Tasks for Revolutionaries and the Role of the CWI
This document should be read alongside articles on the CWI website, socialistworld.net, and ‘What We Stand For’ statements and campaigning materials from CWI sections. This Programme is published alongside the document ‘Historic Foundations of the CWI and the Struggle for a Revolutionary Socialist International’, which provides the political, and theoretical foundations of the CWI and an outline of its history.
Part 1 | The Crisis of Capitalism and the Socialist Alternative
The twenty-first century has laid bare the rottenness of the capitalist system anew. We live in a world of immense wealth and technological achievements, yet the basic needs of the majority cannot be met. War and conflict are on the rise.
The capitalist system is characterised by private ownership of the means of production by the capitalist minority; production for private profit, not human need; competition; the exploitation of the labour of the working class (the vast majority of humanity); periodic crises and the division of the world into rival capitalist nation-states. Poor and working class communities bear the brunt of the environmental and climate crisis that the capitalist system has inflicted on the planet and is incapable of overcoming. Capitalism breeds racism and discrimination and oppression of women and minorities like LGBTIQ+ people, disabled people and others. No matter the human cost, the logic of the capitalist system is increased exploitation for ever expanding accumulation.
The economically advanced capitalist countries, including most of Europe, North America and Japan – amongst whom are the former colonial powers and today’s major imperialist powers – are mired in a structural crisis for which the working class is expected to pay. Sluggish growth and persistent economic instability drives declining living standards and life becoming increasingly unaffordable. This provokes widespread social unrest and stokes the class struggle. The ruling capitalist classes face a crisis of political legitimacy, characterised by a growing distrust in capitalist political institutions.
The ex-colonial countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia have followed different paths, especially since the end of the Second World War. Economic development has taken place in some countries and regions, sometimes creating sizeable ‘middle classes’. China has developed into the world’s second biggest power, but on the basis of a unique ‘model’. Capitalist economic relations are dominant in China, but the Chinese Communist Party state retains considerable levers of power and a large degree of autonomy in steering the development of capitalism. This cannot be replicated elsewhere. But whether in China or in those countries that have experienced significant economic development on the basis of more typical capitalist policies, growth is marred by major problems and produces astronomical inequality. Millions are left behind, trapped in grinding poverty. Globally, one in ten people remain in extreme poverty. Millions lack decent housing, reliable electricity, nutrition, clean water, or adequate sanitation, leading to preventable disease and premature death. For many in the neocolonial world, life continues to be “nasty, brutish and short”. Capitalism offers no future whatsoever for the millions prey to starvation, grinding poverty and conflict.
Younger generations in the advanced capitalist countries are now the first in modern history to face lower living standards than their parents. They have far less of a stake in capitalist society and are far more questioning of its legitimacy; a shift that is already reshaping their political outlook, including an increasing openness to ‘socialism’, and willingness to struggle. In the neocolonial countries, greater access to education and social media can stimulate aspirations for a life markedly different to that of previous generations. The enormous mismatch between these aspirations and the wasteland of opportunities under neocolonial capitalism often places the youth at the head of social revolts and uprisings.
If capitalism does not work, what is the alternative?
Some argue capitalism can be ‘fixed’ through piecemeal and gradual reforms. Gains can be made for working class people, but only through mass struggle or the threat of mass struggle, and under capitalism they will only be temporary. Today even minor concessions are fiercely opposed by capital. The post-World War Two ‘welfare state systems’ in Europe, for instance, were an exception that proved to be temporary. Permanent gains for the working class and the poor of the world require capitalism to be overthrown.
Workers’ and other forms of cooperatives and ‘mutual aid’ are looked to by some sections of the middle class and youth, in particular, as an easier alternative to capitalism than socialist transformation. Essentially, all of these pose building an alternative that exists within the framework of capitalism. Initiatives based on these ideas can give a glimmer of the potential but remain subject to capitalist market forces, necessitating competition and cost-cutting, especially as they grow in scale. Generally small-scale and localised, they cannot challenge multinational corporations or plan the wider economy.
