#Preamble

11. The crisis of world capitalism, born from a declining rate of profit and intensifying competition between imperialists, can signify only one thing: the twilight of the gods of the bourgeois world order is nigh. Today, it is not a question of the periodic economic crises which were once a part of the capitalist mode of production; it is the crisis of capitalist civilization itself; we are witnessing convulsive spasms of the whole of the social organism, formidable outbursts of class antagonisms unseen in a generation, general misery for the vast masses of proletarians, the intensification of atomisation, social collapse, and technological domination: all this is a fateful warning to bourgeois society. It appears more and more clearly to the vast masses of workers that the ever-growing antagonism between exploiters and exploited, the contradiction between capital and labour, cannot be reconciled. Capitalism, in experiencing its prolonged demise, has committed itself wholly to the altars of imperialist war and ecocidal extraction, to the modern Moloch of techno-capital, the foul demiurge of race, nation, and Empire. It has created a chaos whose unbearable prolongation places the proletariat upon that historic crossroads: socialism or barbarism, communism or death, the program of labour or the program of capital.

22. The program of capital, which in reality is a program of vampires, is to consolidate the final and inevitable form of capitalist rule: corporatist oligarchy. All the powers of human labour, all the gifts of so-called civilisation, all the resources and life upon the earth pour into the hands of an ever-dwindling number of capitalists. In their quest for surplus value, they seek to break the organisation of the working class, stripping from it all protections won by decades of class struggle. In doing so, they hope to restore profit rates through the consolidation of a corporate dictatorship, the welding of capital and the state. They render the paper-thin veneer of democracy ever more ragged, until finally it is stripped away by the swing of the policeman's club and the hiss of the tear gas grenades.

33. The consolidation of the corporatist oligarchy, the dictatorship of capital in its final and most grotesque form, is an attempt to drive the working class forever into bondage, reduced down to little more than wage-slaves. This is the program of the vampiric serpent of imperialist capitalism in its final stage, all in the name of their eternal sovereign – the logic of accumulation itself. All the defenders of the old world have now fallen in behind the Party of Order. From craven coalitionists to the most ardent fascists, this Coalition of Capital has made its program known: slavery, toil, hunger, drudgery, tyranny, stagnation, alienation, decay, war, ecocide, death.

44. The only alternative to the program of capital is the program of labour. The proletariat, disparate and disintegrated as it may be, is the only force that provides some hope for the emancipation of humanity. Only when it takes mastery of its destiny, seizing the powers that it has at its disposal, can it use its true weapon – organisation – to overthrow the world of the exploiters, the world of the time-clock and security camera, the world of capital. The Communist Party, the Party of Freedom, is the sharpest blade at hand for the revolutionary proletariat. The program of labour is the emancipation of humanity - its central task is to break the world of the bourgeois and to institute its own republic, the republic of labour, the republic of the working class, the cooperative commonwealth, communism. Then, and only then, can the riddle of history be solved, and humanity emancipated from drudgery, anxiety, toil, and want.

55. The immense crisis in world-capitalism and the historic struggles of the proletariat have made possible the promise of communism: the real abolition of social classes, the state, the wage system, and markets, and the realisation of the living principle of free association through a common plan; a society based upon solidarity and non-domination, where each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their need. Only the revolutionary proletariat, organised into its class party, can carry this promise out.

66. The first task of the communists is to articulate their perspective and their program, as distinct from all other tendencies in the socialist and workers movement. What follows is a proposed program for a future Communist Party, the now elusive Party of Freedom that can unite the vanguard of the class into a decisive weapon for the emancipation of humanity. This program serves as an oath, and a guide for our unity. It is against the realisation of this program that we mark all progress and assess all victories, - for only the program of labour can emancipate humanity.

77. Victory to the Class! Revolution in Our Lifetime! Forward to Communism!

#1. Our Epoch

88. With the revolutionary wave in Eurasia inaugurated by the victory of the Russian revolution, the epoch of revolutionary transition from capitalism to communism began. The central contradiction of our age is between a decaying capitalism and an overdue communism – between the advanced objective conditions for revolution, and the relatively backwards subjective conditions.

99. Globalisation, which is in reality a new phase in the development of monopoly-finance capitalism, brought the epoch of capitalist development to its end; the logic of the world system now trends towards permanent crisis and stagnation.

1010. Despite this historical crisis, the historic task of the proletariat has yet to be realised. Despite the valiant efforts of previous generations of revolutionaries, the great waves of class struggle of the 20th century ended in defeat, conciliation, and recuperation into the logic of capital. With the defeat of the socialist movements of the 20th Century, the workers movement entered a period of reaction of a special type - one in which the merger between socialism and the workers movement was largely severed.

#1.1. The Capitalist World System

1111. In the capitalist mode of production, social wealth appears in the form of an immense accumulation of commodities. Generalised commodity production, which includes the generalisation of the sale of labour power, heralds the dominance of a monetary economy, the dominance of the market over production, and with it, the rationalising logics of the law of value. Capitalist society is a society of competing, disunited economic units; a society of universal competition. As such, it is a society driven by the accumulation of capital: the process by which value self-valorises, and money transforms into more money through the purchase and sale of commodities. In such a society, the fundamental precondition of production is the capacity for the realisation of surplus value in the form of profit – a driver of productive dynamism which increasingly places fetters upon social production.

1212. In capitalist society, a vast class of workers who sell their labour-power in exchange for wages, take on a primary social role. They are exploited in the process of production, bound to service by the lash of economic coercion. This class, the proletariat, is defined by their dependence upon the wage system, and constitutes capitalism's gravediggers – created by the capitalist system, their historical task is to bury this system forever. This class is confronted with a triple form of domination: abstract domination by the market, domination in the workplace by the managerial rule of capital, and political domination by the bourgeois state and so-called "civil society".

1313. The very real domination of the proletariat is obscured within the capitalist mode of production by the abstract nature of commodity exchange. While production has never been more socialised in all of human history, this socialisation is essentially indirect – it is obscured by the fetish-object that is the commodity. This fetishism renders the concrete social relations between people as abstract relations between things. It is an alien world, dominated by a perverse logic of accumulation that not even the masters of industry can fully control.

1414. The capitalist mode of production now stands astride the entire earth. In its constant drive for accumulation, it has demolished or internalised all alternative modes of social organisation. This has created a world-system characterised by exploitation and inequality. Depending on where they stand in relation to the global flows of capital and labour, all the nations and peoples of the world are organised according to great hierarchies of poverty and power. From the sweatshops of Lagos to the mines of the Philippines, a single, unified, global market now integrates the social labour of the entire human race.

1515. Though they remain viciously exploited, many states in Asia and Latin America now occupy a significant semi-peripheral place in the world division of labour. And not only as suppliers of raw materials and agricultural products. Such countries now produce a wide range of manufactured goods. As a result the working class is now the majority class globally and has the self-interest to become a consciously international class.

1616. A prerequisite for the final victory of the working class is winning power in the industrial economies. Only here has capitalism fully proletarianised the bulk of the population and accumulated the technical basis for communism. The imperial core, while no longer being the centre of capitalist industrial production, maintains strict monopolies on many forms of advanced technical production. In turn, it is these countries that militarily maintain the world order of imperialism. The working class can come to power in the peripheral countries, usually in alliance with the peasantry or other popular classes, but these valiant efforts will prove short-lived while world-imperialism still stands bestride humanity. The defeat and destruction of world-imperialism is the material precondition for the realisation of a socialist world system.

1717. Capitalism develops through cyclical economic crises. These crises are both endemic and necessary. Government intervention may attempt to reduce the depth and duration of slumps, but can only succeed in moving the crisis, sectorally, geographically, or temporally. Value, production for profit, private ownership, and money are propped up by the managerial apparatus of the modern state. The structural contradictions of capital lead the system to go into economic shock. The tendency of the rate of profit to decline is the harbinger of a generalised unravelling of the capitalist world system and its vaunted profitability. The working class faces a historic choice: either take power and replace the market with the plan, or suffer the ruinous consequences of capitalist decline and social disintegration.

#1.2. Uneven Development

1818. The world economy and capitalist development make the existence of countries and national borders, the patriarchal family, and religious and communal illusions increasingly anachronistic. Their persistence, both in fact and in ideological life, is a testament to capitalism's uneven development.

1919. The continuous accumulation of capital means the social nature of production grows ever greater. Ownership and control are either taken into the hands of the state or become more and more international, institutionalised and concentrated.

2020. Capitalist accumulation in no way implies the development of a system that is rational in regard to human development. Production is for the sake of capital accumulation.

2121. Capital never rests, driven as it is by the unquenchable thirst for surplus value, an endless drive for dead labour to feed on living labour. It is a system of chronic overproduction that knows no intrinsic limits to exploitation. It is a system where dead labour in the form of capital turns against living labour, where money and profit are primary while need is incidental. It is a system of extreme alienation that mediates human interaction through the cash nexus.

2222. Despite the abundance of its commodities and the wonders of modern technology, capitalism does not allow human beings to fulfil themselves. Work is often a dehumanising torture, not life's prime want. Workers toil long hours, eating up any possible time for social life or community. Precious as it is, leisure time is no more human, being a site of endless consumption, social reproduction, and entertainment spectacle.

2323. Workers suffer relative pauperisation. Compared with capital, wages tend to shrink.

2424. Leisure time is increasingly frittered away, or turned towards seeking other forms of monetary enrichment. As the world of things becomes ever greater, the world of people correspondingly becomes ever more insecure and atomised.

2525. During periods of stagnation and crisis, through unemployment, wage cuts, intensification of labour, longer hours, temporary contracts, etc, capitalism assaults the existing cultural level of the masses – meagre and impoverished though it is. Hard-won wage rates, the right to strike and organise, and legal restrictions imposed on exploitation are damned as heresy by the high representatives of the dollar, euro, pound, and yen. Hence capitalism threatens the workers even under the boot of capitalist domination.

2626. Distorted by relations of exploitation and the lust for profit, national economies become not only anachronistic, but grossly lopsided. In the imperialist metropoles, huge numbers are engaged in all manner of fictitious and pointless labour, such as banking, the stock market, insurance, advertising, and human resources. In peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, capitalism's destruction of peasant agriculture leaves hundreds of millions destitute and eking out a precarious existence in sprawling slums and shanty towns. Great breadbaskets become dependent upon food imports, and fields of coffee and cotton are left to rot or burn when prices fall.

2727. This same development through crisis, driven as it is by competition between capitalists, inevitably produces competition's negation: monopoly. Vast corporate empires, consolidations of capital and labour the likes of which were unimaginable even to the emperors of old, now sit bestride the world system. Monopoly capitalism, in all its forms, is not a perversion of capitalist development, but rather its natural expression.

2828. The same is true by the inevitable merger of industrial and banking capital in the form of financialisation. This great concentration of capital expresses itself at the level of political life through the general merger of state and corporate power. The struggle between the great sectors of the capitalist class, between the various middling layers, is the real content of political life in the bourgeois states. No reactionary dream of a return to so-called "productive" capitalism can be entertained: the future belongs to the struggle between the massified organisations of capital and labour.

2929. Thus capitalism advances the productive forces in a grossly inefficient, wasteful and inhuman way. The full development of humanity's powers requires the social control of production and planning, not only on a national, but an international scale.

#1.3. The Development of Capitalism in Australia

3030. Capitalism on the Australian continent developed as a direct outgrowth of the British Empire and its policies of colonialism in the late 18th Century. By the time of the colonisation of Australia, the capitalist mode of production had fully developed in Britain. As in North America, the colonists engaged in a ruthless campaign of genocide against Australia's indigenous peoples, dispossessing them of their lands and destroying hundreds of distinct cultural and linguistic groups. From this genocidal campaign, and the use of occupied indigenous lands for agriculture and mining, Australian capitalism developed free of the fetters of pre-capitalist modes of production.

3131. The relatively stable development of Australian capitalism, and the relatively small size of the industrial working class in Australia meant that the labour movement developed relatively late, and when it did, it was marked from the outset by the inclusion of petit-bourgeois independent workers and the dominance of craft unionism. The petit-bourgeois composition of the labour movement, and the inability of the petit-bourgeois democratic struggles to metastasize into a genuine democratic revolutionary movement, meant that the primary tasks of developing the Australian nation-state at the turn of the 20th Century was left largely in the hands of a labour movement dominated by petit-bourgeois reformers and national-protectionists. The chronic shortage of labour that has marked Australian capitalism from the beginning also produced a labour movement that was dependent upon immigration control to maintain relatively high wages through the late 19th and early 20th Century.

3232. All of these developments led to the emergence of Laborism, and the creation of the Australian Labor Party on the basis of class collaboration, nationalism, white supremacy, and protectionism. This history has given the Australian labour movement, and the Labor Party-ACTU bureaucracy a fundamentally corporatist character, distinguishing it from the social democratic and labourist traditions of European trade unionism. The Australian Labour Party was at the time of its founding and remains a bourgeois workers party - that is a workers party with a bourgeois outlook, a bourgeois program, and a bourgeois leadership.

3333. With the emergence of the modern Australian state, Australia has been able to bring itself into the capitalist-imperialist core and position itself as a regional enforcer for first British and then American imperialism. In the course of this development, Australian capitalism has transitioned towards a more open migration policy, the restructuring of capitalist production during the period of globalisation, and the class compromise that was the Prices and Incomes Accord and the subsequent defeat of the trade union movement.

3434. In the 21st Century, Australian capitalism exists as a member of the imperialist core and a member of the US-NATO imperialist bloc. Australian capitalists profit from imperialist exploitation in South-East Asia and Oceania, and the Australian state actively supports the US military as a junior partner in the region. However, Australian capitalism is shifting into a period of crisis. The systematic decomposition of Australia's manufacturing base has left Australian capital dependent upon a series of economic bubbles, namely in minerals and housing. In addition, the decline of American hegemony has placed Australia in direct geopolitical competition with China in South-East Asia, while at the same time being a major Chinese trade partner.

#1.4. The Danger of War

3535. Generalised warfare is the product of class society. War, and the potential for war, will only end with the ending of class society itself.

3636. Capitalism goes hand in hand with uneven development – hence the constant pressure for a redivision of spoils. Rising 'have not' powers challenge the existing imperialist hierarchy and seek to offset their own problems at the expense of foreign rivals. When diplomacy and trade wars fail, military force decides. Trade blocs become military blocs.

3737. Imperialism means preparation for war. Peace is only a period of ceasefire. It is only the freezing of the division of spoils arrived at through war.

3838. After 1945 imperialism normalised high levels of production of the means of destruction. Popular support for military Keynesianism was garnered through anti-communism and competition with the Soviet Union. Today, this military spending is justified in terms of defending the "Rules Based International Order", which in turn has ushered in a new period of inter-imperialist competition and geopolitical rivalry.

3939. Capitalism now possesses weapons capable of destroying human life across the whole planet. The struggle to end the danger of war by the working class is therefore a struggle for the survival of the human species. Only the mass action of the working class, and the establishment of a socialist world system, a system of solidarity and universal human community, can war be relegated to the dustbin of history.

#1.5. Nature

4040. Nature is regarded as a free gift by capital, which has but one interest – self-expansion.

4141. Capital possesses no intrinsic concern either for the worker or nature. Nature and the human being are nothing to capital except objects of exploitation.

4242. Because of its never-satisfied lust for profit, capitalism results in the concentrated degradation of nature. Countless species of plants and animals have been driven to extinction. Many more are endangered. Deforestation, erosion of topsoil, spread of deserts, overfishing of seas and oceans, and anthropogenic air and water pollution have accelerated. In industrial cities that means deadly smogs, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Huge numbers have no proper sanitation facilities and no ready access to clean drinking water. All of these horrors sound the warning that a great crisis is upon us: a global ecological crisis, a crisis of the world biosphere, of ocean acidification, climate change, and generalised climactic collapse. A great metabolic rift opens, drawing a sharp contradiction between industrial civilisation and the environment.

4343. Instead of cherishing the resources of nature, there is plunder, waste, depletion and irresponsibility. Oil is squandered through the car economy, huge areas of land are given over for growing biofuels, forests are stripped bare to make way for palm oil and cattle ranches, air travel booms while public transport is neglected, and geo-engineering, with all of its destructive and uneven effects, is presented as the solution to climate catastrophe.

4444. Working class power presents the only viable alternative to the destructive reproduction of capital. The struggle of the working class brings with its minimum program not only higher wages and shorter hours;
it brings health services, social security systems, pensions, universal primary and secondary education, and measures that protect the environment.

4545. Though it is produced by capitalism, the working class is uniquely opposed to capitalism. The struggle of the working class more than challenges capital. It points beyond: to the total reorganisation of society and with that the ending of humanity's strained, brutalised and crisis-ridden relationship with nature.

#1.6. Class Struggle

4646. Class struggle is the immanent result of capitalist social life. The very social relations that allow for the production of capitalist profit, which produces both great wealth and great poverty, bring forth a struggle between worker and capitalist. This struggle begins at the most elemental level, and concerns itself with the minimal struggles over wages and living standards. However, it is within this struggle, limited as it is, that the possibility of total transformation is borne. If the proletariat can raise its struggle from the reproduction and amelioration of the wage relation and its immediate conditions to a general struggle against capitalist exploitation and the bourgeois state, then communism becomes an imminent possibility. To do so, the proletariat must consistently struggle against itself, with its own existence as an appendage of capitalist production, with its existence as variable capital.

4747. Capitalism is objectively approaching communism. Yet achieving communism must be the conscious self-liberation of the working class. This can only be achieved through the overcoming of short-term impulses and sectional interests. Therefore the struggle against opportunism – that is, elevation of short-term or sectional interests over the general interest – is fundamental to the supersession of capitalism. The part must be subordinated to the whole, not the other way round. No section of the working class, no party, no trade union, no national grouping, can take precedence over the whole international working class. The struggle against opportunism is a struggle for a maximal international unity of the working class.

4848. Though the capitalist class is tiny, it possesses immense power – and not only in the form of wealth and the state machine; as the ruling class, its ideas are the ruling ideas.

4949. Capitalist ideology is a concrete manifestation of the alienation and fetishism of capitalist production. It is extended and cultivated through an ideological state apparatus, and in the battle for hearts and minds this apparatus is carefully cultivated by a paid army of permanent persuaders – the media, education, the arts, religion, establishment parties, etc.

5050. In contrast, numerically the working class is a giant. It can, like any oppressed class, economically and politically fight to better its conditions within the existing system. Yet to realise itself as a class for itself with a historic mission to free humanity, it must acquire a scientific, rational, and rounded world outlook. It must consciously acquire a class program. That cannot be gained except through an open struggle against wrong ideas. This must encompass the struggle against manifestations of opportunism within our own, national and international, communist ranks.

#1.7. World Revolution

5151. The proletariat is a global class. It must make a world revolution. Whether revolution breaks out and triumphs first in a peripheral, semi-peripheral, or an advanced core-imperialist country, it is vital that it swiftly spreads beyond that state's borders.

5252. This is necessary both to defend what has been gained and to achieve the full potential of socialist society. Wherever the workers seize power, they will be attacked by foreign capitalist powers, especially the main imperialist powers. The most effective form of defence is therefore the spreading of the revolution to those countries through aiding the struggle for power by their working classes. "Socialism in One Country" is a reactionary utopia.

