Given their commitment to this goal, the delegates are preparing to discuss the various stages through which they see the struggle for socialism progressing.
Defeating right-wing extremism is seen as simply the first stage of the fight. Webb warned of that stage's critical nature. "If you don't believe me," he added, "take a look at Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, where Republicans took control of the levers of power in 2010 and then ruthlessly rolled back rights, eliminated social programs, and attacked the labor movement.
Assuming an eventual victory over the right wing, the Communists see workers and allies then being able to enter an "anti-corporate" stage of the struggle, where they expect the fight for a peoples' agenda will bring the labor movement at odds with corporate/economic political power.
"This stage of struggle doesn't supplant capitalism," Webb remarked. Instead, it "brings the socialist stage closer as tens of millions become convinced in the course of the struggle that capitalism doesn't work for them."
In the next stage (the socialist stage), Communists see a substantial shift to the left among the "core forces" of social change, a deepening of anti-racist consciousness and practice, the consolidation of the anti-corporate alliance, and the growth of the Communist Party and other left organizations.
"This stage will culminate in the election of a peoples' government," Webb stated.
Important parts of this stage, he noted, are "steps to control the movement of capital, to institute a tax policy that weighs heavily on the wealthy, and to place under democratic control sectors of the economy, such as finance, that are a threat to the peoples' government and a socialist revolution."
Some of this is still a way off, and so another focus on the part of the Communists is turning their party into a far bigger one than it currently is."