The CWI argues that the only alternative is socialism. Socialism is not about state control by a privileged elite. Nor is it merely a better welfare system. Socialism means a society based on social ownership of the economy, production for human and environmental needs not profit, international cooperation not competition and a democratically planned economy instead of a market economy. Only on this basis can the needs of humanity be met and those of the planet.
How can capitalism be ended and socialism built?
Part 2 | The Role of the Working Class
Exploited by the capitalist classes of the world, the working class’s unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist classes’ profits. The modern working class is larger and more urbanised than at any point in history. Globally, the working‑age population exceeds four billion. Today, more than half of humanity is concentrated in cities where production, logistics, transport, services, and public infrastructure are organised.
The working class embraces far more than factory workers or manual labourers. It includes the vast majority of those who sell their labour for a wage or salary: nurses, teachers, call centre staff, warehouse workers, tech developers, drivers, hospitality workers. It includes those who are dependent on those earning a wage or salary, such as working class youth, the unemployed, pensioners and others.
The working class has the power to overthrow capitalism. This power does not come only from its numbers and essential role in the capitalist production and wealth making process, vital as these are, with the working class forming the majority of humanity globally. It also comes from the ‘collective consciousness’ the working class is capable of achieving. This arises from its role in the capitalist economy. Working class people broadly experience the same conditions and endure similar hardships in the workplace and in their communities. Collective class experiences and consciousness and action demand collective organisation, such as trade unions, and fosters solidarity. As many revolutionary movements and class struggles have shown, the working class therefore tends towards democratic forms of collective organisation.
Arising from the conditions of exploitation the working class faces under capitalism, social ownership of the commanding heights of the economy is posed. The working class’s democratic instincts, honed by its organisations in the struggle against capitalism, can in turn be carried over to the creation of workers’ states.
The diverse middle layers in society, such as self-employed professionals, small business people and small farmers, can share the working class’s interest in ending the unbearable burdens of capitalism. But it is only the working class that has the power and collective class consciousness to lead the struggle to overthrow capitalism and to complete this task. In Marx’s words, of all the oppressed and exploited only the working class has the potential of being not only “a class in itself”, but “a class for itself”, i.e. a conscious, organised force capable of building socialism.
Socialist Governments & Workers’ States
The working class needs to take control of society. This will require socialist revolutions that dismantle the capitalist state in every country and build workers’ states in their place. These will be based on a new higher and more thoroughgoing form of democracy, built on the foundations of regularly elected democratic councils of workers and communities. These councils would be composed of elected and recallable representatives, with full-time officials paid no more than a skilled worker’s wage, and positions and offices periodically rotated.
Already under capitalism the vast multinationals that dominate the world economy use sophisticated economic planning internally. Many multinationals dwarf most national economies. By abolishing private ownership of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy, a socialist economy would be planned and organised on a democratic basis in order to meet the needs of society rather than generate profits for the capitalist class. Society could then plan to guarantee jobs for all, raise living standards, expand public services, and tackle long-term challenges like the environmental and climate crisis and realise the huge latent potential in modern technology.
Capitalism will not be overthrown simultaneously worldwide. The working class of one nation or other will inevitably be the first to come to power as a socialist government at the head of a workers’ state. As workers’ states are built and cooperate, the basis of a global socialist society, standing on the foundations of a democratically planned world economy, will emerge. The task of building socialism can only be completed as a global process.
The working class and youth are capable of incredible feats of improvisation in the class struggle. But ‘spontaneous’ uprisings, though powerful, are vulnerable to being diverted, co-opted, and ultimately crushed. The working class needs to forge an organised force: a revolutionary party. It is not sufficient for such a party to be created from scratch in the heat of revolutionary uprisings; preparatory work is vital to build at least the kernel of such a party beforehand, rooted in the working class, having built trust in its ideas and methods and tested in the day-to-day struggles. A revolutionary party needs to be armed with a programme that clearly defines the tasks necessary to abolish capitalism.