5353. The victory of socialist revolution in one or more countries is only partial until the balance of forces has tilted decisively against capitalism. That means the socialist revolution must triumph in a tranche of advanced countries if it is not to suffer deformation and counterrevolution in one form or another. National revolutions are therefore best coordinated and where possible synchronised.

5454. The productive forces developed by capitalism over centuries demand an international order. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the nation-state itself has become a fetter on their further development. Therefore, the necessity for the strategy of world revolution flows from the need to combat continued resistance from the old ruling classes and from the fact that a rational and sustainable development of humanity's productive forces can only be finally achieved on a global level.

5555. Then, on the basis of a globally planned economy and a world federation of socialist republics, humanity will be able to step out of its collective pre-history, and into its collective future.

#2. Revolutionary Strategy and the Communist Party

#2.1. The Working Class

5656. The working class is the only consistently revolutionary section of society. Without owning any of the means of production of society, it has nothing to lose but its chains.

5757. However, left to spontaneity and absent the development of communist consciousness, it is riven with sectionalism and exists merely as an appendage of capital – capable of being economically militant, even insurrectionary, but not hegemonic or revolutionary.

5858. Driven to class struggle through the conditions of its existence, the proletariat must transform itself from a class-in-itself, whose struggles are contained within the horizon of capitalist accumulation, to a class-for-itself, capable of waging a revolutionary struggle against class society itself. What raises the proletariat to a class-for-itself is its unity around a revolutionary program – the communist program.

5959. The working class constitutes a large majority of the population in Australia – as well as in Europe, the US, Japan, and other advanced capitalist powers. Alongside the proletariat, organised by capital into heavy and light industry, services, agriculture, and logistics, there are many semi-proletarian layers that are partly or fully dependant on the wage system - pensioners, those on sickness and unemployment benefit, carers looking after young children or aged relatives, students being trained for the labour market, etc. Proletarianisation, the process by which all previous forms of social bond and economic certainty are stripped away, places universal market dependency at the centre of existence. All peasant and artisan layers, all aristocracies of guild, small property, and skill are torn asunder by their exposure to it.

6060. Traditional distinctions between manual and non-manual work have grown more and more irrelevant in the course of social development. Besides manual industrial workers, the working class also includes workers in the health service, transport, the civil service and local government, as well as non-manual workers in industry, finance and distribution, such as technicians, clerical, and sales staff.

6161. If the working class does not elevate itself from being a subject of capital, it finds its common actions paralysed or limited by opposing competitive interests, which divide every section against every other section. It is only on the basis of the merger of the workers movement and the political program of scientific socialism that the working class can throw off its conditions as an oppressed class and lead the revolutionary struggle to overturn all of class society.

6262. In achieving awareness of its political program, the proletariat cannot subordinate its political independence to any other class or stratum. The bourgeois, including the small and medium capitalists, are entirely the class enemies of the working class. In making an alliance with these classes, the working class cedes its struggle for the abolition of capital into the future, forestalling its independent political development.

6363. The working class must also resist all attempts to submerge itself into an undifferentiated populist mass without regard for class differences. It can seek to make alliances with middling and backwards classes, with the understanding that these layers must be subordinated to the proletariat's emancipatory program. Professionals, independent artisans and contractors, peasants, and the urban poor, all the labouring classes must be won to the proletariat's program: a workers' republic and socialism.

6464. In the struggle to implement its program, the proletariat necessarily moves through waves of struggle and organisation. Where it can, the proletariat must prepare for the seizure of power and the establishment of a workers' republic. It must also take direct action to establish for itself the conditions for the completion of its immediate program – the arming of the working class, the occupation and expropriation of capitalist infrastructure, and the formation of councils of action.

#2.2. Revolutionary Strategy

6565. It is not enough to simply aspire to transform the world. Communists must work constantly to offer a strategy for the working class in its struggle for class power. As such, communists must work tirelessly to develop and articulate a revolutionary strategy.

6666. The strategic outlook of the communists is based upon the following planks:

6767. ↳ Class Independence.

6868. The proletariat must organise for itself as a class, under its own interests, and cannot tie itself to any faction of the ruling class. It rejects outright the possibility of alliance with progressive, liberal, or antifascist elements of the bourgeois, or with sinking its proletarian forces into a broad, undefined, populist movement.

6969. ↳ Mass Action.

7070. The central fulcrum of revolutionary activity is the mass action of the working class. Through strikes, militant street marches, occupations, and blockades, the masses can assert their political power in the streets.

7171. ↳ Revolutionary Patience.

7272. There is no shortcut to workers power. Neither putschist adventurism nor electoral opportunism produce the necessary organisation and hegemony of communist ideas within the proletariat to effect a seizure of power and transition to socialism. Only the patient and determined organisation of a communist party, the disciplining and hardening of its cadres, the defence of its revolutionary program, and the winning of mass hegemony can achieve this task. Our strategy must be one of revolutionary patience – hard work and necessity drive us patiently forward along a lengthy march.

7373. ↳ Systemic Opposition.

7474. The communists are utterly opposed to the capitalist system, and entirely opposed to collaboration with or management of this system. We are the systemic opposition, opposed not only to certain elements of the capitalist system, but to its entirety. As such, we are totally opposed to coalition with the bourgeois political parties, or to the management of the capitalist state apparatus.

7575. ↳ The Centrality of the Proletariat.

7676. The proletariat, and the proletariat alone, is the subject of the communist revolution. Only the protagonism and activity of millions of workers and the organisations of class power they form can transform society on a fundamental level. Organisations, including the Communist Party, are weapons of the proletariat, tools for the clarification of its ideas and the organisation of its power.

7777. ↳ Organise the Proletariat, Disorganise the Ruling Class.

7878. All activities organised by the communists, and actions and demands put forward by the communist organisations, must seek to increase the organisation, sophistication, and activity of proletarian power and to disorganise the state and the class forces it represents. There is no possibility of ameliorating capitalism's contradictions in such a way to produce a permanent, or even temporary, social peace. We are the crisis in capitalism.

7979. ↳ Continuous Revolution.

8080. In the epoch of world capitalist crisis, only the proletariat can unify the revolutionary toilers of the world to fight for human liberation. All "stages" of necessary subordination of the proletariat to "national development", democratic or anti-fascist fronts, or other forms of popular front must be rejected in favour of the revolutionary alliance of the workers, the peasants, the students, and the youth, led by the socialist workers movement. Our slogan is for permanent revolution, revolution until the bitter end.

8181. ↳ Unify the Advanced, Win over the Middling, Isolate the Backwards.

8282. Our broad strategic vision is to firstly win over and organise the most advanced layers of workers into a fighting proletarian movement. Then, on that basis, win over the various middling layers of workers, while isolating the most backwards and reactionary layers.

8383. The communists are opposed to both gradualist reformism and to immiseration and the dismantling of workers' gains. Instead, we fight for a program of Going Over the Knife's Edge.

8484. Working class power is the crisis that will destroy capitalist society. The aim of communists is not to ameliorate the contradictions of capitalist society, but to intensify them to their ultimate conclusion. In the mature capitalist economies, workers must struggle to tighten the labour market through low unemployment, monopolisation, and high welfare payments, to increase the scope and scale of demands on wages and conditions, to absorb capital through state investment and expropriation, to liquidate the vast masses of the petty bourgeois, and to drive forward the structural crises of capitalist society – "turning up the heat" on the system through working class power.

8585. This will necessarily accelerate the concentration of capital; by realising the state as manager and consolidator of capital, our struggle against it will become clear. Rather than a multiplicity of private tyrannies to distribute our struggles against, the working class will be hurled into battle with the locus of political and economic power – the merger of state and corporate power, the modern bourgeois state.

8686. Throughout this process, the communists must actively fight for and agitate for a full program of class power, expropriation, a workers' republic, and communism. We do not believe in leading the working class to socialism "by the nose"; communists should at all times make clear their slogan of a workers' republic and socialism, and not content themselves with economistic, short-term demands.

#2.3. Concerning the Communist Party

8787. The Revolutionary Communist Organisation is a fighting union of communists. Its aim is the construction of a mass Communist Party on a communist platform. It is based upon the theoretical tradition established by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and organised according to the principles of democratic centralism.

8888. ↳ What is the Communist Party?

8989. The Communist Party is the highest form of class organisation of the proletariat.

9090. The Communist Party is a class party, as it is made up of the advanced part of the working class. The Communist Party is formed and built by the self-selection of the most dedicated, most courageous and most far-sighted workers. Because of this it can fulfil the role of the theoretical, political, and organisational vanguard of the proletariat.

9191. ↳ What necessitates the formation of a Communist Party?

9292. The need for a Communist Party emerges from the conditions of bourgeois society, and the need to overcome it. Its necessity stems firstly from the need for a coherent, massified, democratic, social republican, and disciplined form of political organisation in the face of the global organisation of the capitalist class.

9393. Secondly, the form of a Communist Party is necessary in order to unify, discipline, harden, and maintain a class vanguard capable of making revolution, in the face of the stratification and uneven development of the working class and its consciousness. Thirdly, the Communist Party is necessitated by the need to conduct general and consistent propaganda and education in order to expose the nature of capitalist society, which is obscured by said society's fetishistic and alienated character, and elevate the struggle of the working class from immediate economic and democratic demands to a struggle for a democratic socialist republic. The working class must prepare itself for political power through the institutions of a mass party.

9494. ↳ The Party and the Class.

9595. The Communist Party has no interest other than those of the proletariat as a whole and its historical task. The Communist Party only differs from the rest of the working class because it has the advantage of a theory that enables it to understand the historical path and results of proletarian class struggle. Hence at every stage and turn of events it seeks to champion the general interests of the movement.

9696. The communists uphold the perspective that the entire working class must be united behind a single mass socialist workers party. However, given the existence of state-loyalist trends in the workers movement, such a party is not possible. Communists must seek to win hegemony through a strategy of unity in action of the entire class, while upholding their principled oppositionist line.

9797. Consequently, as advanced workers and true partisans of the working class, the communists understand the necessity of coming together in the Communist Party.

9898. ↳ Class Independence and the Party-Movement.

9999. The Communist Party is independent of the capitalist state. Around itself, the party organises a multitude of its own political, economic, social, and cultural institutions and movements that can break the power of capital and replace the capitalist state in times of revolutionary crisis. Thus, the Communist Party takes on the form of a state-in-waiting. Revolutionary industrial organisations, tenants groups, student and youth groups, women's organisations, workers schools and universities, community and social movement committees, networks of popular service and mutual aid, all have a place within the revolutionary party-movement of the communists. Within this party-movement, the party and its program plays the role of a political compass.

100100. ↳ On Propaganda and Agitation.

101101. The foremost and unchanging task of communists is to conduct systematic, general, and principled agitation and propaganda. In our conditions this means combating all manifestations of bourgeois ideology and winning the masses to the idea of revolution.

102102. The party conducts propaganda and agitation on the basis of its central publications. The central publication is not only a collective propagandist and collective agitator. It is also a collective organiser.

103103. Organisation around the distribution network of the central publication and education on the basis of the central publication constitute the basis for the continuous action of our party.

104104. ↳ The Basic Units of Party Organisation.

105105. The basic organisational unit of the Communist Party is the cell. The cell is the only unit of the party in which all members must participate. Established on the basis of task, workplace or locality, the basic unit facilitates the closest and broadest relations with the masses.

106106. Cells have autonomy within their sphere of responsibility and should be self-sustaining and constantly striving to take initiatives. Cells work to train their members as professional revolutionaries who have educated themselves, learnt the skills of the revolutionary struggle and dedicated themselves to the cause in the long term.

107107. Cells are combined together and undertake joint work through the establishment of city-wide, industry-wide, regional, or political sections.

108108. ↳ A Class Party of the Avant Garde.

109109. The Communist Party must be a mass party of the militant minority. It is not possible to win a majority of workers to a revolutionary program outside of a revolutionary situation. However, in the interim period, it is necessary for the Communist Party to constitute itself as a party with a mass character, drawing its base from the militant minority, who are ready and willing to take the fight to capital and its state. This militant minority constitutes the vanguard of the class and is the necessary base of the communist movement. To facilitate this merger, the communists must work diligently to study the conditions and composition of the working class and to build organisations that can respond to the changing dynamics of the workers struggle.

110110. ↳ A Combat Party.

111111. The Communist Party is a combat party. The Communist Party does not restrict itself to harmless street actions and electoral theatrics. It is a party of the streets, of the pickets, of the occupations, the riots, and the barricades, or it is nothing at all. As such, the Communist Party must furnish its militants with the confidence and skill to carry the communist program into all struggles and all fronts of the class war. It must be a party of combat.

112112. ↳ On Electoralism.

113113. The Communist Party is not a bourgeois electoral party. It is not a political machine organised in such a manner that best accustomises it to winning elections and managing the capitalist state. The Communist Party does not see electoral means as the primary path through which the proletariat wins power.

114114. However, this does not mean that communists cannot participate in bourgeois elections. It is necessary to carry out all forms of propaganda, including electoral propaganda, and the Communist Party should seek to build disciplined and militant parliamentary fractions that can undertake a struggle within the halls of bourgeois government itself. In bourgeois parliaments, communist representatives serve as tribunes of the people, engage in systematic agitation, and combine legal with illegal work. All parliamentary factions should be systematically bound to and controlled by the party and its elected leadership, and be drawn from proven and loyal communists. As such, parliamentary representatives will subordinate all parliamentary activity to the extra-parliamentary activity of the party, and combine legal and illegal work consistently.

115115. ↳ On Criticism and Political Struggle.

116116. Criticism and debate, including in the view of the class as a whole, on an individual and collective level are the first condition for the unity, development and growth of the Communist Party. The aim is to continually strengthen the party's ability to serve the working class.

117117. Criticism in no way implies the undermining of the individual or collective concern but improves their contribution to the party and party discipline. It shows the individual or collective being criticised why their attitude accords with neither the interests of the class nor the party.

118118. Bourgeois and petty bourgeois influences constantly manifest themselves in the party. The party too lives in a world dominated by the spontaneously generated ideology of capitalism. Hence if the mistakes of individuals or collectives are not corrected they can become a deviation or even embedded amongst the majority of members. Political struggle must be waged consistently against all forms of opportunism, be they of the left or right variety. Criticism and self-criticism are among the most effective weapons against such dangers.

119119. ↳ On the Membership of the Communist Party.

120120. The Communist Party is made up of revolutionary cadres, trained and educated in revolutionary theory and strategy. These militants are revolutionaries by trade, drawing into their ranks a great number of dedicated militants and class struggle oriented workers who are willing to build the party and fight for its program.

121121. There must be no discrimination between men and women in the Communist Party. Male communists must practise equality and female communists must insist on it. Special attention should be paid to cultivate leading women cadres.

122122. Similarly, the party should oppose all chauvinism towards gay and transgender people.

123123. Given the male-dominated culture we operate in and the need to win women to follow the lead and join the ranks of the Communist Party, every effort should be made to promote women comrades in the party. In this way, the party develops its culture and extends its strength for the struggle.

124124. ↳ On Political Education.

125125. A central task of a Communist Party is the political education of its cadres, and subsequently, of the masses. This education covers a wide variety of relevant material, from classical texts of scientific socialism, through to contemporary debates on philosophy, political economy, gender, race, and sexuality.

126126. Importantly, such a culture of education is not just a culture of rote reception of information, but a protagonistic culture of writing, reading, and active critique.

127127. ↳ The Need for a Centralised Party.

128128. In order to form the basis for a revolution and truly replace the capitalist state, the Communist Party must be a mass organisation, made up of the most organised, courageous, militant, and educated layers of the working class.

129129. Communists always support the organisation of the working class in the largest, most powerful and most centralised units. In the absence of objective conditions compelling separate organisation, the proletariat organises as a single party.

130130. This is a requirement of proletarian internationalism.

131131. The vanguard of the working class organises in a single party based on the existing borders of the bourgeois state that is to be overthrown. Those who fail to fight for such organisational unity of the workers have not broken their links with nationalism.

132132. Objective conditions in Australia require the workers of all nationalities to organise in a single Communist Party.

133133. ↳ On Democratic Centralism.

134134. The Communist Party is organised on the principles of democratic centralism.

135135. That is, the part is subordinate to the whole, lower committees to the higher, all committees to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee to Party Congress. The minority is subordinate to decisions of the majority, bound by the principle of Unity in Action. This does not mean that minorities are not entitled to voice and organise around their perspectives. As long as they implement the decisions of the majority, comrades have the right to support alternative political platforms or to organise themselves within the party into temporary or permanent factions through which to express their views openly.

136136. ↳ Proletarian Internationalism.

137137. The Communist Party stands on the principles of proletarian internationalism. It is a proletarian-internationalist duty for communists to make revolution in their own country. However, the struggle for socialism in Australia is subordinated to the struggle for world revolution. Proletarian internationalism renders it compulsory for the interests of the workers' struggle in one country to be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world scale.

138138. Understanding the unity of the interests and aims of the world working class does not arise spontaneously within the national workers' movement. The RCO

139139. has to conscientiously imbue the working class struggle with the ideas of proletarian internationalism and uncompromisingly fight against nationalism.

140140. The RCO sees it as its duty to fight against any trend which harms the unity of the world's working class around communism. We are well aware of the connection between nationalism and opportunism and revisionism.

141141. The RCO believes that the world proletariat needs a world strategy and world organisation. Without a world communist party the working class is weakened and lacks coordination. The RCO will do all in its power to rectify this situation.

142142. We do not seek to build a party for the Australian working class - we seek to build an Australian section of the workers international. In order to consolidate this fact, we seek to organise a party of communists in Oceania and in South-East Asia, as a necessary path to building a Pan-Asian communist movement. At every stage, we will seek the tightest unity and cooperation with comrades in our region and further afield.

143143. ↳ On Legality and Illegality.

144144. Communists make no mechanical division between legality and illegality under the conditions of bourgeois rule. They are not opposites, but different moments in the development of the class struggle.

145145. Democratic rights under capitalism are not granted by the generosity of the ruling class. Nor are they inherent in the system. They have been won by struggle in the face of fierce opposition by generation after generation of working people.

146146. The scope of legal work is determined by the balance of forces between the ruling and working class. Even when bourgeois rule is masked in a representative form, state terror is always held in reserve.

147147. The Communist Party therefore – even in the most democratic of periods – maintains and endeavours to constantly improve its illegal work. Our party must be a combat organisation of the working class. It must always prepare itself for long periods of underground or armed struggle. We will not be deterred.

148148. Thus, we do not build an illegal apparatus for its own sake. We do it to win the freedom to make revolution, an act that no bourgeois state tolerates. A Communist Party is only as free as the struggle it wages for revolution is free from the restrictions of bourgeois legality.

149149. The ultimate guarantee of the freedom of the party to make revolution is the correctness of its scientific world view and its ability to merge with the broad masses of the class. We guard against state provocation and infiltration primarily through the open fight for correct politics.

150150. ↳ On Collective Leadership.

151151. If the working class is to defeat the bourgeoisie, it must train layers of revolutionary leadership from amongst its ranks. Every single party member is a leader of the class, an organiser, an educator, a tireless class fighter.

152152. Instead of promoting personality cults, communists emphasise committees and collective leadership. We seek to demystify and democratise leadership through open debate, regular elections, recallability and actively promoting the aim of making all members into potential leaders – judged by theoretical knowledge, revolutionary energy, and political instinct and experience. That allows individuals to be easily replaced, enhances institutional continuity and provides the means for members to correct errors: that is, to lead.

