Proposed Statement of Principles

Proposed Statement of Principles for a World Party

1. We recognize that the struggle of the working class is global. The interests of the working class and the capitalist class in every country are irreconcilably opposed, and workers have never achieved anything without a fight. Through the form of the trans-national corporation, capitalists organize themselves on a global scale. 

2. We recognize that capitalism is a dying system and must be replaced by socialism. The private ownership of critical economic infrastructure by a minority of millionaires and billionaires, who exert control over all levers of government, blocks the effective scientific and democratic solution to the surge of crises confronting humanity. 

3. We recognize that workers must oppose imperialist war. Imperialist war and militarism are inevitable results of the capitalist system and the division of the world into nation-states, which must be abolished. We are not however pacifists: we recognize the need for waging a revolutionary war by the workers of all countries.

4. We recognize that the goal of the working class is not to seize the existing states, but to establish a new system of power based on organs of working class democracy. The modern capitalist state machine is purpose-built to prevent genuine democratic control. 

5. We recognize that the working class must maintain its independence and develop opposition to the capitalist political parties. Organizations and institutions that we do not control will inevitably support the interests of the dominant class, the capitalist class.

6. We recognize the necessity for unrelenting struggle and opposition to reformist and pseudo-left (ie crystallized right-centrist) organizations operating as tendencies in capitalist politics.

7. We recognize that workers who are organizing must conduct their work on a principled rather than opportunist basis. Always be honest with yourself and others. If we are afraid to tell the truth, we will never be able to achieve our goals.

8. We recognize that the task of the radical workers is to develop revolutionary consciousness amongst the broad majority of workers. An understanding of the crisis of the capitalist system is ultimately not rooted in “common sense,” but in a sober and scientific analysis of the world appropriated by the radical layers of our class, organized in a World Party based on the achievements of Marxist theory.

9. We recognize that workers must fight at every opportunity to advance new and more radical forms of organization in the working class, such as rank-and-file committees and workers councils, or even international unions, rather than allowing their energy to be trapped and depleted by old, ossified organizations. Under the weight of globalization, the old organizations, rooted in various forms of nationalism, reformism and opportunism have degenerated. Workers must rebel against the old bureaucracies and fight for internationalism in the workers movement. 

10. We recognize that many states, as a result of peculiarities of historical development, contain within them national, ethnic, and other minorities who, under conditions of historic oppression and legalized discrimination, experienced an artificially-suppressed class development which concentrated them disproportionately at the bottom of the class structure. Vital statistics such as lower rates of home ownership, lower life expectancy, higher incarceration rates, higher rates of unemployment and lack of access to education, etc. reveal the existence of such minorities. There is no solution to these inequalities within the framework of class society. The solutions to these problems require a vast redistribution of wealth and property such as could only result from a social revolution and ultimately the abolition of the class system. Such a movement can only emerge from a determined orientation to workers from such minorities as part of an orientation to the most militant sections of the working class. 

11. We recognize that workers must oppose nationalism, nativism, racism, communalism, sexism and all other means used to divide the working class. We also oppose "left-wing" politics that base themselves on the elevation of nationality, race, sex, etc above class differences. The division between the capitalist class and the working class is the decisive conflict in society. Measures such as non-class, identity based "affirmative action," which divert the oppressed into support for various forms of identity-based rationing of increasingly limited opportunities, distract from the socialist program to fully satisfy the needs of all workers. 

12. We recognize that workers must learn the art of producing effective propaganda and agitation material. We look with optimism towards the goal of creating a daily socialist streaming news service. 

13. We recognize that workers must not confine their struggles simply to the economic plane or to the workplace. We must organize campaigns, intervene into mass social-political movements, build political strikes, etc.  It is necessary to achieve not just improvements in our economic standing, but to ultimately wrest political control from the capitalist class through economic and most significantly, political struggle. The working class in the 20th century achieved many impressive gains, but without achieving genuine workers' governments these gains have been subject to continuous attacks.

14. We fight to achieve workers' governments in every country by establishing a bridge between the present demands of the working class and the program of world socialist revolution. We will accomplish this by employing a program of transitional demands oriented to the needs of the working class and society.

15. We recognize that the fight for equality is integral to the struggles of the working class. The greatest revolutionary fighters have always centered the demand for egalitarianism. The fight for equality prepares us not only for the defeat of the current ruling class, the capitalist class, but against any attempt to establish a new privileged layer in the future. 

16. We refuse to be separated from our revolutionary heritage. The capitalist class distorts and conceals the lessons of past struggles and the teachings of past working class leaders. By rooting our activity in a long history of working class struggle and Marxist theory, we can learn from and avoid the mistakes of the past. 

17. We are Trotskyists and Bolshevik-Leninists, ie. revolutionary Marxist internationalists, and we root ourselves in the history of the Fourth International and its struggle against the nationalist and bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. We are implacable opponents of every form of national and bureaucratic opportunism and revisionism, including reformism, Stalinism, "national Trotskyism," objectivism, etc. 

18. We will remember that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers ourselves, and that we can look to no one else to save us.