These tasks include mass revolutionary struggle for working class political power in the form of socialist governments and workers’ states. Their socialist economic foundations would be based on public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy in every country. This includes the banks and financial institutions, with guarantees for the savings of the working class, middle class and small businesses and cancellation of the debts of neocolonial countries. This would allow the closure of loopholes, tax havens, and speculative financial mechanisms used by the rich to hide and multiply. It would include all the big corporations and monopolies in key sectors, including mining, construction, transport, manufacturing, telecommunications and ‘big tech’, wholesale, retail and distribution, as well as big agri-business and big commercial farms with support and debt cancellation for small and subsistence farmers. Publicly owned sectors would be integrated according to a democratic socialist plan of production to meet society’s needs and solve the environmental and climate crisis through massive investment in renewable energy and expansion of public transport among other things. Cooperation between workers’ states would lay the foundations for a world socialist economy and the development of democratic international planning.
Part 3 | The Tasks of the CWI
The CWI works to build revolutionary parties in every country by applying the scientific socialist methods of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Our ‘national sections’ are united through the CWI, which we build as the kernel of a mass world party of socialist revolution. Such a party will be built on out of world historic events and the conscious participation of Marxists.
The CWI cannot ‘create’ revolutionary situations; we can only prepare for them. Broadly, capitalism passes through non-revolutionary, pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods. There are ebbs and flows within each of these. Within non-revolutionary periods, for example, the class struggle burns at a lower or higher intensity. A revolutionary party needs to be clear through which of these stages the class struggle is passing in different countries, regions and globally. Its role differs depending on the character of the period.
In non-revolutionary periods only a minority of the working class will draw revolutionary conclusions. The mass learns through experience in the class struggle, testing out different organisations and their programmes. The CWI cannot leap over the development of working class consciousness or substitute itself for the class struggle, let alone the action of the masses. We can play a role in speeding this process up however, helping struggles to adopt the necessary programme.
We are currently in a period of intensifying capitalist crisis. In response to that we are also seeing escalating class struggle in many countries, including uprisings capable of overthrowing governments. However, the working class has not, as yet, fully overcome the setbacks of the previous period. The collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, more than three decades ago, was a defeat for the working class internationally.
The old Stalinist regimes bore no resemblance to genuine socialism. They were nationally-based bureaucratic dictatorships. Nonetheless, they rested upon a distorted form of a planned economy, which for a period gave a glimpse of socialism’s potential, with guaranteed jobs, and public health care, education and housing, for example The implosion of the Stalinist regimes and capitalist restoration enabled a worldwide capitalist offensive against the working class, causing widespread ideological confusion within its ranks and its organisations. Under the impact of this, it was popularly accepted among sections of the society that the capitalist market was the only viable road, with socialist ideas, especially those of a planned economy, widely discredited. Capitalist ideologues consciously conflated socialism with Stalinism’s top-down bureaucratic planning. Traditional workers’ parties – with pro-capitalist leaderships and bureaucracies but a mass base amongst the working class and trade union activists – were largely transformed into openly pro-capitalist parties, with their leaders no longer even paying lip-service to socialism. Levels of working class organisation were pushed back. Today we are at the beginning of a process that will see this being overcome as the brutal experience of capitalism, and mass struggles against its consequences, leads a new generation to start looking towards socialist ideas.
i | Struggle for Independent Class Organisation
One of the roles of the CWI is to champion the need for the ideological, political and organisational independence of the working class from all sections of the capitalist and middle classes. This is a vital prerequisite to the construction of mass revolutionary parties and for the success of the socialist revolution. It is the ‘red thread’ running through the programme and method of every CWI section. We fight for this class independence, not only through argument, but by action, by showing the road and encouraging the working class to travel down it.
The development of working class consciousness – of acquiring an understanding of its power to overthrow capitalism and its ability to build socialism – begins with the daily battles inevitable in class-divided capitalist society. The working class will enter into struggle over issues of wages, workplace conditions, pensions, social grants and welfare benefits; the availability and affordability of food; for a secure place to live, high quality housing and over issues of crime and community safety; the provision of high quality, accessible health, education, and community services, including childcare and elder care; universal access to electricity, including the means to heat and cool homes as necessary, water, the internet and other digital services, and other amenities; high quality infrastructure, including public transport; adequate resources and free time for recreation, sports and the pursuit of other cultural activities etc. The working class will also struggle against war and militarism, issues related to the environment, against corruption, racism, gender-based oppression and other forms of discrimination, and many other issues.