153153. ↳ On Party Discipline.

154154. Party discipline consists of the duty to voice differences, complete fulfilment of assigned tasks, and not violating the organisational rules.

155155. Communist discipline develops on the basis of positively resolving differences and successfully developing ties with the masses. Mutual respect and the strength of the working class increases the level of communist discipline.

156156. ↳ The Task Ahead.

157157. The Communist Party is the party of the most class-conscious, most courageous elements of the working class. It is the historic task of communists to organise the working class into a democratic mass party of the working class based on a communist program. Where such a party does not exist, communists fight for its establishment.

#2.4. The United Front

158158. The communists adhere to the principle of "one class, one party" – that is the perspective that ultimately the entirety of the proletariat must come under the political hegemony of the communist party and its revolutionary program and democratic structures.

159159. However, the persistence of state-loyalism within the workers movement, and the leadership of these loyalist sections by non-socialist, petit-bourgeois layers, makes a split between loyalist and internationalist sections of the workers movement inevitable.

160160. In order to advance the politics and organisation of the proletariat and lay the basis for the struggle for power, it is necessary to organise coalitions with non-communist forces in the workers' and social movements. Through such united work, communist workers can win hegemony for their ideas in the broader workers' movement, polarise and isolate loyalist elements and formations, and advance a communist politics.

161161. The United Front is a call for concerted action from the working class as a whole, regardless of their political or party affiliation. Such a united front must be based on the freedom of criticism of the member organisations, as well maintaining the political independence of the communists – we can march separately, under our own banners and slogans, but strike together. The united front cannot be extended to include any alliance with the liberal or progressive bourgeoisie, who are themselves the left-wing of capital, nor can it subsume the working class into an undifferentiated populist mass.

162162. Such alliances rob the working class of its independence, and cannot be achieved without the communists abandoning their political principles.

#3. The Task Ahead: Our Immediate Program

163163. Communism is the real movement to abolish the present state of things.

164164. The revolutionary tasks of the proletariat are the necessary steps to abolish the present conditions of life and emancipate humanity from capitalist society. They are not abstract aims to which we aspire, but real tasks that necessarily emerge from the struggle to overthrow capitalist social relations. These demands, as well as the strategic principles which bind them together, constitute our program.

165165. The political program is at the centre of the communist organisation. It not only functions as a guideline and charter for the organisation, but also serves as a weapon for members to control their political leaders.

166166. Our program is drafted in the style of the classical revolutionary program, in the tradition of Marx, Engels, the Parti Ouvrier, and Bolshevik Party in Lenin's time. This section outlines the immediate demands of the communists, our minimum program. They concern:

167167. ↳ the establishment of a democratic socialist republic,

168168. ↳ the social and economic power of the working class,

169169. ↳ immediate action regarding the ecological crisis,

170170. ↳ and the specific struggles of the oppressed.

171171. Taken together, these demands provide the minimum basis for the communist workers movement to support a revolutionary government. As such it is a program of the seizure of power by the working class.

172172. Our minimum program – the immediate program of the revolution, lays the foundation for our maximum program: the transition to communism.

#3.1. Towards Workers Democracy

173173. The modern liberal state, with all its organs of representation and mystification, is the political expression of the dictatorship of capital. Capitalist "democracy" is in fact no democracy at all. The political arrangement in all the liberal states is nothing more than a representative oligarchy, where the ruling class buys and pays for political representation in a formally "democratic" political process. Should the working class, through political activity, seek to establish working class power for themselves within this apparatus, the mask quickly drops to reveal open class dictatorship. Undemocratic upper houses, unrepresentative voting systems, gerrymandering and voter suppression, institutions of aristocratic privilege, a vicious and reactionary press, corporate lobbying and public-private governance, extensive mergers of state and corporate power, and most of all the effects of capital flight and economic sanctions: all of these factors present the real character of the bourgeois state.

174174. Hence, communists do not counterpose democracy to socialism. Democracy is more than voting every three or four years. Democracy is the meaningful self-rule of the majority class: the working class. To make that aspiration real necessarily means removing all judicial, structural and socio-economic restraints on, or distortions of, popular control by the masses. We will carry the democratic revolution to the bitter end.

#3.1.1. Winning the Battle of Democracy

175175. Communists stand for republican, socialist democracy. We are opposed to the undemocratic form of the modern representative oligarchy: the constitutional regime.

176176. It is high time we overturn the Commonwealth of Capital by demanding:

177177. ↳ For the abolition of the monarchy and governorships, as well as all ranks and titles. For a Workers Commonwealth with a democratic, republican constitution.

178178. ↳ For the creation of an assembly of popular representatives! For the abolition of the Senate, and the creation of a single-chamber Popular Assembly with proportional representation, annual elections, and MPs'

179179. salaries set at the level of a skilled worker. Lowering of the voting age to 15.

180180. ↳ All elected delegates should be recallable by the electing body through a public petition process.

181181. ↳ The abolition of the state and territory governments and the distribution of their powers between local and national assemblies.

182182. ↳ Political subordination of the state bureaucracy to democratic control.

183183. ↳ The abolition of the presidential prime minister and cabinet. End prime ministerial appointment of ministers and all other forms of prime ministerial patronage. For collective leadership in all bodies and committees.

184184. ↳ The disbanding of ASIO, ASIS, the Australian Federal Police, and all other intelligence services. The overturning of surveillance powers and the dismantling of the surveillance state. For democratic control over all public safety and police services.

185185. ↳ For local democracy. Abolition of the Mayoral office, property voting, and other anti-democratic institutions. Service provision, planning, tax raising, law enforcement and funding allocation to be radically devolved downwards as far as possible and appropriate.

186186. We are under no illusion that the ruling class or its allies in the middling classes will allow their power to be overturned by legal means, electoral success, or peaceful street action by the masses. The transition from a bourgeois dictatorship to a workers' republic is impossible through legal means.

187187. Ultimately, the bourgeois dictatorship must be smashed. We will carry the struggle for democracy to the very end!

#3.1.2. Political Freedoms

188188. The interests of the working class require the open struggle of ideas and the ability to freely organise. The working class needs political freedom like the human body needs light and air.

189189. The workers' movement can win political freedom by demanding:

190190. ↳ Unrestricted freedom of speech, publication, conscience, association and assembly for worker, democratic, progressive, and socialist organisations and publications.

191191. ↳ Freedom for all revolutionary, progressive, socialist, and democratic political prisoners and prisoners of war.

192192. ↳ Overturning of all laws that limit the right to protest, strike, disrupt capitalist production, or demonstrate.

193193. ↳ An end to state bans and censorship of art and culture.

194194. ↳ The abolition of all state and private blacklists on employment and housing.

195195. ↳ Oppose state secrets. Demand free access to all state files, cabinet papers, diplomatic agreements, etc.

196196. ↳ Abolish copyright laws, private patents and other so-called intellectual property rights. Nationalisation of all patents.

197197. ↳ Open the books of all firms. For total transparency in corporate dealings and accounts. Workers should be able to see where the money is going.

198198. ↳ Socialisation of internet service providers, public cloud infrastructure and other natural monopolies in communications. An end to the corruption of advertising-funded media. For the liquidation of the bloated advertising industry, and the placing of severe limitations on corporate advertising.

#3.1.3. The Universal Militia

199199. Communists are universally opposed to the standing army and the bourgeois police. In the current period, the professional cadre of the Australian military are unlikely to significantly break ranks with the old order. However, this may change under revolutionary conditions, or in periods of inter-imperialist war (and the expansion of the military into a mass organisation).

200200. Without a workers' army, the working class has nothing. Communists are against the standing army and for the armed masses. This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia.

201201. Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself: defending picket lines, mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, anti-fascist street organising, the party guard, etc.

202202. As the class struggle intensifies, conditions are created for the workers to arm themselves and perhaps win over sections of the military forces of the capitalist state. Every opportunity must be used to take even tentative steps towards this goal. As circumstances allow, the working class must equip itself with all weapons necessary to bring about revolution.

203203. Without a workers' army, the working class has nothing. As such we demand:

204204. ↳ The right of trade unions and worker organisations to bear arms, form militias, and wear uniforms in public.

205205. ↳ Confine the police and army to their barracks and watch-houses. Place all armed bodies under democratic control.

206206. ↳ For the training of all advanced workers and youth, regardless of sex, into workers' militias.

207207. ↳ For organised antifascist self – defence of workers, national minorities and youth. An antifascist militia can break up fascist rallies, demonstrations, and meetings and deny a platform to the racist and fascist demagogues.

208208. ↳ The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.

209209. ↳ For the disbanding of the special forces and the prosecution of all war criminals. For the dissolution of the riot police, and the organisation of tribunals for the prosecution of killer cops.

210210. ↳ The working class must have the right to bear arms and defend itself, to organise its own militias, gun clubs, and shooting groups.

211211. ↳ The dissolution of the standing army and police and the formation of a popular militia under democratic control. For the organisation of institutes of communist military science.

#3.1.4. The Judiciary and Crime

212212. The law and its various juridical apparatus are an expression of the essentially bourgeois character of society. The carceral state and its attendant horrors are an expression of the social crises produced by capitalist society. We are opposed to such a system and seek its abolition.

213213. In order to deal with the existing system of criminal injustice, we demand the following:

214214. ↳ Creation of a civil legal code and the abolition of customary and precedential law.

215215. ↳ Establish the right to submit cases to a randomly selected jury, which decides after the presentation of evidence and is advised by a judge. The abolition of the adversarial court system and the creation of a public, democratic investigation and mediation service.

216216. ↳ Abolition of the High Court. If questions of interpretation arise in a procedure, they are referred to a committee under the direct democratic control of the Popular Assembly.

217217. ↳ Decisions made democratically by the Popular Assembly cannot be overturned by a judge. For the Popular Assembly to be the final court of appeal for all legal matters.

218218. ↳ All judges and public prosecution officials must be impeachable.

219219. ↳ Everyone must be entitled to free high-quality legal assistance. All lawyers to be employed by the state and receive a normal salary for a skilled worker. Abolition of legal protections for corporate firms.

220220. ↳ End youth detention. For the immediate release of all youth offenders into the care of community support services.

221221. ↳ Fines should be proportional to a person's income and assets.

222222. ↳ Decriminalise non-violent offences and the release of non-violent offenders from custody.

223223. ↳ End the War on Drugs. Recreational drugs should be legalised and quality standards ensured. Addiction to be treated as a health and social problem, not a criminal one.

224224. ↳ Abolition of the solitary confinement system and other forms of state-endorsed torture.

225225. ↳ Jail should always be a last option. Prisoners must have the opportunity to develop fully as human beings. Each prisoner should only be confined within a short distance of his or her residential location;
if this is impossible, travel costs for visits by relatives must be fully reimbursed.

226226. ↳ Rights for prisoners, including education, leisure facilities, and political rights to unionise and publish.

227227. ↳ Prison life should be as normal as possible. The goal should be rehabilitation, not retaliation.

#3.1.5. The National Question

228228. As a general rule communists do not want to see countries broken up into small nation-states. Ours is the revolutionary call for humanity to shed the flag-waving, imagined community of the nation-state.

229229. Communists are the most consistent internationalists and unreservedly denounce any tactical pandering to, let alone attempts to exacerbate, national tensions. We are opposed politically to nationalism, which places the national struggle over the class struggle. We are especially opposed to Australian nationalism and white nationalism, which has a particularly reactionary character.

230230. Communists want a positive solution to the national question in the interests of the working class: that is, the merging of nations. That can only be achieved through democracy and the right of all to fully develop their own culture.

231231. The starting point of internationalists is that workers and peasants of every nationality should unite, since they cannot solve their problems at the level of the isolated nation. The greatest obstacle to achieving this internationalism is national oppression: the fact that the world system is based on the systemic oppression of the racialised and colonially oppressed masses. Lasting unity between workers cannot be achieved where one nation oppresses another.

232232. Today, whole peoples, such as Indigenous Australians and Americans, the Māori and Pasifika peoples, the Palestinians, the Kurds, the Irish, the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Puerto Ricans, the Black Nation in the United States, and many others, are kept under the boot of colonial and racial oppression. Along with many indigenous peoples, they are subjected to ethnic cleansing and cultural, sometimes physical, genocide. The working classes, especially those whose national ruling classes are responsible for such oppression, must give support and practical aid in the struggle of oppressed nations for liberation – not through narrow nationalism, but through socialist revolution.

233233. We raise the following slogans:

234234. ↳ For concrete support by the workers movement to the struggles against racial and colonial oppression the world over.

235235. ↳ For the right of self – determination of oppressed nations, for free association between peoples based on full linguistic and cultural rights.

236236. ↳ For the right of indigenous peoples to their lands, free of settlement aimed at making them a minority.

237237. ↳ Equal democratic and social rights for members of national minorities.

238238. ↳ Against official state languages. Equal rights for national minorities to use their languages in the schools, the courts, the media, in dealings with public administration. For the right of migrant communities to use their mother tongues in school.

#3.1.6. Taxes

239239. Communists stand for a transparent state. Direct taxes are therefore preferable to indirect, progressive to regressive. Where indirect taxes are unavoidable, we are for progressive taxation.

240240. As such, we raise the following demands:

241241. ↳ Abolish indirect and regressive taxes such as GST and vice taxes. For a steeply progressive taxation system based on income and wealth tax.

242242. ↳ For a tax on improved land values, aimed at discouraging landlordism and building state capacity for social housing.

243243. ↳ Increase inheritance and gift tax. The dynastic operation of capital, in which wealthy families maintain themselves over generations, must come to an end.

244244. ↳ End tax haven policies. For an international tax system that stops the flight of capital to the cheapest country. Persecution of bourgeois tax dodgers.

245245. ↳ End special tax arrangements for big business. Make the entire operation of the tax system fully public and understandable to all.

246246. ↳ For expropriative taxation to be levelled against the largest capitalists and their firms.

#3.1.7. Religion

247247. Regardless of the particular metaphysical views of communist militants, the communist movement as a whole takes an atheistic and secularist position on religious matters. While in previous epochs, religion has served a revolutionary purpose, today it has been rendered anachronistic and often reactionary.

248248. Communism in turn overcomes religion by realising the liberation of humanity on earth.

249249. Communists want to overcome all religious prejudices and are opposed to all attempts to suppress and marginalise religious groups in the name of national or religious identity.

250250. Communists therefore demand:

251251. ↳ The establishment of a secular state – i.e., the total separation of church and state. Nationalisation of all religious property, land holdings, share portfolios, and art treasures. End all state subsidies for religious institutions.

252252. ↳ For the nationalisation of religious schools and camps and their integration into the school system. The establishment of a formally atheistic school curriculum.

253253. ↳ For the elimination of religious discrimination and religious privileges.

254254. For the freedom to carry out anti-religious political work.

255255. ↳ End all state-sponsored religious propaganda and acts of worship. State sponsored holy days to be secularised. Religion is a private, not a state matter. Religion can be studied as a subject of academic interest in state schools, not as a means to indoctrinate children.

#3.2. Against Imperialism and Militarism

256256. Australia is a sub-imperialist power, an enforcer and client of first British, and then American imperialism. This privileged position within the global order has placed Australia in the core of the capitalist world system, where it has reaped the subsequent benefits. As such, it is imperative for communists to organise to oppose imperialism and militarism.

257257. Communists oppose all imperialist wars, military alliances and occupations. Peace cannot come courtesy of bodies such as the United Nations – an assembly of exploiters and murderers. It is the duty of communists to connect the popular desire for peace with the aim of revolution. Only by disarming the bourgeoisie and through the victory of international socialism can the danger of war be eliminated. Communists will therefore strive to expose the war preparations of the bourgeoisie, the lies of social imperialists and the illusions fostered by social pacifism.

258258. Communists are not pacifists. Everywhere we support wars of liberation, above all revolutionary civil wars for socialism.

259259. As such, communists work towards the following demands: Smash Militarism!

260260. ↳ No Blood for Empire! Not a penny nor a person for any capitalist army, be it professional or conscription based. Workers' representatives in parliament must oppose all military spending by capitalist governments.

261261. ↳ The exposure of secret treaties, all war aims and preparations, and the war-mongering of the bourgeoisie.

262262. ↳ The withdrawal of Australia from all military alliances with American, Japanese, and British imperialism, and the expulsion of American military installations.

263263. ↳ The adoption of a neutral foreign policy in regard to the struggles between imperialist powers. Expulsion of all intelligence and military personnel of the imperialist powers. The withdrawal of all Australian soldiers from imperialist wars and "peacekeeping" operations. The limitation of Australian imperialism and militarism through vigorous class struggle.

264264. ↳ No to imperialist wars and aggression. Full support for liberation struggles around the world. For the democratic, socialist reunification of Ireland, China, and Korea.

265265. ↳ For the closure of all imperialist military bases around the world! No to US, EU, and other imperialist military interventions.

266266. ↳ Dissolution of all imperialist-dominated military alliances like ANZUS, NATO, AUKUS, the Five Eyes, and the Quad.

267267. ↳ For the disarmament of the great imperialist powers, and the systematic drawing down of nuclear weapons stockpiles. In a world of imperialist domination and hegemony, the largest stockpiles must be the first to be dismantled.

268268. Against the Imperialist Army!

269269. ↳ Military training for all under the auspices of the workers' movement.

270270. ↳ For full civil rights for soldiers, the setting up of soldiers' committees and unions and the election of officers. Defend soldiers who defy illegal or immoral orders.

271271. ↳ Full support for draft dodging, fragging, mutiny, and desertion from the imperialist military.

272272. ↳ In a reactionary war, the enemy of the working class is at home. For the defeat of imperialist governments in time of war; victory to the workers and peasant masses against imperialist armies.

273273. Smash the Chains of Dependency and Uneven Exchange!

274274. ↳ Full support to revolutionary struggles and resistance to imperialism and colonialism.

275275. ↳ Unconditional and total cancellation of the debt of all semi-colonial and peripheral countries. Overturn the petrodollar and American dollar seigniorage.

276276. ↳ The imperialist states must compensate the semi-colonial world for the plunder of its natural and human resources through concrete investment and development of socially owned industries and services.

277277. ↳ No to protectionism by the developed countries against the products of the global south. Abolish NAFTA, the Common Agricultural Policy and other protectionist weapons of imperialist states.

278278. ↳ Abolish the IMF, World Bank, UN, ICC, and WTO. Total opposition to world imperialism and its "Rules-Based International Order". For an international congress of workers representatives, and a new communist international.

#3.3. For Workers Self-Defence! Smash the Reactionary Militias!

279279. The same crises in capitalist society which produce the growth of the real communist movement amongst the proletariat also produce increasingly reactionary strains of organisation to emerge amongst the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie. The middle and lower bourgeois, fearing their eradication at the hands of an increasingly tight market, seeks to restore profit rates through vicious counter-revolutionary measures, the eradication of labour rights, the driving of subjugated peoples into near or actual slavery, and the restoration of social reproduction through the elimination of the rights of women and sexual minorities. The ultimate aim of this movement is to overturn the liberal state and institute a reactionary dictatorship, so as to wield this dictatorship against the working class.

