other countries with use of words or force. The US is the most powerful empire on earth, and we are positioned in the belly of the beast!

What is the history of socialism/communism?

The idea of socialism probably predates but was first written down by European and American utopian socialists in the early 1830s. They viewed socialism as something that the ruling class could implement from the top-down, or something that could be achieved by going into the wilderness to start utopian communes. The utopian socialists were well intentioned, but because they didn’t have a scientific outlook and methods, their early attempts at establishing socialism were unsuccessful. In the late 1830s and 1840s, worker’s movements that called themselves communist appeared in Western Europe, advocating for violent revolution. By the time of the publication of the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels in 1848, the two words became synonymous.⁴

Leading up until the First World War, the people who worked towards socialism/communism called themselves social democrats (as they advocated for a social-political democracy). The outbreak of WWI resulted in a split in the social-democratic movement, with some members reclaiming the name of communism to distinguish themselves as revolutionaries against social democrats who wanted to peacefully reform society into socialism. At the same time, social democrats sided with “their own” empires and communists called for a war between classes rather than a war between peoples. We believe that the communists were right.⁵

Why can’t we reform capitalism into socialism?

In our society, there are two main economic classes (with layers in between): the working class (the proletariat) and the owning class (the bourgeois).

The owning class, who are defined by their ownership of property, comprises of people who have vast amounts of property and wealth. They form our ruling class because we live in a political system where having a lot of wealth easily translates into political power. Even though we might have formal rights to free speech, to vote, and to run for office, our democracy is set up for the bourgeois, which you can tell by the presence of superPACs where corporations and billionaires can buy off individual candidates and by politicians being involved in insider trading. Because our democracy is rigged against the working class who don’t have a lot of wealth or property, individual reforms are always in danger of being taken away by the ruling class.

We think that the only way to win a rigged game is to flip the board entirely and recreate society so that it is working people who are the ruling class. Working people sacrifice their time, energy, and health to their jobs. They are the people who make the world function. The people who do the work of society should have a say in society’s decisions more than they do right now. The infrastructure to improve our communities is already there and we already know how to run it as part of our jobs, so why shouldn’t we take control of it for ourselves and cut out the owners?

Do you support the Democrat party?

No, because of the reasoning above. The Democrat party differs with the Republican party on a few social issues and the question of social welfare, but it is a party that is run by the ruling class. The two parties are united on the principles of capitalism and imperialism, but disagree on strategy and tactics. Trying to reform the Democrat party would be engaging in the same rigged game.

But doesn’t capitalism mean that if you work hard, you will be successful? Aren’t poor people just lazy?

No. Being poor requires a lot of hard work! In order to stay afloat, poor people have to often work multiple jobs alongside gig work, and have to be extremely careful with their money and find the best ways to save money. On the other hand, many middle-income and rich people do not have to do the difficult jobs that poor people do. The reason that the owning class is rich is because they exploit many workers underneath them. Those workers do the hardest part of the job and they only get a tiny fraction of the total profit made by the company or employer. Our society is set up in a way to keep a few people rich and most people struggling on purpose.

What do you mean by revolution?

By revolution we mean a total transformation in social relationships, to destroy old relationships in society, to abolish the owning class by making it impossible for any individual person or group to hold such a large amount of economic power, and to move towards collective ownership of the things we need to survive. We want to create a society where everyone, no matter who they are, will be guaranteed food, housing, healthcare, and other necessities. We believe that this will not be easy, because the owning class does not want to give up its grasp of the economy and political power, but we believe that the infrastructure for the new world is already here- we just need to take it!

We are not alone in this either. In history, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, and many other revolutions, are examples of working and oppressed peoples successfully taking power to build a new society on top of the old. We want to study them and understand how they won, then take their lessons and apply it to our context.

Wasn’t the Soviet Union bad?

No. The Soviet Union was one of the first countries in the world to attempt to re-engineer society on a massive level on a basis of social equality and justice, while also trying to do it in a country that was industrially undeveloped and which faced open hostility from its neighbors from its foundation. Fourteen foreign armies invaded the country after the Bolsheviks took power! Considering the central role of the USSR in its defeat of Nazi Germany and its support of freedom fighters all over the world during the era of anti-colonial revolutions after WWII, the leaps it made in its quality of life after the last famines it experienced, its vast improvements to the status of women and national minorities within its borders, it is difficult to consider the USSR as worse than its contemporaries at the time.⁶

Ultimately, the USSR did collapse for a reason, and since then the abysmal backslide of quality of life for most people in the post-Soviet bloc has only proven out that the USSR, for all of its flaws, is worth studying and learning from. Today there is now a fratricidal war between Russia and Ukraine, with the latter being used as a hammer for the United States to try and further break up Russia. That war would never have happened if the USSR was still intact.

Is China socialist?