It is impossible to elaborate in any details a globally applicable transitional programme connecting the immediate issues of the working class’s living standards and other issues facing the class, and linking it with the need for the socialist transformation of society, beyond saying that the working class will be compelled to fight for a secure, comfortable and dignified life. The CWI will participate in those struggles, connecting them to the need for a political programme for a socialist society. It is the role of revolutionaries in every country to be involved in all the daily struggles of the working class and to expand and defend previous gains won.
The CWI marches step-by-step with the working class, at the same time as marching a ‘step ahead’, in the sense of having a clear understanding of the role the working class can play in changing society. Understanding this makes Marxists the best fighters for reforms; refusing to accept the constraints of what the ruling classes claim to be able to ‘afford’. We raise transitional demands in all the daily struggles of the working class; demands that link up with the conclusion that the socialist revolution is the only permanent means to secure the fundamental interests of the working class.
We build the CWI on the ‘twin pillars’ of the most class-conscious workers and the youth who are convinced of the role of the working class as the agent, or the ‘motor force’, of the socialist revolution.
As the crises of capitalism mature and revolutionary situations develop, it is the intention of the CWI that the cadre of the revolutionary groups and parties under its banner – in other words the experienced members and activists – assist the advanced layers of the working class to draw revolutionary conclusions. Building mass revolutionary parties able to lead the broad mass of the working class and all those oppressed by capitalism to carry through the socialist revolution is an essential task.
In the course of the class struggle the working class is compelled to organise itself. The CWI takes part in this process,in every theatre of struggle – including workplaces, communities and educational institutions – and fights for these struggles to be linked together through independent working class political organisation.
Trade Unions
With the workplaces as the key daily battleground in the class struggle, workers are pushed towards organising themselves in this arena. Whether this is granted legal recognition by the bosses and the capitalist state or not, this usually takes the form of trade unions, the basic organisations of the working class. Workplace organisation brings workers together, give them collective strength against the bosses, and can win real gains, such as better pay, safer conditions, shorter hours, and protections against arbitrary management power.
Trade unions are schools of struggle. In strikes, workers gain confidence, collective experience, including of their ability to control the workplace, encouraging an understanding of class power. This is a vital experience for the working class. In the trade union struggle for greater democratic control of the workplace the seeds of future workers’ democracy under socialism are planted.
Nonetheless, unions have another side that emerge from their role under capitalism of negotiating with employers and the capitalist state. The capitalist class has realised the potential ‘value’ of trade unions in mediating the class struggle. Depending on the circumstances, the ruling classes will combine repression of the workers’ movement with a conscious policy of co-option and incorporation. They will take this as far as initiating the formation of fake ‘yellow’ trade unions.
Even when originally formed as genuine workers’ organisations, over time, the administrative apparatus tends towards becoming cautious, conservative, and disconnected from the rank-and-file, especially in periods when the workers’ movement is in retreat.
The CWI fights for full legal rights for trade unions and to defend and extend those rights where legal recognition has been won. A constant struggle must be fought to build a class-independent and united movement of militant, democratic and rank-and-file-controlled trade unions in which leaderships are held to account and subject to recall, living on a worker’s wage, and to build international links between these movements. Often this will require building class struggle-oriented opposition groups within trade unions to organise militant workers around a common programme, strategy, and tactics, including fighting for the leadership of trade unions. We intervene in such opposition groups and in the wider trade unions with a socialist programme and mobilise support for that. In other circumstances, the established unions can be so discredited among sections of workers that they begin building new unions. The CWI fights to link day-to-day workplace struggles to the wider political struggle of the working class in the struggle for socialism
Independent Political Organisation and Mass Workers’ Parties
The CWI points towards the steps needed to increase the ideological and organisational cohesion of the working class. This is a vital prerequisite to the working class fighting for political power and using it to build socialism.