280280. Capitalist crisis ruins the middle classes and drives them to a frenzied search for scapegoats, while the long-term un- and under-employed sink ever deeper into despair, making them vulnerable to racists, ultra nationalists, religious demagogues, and neo-fascists.

281281. Fascism is a force of civil war against the working class. By stirring ancient hatreds and promoting irrational fears, it mobilises the petit bourgeois and lumpenproletariat masses to first divide, and then destroy, working-class and democratic organisations. It then gathers into its hands the entire apparatus of state control to impose a regime of super – exploitation on the workers under the direct supervision of the police and its auxiliary gangs. It is the imperialist brutality of the colonial regime turned inwards in a regime of terror.

282282. In the face of reactionary terror, we raise the following slogans:

283283. ↳ For a workers' united front against the street reactionaries and paramilitary thugs.

284284. ↳ No reliance on the capitalist state and its repressive apparatus to fight the fascists. The working class must deal with the threat of the Blackshirts.

285285. ↳ For organised self-defence of workers, national minorities and youth. An antifascist militia can break up fascist rallies, demonstrations and meetings, combat fascist gangs, and deny a platform to the racist and fascist demagogues.

#3.4. For a Life Worth Living!

286286. As prices rise and wages fall, as the numbers of workers homeless and impoverished explode in the imperial core, and as billions languish in poverty and wage slavery, the first and foremost task of the communists is to organise the working class to achieve a good life: a life without precarity and impoverishment. We stand for a life worth living.

287287. In order to address the immediate conditions of the working class and the poor, we demand the following:

288288. We Won't Pay for Capital's Crises!

289289. ↳ Total opposition to cuts to social services and privatisation of state capitalist assets and industries. Abolish the public-private partnerships and contracting agreements.

290290. ↳ Opposition to all wage cuts, either direct or indirect. For the indexing of all wages against inflation, as calculated by workers organisations. Delegates elected in the workplaces, consumer collectives, neighbourhoods and suburbs, estates and shantytowns, workers', youth, and womens' organisations to draw up a workers' cost of living index. Pensions and social welfare must be indexed against inflation and be guaranteed by the state, not left to the mercy of the stock markets. For the implementation of a sliding scale of wages, hours, and benefits.

291291. ↳ The setting of price controls on vital goods, the persecution of price-gaugers and profiteers, and expropriation of goods from firms that seek to inflate prices. For rationing of essential goods where necessary.

292292. Raise Living Standards through Workers Power!

293293. ↳ A minimum net wage to be set on the basis of what is needed by a worker and one child to lead a full life, participating materially and culturally in society.

294294. Twice yearly indexing of all wages and welfare payments against the cost of living.

295295. ↳ Universal, easy access to government benefits. For a universal unemployment benefit set at the cost of living. For social workers to be provided to assist applications for government services for those who need it.

296296. ↳ The state pension for the elderly or the disabled should be set at the level of the minimum wage. Abolish the NDIS. For a universal Disability and Aged Care Service that provides a good life for all who cannot work due to age or medical condition, overseen and paid for by the state.

297297. ↳ For a Public Works Program under workers control. For a programme of socially useful work to improve social services, healthcare, housing, transport and the environment, under the control of workers' and their communities.

298298. ↳ For immediate seizure of empty homes and buildings in order to alleviate the housing crisis. For the establishment of democratically managed public housing agencies on the city and regional level.

#3.5. Building Workers Power

#3.5.1. Working Conditions and Wages

299299. Communists begin with what workers need, not what capitalism can afford. The first step in the economic struggles of the working class is to confront their immediate conditions of life.

300300. Therefore communists demand:

301301. ↳ Fight the intensification of work. Down with the bosses' constant speed-up and 'efficiency drives' which are actually nothing more than attempts to intensify exploitation and boost profits, endangering our health, safety and lives.

302302. ↳ A maximum four-day working week and a maximum seven-hour day for all wage workers. Reduction of that to a four-day working week and a maximum six-hour day for occupations which are dangerous or particularly demanding. An uninterrupted weekly break of no less than 65 hours for all wage workers.

303303. ↳ The working day must include rest periods of no less than two hours. For the limitation of work hours during the hottest parts of the day or on account of extreme weather, heat or cold.

304304. ↳ All medium and large workplaces are to include break rooms and dining halls for employees, as well as regular breaks, with food and water provided free of charge. Workers' dining halls to be provided in densely populated areas to provide for workers in small firms.

305305. ↳ Equal pay for equal work, negotiation of wages across entire sectors, with the equalisation of wages for similar work across industries.

306306. ↳ Abolition of overtime in its present form. All hours worked in addition to scheduled hours must be paid overtime, regardless of work status. In the case of emergencies and other such eventualities, overtime must be voluntary, for only short periods, and with at least double pay.

307307. ↳ Limitation on casualised labour. All workers are to be offered permanent part-time status after six months of employment. Guaranteed hours for casual workers who want them. For the elimination of all
"probation periods" in employment.

308308. ↳ Institute strict conditions for laying off workers, including casual workers, with protections against unfair dismissal to be enforced by workers organisations. Minimum hours for casualised workers to be enforced.

309309. ↳ A minimum of six weeks' fully paid holiday leave during the year in addition to state holidays. For full provision of generous sick leave, parental leave, and other benefits.

310310. ↳ Insurance and other such payments to be made entirely by the capitalists and the state.

311311. ↳ Occupational training for all workers to be the legal obligation for employers. For the end of
"credentialization", and the establishment of standardised trade schools under workers control. Trade school to be free and incorporate paid workplace experience.

312312. ↳ Employment of children in private firms to be banned. For strict limitations on the employment of school children.

313313. ↳ Strict enforcement of vigorous health and safety standards, with supervision being organised by workers organisations. For the institution of industrial manslaughter laws.

#3.5.2. Trade Unions and Workers Organisation

314314. In the development of proletarian organisation, the trade union is the most immediate form. This body, the product of the development of the class struggle, is essentially a collective organisation for negotiating the sale of labour power, in particular its price and the condition under which it is sold. Trade unions limit the competition between workers in a given trade or industry and, as such, increase their bargaining power through cartelisation. Therefore, while unions are crucial for the organisation of workers and the emergence of trade union consciousness (that is, the consciousness of workers as workers in the struggle with their bosses), they are not in and of themselves opposed to the rule of capital – in fact, they exist to mediate between workers and capitalists.

315315. The contradictory role of the trade unions necessarily leads to the emergence of a bureaucratic layer that embodies this contradiction. The union bureaucracy is structurally tied to the conciliatory role of the unions; they benefit from close relationships with employers and a legal-judicial approach to union struggles.

316316. Ultimately, this bureaucracy tends to play a conservative role and will necessarily be swept aside by revolutionary upsurges in the proletariat.

317317. Communists, especially when they are a relatively small force, must stand outside and against this bureaucracy.

318318. Communists openly strive to turn unions into schools of communism. We do this by always defending the interests of the whole class, striving for class unity and by fully involving active members in strategy and organisation. We support industrial unionism against craft unionism, rank-and-file democracy against trade union bureaucracy, and fight for workers' power inside and outside the unions, not for positions in the halls of bureaucratic privilege. At all times, communists must oppose all forms of class collaboration and integration of workers organisations into the bourgeois state.

319319. In addition to work within the trade unions, communists seek to organise workers, unionised or not, into various transitional workers organisations, shop committees, worker action groups, and rank-and-file networks. These bodies extend and deepen the organisation of the working class, and advance the class as a whole. This is especially true in a period of generalised decline in trade union membership.

320320. In the trade union movement, the communists fight for the following:

321321. ↳ For the scrapping of the class collaborationist accords of the ACTU

322322. bureaucracy and the Australian state. End the corporatist program of the Australian unions that welds the workers' economic organisations to the hip of the capitalist state.

323323. ↳ For the organisation of all unorganised sectors! For massive unionisation drives by militant, class struggle unions. For the unionisation of casual and precarious workers, interns, and trainees. For the establishment of unions for secondary and technical college students, for sex workers and other precarious sectors, and for home workers and domestic workers.

324324. For unionisation of workers regardless of citizenship or visa status. For independent caucuses in the unions for women, queer people, indigenous people, and peripheralized and migrant workers.

325325. ↳ Support for industrial unionism against the petty divisions and limitations of the craft unions. Union officials are to be paid the wages of an average member and must be placed under the democratic discipline of membership.

326326. ↳ Smash the class collaborationist ACTU and its bureaucratic-political leadership caste. For a federation of mass workers organisations, including industrial unions, student unions, tenants organisations, and social organisations. For a single, unified union of all industrial, agricultural, service, and precarious workers.

327327. ↳ The political independence of the unions must be guaranteed against interference from the capitalists and the state. Union representatives must have the unlimited freedom to enter workplaces to review payroll, ensure worker safety and politically organise. Freedom of association at work. For the reintroduction of closed shops. The elimination of NDAs and freedom of speech for workers. For the formation of shop committees in every workplace.

328328. ↳ For direct struggle against anti-strike legislation. The Fair Work Commission and the other arbitration courts of the bosses must be overturned through class struggle. For the elimination of the arbitration system. For the direct negotiation of wages between labour and capital through class struggle on a sectoral basis. For the elimination of all limitations on the right to strike.

329329. ↳ All national pay, hours, and conditions laws to be overseen by elected workers representatives. All industrial policy to be drafted and implemented by workers organisations.

330330. ↳ For a class struggle strategy in the unions – transformation of the unions into schools of communism. The capitalists must be directly confronted by the workers' organisations utilising any means necessary to defend the interests of the working class. For inclusive workplace shop committees where all workers, regardless of their job, regardless of whether they are unionised, are organised. For the organisation of shop floor committees to directly organise workers in every workplace.

331331. ↳ Due to the international character of the capitalist system and the existence of gigantic transnational corporations, trade unions must also organise themselves internationally. For international unions and international negotiations on wages and conditions. Unions must seek to organise internationally given the international nature of capital. For international bargaining on wages and conditions.

#3.5.3. Street Organisation and Movement Committees

332332. The proletariat does not assert its power through economic struggles alone.

333333. Communists see the fight for class power in all the battles against capital and reaction: in the struggles of women, gay and trans people, oppressed nationalities, and disabled people, in the struggle for free time, in the struggle for ecological justice, in the struggle against war and militarism, in struggles for quality public services, in the struggles of tenants and the urban poor. In these struggles, communists favour mass organisation against particularism, living organisations against hollow committees, offensive struggles against defeatism, radical demands against reformist ones, militancy against capitulation, and mass democracy against bureaucratic NGOism. We seek to build broad social movement organisations – and revolutionary fronts in these struggles.

334334. Communists should take the lead in forming mass organisations of workers, students, peasants, women, the poor, national minorities, and other oppressed people, and fight for their unification into a militant national federation of workers organisations. Communists should be in the most revolutionary and militant sections of the class, in the streets, on the barricades, on the picket lines, at the blockades, and in the occupations.

#3.5.4. Unemployment

335335. Unemployment is an integral feature of capitalism. In periods of crisis millions cannot be profitably employed and are discarded. At all times unemployment is capitalism's principal tool for collectively disciplining the working class and maximising exploitation. Full employment, whether as a result of deliberate government policy – as in the post-war period – or in periods of exceptional economic circumstance, increases the confidence of workers and the strength of their organisations, leading to higher wages and improved conditions.

336336. Permanent full employment is not compatible with the continuation of capitalism. The capitalist class and its state will therefore act to restore the reserve army of labour to counter the combativeness of the organised working class. This effort should be met with an intensification of the class struggle.

337337. Maintained at below subsistence levels, the unemployed increasingly constitute a permanently marginalised section of the population. The only way to eradicate unemployment is to end the system that causes and requires it.

338338. As part of the working class the unemployed must be integrated as fully as possible into the workers' movement.

339339. The unemployed are capital's reserve army. They must be made into a reserve army of the revolution by demanding:

340340. ↳ The right to work at trade union rates of pay or unemployment benefit at the level of a liveable wage. For a universal income guarantee for all who cannot or do not want to work.

341341. ↳ No state harassment of the unemployed. Claiming benefit is a right, not a privilege. The abolition of so-called "Mutual Obligations" and the closure of the parasitic job search agencies. The creation of a state employment service for those who want to work as the chief means by which labour is hired. For full rights to turn down work.

342342. ↳ The formation of unions for unemployed workers, with representation in workers peak bodies.

343343. ↳ Cheap labour schemes must be replaced by real training and education under trade union supervision.

#3.5.5. The Strike Weapon

344344. The most decisive economic weapon in the hands of the proletariat is its capacity to withdraw its labour - the strike weapon. Used effectively by small groups of workers it can bring a capitalist firm to the table. Used en masse, it can bring an entire nation to its knees.

345345. The general, or mass, strike, represents an advanced form of working class organisation, and communists seek to use flying pickets and agitational propaganda to draw out as much of the class into these struggles as possible. As the power of the working class grows, the strike weapon can be used to resist state repression, defend workers gains, as well as to advance reform struggles.

346346. General strikes, even when they do not take on an insurrectionary character, can dramatically advance the interests of the working class. However, in and of themselves, they cannot replace the construction of a mass socialist party to win a social majority.

347347. General strikes do not need to be confined to the sphere of the wage labourer.

348348. General strikes necessarily take on a social character, drawing all members of the oppressed and exploited into activity, taking part in radical actions around questions of health and education, social reproduction, and participating in the seizure and occupation of infrastructure.

#3.5.6. Councils of Action

349349. In any decisive clash of class against class, new forms of organisation which are higher, more general, more flexible than trade unions emerge. In Russian they have been called soviets, in German, Räte, in English, councils of action.

350350. These councils embrace and coordinate all who are in conflict and thus have the potential to become part of the future workers' republic. We encourage any development in this direction as an emancipatory part of our class's political power.

351351. As a society-wide organisational form, they do have democratic limitations and are therefore also a battleground for proletarian politics. The Communist Party has a central place in this struggle, bringing political education and organised political discussion. Thus, workers' councils can grow as potential building blocks for the democratic republic.

#3.6. Expropriation of Industry

#3.6.1. Nationalisation or Socialisation?

352352. Capitalist competition, in accordance with the general laws of its development, gives way to its negation, monopoly. This tendency towards monopoly is embodied by nationalisation, by which the capitalist state takes ownership of firms. This simply produces a tighter relationship between the state and capital accumulation, a state-capitalist firm.

353353. Communists oppose the illusion that nationalisation equates in some way with socialism. There is nothing inherently socialistic about nationalised industries.

354354. The historic task of the working class is to fully socialise – that is, to expropriate under the control of the working class, reorganise according to general need, and integrate into a social plan – the giant transnational corporations and international supply chains. Programmes for wholesale nationalisation absent the international revolution and political rule by the working class can only succeed in breaking such corporations into inefficient national units. From the perspective of world revolution, programs for simple nationalisation are today objectively inadequate, even reactionary. Our starting point is the most advanced achievements of capitalism. Globalised production needs global social control.

355355. However, specific acts of nationalisation can serve the interests of workers.

356356. In cases where capitalists would seek to evacuate their capital, or where workplaces are threatened with closures and redundancies, communists support the following:

357357. ↳ No bailouts or public support for capitalist firms. Abolish all subsidies and public-private borrowing initiatives.

358358. ↳ No redundancies. Nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers' control. For the expropriation of all industries that threaten to close, slow production, or move abroad. For the retraining and re-employment of workers in socially unnecessary or harmful sectors.

359359. ↳ For the organisation of workers to carry out occupations of firms targeted for nationalisation.

360360. ↳ Cut the hours, not the jobs. Share the available work amongst all who are able to work. For a sliding scale of working hours to reduce the working day and absorb the unemployed, with no reduction of pay or conditions.

361361. ↳ No to outsourcing and offshoring; instead of conflict between workers of different nationalities for the same jobs, level up all pay rates and build international combines of workers in the same enterprises and branches of production. Collective agreements and legal rights to apply to employees of subcontracting companies as if they were employees of the main contractor.

#3.6.2. The Commanding Heights

362362. It is an objective necessity in the general development of social production that the commanding heights of the economy be brought under monopolistic state ownership. As such, any revolutionary government must begin to consolidate the most strategically important firms in the hands of the working class.

363363. As such, communists call for:

364364. ↳ The expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy, including the financial, grocery and retail monopolies, real estate, telecommunications, transport, steel, mining, energy, and logistics sectors, under worker management.

365365. ↳ For a state monopoly on foreign trade.

366366. ↳ The expropriation of the capitalist press, publishing, and media apparatus and its nationalisation or distribution to workers cooperatives.

367367. ↳ For a mass program of retraining and redirection of labour towards socially necessary sectors.

368368. ↳ For a program of public works to improve social services, healthcare, housing, public transport and environmental conditions under the control of the workers and their communities.

#3.6.3. Socialisation Commissions

369369. The task of the communists is complete socialisation of industry, and as such, communists fight for the formation of socialisation commissions made up of workers representatives. These commissions would begin drafting concrete plans for the socialisation of industry, its expropriation and integration into a social plan where capitalist exploitation is suppressed.

370370. As part of the task of socialisation, communists demand the formation of committees on economic planning, made up of both technicians and workers'

371371. representatives. These bodies would begin the task of constructing a real science of economic planning and the implementation of that science through the development of economic plans, both in the short and long term.

#3.6.4. For Workers Control!

372372. For the working class to seize economic power, they must lay their hands upon the means of production. The implementation of self-management, and the management of workers over strategic economic sectors, is a necessary precondition for the socialisation of the economy as a whole.

373373. As such, the communists propose the following demands to advance the struggle for workers' control:

374374. ↳ For worker control in all nationalised industries and public services, with systematic democratisation of public services at every level.

375375. ↳ For worker control over the shop-floor. For democratic decision-making to be organised by shop committees and trade union caucuses in every workplace. For worker supervision of all management decisions.

376376. ↳ For the organisation of self-management schools under workers control in order to train workers for the socialisation and management of the economy, under the control of workers organisations.

377377. ↳ For workforce control over management decisions – not co-production, 'social partnership' or other forms of class collaboration in which our unions administer the bosses' cuts, but a fight for workers' control of production and the introduction of new technologies to benefit workers and their families, not displace or impoverish them.

378378. ↳ For the formation of an independent workers inspectorate tasked with ensuring quality of services and the enforcement of workers pay and conditions in all sectors of the economy.

#3.7. Nature and Climate

379379. Capitalist civilisation has placed humanity upon the brink of ecological catastrophe.

380380. Driven by the brutal logic of capital accumulation, capitalists are driven towards constant expansion of production and consumption. This creates a multitude of crises in the biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans.

381381. Our goal is not only to stop the massive destruction of nature and preserve what we have left, but also to restore and enhance the richness of nature where possible. Ultimately, we want to move towards a planned economy where production is done for utility, taking into account ecological consequences. Until then, we can struggle to subordinate capital to coercive measures for the benefit of nature and the environment.

382382. Climate change and the danger of runaway ecological crises must be dealt with as a matter of extreme urgency. But we should be on guard against pseudo-solutions. Carbon offsets and carbon trading amount to greenwashing capitalism. Blaming population numbers in poor countries easily leads to Malthusian programs and terrible human suffering. Various geo-engineering measures would at best allow capital to continue the general destruction of the planet, and at worst cause devastating ecological crises of their own. Technological "magic bullet" solutions, such as hypothetical carbon capture technologies, cannot be relied upon to deal with the climate crisis.

