Points of Unity

These are the basic political principles and positions that members of our group are expected to uphold and defend, as well as our terms of formal affiliation with other groups in our project of forming a larger scale organization.

Our goal is Communism: the end of all exploitation and oppression.

Communism is a worldwide stateless society where money and markets have been abolished and production is collectively planned by all. It is the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, where the segmentation of human beings into classes, nationalities, races and genders has been transcended. Rather than mere worker ownership of factories or state-control of resources, communist society is one within which “value” as we know it has been abolished and free access to goods has replaced markets and rationing. The previous development of capitalism makes such a society possible. Such a society will emerge through a process of transition, not through immediate insurrection or apolitical utopian experiments.

The proletariat is the class that fights for communism.

While communism is universal human emancipation only those with no stake in capitalism will wage a real struggle to abolish it.  The proletariat are those without reserves who must sell their labor power to survive, compelled by these conditions to engage in the economic and political battle against capitalism. There is no other “revolutionary subject” that can lead the struggle for communism nor any kind of substitute for the class struggle. The propertied classes may join the struggle of the proletariat, but only under the conditions that they submit to the interests of the proletariat.

The proletariat must seize power to transition to communism.

The proletariat must seize power as a class, becoming the class which governs society by forming a workers republic based on radical political democracy. This is also known as the dictatorship of the proletariat, where the proletariat rules as a class within capitalism and puts the class struggle on a new footing which makes possible the struggle for communism itself. This is to be achieved through social revolution on a mass scale. The proletariat cannot seize power through a putsch or coup nor can it come to power in coalition with the bourgeoisie.

Communists oppose the bourgeois state.

In order to take power, the proletariat must smash and destroy the bourgeois state and implement its own form of governance. The bourgeois state cannot be gradually evolved into socialism. It is fundamentally a protection racket for the propertied classes, structurally designed to serve the needs of capitalism. The police, military, and bureaucracy must all be dissolved for the proletariat to emerge as the ruling class.

We need a party and programme.

The proletariat wages both an economic struggle and a political struggle, fighting to improve its position under capitalism through union struggle while also struggling for power as a class. To wage a political struggle for power, the proletariat must form its own party based around a programme for workers power and communism. This party must be independent from all bourgeois parties. Through building its party, proletarians become politically trained to run society and organize around a programme that expresses their class interests.

Communists are internationalists.

Communism is a worldwide society based on the cooperation of all humanity. We promote world revolution as opposed to “socialism in one country” or other national roads to socialism. Internationalism is not only a goal but also informs our methods; communists promote the unity of the working class beyond national borders and wage a political struggle against national oppression, chauvinism, and imperialism. As internationalists we stand for the equality of peoples, that no national grouping has the right to dominate another. From this we reject all capitalist wars and do whatever is in our capacity to sabotage them. Nationalism in all forms stands as an obstacle to revolution in today’s globalized capitalism.

Communists are for gender liberation and sexual freedom.

Sexual liberation is an inherent part of communist revolution, but it can only be true liberation if the shackles of patriarchy are thrown off. We therefore oppose and aim to transcend the patriarchal family that is based on the unpaid reproductive labor of women. This necessitates the socialization of domestic labor which will no longer be considered inherently feminine. Under communism masculinity and femininity will be purged of relations of domination and forced labor. We oppose transphobia and any other prejudice that upholds traditional gender norms and binaries. We are also against the stigmatization of sex workers, which divides the working class. A struggle against patriarchy and rape culture is necessary within the labor movement and the left as a whole.

Communists fight against racism with revolutionary integrationism.

Under communism, phenotypes like skin color which function unevenly today as markers of racial and ethnic distinction will carry no more significance than differences of eye color. Yet we cannot be “color-blind” marxists and ignore the problem of racism as an actually existing phenomena and must actively struggle against white supremacy in our own organizations and society at large. Racism is embedded in the worldwide class structure of capitalism through the historic impact of colonialism, slavery, segregation, and apartheid. The fight against racism is a fight to unite the working class to defeat capitalism and achieve a meaningful form of integration.

We believe communists and the working class must organize democratically.

Against the democracy of the bourgeoisie, based on constitutional rule of law and systemic corruption, we propose the democracy of the proletariat. We uphold the right to open debate, factions and accountable collective decision-making within revolutionary organizations, especially our own. This means opposing bureaucratic centralism and working against the development of unaccountable caste-like layers of leadership. All disputes among fraternal and comradely groups and individuals are to be aired publicly and to be conducted in a manner befitting organizational discipline. Threatening splits to assert minoritarian vetoes over rank and file majorities, personalistic politics, lack of transparency — all of these are roads to degeneration for any organization. We reject secretive and authoritarian models of organization that are based on an unchallenged dictatorship of the central leadership over the rank-and-file. Proletarian organizations will either function according to norms of internal democracy or fail.

Communists support reforms that benefit the working class, while rejecting reformism.

We support fights for reforms that increase the living standards of the working class as well as reforms that expand our democratic rights under capitalism. This is not because we have an illusion that capitalism can be reformed, but rather an understanding of how the fight for reforms is part of the process through which proletarians better position themselves to become the ruling class. This means not having illusions about what a given struggle can realistically win while also promoting tactics that aren’t straightjacketed by the rule of law.

We support industrial unionism.

Against narrow corporatist trade unionism, we promote unionism that unites workers at the greatest possible level that do not seek to maintain a “peace” with employers. We encourage workers to join unions and struggle against the bureaucracy when it is necessary, also promoting forms of unionism that empower the rank and file. Unions themselves are a location of class struggle, where the tendency to accommodate to capitalism in the bureaucracy needs to be challenged by communists. We also encourage unions to become politicized and support socialism as an end goal. On their own unions are necessary but not sufficient.

We oppose bureaucratic and authoritarian models of socialism.

This means rejecting that the USSR and its various offshoots such as the People’s Republic of China and Cuba are examples of socialist societies or functioning proletarian dictatorships which serve as models for us to use. While no functioning communist society has existed, we point to the Paris Commune, the early days of the Russian Revolution, the German revolution, the Shanghai Commune and aspects of the Spanish Civil War as historical moments where the working class grappled with the task of forming a new society. While this isn’t to say past bureaucratic attempts at socialism had no progressive gains, the lessons to learn from them are mostly negative.

Organizing rather than activism.

Much left wing activism today is not about actually building working class power but rather hoping to “raise consciousness” through symbolic public demonstrations. Rather than chasing activist causes whenever they pop up, we believe communists need to put their energy into organizing institutions of class struggle and educating class conscious workers, building a base that can fight for revolution. Organizing builds class power while activism tends to simply be a way of publicly expressing one’s disapproval about a given issue.

Communism must address the ecological question.

With the growing reality of global climate change leading to increased disasters, addressing the ecological question is a necessity for the survival of humanity. Communism aims for a harmonious relationship between humanity and its ecosystem, as much as it aims for harmonious relation between humans. To address this global crisis, humanity will need to use scientific planning rather than be dominated by the irrationality of the market