Because of the general vacuum of independent working class political organisation globally, it is necessary to reconquer this idea in most countries. The CWI often concretises this task with transitional demands calling for the creation of new mass workers’ parties, rooted in struggle and independent of capitalist influence, and actively taking and participating in steps towards their creation. Often the CWI addresses this demand to workers organised in the trade union movement. The CWI simultaneously builds our revolutionary groups and parties through the recruitment of those workers and young people that can be won directly to our revolutionary socialist programme at this stage, including those participating in the struggle for new workers’ parties. We describe this as our ‘dual task’.
Broad mass workers’ parties, even when lacking a revolutionary socialist programme, which will almost certainly be the case initially, can nevertheless be important steps forward, fostering the generalisation of the interests of the working class in their programme and indicating the need for the unity of different class struggles. They can allow the working class to debate and test out different programmes. The CWI participates in such formations and argues for the adoption of a socialist programme and a militant class struggle policy.
Inevitably, different political tendencies would exist in such formations, again, especially initially, some of these might superficially appear to be more attractive than a revolutionary socialist programme, given working class consciousness at this conjuncture. The CWI would engage with significant reformist and centrist[1] tendencies and organisations, calling for a united front in struggle but explaining the limits of their programme and leadership and conducting an ideological struggle. We would also debate with different tendencies and organisations claiming to stand in a Marxist or Trotskyist tradition. By being the best fighters in day-to-day struggles, CWI members demonstrate in practise the power of our ideas and programme.
Broader workers’ parties could play a role as ‘transitional organisations’ on the road to the development of the mass revolutionary parties needed to overthrow capitalism and begin the task of constructing a socialist society . Whether they play this role will depend on the struggle over programme and their ability to connect with and win the support of the working class. However, in periods of sharpened class struggle, pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations, it is possible, with the correct policy, for a small revolutionary kernel to ‘fill out’ and win mass working class support directly.
Capitalist Democracy and Democratic Rights
Capitalism can be the foundation for varied political regimes, from capitalist ‘liberal’ democracy, though bonapartist police and military dictatorships, to totalitarian fascist regimes.
Regimes of capitalist democracy are the best conditions for the building of trade unions, workers’ parties and other working class organisations. Democratic rights include the right to free speech and assembly, the right to organise, bargain collectively, protest, vote and stand for political office. But democratic rights have never been granted voluntarily by the ruling classes. They are won, extended and defended through struggle. Replacing the capitalist state, and its powers of repression and coercion used to impose minority class rule on the majority, with a workers’ state is a precondition for guaranteeing democratic rights for the mass of the population. The administration of justice, policing and the armed forces would not stand above society but be controlled democratically by the working class. Workers’ control and management of the workplace would end the anti-democratic dictatorship of the bosses. Public ownership of news agencies, social media companies, publishing, large spaces for meeting and gathering etc. would enlarge and provide the resources for collective discussion, deliberation and decision making.
Where the ruling classes have conceded the right to vote and stand for election to a ‘representative’ body, such as a local authority, parliament or congress, these concessions have been hard won in the class struggle. Marxists argue for the working class to fight on the electoral field, and struggle for the working class to build its own independent party. Marxists, when elected, can play an important role as the most determined fighters for the independent interests of the working class, using the platform to promote workers’ struggles and solidarity.
The CWI opposes so-called ‘popular fronts’ between the working class and ‘progressive’ capitalist parties. That is workers’ organisations or leaders forming a coalition or bloc with liberal capitalist forces against, for example, fascist capitalist forces in a period of intensified crisis We understand and are sympathetic to why, in some circumstances, sections of the working class might tolerate this. But such ‘fronts’ or coalitions have historically resulted in catastrophic outcomes for the working class. This has included the refusal by workers’ organisations and leaders to seize power in a revolutionary situation, or asking the working class to drop some or all of its class demands in order to maintain the alliance with liberal capitalist forces. The CWI also rejects ‘coalitionism’, i.e. workers’ parties entering coalition governments with pro-capitalist parties at any level
Especially in countries where bourgeois democratic rights are limited and independent working class organisation is suppressed by the bosses and the capitalist state, the struggle for democratic rights will go hand-in-hand with the struggle to build independent working class organisations.