383383. Instead of these non-solutions, communists present these demands: Protect the Land, Water, and Air! Climate Justice Now!

384384. ↳ The big corporations and imperialist states like the USA, Australia, and the EU

385385. must pay for the environmental destruction they have caused in the rest of the world. For reparations to help the peripheralized countries bring about the necessary ecological change.

386386. ↳ Where feasible, re-establish imperilled ecosystems: forests, natural floodplains, marshes, and rainforests should be rejuvenated. Strive to reintroduce the full array of native flora and fauna.

387387. ↳ Nationalise the land and waterways. Concrete jungles, urban sprawl, using rivers and seas as common sewers, huge farms and intensive meat and dairy production result in substantial damage to the biosphere. This damage must be mitigated through thorough ecological stewardship.

388388. ↳ For a large global program for the reforestation of destroyed forests while at the same time protecting the existing close-to-natural ecosystems. For strict limitations on logging, and the preservation of old growth forests and nature preserves.

389389. ↳ For a global program to protect water resources. For massive investments in drinking water supply and wastewater treatment! For common management of rivers and water-tables.

390390. ↳ For a global program to conserve resources, and to avoid and manage waste. For recycling cooperatives in every community.

391391. ↳ Towns and cities should be full of trees, roof gardens, planted walls, allotments, wild parks, and small-scale cooperative farms, both as a means of deepening food security and as a means of sequestering carbon.

392392. ↳ Destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling should be banned. Inshore seas must include wide no-catch areas. The aim should be to fully restore marine life and thus create a sustainable fishing industry.

393393. ↳ Full support for the struggles of indigenous peoples and populations threatened by environmental destruction.

394394. ↳ For a restrictive policy concerning chemical products based on the precautionary principle. For a ban on chemicals that are proven or likely to be hazardous to health and/or the environment. Threshold values or danger levels with regard to the use of chemicals must be determined by organs of democratically legitimised social control.

395395. For Ecological War Communism!

396396. ↳ Organise a general industrial plan to move towards a negative carbon society as soon as possible. For a crash energy transition and sweeping ecological reorganisation – we need an ecological war economy! Rapidly transition away from coal, oil, and gas towards wind, tidal, solar, geothermal and other renewables.

397397. ↳ The breakup of the oil-auto-steel complex, the progressive elimination of urban automobile use and the breaking of the automobile domination over the transportation system. The expansion of rail, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian transit.

398398. ↳ For a global emergency plan to restructure the energy and transport system – for a perspective of ending the global consumption of fossil fuels!

399399. ↳ Reduce energy demand: bring home and work closer together, support workers who want flexible working arrangements; introduce free local and urban public transport; discourage the consumption of meat and dairy products; put limits on air travel and car use; ensure that the existing housing stock is radically upgraded and exacting building standards are enforced; impose taxes on big scale polluters.

400400. ↳ Nationalisation under workers' control of all energy corporations, enterprises which monopolise basic goods like water, agribusiness, and all airlines, shipping, and rail enterprises. Abolish business secrecy in the clean technology and energy sectors – pool the knowledge to create effective alternatives.

#3.7.1. The Agrarian Question

401401. Almost half of humanity still lives in villages, on plantations, and in the rural communities of indigenous peoples. The gap between their incomes, their access to healthcare, education, communications, to that in the cities is often enormous. At the same time, capitalism relentlessly concentrates landownership in the hands of a wealthy elite or international agribusiness.

402402. From China and Bengal to South America and Africa, peasants and indigenous communities are driven off the best land and forced to migrate to the slums of the cities. Life on the plantations that produce sugar, coffee, tea, cotton, sisal, rubber, tobacco and bananas reproduces many of the features of slavery and indentured labour. Plantation workers are often thrown into debt bondage. In the imperialist core, small farmers have long been squeezed out of business by agricultural monopolies that are reliant on cheap labour and ecocidal farming practices.

403403. In Australia, small holding family-farmers, always in competition with the powerful squattocracy, have largely given way to agricultural monopolies and wage-labour employment in agriculture. Today, it is not a question of agrarian reform that is posed, but of the socialisation of land and the collectivisation of agriculture on an ecological socialist basis.

404404. On the question of land and agriculture, the communists seek social ownership, sustainable food security, and a good life for rural people.

405405. As such, we demand:

406406. ↳ For workers' solidarity with the struggles of sharecroppers, peasants, rural workers, and the landless. For international solidarity with peasants struggles against capitalist monopolies and climate catastrophe.

407407. ↳ For the rationalisation of land ownership – nationalisation of all land, water, and natural resources, with consistent indigenous land rights and fair leases for agricultural cooperatives.

408408. ↳ Expropriate the land of the oligarchs and the multinational agribusinesses and place them under workers', poor peasants' and agricultural labourers' control.

409409. ↳ The Land to those who Work It! We fight for workers' control in the countryside. For full rights for seasonal and migrant labourers.

410410. ↳ Abolition of rent and cancellation of all debts of the poor peasants and small farmers.

411411. ↳ Free credit to purchase machinery and fertiliser to encourage subsistence and small farmers to voluntarily join production co – operatives. For the creation of fisher cooperatives to protect the livelihoods of small fishers.

412412. ↳ Create stable prices on agricultural goods through farmers cooperatives and the nationalisation of the grocery monopolies.

413413. ↳ Free access to seeds, abolish all patents in agriculture.

414414. ↳ For the conversion of agriculture to sustainable cultivation methods. For the expropriation of large estates and the distribution of land to the people who (want to) cultivate it. For animal-friendly husbandry conditions on all farms and the shuttering of factory farms. For the intensification of research into sustainable farming systems under the control of farmers and workers. Where necessary, obligatory use of environmentally sustainable methods of cultivation, such as organic farming, while accounting for the need to ensure food security.

415415. ↳ Against poverty in the countryside; equalise income, access to health, education and culture on par with the cities. This alone can slow and reverse the pathological urbanisation of capitalism and open the road to the goal set out in The Communist Manifesto: "the gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country".

#3.8. The Social Question

#3.8.1. The Housing Question and the Reclamation of the Cities

416416. In capitalist society housing becomes a commodity - a means for the extraction of rents. The city, the common home of billions of workers, becomes nothing more than a playground for property developers, landlords, and other capitalist factions.

417417. Communists seek the universal provision of housing and a common, social city.

418418. Wherever possible, we seek to join the struggle of workers and tenants against immiseration, eviction, and rentierism. The organised mass of the working class should be mobilised to seize control of empty houses and the mansions of the rich; expropriation must be a living demand, not a policy proposal.

419419. Towards this end we demand:

420420. ↳ Break the housing market! For a massive revival of the public house building program. The shortage of housing must be ended, and public housing must come to make up the majority of the housing stock. For rents to be capped at 20% of income. For a National Housing Insurance Scheme to cover the rents of the unemployed and poor workers.

421421. ↳ For the organisation of workers and the poor to seize abandoned housing and corporate property. For the defence of squats and occupations.

422422. ↳ For a massive emergency program of socially useful public works to provide full employment, develop the economic and social infrastructure and restore the environment. Working-class communities, faced with acute shortages of socially owned housing, dilapidated housing stock, run-down schools, shortages of nurseries, kindergartens, surgeries and clinics, should conduct an audit of social needs.

423423. ↳ For housing, light and power, sewage and waste disposal, health clinics and schools, roads and public transport for the inhabitants of the vast and rapidly growing shantytowns which surround all the major cities of the 'developing world' from Manila and Karachi to Mumbai, Mexico City and Sao Paulo. For the rejuvenation and reconstruction of derelict and socially marginalised housing estates, for good homes for all who currently live in slum conditions. For clean water, heating and cooling, and climate protection for all homes and public buildings.

424424. ↳ Progressive expropriation of all investment properties through granting to the state a right of first refusal for all housing sold. Incorporation of these properties into the public housing stock once it is refurbished and improved to a good standard.

425425. ↳ For a jubilee on the mortgage debts of owner-occupier households.

426426. ↳ The seizure of empty buildings, such as corporate offices and hotels, for social use, including for retrofitting as housing. Hotels to be replaced by state and worker-owned boarding houses.

427427. ↳ All public housing must be high-quality, energy-efficient and with spacious rooms. Where appropriate, outside areas must be provided for children to play. Social services, such as schools and health clinics must be included as part of the mix of housing. Housing should be of medium density, and integrate large amounts of green space.

428428. ↳ Accommodation to be allocated on the basis of need, with each person being entitled to a room and a half each in addition to shared spaces.

429429. Social housing payments should cover maintenance and nothing more.

430430. There should be life-long tenure, moving only when the occupants want to, or due to extenuating circumstances.

431431. ↳ Communal housing schemes with shared services, gardens, swimming pools, gyms, etc should be included as part of the mix of housing options.

432432. ↳ Housing estates and blocks of flats should be democratically run by tenants in conjunction with the local authorities and relevant trade unions.

433433. ↳ A publicly-owned building corporation to be established to ensure that planned targets for house-building are reached and to provide permanent employment and ongoing training for building workers. For a general census and improvement program on all housing stock.

434434. ↳ For the reorganisation and beautification of urban spaces, the provision of free, universal public transit, the elimination of slums and unsafe housing, suburban alienation and misery, and rural decay.

435435. ↳ For the beautification of cities, and the radical expansion of public spaces for leisure and social life. For expansion of free galleries, parks, sports facilities, gymnasiums, bathhouses, libraries, cinemas, theatres, youth centres and music venues.

436436. ↳ For the elimination of hostile architecture, loitering laws, laws against public drinking and smoking, and other limits on public gatherings. For a plan to eliminate the scourge of homelessness through social care and universal access to housing.

437437. ↳ For the integration of production, housing, leisure, education, and agriculture within communities.

#3.8.2. Healthcare and Social Care

438438. Communists demand a comprehensive, free and democratic health service to meet the needs of everyone. Healthcare should be universal, a basic building block in social solidarity, not a tool of profit, alienation, and social control.

439439. All people deserve secure, dignified, and comfortable lives, from cradle to old age. The needs of the elderly should be met fully by the state and be available by right. Old people must not suffer the humiliation and anxiety of relying on means tests or charity. Disabled people should be able to live full dignified lives, free from abuse and exploitation.

440440. Communists therefore present the following demands:

441441. ↳ For the expropriation of all private health clinics, hospitals and services, and their incorporation into a single National Health Service, funded and provided by the state and free at the point of access.

442442. ↳ For the elimination of all "workplace benefit schemes", "company wellness policies", and other health and social care regimens that tie workers to the whims of their employers.

443443. ↳ The national health service must provide the highest quality care in all areas, including dentistry, mental healthcare (including various "complex" treatments such as psychotherapy), optometry and those complementary therapies that have been scientifically proven to be effective. These services should be widely available with the quality of care guaranteed by extensive funding drives and a bill of patient rights.

444444. ↳ The national health service must place a strong emphasis on preventative interventions.

445445. ↳ All hospitals and clinics to be run by their staff and the community they serve.

446446. ↳ For the abolition of asylums and other forms of forced psychiatric treatment, and their replacement with in-community care by qualified professionals.

447447. ↳ For community clinics, both general practitioners and polyclinics, in every neighbourhood and village providing a full range of health services democratically accountable to local people. For extensive public health initiatives such as mass vaccination, disease prevention, and health awareness. For free, socially organised exercise and public sports, as well as gymnasiums and organised sports for children. For the elimination of fraudulent and pseudoscientific health practices through social education and rigorous health standards.

448448. ↳ The pharmaceutical industry should be nationalised, so that the development of drugs serves human needs, not the generation of profits.

449449. ↳ For the elimination of superannuation. For the provision of a fully funded Disability and Aged Care Service and a generous old age pension beginning at age 60. For the establishment of a single Wage-Earner Fund to fund pensions, social housing, and workers cooperatives, paid for through taxes on corporations.

450450. ↳ No compulsory retirement on the basis of age. Right to retirement from age 60 for all workers – younger in unpleasant and dangerous occupations.

451451. ↳ Old people should have the right to decide how they live. The state must provide what is needed to allow elderly people to live independently if they so wish, for as long as they are physically or mentally capable of doing so. There should be no compulsory institutionalisation.

452452. ↳ Social clubs for the elderly should be democratic and subsidised by the state and workers organisations, not charities.

453453. ↳ The comfort and dignity of the dying must be ensured at all times.

454454. Voluntary euthanasia and disposal of the body after death should be carried out according to the wishes of the individual, without state pressure.

#3.8.3. Youth and Education

455455. Youth are used as cheap labour, policed and disciplined in schools and in the streets, and blamed for social decay. The system also exploits youth as consumers. Every ideal, every artistic talent is judged in terms of generating artificial needs. There are many who reject the twisted values of the system. But in despair this often turns to nihilism and escapism – themselves turned into commodities by capitalism.

456456. Youth are at the sharp end of capitalist decline. Young workers are in general less likely to be protected by trade union membership. Homelessness, unemployment, and sexual abuse and exploitation are greatly disproportionate amongst the young.

457457. The education system is a vitally important site of struggle. Secondary education is narrow, unimaginative and obsessively focused on targets and exams. Official schemes for unemployed youth are notoriously mediocre, designed more to massage government statistics than equip young workers with the skills they need for a worthwhile future.

458458. Higher education is increasingly designed to suit the commercial interests of employers – university courses included. This sector churns out the next generation of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Elite universities specialise in the reproduction of the upper-middle and ruling classes.

459459. It is because of all of these factors that young people play a decisive role in the revolutionary movement. Young workers, students, the unemployed and precarious youth have always played a most important part in the class struggle, where they serve as the detonator of the revolutionary situation. Young workers and intellectuals carry the torch of the revolution.

460460. The education system, be it high schools, TAFEs, or universities, is a vital site of social struggle. At every turn, communists must organise and ready the youth for an epochal conflict with the capitalist system. It is most likely, at least in the initial stages, the youth will fill out the ranks of the Communist Party in great numbers, providing a militant and committed vanguard of the broader class movement.

461461. Amongst students, the necessary task is to organise against the capitalist university and school as such, not simply for reforms, or a return to some imagined academic idyll. The school is, at its core, an institution of capitalist power and control. It must be smashed.

462462. The following demands are of crucial importance for youth:

463463. ↳ For the formation of mass student, youth, and children's organisations for the carrying out of revolutionary activity and the political education of the youth!

464464. ↳ Childcare and the raising of children from birth to adulthood to be seen as a collective responsibility borne by the state and society as a whole. For free school meals in every creche, school, and university, for all the meals of the day. Free, comprehensive medical care to be provided through creches, schools, and universities.

465465. ↳ Jobs for all young people on wages and conditions equal to those of older workers. Scrapping of youth wages, and the banning of child labour. The banning of employment of teenagers on school days.

466466. ↳ Scrap cheap labour training schemes, replace them with apprenticeships on full pay with guaranteed employment afterwards.

467467. ↳ General reform of the education system. For a compulsory, social education system, with extensive support for disabled or regionally isolated students. Nationalisation of all private and religious schools. The creation of a single, high quality, National Education Service. Provision of robust, democratic, and revolutionary education from childhood to the age of 20.

468468. ↳ Secondary and tertiary education should be of a polytechnic nature. That is, rounded to include technical and personal skills, as well as scientific, social, historical and artistic subjects. Extension of school opening hours to allow for increased individual study time and group activities.

469469. Limitation of homework for children. Curriculum should be oriented towards creative thinking, cultural enrichment, and social liberation.

470470. The combination of education with production and community life.

471471. ↳ Tertiary education should be a right, not a privilege. Abolish student fees and write-off all currently held student debt. Everyone should be encouraged to develop themselves and their intellectual and critical abilities to the fullest degree. For the promotion of the arts, natural and social sciences, humanities, and other neglected disciplines.

472472. ↳ For the expansion of adult education programs to combat illiteracy, cultural ignorance, and social isolation. For the expansion of the existing public library system, with 24/7 services.

473473. ↳ The placing of schools and universities under democratic teacher and student management.

474474. ↳ For academic freedom in teaching and research. End the financialization of the universities. Full funding for university research.

475475. ↳ Wages for Students, paid by the state. The recognition of students' labour as a form of socially necessary labour with all that this entails, including pay, maximum work hours, the ability to organise for better conditions, self-management of learning conditions, etc. For the standardisation of university hours, including breaks. Housing for students, provided by the state.

476476. ↳ Provision of housing/hostels for youth to enter of their own choice for longer or shorter periods when they lose their parents or choose to leave them, funded by the state but under the democratic control of the youth who use them.

477477. ↳ The right of every young person to leave education to a job, proper technical training, or full benefits.

478478. ↳ Remove all obstacles to the participation of youth in social life. Votes and the right to be elected from the age of 15.

479479. ↳ The provision of a broad range of sports and cultural centres under the control of representatives elected by youth. For youth centres in every neighbourhood.

480480. ↳ Young people should be entitled to develop their personal and sexual lives free from parental, police or religious control. Protection of young people from sexual abuse and exploitation should be guaranteed through a robust social services system.

481481. ↳ We defend contraception services which are free and confidential, available to students at all ages from school medical clinics. We fight for extensive provision of education, counselling and advice on all matters relating to sexuality and reproduction.

#3.8.4. Arts, Culture, and Sciences

482482. Art, cultural activity, and scientific knowledge is the common treasury of human history. It should be accessible to all and turned towards constructing a new world.

483483. As such, we demand:

484484. ↳ Universal access to the arts and culture, for the promotion of art and culture through democratic artists organisations and cooperatives. For the creation of freely accessible arts centres for all manner of creative pursuits. For the expansion of resources dedicated to the arts, as well as the expansion and promotion of arts education and schools in a variety of styles and traditions. For generous grants and funding to be provided to community art projects and artists organisations. For the mobilisation of artists and culture workers for revolutionary ends.

485485. ↳ For campaigns of public education and cultural enrichment, mass production of high-quality literature for mass distribution, and the expansion of lecture halls and adult education institutes. Unemployed intellectuals and students should be mobilised to give public lectures on subjects such as the natural and social sciences, history, art and literature, political economy, and philosophy. For the unity of proletarian intellectuals and the workers organisations.

486486. ↳ For the organisation of workers fitness associations, sports clubs, hiking and wilderness societies, and other cultural and athletic bodies. For the expansion of worker-socialist boxing gyms and shooting clubs. Break sports and public fitness away from crass consumerism, masculinism, nationalism, and militarism.

487487. ↳ For the nationalisation of research and development programs, and guaranteed state employment for all scientific workers. For expansion of support for scientific education and research, the creation of socialised scientific schools and academies, and elimination of burdensome pressures and precarity for scientific and technical workers. Abolish corporate secrets: for free access to all research.

#3.8.5. Indigenous Liberation and Socialism

488488. The dispossession of Australia's First Nations peoples was the foundational act of colonial violence upon which the Australian capitalist mode of production was erected – a foundational violence that included the expropriation of traditional lands, the uprooting of modes of production and political forms, the banning and suppression of languages and cultures, the enslavement of indigenous people, and the kidnapping of Indigenous children during the infamous Stolen Generation. This foundational violence has marked the social formation of capitalism in Australia as being essentially settler-colonial in nature – constructing a society in which capitalist social relations have been instigated by and expanded by a caste of settlers brought from the metropole.

489489. While the initial period of colonialism has ended, the colonial process is still ongoing, as the Indigenous masses struggle for existence within and against the imperialist Australian state.