Yes and no. In China, the prerequisites to socialism such as high amounts of automation and technological development has optimized to the point that even with low wages compared to other countries, the average Chinese person has a lot more access to food, housing, healthcare, and other essentials than the average American because those prices are also kept low. At the same time there still exists a market economy in China, it is dominated by large state-owned enterprises in key sectors like telecommunications, transportation, and electricity which facilitate redistribution of value internally and act as social welfare systems.

China had to reintroduce and preserve aspects of capitalism such as the market because they are necessary to interface with the rest of the world economy. However unlike in capitalism, the ruling Communist Party of China, which is actually responsive to the Chinese masses, has the ability to politically control billionaires where in the USA the relationship between the ruling party and the bourgeois is reversed.⁷

Further developments in Chinese socialism are constrained by the world system it is a part of. So in the words of Chinese Communists themselves, China is “on the socialist road” but has not reached socialism and cannot do so as long as US imperialism exists to enforce the regime of private property. Ideologically, China is socialist, which has been proven out by their successes in developing the country. For a good comparison we can compare China with India, which started off with a similarly rural and undeveloped country, but their developments have taken different roads.

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is just one local adaptation of scientific socialism amongst many and is worth studying for the same reasons as other socialist ideologies.

How does racism relate to capitalism?

Capitalism itself was founded on genocide of indigenous peoples and Black slavery. In the context of the US, a settler-colony, historically speaking, it has been difficult to unite the white and nonwhite parts of the working class because of the psychological and economic benefits of white supremacy. At the same time, many people who choose to make a stand against white supremacy soon realize how integral racism is to capitalism and become socialists if not fully fledged Communists.

We don’t think that nonwhite workers should be forced to work together with racist white workers, but rather that it will mostly be nonwhite workers as a group who will be the leaders of the revolution in the United States. When it comes to general trends, the benefits of white supremacy make it less likely for white people to risk their own lives, yet, as we have seen in Minneapolis and other cities during this recent wave of repression and historically during the George Floyd Uprising, white working people can become political actors against injustice. The ICE terror has drawn people of all races together to defend their neighbors.

In short, we think that any Communist which wants to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism in the US will have to support the right of all people to self-determination, including the indigenous and Black nations in the US and by the same reasoning, that anyone who wants to really get rid of racism once and for all must also want to do the same with capitalism.

What is your view on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Free Palestine from the river to the sea, which means decolonization: dismantling and abolishing the Israeli apartheid state. Israel is an agent of US imperialism; if Israel did not exist then the US would have had to invent one. There are often people who confuse the issue, and believe that Israel is controlling the US, but in reality the US did everything that Israel does first. Israel acts like an advanced military base, which is why the US is dedicated to maintaining it to impose control in West Asia.

Do you support LGBTQ+ people?

Yes! LGBTQ+ people are often at odds with capitalism because capitalism operates on the assumption that some people will be men who work and other people will be women who raise children (and also work) and that households can only comprise of straight marriages. This means that LGBTQ+ people often have less buy-in than cisgender straight people into existing society.

It is true that organizing over the decades has won some concessions for LGBTQ+ people in capitalism, but at the same time this has meant a greater integration into imperialism with the excuse of “LGBTQ+ rights” being used to argue for invasions and bombings of other countries (as if gay people are immune to bombs!). On the contrary, Cuba, which has a socialist government which has created some of the most progressive LGBTQ+ related legislation in the world, is constantly under siege by the US.⁸ Today, trans people in particular are facing genocidal attacks by both conservative states and the federal government.

We believe that real LGBTQ+ rights can only be achieved under socialism, because when people’s rights to their basic needs are guaranteed by society, it makes it more difficult for people to punish other people for being different.

Are you a charity or nonprofit?

No, and we will never be.

Why can’t charities and nonprofits solve the problems of capitalism?

Charities and nonprofits are often reliant on volunteer labor by those who have the extra time and energy to work for them. They are heavily reliant on the government and corporations for grants and funding. Oftentimes, people who need help from a charity or nonprofit do not have a say in how they are helped. Charities and nonprofits can often help with the worst effects of capitalism, but they are a band-aid solution that don’t treat the underlying sickness of the system itself. In fact, charities and nonprofits are often motivated to not fully solve a problem, because their existence is justified by the presence of a problem in the first place.⁹ Charities and nonprofits are also legal entities bound to the state- if the government wants to stop funding social welfare, it will do so, as we see today with federal cuts to many grant and aid programs.

Are you affiliated with a national organization?

As of April 2026, we are entirely local to Peoria. We are not affiliated with any national organization. We agree politically with many of the ideas published by Unity-Struggle-Unity Press, however.

I am a Communist and I disagree with your views on something.

Contact us! We always want to engage in good faith struggle with other Communists; it’s the only way to improve as a movement.

I have more questions I want answered!

Contact us! We would be happy to clarify our views and update our FAQ.

I have ideas. How can I get involved?

Contact us! We are always looking for people who want to help out.