The CWI defends the democratic right of people to practice or not practice religion while opposing the use of religion and sectarianism by the ruling class to divide workers and justify oppression. We call for the full separation of organised religion and the state. We oppose all reactionary religious and sectarian-based organisations, that attack minorities, to divide the working class and poor and undermine democratic, gender and social rights.
Under all types of capitalist political regimes the CWI argues and fights for the working class to take the lead in the struggle for democratic rights, not as ‘ends in themselves’, but in order to forge additional weapons with which to fight the class struggle. The CWI fights for full democratic rights, including the right to free speech and assembly, the right to organise, bargain collectively, protest, vote and stand for political office and freedom for trade unions, workers’ parties and other working class organisations.
ii | Forge the Unity of the Working Class
Capitalism divides in order to exploit. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, national and ethnic divisions, ableism, casteism, religious sectarianism and xenophobia are rooted in the division of society into classes. Racism is a structural product of capitalism, rooted in slavery, colonialism and imperialist domination. The oppression of women began with the dawn of class society. It is therefore one of the longest standing and most deep-rooted forms of oppression. Even where struggle has led to steps towards legal equality, the reality of women’s oppression remains. All women are victims of sexism and misogyny under capitalism but working-class women bear many other burdens: exploitation at work and unpaid domestic labour at home, and, health discrimination and other discriminations. The oppression of LGBTQ+ people is deeply rooted in capitalist gender norms, patriarchal traditions, and religious bigotry. Every fault line will be prised open by pro-capitalist parties and politicians to divide the working class, super-exploit certain groups, scapegoat migrants and justify repression, especially in times of crisis.
Tribunes of the Oppressed
Marxists fight for the complete liberation of all oppressed groups; members of which suffer specific oppression regardless of their class background.
However, the working class is the only force capable of ending capitalism, which is necessary to end oppression. Understanding this will lead to layers of oppressed groups from non-working class backgrounds putting themselves on the standpoint of the working class and joining the struggle for socialism.
Marxists support struggles against specific forms of oppression but reject strategies that deliberately separate these struggles, or that limit participation to those who have experienced the relevant specific oppression. ‘Identity politics’, for example, can express real anger but can also be misused to divide movements and give ammunition to capitalist ‘divide and rule’ tactics. The CWI encourages united working class struggle to end all forms of discrimination and prejudice, linking these struggles to the broader fight for socialism.
The working class needs the maximum unity in struggle. Forging this ‘fighting comradeship’ demands combatting any racism, sexism, LGBTQ+phobia and all other forms of discrimination in the workers’ movement and for the workers’ movement to take the lead in broader struggles for equality.
Daily battles against discrimination and oppression in all its forms, and for racial, women’s, and LGBTQ+ liberation, are inevitable in class-divided capitalist society. Again, it is impossible to elaborate a globally applicable transitional programme on the daily struggles against oppression and discrimination and for liberation, beyond saying that the CWI will participate in these struggles, fighting for full rights for all groups facing specific oppressions and greater resources to push legal equality closer to actual equality.
Global capitalism drives mass migration and asylum-seeking, displacing millions through war, repression, instability, and economic and environmental collapse, rooted in the impact of imperialist policies. Migrant workers are among the most exploited. Capitalist governments use racism and strict immigration controls as “divide-and-rule” tactics against the working class.
All workers, including migrant workers, share class interests. United struggle, through strikes, protests, and international solidarity, is essential to struggle for equal rights for migrant workers at work, including legal rights, employment, education, and social security worldwide. The CWI campaigns to unite local and migrant workers in workers’ organisations, especially the trade unions in order to build joint struggles against wage-cutting, discrimination and racist divide-and-rule. We oppose racist immigration laws and deportation programmes and defend the right to asylum.
International Workers’ Solidarity, Not Capitalist Wars
Capitalism breeds war and uses the working class as its cannon fodder. In a period of crisis capitalism breeds war faster because the capitalist classes and governments are in increased competition with each other. The CWI opposes all imperialist powers. The relative decline of US imperialism and the European powers, together with the rise of China, the assertion of Russian imperialism in its sphere of interest, and the strengthened role of regional powers like India, Brazil and others, are features of the multipolar world that now exists. This has opened an era of wars, and national and ethnic conflicts. The CWI opposes imperialism in all its guises and rejects the idea that workers must choose between the ruling class of rival powers or rival blocs. We stand instead for an independent, internationalist approach based on the common interests of the working class to replace imperialism and capitalist domination with socialism.