490490. In contemporary Australia, Indigenous people suffer under the burden of national and racial oppression. Indigenous people are often marginalised even when compared to other groups of workers, are disproportionately proletarianised or lumpenised, and subject to overwhelming criminalisation and state oppression. This oppression has produced a broad movement for the advancement of Indigenous people, a movement which contains liberal, conservative, and reactionary wings, as well as a militant left-nationalist wing.

491491. Communists recognise the oppression of Indigenous peoples on this continent as indispensable to the functioning of capitalism as a whole. There is no road to national liberation for Indigenous people that does not include the overthrow of the settler-colonial Australian state and the capitalist mode of production itself.

492492. Communists advocate for revolutionary activity in the Indigenous national liberation struggle, and for absolute solidarity with Indigenous struggles amongst both settler and migrant workers. Not a single inch can be given to settler chauvinism. In regard to the communist program, the communists struggle for indigenous governance over Indigenous cultural and linguistic institutions as well as Indigenous communities, for systematic reparations in the form of meaningful increases in living standards, and meaningful land rights and land reform. This also means recognising the essential role that Indigenous people play in the struggle for a sustainable climate and ecological system. Importantly, none of these tasks can be completed unless the colonial outpost known as Australia is overthrown, and a workers republic is brought to power with a program of Indigenous liberation and socialism.

493493. As such, we demand:

494494. ↳ Build Black Power and Workers Power! For revolutionary organisations of black workers and youth, militant Indigenous caucuses in the unions, and in all other organisations of popular power.

495495. ↳ Stop Black Death in Custody – hold the killer cops to account. Disarm, defund, and disband the racist police services.

496496. ↳ A Treaty with First Nations, enshrining the right to their lands, to a good standard of living, and to use their own languages. For Indigenous control over Indigenous affairs. For a policy against Australian settler chauvinism and for the advancement of national minority cadres to be ruthlessly enforced.

497497. ↳ For an organised policy of reparations for the effects of colonial oppression, paid in the form of consistent increases in living conditions and social services. Support the material basis for Indigenous cultural regeneration with land rights and socially owned resources, farming, and industry. For the expansion of Indigenous run health clinics, school, and social welfare centres. For schooling to be conducted in the local language, and for the promotion of multilingualism.

498498. ↳ For the integration of Indigenous culture into general social life. For ruthless struggle against white settler, chauvinist culture.

499499. ↳ For an end to the policies of child-theft by the Australian government, and for the provision of Indigenous run child safety and support services.

#3.8.6. Racism and Migration

500500. Racism is one of the deepest and most pernicious of the many forms of oppression capitalism creates. Its roots coil deep in the history of capitalist development. The world market and trade grew under the domination of powerful capitalist states which plundered weaker powers. Slavery in America, the fruits of empire in Britain, Holland and France, wars of conquest by Germany and Japan, all required that the oppressors deny the very humanity of those they enslaved. African, Indian, Chinese and South East Asian, indigenous, Jewish, and traveller peoples all were presented by the new imperial powers as subhumans unworthy of the rights they reluctantly extended to their own populations at home.

501501. Australian capitalism has always depended upon the regulation of flows of labour from overseas, opening and closing the path to migrants based on the needs of capital and the need to maintain social peace at home. This has necessarily produced a political culture that is steeped in racial animus, deployed constantly against various migrant groups. This same racial animus is used to motivate and justify Australian participation in imperialist campaigns abroad, and the repression of certain sections of the working class at home.

502502. Communists are wholly opposed to racism, and are opposed to all attempts to divide the working class based on colour, culture, religion, or language. Only by breaking the power of racial ideology and racist divisions can the class be genuinely unified in its struggle against capital.

503503. Communists are totally opposed to all controls on migration and border crossings, are opposed to the internment of migrants and refugees, and the mistreatment and exploitation of migrant workers. Just as capital is allowed to flow freely across borders, so too should labour be able to seek the best price for its sale. Communists are fervent advocates of the struggle against racist border policies and for the organisation of migrant workers into the labour movement.

504504. The struggle against racism has three fronts, all of which must be taken up by communist militants. The first is the direct confrontation with racist forces in the streets. The second is the broad mobilisation of the class to confront racist policies and institutions such as the police, border force, and racist employers and landlords. The third is the broad mobilisation of all workers in the general struggle for communism, so as to provide a basis for a genuine politics of solidarity across racial divisions.

505505. As such, we make the following demands:

506506. ↳ Smash Racism through Mass Organisation! For mass organisations of working class migrants and oppressed nationalities. For mass anti-racist street organisations.

507507. ↳ Down with all forms of discrimination against migrants. Equal pay and equal democratic rights irrespective of race, nationality, religion, or citizenship. Full democratic rights for all migrants, including the right to vote!

508508. ↳ Close the camps, free them all! Remove all specific laws and restrictions concerning people with foreign citizenship. Open the borders. Fight racist border controls that prevent the free movement of workers and the oppressed across borders. For the closing of all detention centres and offshore processing centres.

509509. ↳ Full asylum rights for all those who flee war, oppression and poverty in their home countries.

510510. ↳ Fight racism and all forms of racial discrimination. Launch a fight against racism in all sectors of the labour movement. No to strikes against the employment of foreign or migrant labour.

511511. ↳ The workers' movement, especially trade unionists in the press and broadcast media, must mount a campaign, backed by direct action, to answer and halt racist hate propaganda. For ruthless struggle against white chauvinism, settler racialism, and communal xenophobia.

#3.8.7. On the Status of Women

512512. The oppression of women, and their economic, social, and political marginalisation (a social arrangement commonly known as patriarchy) is intimately linked with the capitalist mode of production. The reproduction of the labour force, both daily and across generations, requires a certain amount of socially necessary labour in the sphere of social reproduction and domestic work. This work is done overwhelmingly by women, and it is not directly remunerated by the state or capital. This condition of domestic servility produces women as a subject within capitalist society, reduced to carers, cooks, cleaners, sexual objects – objects of male power and domination, objects at the disposal of capital.

513513. The modern liberal state promised women equality, but the promise is unfulfilled. Wages are on average only 70 per cent of men's and often much less.

514514. Women still bear the double burden of childcare, care of the elderly, and managing the individual household, alongside their jobs. This vast economic burden is not directly remunerated, placing women at the mercy of their husbands under a patriarchy of the wage. Rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence are rife. Reproductive rights are restricted and under constant attack.

515515. Even when women do enter the workforce, they do so on the basis of a profound inequality. Funnelled into lower paid sectors that reflect their social role in the home, women find themselves shackled with a second shift – working in the market and in the home, often doing similar jobs.

516516. In the global south, patriarchal relations in the countryside and religious prejudices magnify these inequalities. Women are denied the right to control their own bodies, to decide if they wish to have children and, if so, when and how many. Domestic violence, family rape, even murder (so-called 'honour' killings) often go unpunished. In every country, this oppression is rooted in the family structure of class society. Yet, over the last decades, millions of women have been drawn into mass production, especially in manufacturing in the cities of South and East Asia and Latin America. During crises in the textile, electronic and service industries, where women make up some 80 per cent of the workforce, they have often been the first to be sacked, with employers leaving wages unpaid, breaking legal obligations to give notice and with governments and courts turning a blind eye. Most cruelly exploited are the huge numbers of migrant women workers whose families back home will starve without their remittances.

517517. Unlike liberal feminists, communists understand that only breaking the power of capital and abolishing the patriarchal family and communal system can bring forth the emancipation of women. We are fervently opposed to all class collaborationist and separatist tendencies in the women's movement – as only genuine unity of the class on the basis of a struggle against women's oppression can bring about women's liberation.

518518. The emancipation of women is a core plank in the communist program. As such, communists support the involvement and leadership of women in all proletarian struggles, and support the emergence of organisations and movements that focus specifically on women's issues – in both cases, we advocate for communist, proletarian politics to take the helm.

519519. Communists say:

520520. ↳ Fight for mass women's organisations, defence groups, social collectives, and union fractions.

521521. ↳ Turn formal freedom into genuine freedom. Socially, economically, politically, and culturally, there must be substantial freedom for women.

522522. ↳ End all limitations on the right to divorce.

523523. ↳ Wages for Housework, paid by the state. For the unionisation of all domestic workers, be they paid by the state (including in the home) or work in the private sector.

524524. ↳ Against all forms of legal discrimination against women. Equal rights and responsibilities for women, to vote, to work, to education, to participate in all public and social activity.

525525. ↳ Equal pay for women in all sectors, enforced by the organised labour movement.

526526. ↳ Help women to escape concentration in the informal and family business sector. For public works programs to provide full – time job opportunities with decent wages for women.

527527. ↳ Open free, 24-hour crèches and kindergartens to facilitate full participation in social life outside the home. Society must take collective responsibility for the rearing of children.

528528. ↳ Open high-quality canteens with cheap prices on every street and in every neighbourhood. For the expansion of canteens and free meals at schools and large workplaces. Establish laundry and house-cleaning services undertaken by local authorities and the state. This to be the first step in the socialisation of housework. We would encourage a balance of male and female workers to be employed in these facilities.

529529. ↳ Fight sexual violence in all forms. Full support for women fleeing violence within the home. Expansion of domestic violence and assault support shelters under democratic control. Self – defence against sexist violence, backed by the workers' and women's movement.

530530. ↳ No to laws which either oblige women to wear, or not to wear, religious clothing. Women should have the legal right to dress as they please.

531531. ↳ For the systematic elimination of arranged marriages, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and polygamy.

532532. ↳ Fully paid maternity leave of 12 months, which the mother can choose to take from up to three months before giving birth. The partner to be provided with twelve months' fully paid parental leave – three months of which should be compulsory – to encourage equality and bonding with the child.

533533. ↳ Free abortion and contraception on demand. For universal sexual education that promotes sexual freedom, dignity, responsibility, and sexual health.

534534. ↳ Provision for either parent, or main carer, to be allowed paid leave to look after sick children.

535535. ↳ A maximum six-hour working day for all nursing parents.

#3.8.8. Sexual and Gender Freedom

536536. The historic inequality of the sexes, going back millennia to the emergence of class society and the state as an instrument of the exploiters over the exploited, led to repressive rules and customs regarding sexuality, and masculine and feminine gender roles. Heterosexual relations outside marriage or family or caste arrangement, and homosexuality were often severely sanctioned, including with capital punishment. People who transgressed binary sex or gender roles were stigmatised, bullied, driven to suicide or murdered. In many countries this is still the case today.

537537. With the advent of bourgeois society, the regulation of sexuality
(ruling class sexual hegemony), the regulation of working class sexual life became a core means by which the capitalist state sought to discipline and police workers in the slums and poor districts. State persecution of homosexuals, sex workers, and other "deviants" became the norm in all bourgeois societies. Gay and trans people have formal equality and freedom only in a minority of countries. In many, they are threatened with punishment by the state, with physical harassment and even death. Most religions sanction this hate-filled repression.

538538. The workers' movement and the socialist youth must come to the defence of gay and trans people everywhere. For gay liberation! For trans liberation!

539539. The emancipation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people is intimately tied to the liberation of women and the proletarian revolution. Only the overthrow of capitalist social relations can allow for the full expression of human sexuality, and only the crushing of patriarchal society can allow queer people to be truly free.

540540. In the immediate term, communists are fervent advocates of the queer liberation struggle, and resist both separatist and assimilationist tendencies within the movement. We advocate for a proletarian queer movement organised on the basis of class struggle, the overthrow of bourgeois gender norms and sexual repression, and the smashing of the repressive apparatus of the state.

541541. As such, we raise the following demands:

542542. ↳ Abolition of the legal status of marriage and its replacement with a simple system of de facto relationship through declaration. Family status and associated rights to be awarded based on voluntary declaration and dependent children.

543543. ↳ Decriminalisation of all consensual sexual practices and elimination of all "public morality" laws. Overturning of all historical convictions for sodomy or solicitation. Abolish the "gay panic" defence.

544544. ↳ Stop all harassment by the state and religious institutions: sexual orientation and all consensual sexual activity must be a matter of personal choice. For the banning of "conversion therapy" and the prosecution of its practitioners.

545545. ↳ Outlaw all discrimination against gay people. No discrimination in housing, in access to life insurance, in medical treatment, in access to work or to services.

546546. ↳ For the right of gay couples to rear children. For state support for collective childrearing and co-parenting.

547547. ↳ No bans on educating people in their sexual choices, no bans on the public expression of homosexual affection and love. For the expansion of community controlled clinics, bathhouses, cinemas, clubs, bars, and bookstores.

548548. ↳ Full provision of healthcare for trans people, paid by the state. For community control over gender clinics, easy provision of hormones and access to medical support and advice. Expansion of youth gender clinics.

549549. ↳ For state protection of intersex individuals, and a prohibition on unnecessary "corrective" surgeries on intersex children.

550550. ↳ State funding for fertility treatment. Full rights to adoption for queer families.

551551. ↳ Against any attempt to criminalise sex workers. For the self-organisation of sex workers to improve their conditions. Sex workers should have access to specialised healthcare and other services to reduce the hazards of their work.

552552. ↳ Abolition of legal recognition of gender with regard to government documentation. The right to change name or identity to be made simple.

#4. Socialist Revolution

553553. Capitalism can only be defeated by the unity of the international working class and the oppressed. Without workers' power (and thus the workers' republic) there can be no communism, no universal human freedom, no production according to need, no end to exploitation.

554554. Communism can only be established through a revolution supported by the majority of the working-class. Communists seek to constantly agitate for and win a majority for a new republic and socialist economy. While communists seek to undertake revolutionary struggle through open and legal means, we are under no illusions: the ruling order will not surrender its power voluntarily.

555555. There are no shortcuts to establishing workers' power and, ultimately, communism. We are fully opposed to opportunism, be it of an adventurist, putschist character, or of a reformist, electoral character. Revolution in full is the only path forward. All political activity must be subordinated to the mass movements of the working class.

#4.1. The Revolutionary Situation

556556. It is unthinkable that a majority of people in any society, even the majority of workers, will be won to revolutionary action before the development of a revolutionary situation.

557557. Such a situation is characterised by the following broad conditions:

558558. ↳ A broad crisis in the development of capitalist society,

559559. ↳ A distinctive proletarian party has emerged,

560560. ↳ This party has won a popular base amongst the proletariat and labouring masses,

561561. ↳ The organs of working class power have been won over to a communist program,

562562. ↳ The advanced sectors of the working class hold the confidence of the masses,

563563. ↳ Reformist strategies have been refuted in practice,

564564. ↳ The middling classes have lost their faith in the ruling class,

565565. ↳ Revolutionary slogans have been popularised

566566. ↳ The inability of the ruling class to restore order and metabolise social contradictions, leading to open conflict amongst the ruling class,

567567. ↳ A split has emerged in the armed forces,

568568. ↳ Spontaneous uprisings are increasingly common,

569569. ↳ The fragmentation of political order and ideological power of the ruling class.

570570. In the most general sense, the communists organise for the continuation and culmination of all existing democratic, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-feudal, anti-capitalist, and anti-systemic struggles to the very end. These struggles, in addition to the crises inherent to capitalist society, open the possibility of a revolutionary situation: a general collapse in the authority of the state, a general, rapid politicisation of the masses, and a broad revolt. In such conditions of revolutionary rupture, communists raise vital slogans:

571571. ↳ The working-class organisations must appeal for the formation of an revolutionary, democratic united front of all proletarian and semi-proletarian layers while maintaining their own independence. The Communists must fight for leadership of the revolutionary movement and win a majority of workers to a revolutionary program.

572572. ↳ Down with the capitalist governments, down with the capitalist ministers! No participation of the workers' organisations in any bourgeois regime. No to coalitions with bourgeois or petit-bourgeois liberal or democratic parties who are sure to betray the revolution.

573573. ↳ For councils of workers' and youth delegates, and the organisation of a revolutionary national assembly.

574574. It is not possible for a workers' republic to be established without revolutionary action.

575575. The ruling class will not willingly surrender its power, nor will it capitulate to electoral majorities. The power of the capitalist class, and in particular the bourgeois constitutional regime, must be overthrown. As such, we raise the following slogans:

576576. ↳ Form the Red Guards! For the arming of workers, students, and youth into militias and defence groups, and the training of workers in military science.

577577. ↳ For a revolutionary popular assembly and a provisional government of workers organisations and parties, elected by the revolutionary masses through their organs of class power, on the basis of a program of maximal democracy.

578578. ↳ For a workers' and youth government to proceed from the democratic to the social revolution, socialising ownership and control of industry and agriculture, renouncing imperialist debts and spreading revolution to other countries, promoting regional federations of working class states and socialist development. For the establishment of a democratic dictatorship of the working class, a proletarian republic on the world scale.

579579. ↳ The organisation of revolutionary tribunals for the organisation of a revolutionary justice system.

#4.2. The Workers Republic

580580. The modern state, regardless of its particular constitutional form, is nothing more than a committee that manages the common affairs of the bourgeoisie – the dictatorship of capital. All states within the capitalist world system must effectively mediate the accumulation of capital – if they did not, they would face capital flight, economic recession, and a revolt of the bourgeoisie. The state is wholly organised to maintain the dominance of capital over social life. This organisation is characterised by several state apparatuses, oriented towards repressive activity (Repressive State Apparatus), ideological reproduction (Ideological State Apparatus), social reproduction (Reproductive State Apparatus), and the management of capital accumulation (Managerial State Apparatus).

581581. The rule of capital does not simply rest in the powers of the capitalist state. It rests in the economic power of the bourgeois class – in the thousands upon thousands of firms they own, in the press they control, in the social power their collective wealth commands. It also rests in a myriad of institutions, from churches to schools, that maintain the ideological state apparatus of capitalist society.

582582. In order to break the power of the bourgeoisie, break the power of capital itself, and forever crush their class-dictatorship, it is necessary for the proletariat to create a class-dictatorship of its own. By this it is meant that the proletariat as a whole must assume absolute political power, and rule directly against the exploiter class. Just as the dictatorship of capital reflects the nature of capitalist society and the bourgeois class: a minoritarian state with a strict division between economic and political life; the dictatorship of the proletariat will reflect the class nature of the proletariat: a democratic majority class in every advanced capitalist country, whose power is premised on the unity of economic and political power and the solidarity between members of the class.

583583. And while the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie seeks to preserve class relations on behalf of an exploiter class, the dictatorship of the proletariat seeks to emancipate humanity from exploitation itself – to abolish class society.

584584. The proletarian dictatorship is at once wholly dictatorial and wholly democratic.

585585. Dictatorial, for it carries out its task of the suppression of capitalist social relations with revolutionary ardour and determination, without limit. Democratic, for it is based on the broad participation and organisation of the vast masses of the working class, and allows full freedom of debate and organisation within its ranks.

586586. In its political form, the dictatorship of the proletariat is embodied in the workers republic, a republican state premised on the democratic form of the commune, or workers assembly. These assemblies organised on the local, regional, and general level, will be made up of delegates elected by workers and the oppressed, with the right to recall their delegates at any time. These representatives will be paid no more than a median worker's wage. These bodies will have legislative, executive, and judicial powers: they will make and implement decisions, as well as act as the final body for mediating disputes. They will be the total embodiment of the democratic power of the working class at all levels of social life. They will be working bodies, in that they will carry out a wide variety of executive tasks and sit in session regularly.

