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Workers’ Party of Tunisia (PTT): Remembering 40 Years Since the Founding: Always True to Our Promise

By Deputy Editor on January 25, 2026

Workers’ Party of Tunisia (PTT) | Jan. 4, 2026 | Translated for the Red Phoenix by Sofia D.–

Forty years have passed since we announced the foundation of the Communist Workers’ Party of Tunisia (Workers’ Party). We chose January 3, the occasion of the bread riots (Jan. 3, 1984), which the Bourguiba regime drowned in blood. This date was chosen for its special significance in the memory of the Tunisian people. The Bourguiba regime was constantly committing crimes against the Tunisian people; beginning with the farmer’s protests at the end of the sixties, the student movements of the seventies, and especially during the January 5 movement of 1972: the worker’s and employee’s struggles, especially during the general union strikes on January 26, 1978, in which dozens were martyred and hundreds of union members and citizens were arrested, finally culminating in the “bread riots”, which reached their peak on January 3, 1984, where also dozens of protesters were martyred at the hands of the regime’s police and its army, and where hundreds were detained.

These events, including the bread riots, have indicated that the record of workers, laborers, and popular masses is full of struggles, sacrifices, and immortal achievements, and it has shown at the same time that the struggles and sacrifices have lacked organization along revolutionary class lines, to frame them and guide them towards really radical change, putting an end to dictatorship, oppression, dependence, and exploitation. The announcement of the birth of the Workers’ Party was a response to these objective facts. Today marks 40 years of existence for the Party; so it is the right of every activist, indeed the right of all progressives in every arena to take pride that the Party was and continues to be faithful to its principles, values, and goals, standing beside the people in their tenacious struggle for freedom, liberation, democracy, social justice. The Party’s voice remains unsilenced by the stick of dictatorship , neither in the time of Bourguiba, nor Ben Ali. It has offered up martyrs, such as the comrade Nabil Barakati, and hundreds of detainees in the prisons of the dictatorship, contributing to the struggles of the Tunisian people, which were crowned in the 2010-2011 revolution. And it faced—with all its intellectual, political, and practical strength and resilience —the forces of the left, the religious forces, and the liberal forces, which followed one another into power after the revolution. These forces turned on the revolution and aborted it, each one after the other, deepening the pain and suffering of the people, and opened the door to the populist fascist coup on July 25, 2021. The coup exploited these pains and state of general frustration to eliminate the gains of the democratic revolution, and to return the country to the corner of dictatorship, under a barrage of populist slogans, and gradually pushed the people back to the streets. This has shown once again the soundness of the Workers’ Party’s vision, which continues its work to win over the workers, laborers, and popular masses generally to its program, so as to overcome the shortcomings of the 2010-2011 revolution, and to achieve in reality the slogan: “Work, Freedom, National Dignity”, in the framework of a democratic popular republic.

The situation today all over the globe, in the Arab world, and in Tunisia especially, confirms the importance of the revolutionary party, for the purpose of confronting the dangers threatening the workers, laborers, nature, and the whole world.

The world is heading more and more towards many barbarities, which is expressed by the resurgence of strength for aggressive fascists. Trump represents the most prominent example, in all the crimes committed by him in Palestine, in the Region of the Middle East, and in South America. For example: what is happening today in Venezuela, which has been subjected to violence, and whose president has been kidnapped in an unprecedented act of thuggery, aiming to take control of the oil and mineral wealth of Venezuela. This could open the floodgates to further bullying all around the world, and exacerbate the conflicts between major imperialist states, which are exponentially increasing their military budgets and multiplying the fronts of confrontation.

And in this moment where human and natural existence is threatened, the revolution formula comes to mind: “Socialism or Barbariam.” Capitalism and Imperialism have brought nothing but terror, humiliation, exploitation, and alienation, which are escalating and multiplying in every country on earth, and there is no option but to confront it with class and rational struggle, by engaging every social class and popular strata, led by the working class and its revolutionary party. The revolutionary party is still needed today to organize the conscious, revolutionary struggle which can put an end to the rotten and savage capitalist civilization, and pave the road for a new, human society, based on freedom and equality.

The task of creating the revolutionary party falls to the shoulders of the communists, the Marxist-Leninists, in the various corners of the world, who have been called upon to draw inspiration from the experiences of their predecessors in the past two centuries, and from their experiences in resisting the Capitalist monster in order to build the socialist system as an alternative. The Workers’ Party has considered itself from day one an internationalist Party, and it will not hesitate to play its role in this battle with and alongside all working-class, revolutionary forces.

There is no doubt that the need for a revolutionary party is multiplying in the Arab world, whose people suffer tyranny and economic, social, and political backwardness without exception, under the role of comprador, corrupt, and dictatorial regimes. The Arab world is the richest in terms of its resources and wealth, and yet the poorest and weakest due to the imperialist hegemony in its “new” forms, even in its direct colonial form, as in Palestine. Palestine’s occupation and usurpation would not have lasted all this time if not for the complicit role played by the Arab regimes, such as what is happening today against the backdrop of the “Al-Aqsa Flood”, which would have constituted a significant shift in the performance of the Palestinian resistance, if not for the treacherous role carried out dutifully by the regimes of humiliation and shame. It was the same role they played in subjugating Lebanon, destroying Syria, dividing Yemen and Sudan, and solidifying the division of Libya, in normalizing relations with the enemy and submitting to the will of the invader.

The deplorable situation in which our people are living puts urgently on the agenda the necessity of a revolutionary class party as a lever of national and social struggle in the face of reactionary class rule and in the face of counterfeit “alternatives”, in the face of both oppression and liberalism, and which will continuously reproduce the production of dependency, poverty, misery, and tyranny.

The difficulty and complexity of the situation does not absolve the revolutionaries in the Arab World and the whole region of bearing their responsibility and providing necessary instruments of change.

The positions of our party throughout forty years have not overlooked the national front as a basic dimension in the struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and reaction, considering them as interlocked and complementary links in a single chain, today more than ever. Our Party will not hesitate to continue its efforts to strengthen its relationships with the revolutionary forces in the region, and especially the Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations which work to become deeply rooted in the popular struggle, until they can play their role in reviving the spark of struggle for National Liberation, including occupied Palestine, and to expel the imperialist, Zionist colonizer from the region, overthrowing the system of subservience and treachery, creating the conditions to build the socialist alternative.

And in our country, the constant need for an independent and militant party is at all times confirmed. We need one that opposes the tyrannical, oppressive dictatorship that seeks to eliminate the achievements towards freedom by the people through their struggle and sacrifices, and which aims to deprive them of the tools which they use to defend themselves, as the right-wing populist government is constantly moving to strip these tools away.

Our party has not been ticked by the transformations that took place. The transformations have generally confirmed the correctness of our analysis, and given us another factor of confidence and determination as we continue our work with the people for the correct course. This correct course can only mean overthrowing the system of tyranny, dependency, and impoverishment, in favor of a national, democratic, and popular system. The path of struggle is hard and arduous, but the lessons of 40 years constitute today an inexhaustible course for continuing the struggle against dictatorship until it is overthrown.

The Workers’ Party pledges to its people that it will not deviate from its values and principles, and that it will not spare any effort to reach the people and connect with them in all sectors and activities. If conscious and organized, the people are the only power capable of bringing about change. Neither the foreign reactionary colonialists nor their fools on the inside are capable of giving change to the people. The Tunisian people will not free themselves except by themselves, and the first step is the defense of their freedoms and rights, their livelihood, and their dignity by their conscious and organized ranks, until they seize the decisive moment and achieve their goals. Tomorrow is around the corner.