The CWI regards the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, the African Union, BRICS, and other international and regional capitalist institutions, blocs and alliances. We reject the wars of the ruling classes and fight to build an international working class movement in opposition , as well as mass movements of youth and workers against militarisation policies and all military occupations undertaken by the capitalist ruling classes. This includes campaigns for nuclear disarmament and to stop arms deliveries to ruling classes waging wars. But we understand the need to fight for and defend the interests of the working class and the oppressed masses and so are not pacifists. The CWI campaigns for an independent class programme on questions of war and peace in the workers’ movement, which includes fighting for the nationalisation of the arms industry and major arms manufacturers in every country, bringing them under workers’ control and management; and protecting the jobs, pay and skills of workers in the arms industry during a planned transition, led by workers, to socially useful production. We also support the struggle for trade union rights for soldiers, including the right to organise, elect representatives, collectively bargain, and refuse to participate in repression against workers and oppressed communities, or in imperialist adventures and wars on civilians.
iii | Fight for Working Class Leadership of All the Oppressed
Class divided capitalist society inevitably oppresses social groups and layers beyond the working class, for example whole nations, including indigenous, or ‘first nations’, and other social classes such as small farmers, or peasants, in neocolonial countries. However, as we have explained, the working class is the force capable of ending capitalism, which is a prerequisite to ending oppression.
Oppressed Nations and the Right to Self Determination
Marxists oppose all forms of national ethnic and religious oppression and firmly support full rights for all national and ethnic minorities and indigenous ‘first nations’. This includes the right to self-determination for nations, including the right to form an independent nation-state where desired. Working class unity will not be forged on the basis of the working class of one nation colluding with its ‘own’ ruling class in the national oppression of the working class of another nation. The CWI fights for an independent class programme in national liberation struggles. This means no support for bourgeois and petty bourgeois pro-capitalist nationalist forces and fighting for working class leadership in national liberation struggles. The working class must place itself at the head of the struggle of oppressed nations, linking the struggle to the class character of the future liberated nation.
Small and Subsistence Farmers
Especially in the neocolonial countries, small and subsistence farmers and peasants face poverty, landlessness and debt. Land monopolies, agribusiness, and finance capital dominate agriculture, setting the prices of crops, agricultural inputs and the terms of trade for the sale of produce and livestock on the world market.
However, these dispersed social layers, engaged in isolated economic activity, have no choice but to look toward either the capitalist class or the working class for political leadership. The CWI fights for working class leadership of the oppressed small and subsistence farmers, waging a struggle for the expropriation of the landlords and capitalist agribusiness, distribution of the land to the landless and support and debt cancellation for small and subsistence farmers.
Conclusion
The first attempt to create a workers’ state was during the 1871 Paris Commune, which was brutally crushed by counter-revolution. The class struggle has ebbed and flowed since then. Revolution and counter-revolution have vied with each other. The working class proved it can win political power with the 1917 Russian Revolution and has stood on the threshold of power in many other countries since. But the working class has not yet succeeded in consolidating and holding power in a democratic workers’ state. All the tendencies within capitalism that prepare the objective basis for a world socialist society continue to strengthen. Indeed, the world has become over-ripe for socialism. Above all the potential power of a now billions-strong and truly global working class to act as capitalism’s “gravediggers” has never been greater. Based on the ideas briefly sketched in this document, the CWI believes we can play an important role in assisting the working class to build the necessary mass forces to win power and to bury the profit system. This will banish exploitation and oppression once and for all, preparing the way for future generations to build the classless communist society anticipated by Marx and Engels and all the other great Marxist figures and generations of working class militants.
[1] Centrism is a tendency that vacillates between revolution and reform. Trotsky described centrism as “revolutionary in words and reformist in deeds”. Its adherents may formally accept revolution and adopt revolutionary phraseology but lack the programme, clarity, or confidence to break decisively from capitalism. It is a transitional and unstable political tendency.