587587. This republic, far from being a national state in the modern sense, will be an internationalist republic of the working class and the oppressed. We seek a democratic socialist workers' republic in Oceania, South-East Asia, and Asia more broadly. Such a unity will be achieved through the most thorough fraternity and equality between peoples of different cultures and geographies.

588588. As such, we argue for the following characteristics of the workers republic:

589589. ↳ The aim of this republic is to establish a global dictatorship of the proletariat led by the world party of the international working class. We are for a joint dictatorship of the communist masses over the whole world to overcome imperialism and exploitation, and the merging of sister republics into unified communist blocs.

590590. ↳ Supreme political power in the republic shall rest in a single legislative-executive congress of workers delegates, elected directly and recallable through a public petition process. Elected bodies will sit regularly so as to ensure democratic accountability.

591591. ↳ The basis of the workers' republic is the universal militia and the worker-soldier-intellectuals that make up its ranks. This body is directly accountable to the working class, drawn through universal service, with elected officers, and wide training in strategy and military science. All workers and revolutionary youth, of all sexes and ages, are to be trained in military arts.

592592. There will be the organisation of a revolutionary army to defend the revolution, and the organisation of international brigades to support revolutionary forces abroad.

593593. ↳ Elections will be overseen and organised by local councils. Delegates are to be paid the salary of an average worker. There are no financial barriers that impede political participation. All counts are public.

594594. ↳ In place of the existing police and internal security apparatus, a workers militia will guard against armed counter-revolution. Existing police and security responsibilities will be broken up and demilitarised. All local security and peacekeeping groups will be placed under social control and popular oversight. Social workers, teachers, political organisers, and other front line workers will deal directly with social crises, rather than suppressing them through the lens of "crime".

595595. ↳ All bodies will be working bodies, with delegates expected to work as decision-makers, representatives, and organisers of daily political life. They will be held accountable by regular mass assemblies and meetings of workers that they represent.

596596. ↳ All bureaucratic, judicial, and administrative functions are to be subordinated to the commune. The bureaucracy will be re-organised to consolidate the revolutionary character of the state. The subordination of all legal processes to revolutionary tribunals.

597597. ↳ The workers' republic will constitute a republic of the proletariat and its class allies, and in particular of the vanguard of the proletariat. While political factions will be free to operate, all revolutionary bodies must stand united against counter-revolution and the restoration of the old ruling classes and their allies.

598598. For the exclusion of all counter-revolutionary parties and organisations.

599599. ↳ All parties and groupings that receive above the threshold of votes needed to assume seats in the republican government will receive state funds to publish their own press.

600600. ↳ All organisations that accept the legitimacy of the new revolutionary order and accept the socialist character of the republic are free to participate in political life. Political minorities have the right and must have the opportunity to convince a majority. Such revolutionary democracy is guaranteed by the disenfranchisement of the former ruling classes and their agents, and the suppression of reactionary and fascist organisations.

601601. ↳ Local councils will have a high degree of autonomy and are to be governed democratically through mass assemblies and elected city councils. These local bodies will oversee local civic administration and services and serve as the most elementary form of political participation.

602602. ↳ The abolition of the special category of citizenship, and the extension of full democratic and social rights to all permanent residents.

603603. ↳ The principle of an open and transparent government is guaranteed through mass participation in political life at all levels and the freedom to publish state documents.

604604. ↳ The republic will be secular and atheistic in its character. Religion will be rendered a private matter.

605605. ↳ All international treaties that are against the interests of the working class will be repealed. All imperialist debts will be repudiated.

606606. ↳ The capitalist press and cultural apparatus will be expropriated, and placed into the hands of the proletarian republic, workers mass organisations, and local councils. The freedom of all workers and socialist press and publication will not be abridged. Artistic and cultural censorship will be abolished.

607607. ↳ The republic will seek the progressive closure of the prison system with the aim of eliminating the carceral state. The elimination of carceral punishment with the exception of conditions of revolutionary struggle under democratic mandate.

#4.3. Socialist Reconstruction

608608. The workers' republic inherits not only sectors of the economy that capitalism has socialised in its own way, but those sectors owned by small and medium capital and the petty bourgeoisie as well as middling classes which possess various skills monopolies.

609609. The economy under working-class rule will therefore be contradictory: there is a socialised part and a part which consists of surviving capitalist elements. Given the global organisation of contemporary capitalism, a crash program of simple nationalisation is not a viable path to socialism.

610610. Planning and state control of the financial sector and the monopolies is posed by capitalist development itself. The expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy lays the foundation of generalised socialisation. But the full socialisation of production is dependent on and can only proceed in line with the withering away of the skills monopolies of the middle classes and hence the division of labour.

611611. In order to facilitate this, we envisage the following measures:

612612. ↳ There will be a radical extension of democratic decision-making in the socialised sector of the economy. All important decisions relating to production, hiring and firing, etc, will be ratified by workers' committees. The republic will create a general plan for the entire economy. Technical and administrative workers will be subordinated to democratic decision-making.

613613. ↳ There will be general social ownership of all land and natural resources. Empty houses and offices will be transferred to social control, with large offices and mansions being handed over to the workers' organisations for their own use.

614614. ↳ The socially unnecessary Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sectors (FIRE) will be liquidated. Socially unnecessary labour will be eliminated and work will be shared up evenly. For the establishment of worker-consumer collectives in every locality, for the collective organisation of consumption and distribution of basic necessities.

615615. ↳ Regular censuses will be conducted to measure the level and development of the productive forces and to organise the informational basis for economic planning. A communist internet will be created for the general administration and democratic planning of society, formed on the basis of expropriated corporate IT infrastructure.

616616. ↳ As social planning matures, all large firms will be socialised. Workers will be organised to directly carry out socialisation drives. Democratic labour armies will be formed to carry out agricultural, industrial, social, and ecological work.

617617. ↳ The republic will organise shorter working hours and a major expansion of adult education and training to facilitate individuals changing jobs and taking on management and coordination roles.

618618. ↳ In the remaining capitalist sector workers will be guaranteed full rights, and workers organisations will carry out the democratisation of workplaces.

619619. ↳ Unemployment will be abolished. There will be a rational sharing of labour amongst all able-bodied members of society, with the equal right to leisure for all.

620620. ↳ Planning will be based on the widest participation, discussion and decision-making processes, with all plans to be organised by planning commissions and workers' mass organisations.

621621. ↳ Production will be redirected towards socially useful ends and will be reorganised so as to radically reduce the major social and international economic inequalities through technological and skill transfers. Automation will be utilised in order to enhance the quality of life and the collective free time of humanity.

622622. ↳ Measures will be taken to encourage the formation of workers' cooperatives and communal programs, which can then be socialised into a common plan. Small producers will be encouraged to participate in producers cooperatives so as to socialise their labour.

623623. ↳ There will be a progressive decommodification of social life through the direct provision of food, housing, clothing, and other necessities in accordance with a common plan. There will be the implementation of a labour-time planning system, as the basis for the abolition of money. As social planning matures, there will be a general transition towards a communist mode of production, where the governing principle is "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

#4.4. Social and Cultural Measures

624624. In addition to the generalised domination of the law of value over human activity, the political (through the state dictatorship) and economic
(through the dictatorship over the workplace and over economic decision-making) domination of the bourgeois class over the proletariat, there exists the general morass of social oppression and chauvinism that characterises class society as a whole. A social republic will inherit all manner of racial, geographic, sexual, linguistic, and cultural divides. It will inherit a world where the patriarchal family persists as a primary unit of social reproduction, and where religion, reactionary mysticism, national chauvinism, and other phantasms maintain their grip on some sectors of the general populace.

625625. The socialist republic is not a politically or culturally neutral institution. It is a revolutionary force in the overthrow of social oppression. It is generally communist and revolutionary, openly political and emancipatory.

626626. As such, it will advance the following measures:

627627. ↳ There will be a general expansion of existing socialised laundromats, kitchens, dining halls, and other institutions of social reproduction. These institutions will be integrated into expanded domestic units and worker-consumer collectives for the sharing up of domestic work.

628628. ↳ There will be general social responsibility for the raising of children and establishment of communist creches, and the integration of these creches with the education system. Campus living and youth housing will be expanded. A revolutionary education system will allow the promotion of a genuinely critical, revolutionary, communist childhood. Specialised education and childcare cadres will be trained to fill these roles.

629629. ↳ There will be generalised democratisation of healthcare, education, and other social services, under the general management of workers and members of the community. Health will be understood as a social problem and a collective responsibility, rather than being an individual virtue or failing. Universal, high-quality health and services will be guaranteed.

630630. ↳ There will be a general integration of education with production, research, physical health, mental and social healthcare. The new education system will be unabashedly revolutionary, democratic, and communist. Education and social life will be fused by turning the school-creche institution into a headquarters for communist political activity. Youth and students will be mobilised for revolutionary activity, and be integrated into labour and militia training, through mass youth and children's organisations.

631631. ↳ There will be generalised planning of living spaces and workplaces for social needs. With the ecological planning of human living space, the basis will be laid for the dissolution of the difference between town and country.

632632. ↳ Artistic and cultural workers will be mobilised for revolutionary ends. The republic will organise a cultural struggle against chauvinism, bourgeois individualism, and consumerism.

#5. The Transition to Communism

The entire movement of history, as simply communism's actual act of genesis – the birth act of its empirical existence – is, therefore, for its thinking consciousness the comprehended and known process of its becoming. - Karl Marx

633633. The immediate measures of the workers' republic constitute a profound assault on the capitalist mode of production, breaking the most pervasive forms of bourgeois rule and crushing wholly the resistance of the capitalist class. However, it is not in itself the total task of the communist revolution. The new society remains stamped with the marks of the old. In its immature form, communism has only formally dominated and subsumed bourgeois society, it has not yet done so in reality. This unevenness cannot be done away with by simple fiat - a period of transition is necessary through which the self-organised proletariat abolishes itself as a class, and constitutes a new, universal community. During this period of transition, the initial measures taken in the early days of the revolution will be taken to their conclusion - the full elimination of private property, the total planning and socialisation of production, the full elimination of money and other forms of economic regulation, and the dissolution of the contradiction between intellectual and manual labour, between town and country, between man and woman, between work and leisure.

634634. The initial, immature form of communist society will necessarily be marked by the combined and uneven processes of social transformation, including the persistence of bourgeois right and law. However, through the maturation of the communist mode of production, this limited form will give way to a fully developed socialised economy, based on the principles of communist production and distribution.

635635. The end of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production is necessarily limited when it has occurred in only part of the world. The achievement of communism in a single country is impossible, though major developments in social forms are possible prior to the victory of the world revolution, especially on the continental scale. While the immediate extension of proletarian power will have laid immediately the material basis for communism, it may take some time for the new form of social life to come fully to fruition. However, with the victory of the proletariat on the world scale, and with the sweeping of class society fully into the dustbin of history, the preconditions have been established for the emergence of a wholly new society.

636636. With the abolition of class society, the need for the repressive state disappears, and the socialist republic forged in the flames of revolution gives way to a universal republic. This universal republic reflects the common management of all of humanity in their common affairs, without the need of a privileged caste or class. As such, the state withers away, a relic of the division of humanity into classes.

637637. It is the tendency of communism to extend the socialised part of the economy so as to finally replace the market and the law of value with conscious planning and production for human need. With the maturation of social planning and the direct socialisation of labour, a free association of producers will emerge, a cooperative commonwealth, the entire human community working according to a common plan.

638638. Through the ardent political struggle of the communists and the maturation of the communist mode of production, the chauvinisms, superstitions and pretensions of the capitalist epoch will give way to a common, scientific, universal humanity. The socialisation of reproductive labour, the industrialisation of domestic work, the common raising of children, all will lay the material foundation for the abolition of the family. With the establishment of a universal republic, the nation-state system will disappear, and the narrow nationalisms of the past will give way to fraternity.

639639. The historical task of the proletarian movement is the abolition of class society and the achievement of a communist mode of production. For us then, communism is not an object placed high upon the shelf to which we can only aspire. Nor is it a preference, one of many "possible" ways of organising a society through some voluntary process. It is the real movement to abolish the present state of things. It is the resolution of the historical dialectic between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between capital and labour, between use value and exchange value. The proletarian program is that which is thrown up as necessary in this colossal struggle for emancipation.

640640. The development of a mature communism, emerging from the real movement to suppress capitalist society, brings forth the following transformations:

641641. ↳ In place of private ownership and consumption of social production, communism abolishes private property, and fully socialises production and consumption under common management.

642642. ↳ In place of exchange, money and the wage system, communism does away with the market system, and the commodification and exploitation of labour, under the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

643643. ↳ In place of the anarchy and universal competition of market society, and capitalist monopoly, and the dominance of profit over society, communism brings all of production and consumption under the management of a common plan, where the free development of each part of society is the precondition for the free development of all.

644644. ↳ In place of the modern state, and the apparatus of social repression, communism organises the entire human community in the position of managing their social life, where the governance of people gives way to the management of things, where the rule of classes gives way to the universal republic.

645645. ↳ In place of the privations and degradation of household toil, in place of the family unit, of religious and national chauvinism, in place of the bourgeois regulation of sexuality, there will be a universal republic and a universal human community, where domination gives way to freedom, based on the solidarity of an emancipated humanity and the socialisation of reproductive labour.

646646. These transformations demonstrate the character of communist society. It is this character that serves as a compass-point - a new world to which we set our course. It is the real, concrete unfolding of the struggles of the proletariat today, and as such, constitutes the real movement to resolve the riddle of history.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workers of the World, Unite.

#Appendix One: Points of Unity

647647. These points lay out the principles of our organisation, and provide a clear basis for political unity -

648648. common fidelity to the task of building a revolutionary party and overthrowing capitalist society.

#1. On Communism.

649649. Communism is the movement to emancipate humanity from class society and the rule of the capitalist mode of production. This movement is led by the international proletariat, the vast class of wage labourers, and brings in its wake all oppressed classes in a vast struggle for liberation. Only the communist movement - the concrete struggle to overturn capitalist social relations and secure a society without the state, markets, classes or money - can save humanity from the tyranny, hunger, poverty, despair, alienation and anxiety of capitalist existence.

#2. On Scientific Socialism.

650650. Scientific Socialism is the living, open doctrine of the emancipation of the proletariat. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement, and as such the foremost task of all communists is to promote the ideas of the scientific socialist program and world-outlook amongst the working class. Absent scientific socialism, the movement of the proletariat will be seized upon by romantic, reactionary, chauvinistic, or opportunistic illusions fostered by the reactionary, bourgeois, and petit bourgeois socialists.

#3. Working Class Unity and Internationalism.

651651. The working class requires unity, and the international character of that class requires international unity. Communists uphold the maximal international unity of the proletariat in its struggle for emancipation. As such, we are opposed to all sectoral, nationalist, or otherwise opportunist trends in the workers movement. Splits amongst the working class, amongst socialists, can only be justified to the degree they uphold the international unity of the working class, and the freedom of criticism and tendency of the internationalists.

#4. For a Workers Commonwealth.

652652. In order for the working class to begin the transition to a socialist society and do away with capitalist production, it must first bring itself to political power - it must win the battle of democracy. In winning this battle, the working class cannot simply seize the old state apparatus of the constitutional, liberal state - it must instead create a new republic, based on the organised power of the working class, with maximal democratic freedoms.

#5. We need a Mass Socialist Workers Party - a Communist Party.

653653. The emergence of a socialist workers party with a mass membership and base within the advanced sections of the proletariat is only by which the working class movement can reach its political maturity and begin the long march to political power. The centre of such a party is its program, which outlines the preconditions both for the working class to take power and the transition to socialism. Such a party must be based on the broadest possible freedom of criticism and the strictest unity in action, with full freedom of tendency and representation of political minorities on committees. In its wake, it will create a vast party-movement of workers organisations, militias, educational and cultural groups, publications and literary circles, and organisations of national minorities, women, and youth.

#6. Strategy of Patience.

654654. There are no shortcuts to bringing the working class to power. With the formation of its party, the working class will be furnished with its political program. However, it will take a period of patient work to win popular support for such a program amongst the working class. It is only when popular support has been won that the working class can take up the tasks of taking political power, and implement its minimum program by any means necessary.

#7. Programmatic Unity.

655655. Unity of Action requires a common political outlook. Freedom of Criticism requires freedom of thought and debate. The consequence of these facts requires political unity around a concrete program of political tasks be made the core of communist organising. The proliferation of doctrinaire sects which profess a specific factional outlook is a consequence of the immaturity of the socialist movement, and it is a hindrance that must be overcome through unity around a common program. This program must include two parts - the immediate tasks of the communist, which would outline the preconditions under which the working can take power, and the tasks for its new revolutionary government, and the maximal program of the communists - the transition from capitalism to communism, the withering away of the state, the abolition of the family, religion, and nation.

#8. Unity of Communists.

656656. The first task in forging a mass socialist workers party is to forge the unity of all communists, revolutionary socialists, internationalist workers, and all who share the common aims of the communist program. Such a unity must overcome sectoral and sectarian divisions, and can only be won through consistent debate, freedom of criticism, and systematic political education of the socialist movement of its outlook and its tasks.

#9. A Partyist Fighting Organisation.

657657. In the absence of a mass socialist workers party, unity of communists must be secured through the growth of a partyist (that is pro-communist party) faction within the socialist and workers movements and the systematic agitation for a partyist perspective in all corners of the movement. Our organisation has forged itself in order to carry out this task and prepare the ground for a coming communist party.

#Appendix Two: The Platform

658658. The emancipation of all of humanity can only be brought about by the revolutionary movement of the proletariat - the revolutionary class in capitalist society. The self-emancipation of this class sweeps away all the remnants of the old world - including the wage system, the family system that oppresses women and youth, the system of the national-state, and the mystifications of religion.

659659. In capitalist society, the working class exists first and foremost as an oppressed class. It is both the object and subject of capitalist production, born into a world of exploitation and immiseration. The process of capitalist production and reproduction continuously exploits and degrades the working class and depreciates labour power itself. Paid in meagre wages, the worker then finds themselves hounded by rents and debts, squeezed even of their share of productive output. This precarity and desperation is the face of capitalist domination.

660660. The domination of the working class is essentially threefold in its character. Firstly it is domination by the abstract laws of the accumulation of value (that much heralded "invisible hand"), which drives the worker to toil by the threat of starvation, that sends millions into unemployment, that drives inflation that starves and beggars the masses - it is mute compulsion, demanding servitude to the logic of accumulation. Secondly, the worker is dominated by the concrete form of this abstract law of value - the boss, the landlord, the rentier, the manager. All these figures are personifications of capital's exploitation, and all of them reign over the worker in the personal realm of domination. The workplace, the home, all of society becomes a dictatorship of this class. Thirdly, the working class is dominated by the political rule of capital as expressed in the modern state, by forms of social domination and unfreedom, the oppression of women and of national minorities - by the dictatorship of capital as a form of political rule. This dictatorship may mask itself as a democracy, but it is nothing more than a representative oligarchy, a democracy of the property owner, of the capitalist.

661661. To overcome this triple domination, the communists propose a tripartite response:

1. Social Planning against the Anarchy of the Market. Only the organisation of a universal social plan, the socialisation of industry, and the placing of social production under common ownership can emancipate human labour from the domination of the value form and the accumulation of capital.
2. Workers Control against the Dictatorship at Work. Communists stand for the abolition of managerial hierarchies, of the power of bureaucrats and technicians, and of one-man management. Instead, we support democratic organisation in all of society - on the factory floor, in the housing complexes, in the school.
3. A Workers' Republic against the Dictatorship of Capital. A democratic republic founded on the power of the organised working class, consisting of elected and recallable delegates with the power to control the bureaucracy is the only form of political organisation that can adequately suppress the dictatorship of the capitalists, of the propertied classes, of capital itself.

662662. These three slogans point in the direction of the realisation of the communist program as a whole: the abolition of money and markets, the overcoming of the national state as a form of political rule, the elimination of classes, and the realisation of a emancipated society of producers, where the free development of each is the precondition for the free development of all, and where the guiding principle is from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

663663. In order to achieve the above aims, the communists propose the following immediate demands as a revolutionary minimum for the establishment of a workers' republic:

#Political Demands

1. The abolition of the current parliamentary system; and the placing of all political power in the hands of a general assembly of workers' representatives. The abolition of the monarchy and the offices of the governors.
2. Subordination of all bureaucratic, judicial, and administrative authority to the general assembly.
3. The immediate abolition of all limitations on the right to strike, organise, or demonstrate.
4. Freedom for all revolutionary, progressive, and democratic political prisoners and prisoners of war. For the full freedom of the socialist and workers' press.
5. The disbanding of the military and the police, and the organisation of a worker militia. For the arming of workers' organisations and the training of workers and youth in military sciences.
6. For the withdrawal of Australia from all imperialist military pacts. For the expulsion of imperialist military installations and intelligence officers.

#Economic Demands

1. For the establishment of a universal minimum income pegged to the cost of living. For the sharing up of hours amongst workers so as to eliminate unemployment. Abolish arbitration and the Fair Work Commission. No limitations on the right to strike. For full rights for workers to organise economic organisations and enforce worker control in the workplace. For the establishment of a wage-earners fund to cover the payment of pensions. For unemployment and disability payments equal to a living wage.
2. For a jubilee on household debts, including mortgages and student debts.
3. For the progressive expropriation of rental properties and the massive expansion of public housing. For a plan to allocate housing according to need. The expropriation of all unused property.
4. For the expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy: finance, land and natural resources, grocery monopolies, logistics, energy, mining, transport, utilities, and foreign trade are all to be brought under social ownership. For the expropriation of any firm that seeks to evacuate capital.
5. For a steep income and wealth tax, in addition to a tax on improved land values. For the abolition of consumer and vice taxes.

#Social Demands

1. For a Treaty between indigenous nations and a new democratic republic, enshrining land, cultural, and linguistic rights, and meaningful self-government.
2. Full democratic and economic rights for migrants and the abolition of the special category of citizenship. For the immediate closure of all detention centres and refugee camps.
3. For the creation of a universal education service, funded by the state, through the nationalisation of all private and religious schools. For the application of a scientific, social, and polytechnic education from birth until the age of twenty. The abolition of university fees. Wages for schoolwork to be paid by the state. For the expansion of youth accommodations.
4. For the establishment of a universal health and social care service funded by the state and under the democratic management of society as a whole. Free, comprehensive, and readily accessible mental, disability, aged, gender affirmation, dental, and preventative care.
5. Turn formal equality into real freedom. Free abortion on demand. End state sponsored homophobia and transphobia. For the creation of collectivised laundromats and kitchens maintained by the state. For the provision of free childcare and the payment of wages for housework. The raising of children to be the burden of society as a whole.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workers of the World, Unite!

#Appendix Three: What We Fight For!

664664. The Revolutionary Communist Organisation is a partyist fighting organisation of workers and youth committed to the real movement to abolish the present state of things. This is a summary of our vision for the activities and aims of Communists in Australia as it exists right now. These are our principles – this is what we are fighting for!

1. Our central aim is the organisation of communists, revolutionary socialists, Marxists, worker-internationalists, and all politically advanced workers and youth into a Communist Party. Without organisation the working class is nothing; with the highest form of organisation it is everything.
2. Our aim is the formation of a mass communist party, but there exists no real Communist Party today. There are many so-called 'parties' on the left, but in reality none have the character of a mass socialist workers party. The sect form is a sign of the immaturity of the workers movement, and must be overcome if a Communist Party is to be built.
3. Communists operate according to the principles of democratic centralism. Through ongoing debate we seek to achieve unity in action and a common world outlook. As long as they support agreed actions and abide by programmatic unity, members have the right to debate their views in the internal party press, to express their positions publicly in a principled manner, and to form temporary or permanent factions.
4. Communists oppose all imperialist wars and occupations but constantly strive to bring to the fore the fundamental question – ending war is bound up with ending capitalism.
5. Communists are internationalists. Everywhere we strive for the closest unity and agreement of proletarian and progressive parties of all countries. We oppose every manifestation of national sectionalism.
6. The working class must be organised globally. Without a global Communist Party, a Communist International, the World Party, the struggle against capital is weakened and lacks coordination.
7. Communists have no interest apart from the working class as a whole. They differ only in recognising the importance of scientific socialism as a guide to practice, and they recognise the world-historical task of the proletariat. That theory is no dogma, but must be constantly added to and enriched.
8. Capitalism in its ceaseless search for profit puts the future of humanity at risk. Capitalism is synonymous with war, pollution, exploitation and crisis. As a global system capitalism can only be superseded globally. All forms of nationalist socialism are reactionary and anti-working class.
9. The capitalist class will never willingly allow their wealth and power to be taken away by a parliamentary vote. They will resist using every means at their disposal. Communists are not opposed to using parliament and winning the biggest possible working class representation. But workers must be readied to make revolution – by any means necessary.
10. Communists fight for revolutionary democracy in all spheres of society. Democracy must be given a reality by social revolution.
11. We will use the most militant methods objective circumstances allow to achieve a socialist republic in Oceania, the self-determination of Indigenous Australians, and a socialist federation in Asia.
12. Communists favour industrial unions. Bureaucracy and class compromise must be fought and the trade unions transformed into schools for communism.
13. Communists are champions of the oppressed. The struggle against women's and gay oppression, combatting racism and chauvinism, and the struggle for peace and ecological sustainability are just as much working class questions as pay, conditions, trade union rights and demands for high-quality health, housing and education.
14. The workers' republic is the first stage of the worldwide transition to communism – a system which knows neither wars, exploitation, money, classes, states nor nations. Communism is genuine freedom and the real beginning of human history.

665665. All who accept these principles are urged to join the Revolutionary Communist Organisation and fight to build a Communist Party!

#Appendix Four: Organisational Rules

666666. The following document constitutes the organisational rules of the RCO, and are the basis for its political structures and discipline.

#Name

667667. 1. The name of the organisation is the "Revolutionary Communist Organisation".

#Aim and Character

668668. 2. The aim of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) is the formation of a mass communist party for the purposes of proletarian revolution, the establishment of a workers republic, and the triumph of communism.

669669. 3. The character of the RCO is that of a revolutionary, multi-tendency, pre-party, partyist fighting formation, based on the Leninist principles of democratic centralism and principled, programmatic unity. Our program is a scientific socialist program for the construction of a communist society.

#Membership

670670. 4. A member of the RCO is any individual who accepts the program of the RCO, regularly participates in organisational activities and attends meetings, engages in the consistent study of revolutionary theory, and regularly pays dues.

671671. 5. All members are required to fulfil all tasks assigned to them by the organisation, to uphold programmatic unity, to undertake their political work under the discipline of the organisation, to fight for the organisation's unity in action, and use the organisation's material resources in a responsible manner. RCO members also have a right and a duty to study scientific socialism and develop the organisation's political positions, as well as participating in its democratic life. RCO members are protected and bound by all disciplinary measures and Codes of Conduct established by the organisation.

672672. 6. A cadre member is a member of the RCO who has undertaken a period of applicant membership and has been accepted as a full member of the RCO by a relevant party body. A cadre member has full rights and responsibilities.

673673. 7. Applicants for membership must first go through a period of applicant membership and political education in a cell before being accepted as a cadre member. The process for being accepted as a cadre member is as follows:

674674. 7.1. The applicant is interviewed by a relevant cadre and a member of a higher committee to assess their political and personal suitability for revolutionary work.

675675. 7.2. The applicant is then assigned to a relevant cell, and is to perform political tasks as well as complete political and organisational training, as well as being familiarised with the RCO program and structure. In addition, they will be assigned to at least one comrade who will act as a mentor for them for the duration of their applicant membership.

676676. 7.3. At the end of a period of no less than three months and no greater than six months, the applicant member will be interviewed again by at least two members of a higher committee, and be assessed on their political understanding and organisational work.

677677. They will then pass on a recommendation to the relevant cell.

678678. 7.4. An applicant member can then be granted the status of cadre member with full rights and responsibilities by a simple majority vote in their cell.

679679. 8. Applicant members of the RCO have the right to attend and speak at meetings, though their votes are not counted, and they do not have the right to be elected or participate in clandestine activities. Applicant members can be denied full membership by a simple vote in their cell, but the Central Committee must be notified of such a rejection.

680680. 9. Special dispensation and leaves of absence for members of any type can be granted for party activities by the Secretary of a relevant organisational body. If a member takes a leave of absence longer than two months, they must resign all elected positions within the organisation and be replaced.

#Organisation of Political Life

681681. 10. The internal organisation of the RCO is based on the principle of Democratic Centralism: the part is subordinate to the whole, lower committees to higher, all committees to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee to the General Conference. All decision making processes must be consultative and democratic in nature, while activity should be taken collectively. Democratic Centralism also seeks to eradicate the privileges of leadership, political bureaucracies, and allows tendencies to openly publish their views. This means allowing for the possibility that minorities in the organisation may become majorities.

682682. 11. The RCO is premised upon Programmatic Unity. Unity within the RCO is based upon the concrete acceptance of the RCO Program as a means of struggling against the capitalist system and replacing it with communism. All organisation members and organs must accept the program as the basis for our politics, and represent the politics of the program as the politics of the organisation as a whole.

683683. 12. Except where the rules state otherwise, in all organisation bodies decisions are taken by the majority of members participating in the meeting through a simple vote. A meeting is quorate if half the cadre members of that body are present. It is the right and the duty of RCO members to participate in the meetings of the bodies of which they are a member and to openly state their views on all matters concerning the organisation. In between meetings the tasks assigned by the relevant leadership committee or elected chair must be fulfilled.

684684. 13. Members have the right to submit their views to higher committees up to the Central Committee for discussion and to the central publication for publication. While acting fully in accordance with the principle of unity in action, members can oppose decisions taken by higher committees.

685685. 14. The RCO is a multi-tendency organisation. Members have the right to form tendencies on the basis of common political, philosophical, strategic, or tactical perspectives in order to influence the organisation, structure, direction, strategy, and leadership of the RCO. Tendencies, once formed, must be formally announced to the entire organisation. Tendencies have the right to publish their perspectives in the party press and in their own publications. While tendencies have the right to campaign for changes to the party program, a tendency's platform must reflect the spirit of the RCO's programmatic unity. Tendencies must defend the RCO's unity in action, uphold the principled unity of the organisation, and must subordinate their political work to the RCO.

686686. 15. The RCO as a whole, as well as local cells; area, city, industrial, or regional sections; caucuses; and tendencies have the right to publish their views in publications of their own creation, with editors to be subject to democratic accountability.

#Structure of the Organisation

687687. 16. Organisational bodies are established on the basis of task, locality or workplace. Within their sphere of responsibility they are autonomous.

#Cells

688688. 17. The basic organisational unit of the RCO is the cell. Cells may be formed on the basis of locality (such as a suburb or town), workplace or industry, a specific political task, or an institution such as a school or university. The minimum number of members required for a cell to form is 3.

689689. Cells should meet at least fortnightly and conduct regular agitational and theoretical work.

690690. 18. Cells have the right to elect a Steering Committee in order to coordinate political work between meetings. A cell with at least 7 members must elect a steering committee.

691691. 19. Cells may be seeded by other cells, or seek to join collectively in areas where the RCO currently has no structures. In the case of a group seeking to form themselves into a cell, normal membership processes can be temporarily suspended by the Central Committee to allow their cadre membership, after a period of political assessment. Political education must then be delivered as quickly as possible to the new cell's members.

#All-City, All-Region, and All-Industry Sections

692692. 20. All-city, all-region, and all-industry sections are made up of all RCO members in a given city, region, or industry. Sections are divided into cells, and all members of a section are members of a cell. Sections should meet regularly, and elect a steering committee to oversee the implementation of their decisions. Sections can organise working bodies, establish publications, and organise activity like any other organisational body.

#Working Bodies

693693. 21. Organisational bodies (such as cells, all-city sections, Conference, or the Central Committee) may choose to establish special Working Bodies, deciding upon their nature, composition, and purpose. These bodies are assigned specific tasks or areas of work, and are accountable to the organisational body that created them. There are two kinds of Working Bodies: Committees and Working Groups.

694694. 22. A Committee is an elected or appointed body, with its membership chosen by the body that creates it.

695695. 23. A Working Group is a volunteer body, open to all members of a relevant organisation body. Often, a working group is chaired by a committee.

#General Conference

696696. 24. The General Conference is the highest decision-making body of the organisation. The General Conference should normally be held every year. The congress should be announced by the Central Committee at least three months in advance. The conference can be delayed by decision of the Central Committee, but the period between congresses should not exceed two years.

697697. Preparation and representation is decided by the committee convening the Conference, though the delegate system in place should seek to represent the membership as broadly as possible.

698698. 25. Extraordinary congresses can be called by a majority decision of the Central Committee. If more than a third of the membership demand it via petition, the Central Committee is obliged to convene an extraordinary congress. It should be held within three months. Failing that, the next highest committees calling for a congress has the duty to set up an organising committee to convene one.

699699. 26. Any cadre member of the RCO has the right to attend and speak at the General Conference, but only delegates have the right to vote.

700700. 27. The General Conference hears, discusses and votes upon all reports, resolutions and matters it considers relevant. Through simple majorities it also decides upon the numbers and composition of the Central Committee, decides on organisation-wide strategy, changes in the rules and program, takes appeals on matters of discipline, etc.

701701. 28. At the start of Congress, a Nominations Committee is formed from delegates appointed by cell or section delegate contingents. The role of the Nominations Committee is to source nominations for elected positions, take nominations and recommendations for elected positions, and to nominate an elections officer.

#The Central Committee

702702. 29. The Central Committee is the highest decision-making body between congresses. It is tasked with maintaining the daily functioning of the organisation, overseeing its working groups and committees, issuing statements and communiques, and carrying out the general strategy and orientation endorsed by the General Conference. The Central Committee will report to the General Conference on all important matters at the end of its term.

703703. 30. If one third of its members demand it via petition, the chair of the Central Committee must convene an extraordinary meeting of the Central Committee. An extraordinary meeting of the Central Committee can address any matter that is within its purview.

704704. 31. Decisions of the Central Committee are taken by a simple majority of those members participating. The Central Committee has the power to dissolve and re-establish any organisational body or publication. The Central Committee may co-opt new members who will not have voting rights.

705705. 32. Between congresses or at particularly important junctures, an Organisational Assembly may be convened by the Central Committee or a majority of district committees or cells. Assemblies cannot take the place of the Conference. It cannot elect the Central Committee nor change the rules and programmatic documents. It can make decisions concerning strategy, the functioning of various bodies, and non-programmatic political documents and positions.

#Caucuses

706706. 33. Caucuses are organisation-wide groupings that organise members of specifically oppressed groups within the organisation. Caucus status can only be granted by the General Conference, and have the right to issue publications, conduct public facing organisational activities, and elect their own steering committees. Caucuses are also tasked with conducting political work amongst the specific oppressed layer of the working class that they represent.

707707. 34. Caucuses must produce a Charter of their Organisational Rules, political principles, and general orientation, which can be approved by the General Conference or by the Central Committee of the RCO.

708708. 35. All Caucus activities must be within the bounds of programmatic unity.

709709. 36. Caucuses maintain their own membership roles in accordance with their charter. All members of a caucus must be members of the RCO.

710710. 37. Caucuses have the right to elect one delegate to the Central Committee, who sits on the Political Committee.

#Affiliate Organisations

711711. 38. An organisation may choose to affiliate with the RCO. This grants that organisation the status of "affiliate organisation". Affiliation must be approved by a Plenum Session of the Central Committee of the RCO. The Central Committee of the RCO may choose to set the terms under which an organisation may affiliate, up to and including sending representatives to the RCO General Conference (though such delegations must be approved by the Congress when it is in session).

712712. 39. An affiliate organisation must broadly accept the RCO's program as well as its strategic organisation towards the construction of a mass socialist workers' party.

#Elections

713713. 40. Steering Committees, be they on the cell, city, regional, industrial, or central level, are elected by the bodies that create them. The size and responsibilities of these bodies are determined by the electing body. All steering committees must choose a Chairperson and Secretary from within their membership. In addition, both the steering committee itself and the electing body have the right to create offices within that body, which can then be filled by one or more members of the steering committee. Steering committees may choose to co-opt on additional members by a simple vote, but these members do not have voting rights.

714714. 40.1. The role of the Chairperson is to convene meetings of a given committee, and to chair and organise those meetings, as well as to oversee the execution of decisions made in meetings.

715715. 40.2. The role of the Secretary is to take minutes of the meetings of a given committee, and to oversee the membership rolls of that committee/body
(unless this task is delegated to a Membership organiser). They have the power to grant terms of leave to cadres in the relevant committees.

716716. 41. Elected officers and elected committees of the RCO are recallable by a simple majority vote by the electing body.

717717. 42. All elected positions within the RCO have a term limit of 2 years before they must be replaced with another member.

#Discipline

718718. 43. The following are violations of organisational discipline: failure to adhere to organisational rules; violating organisational security;
refusal to support an agreed action; concealing by words, or silence one's political or factional relations and activities; behaving in a way that brings discredit to the organisation; behaving in a way that undermines the solidarity of the organisation and endangers its members.

719719. 44. A member who has not performed political duties in at least a month and who has not made contact with the organisation, but has otherwise not violated party discipline, may be considered by their cell or other party bodies to have their membership suspended until they return to political activity.

720720. 45. Any committee or body of the organisation can vote on a motion of censure against one of its members. The relevant higher committee must be notified. Votes by a committee to suspend or expel a member must be ratified by the Central Committee. A member who is censured has no membership rights, only duties. The comrade's level of consciousness and experience should always be taken into account.

721721. 46. Every member of the organisation who is subject to disciplinary procedures has the right to appeal to higher bodies of the organisation, up to and including the Conference.

722722. 47. The expulsion of a member of the Central Committee must be agreed by a two-thirds majority of its full membership.

723723. 48. The Conference or the Central Committee has the right to adopt and enforce Codes of Conduct and other disciplinary documents and processes that are binding throughout the organisation, as long as they do not abridge the rules outlined in the Organisational Rules.

#Dues and Finances

724724. 49. The Central Committee determines the level of membership dues. Money from dues must be distributed between the Central Committee, organisation-wide, and local party bodies.

725725. Dispensation can be negotiated in particular cases by the basic committees, but have to be ratified by the Central Committee.

726726. 50. All paid positions within the organisation must be approved by the Central Committee or by Conference.