The World Historical Task of the Proletariat

1. The world-historical task of the proletariat (the labouring class in the capitalist

mode of production) is to emancipate itself through communist revolution, and

with it bring about the liberation of humanity. In doing so, it will establish for itself a

new social order: communism. The communist revolution, in doing away with

capitalist society, will do away with money, the anarchy of the market, and

commodity production, as it will do away with the modern repressive state, the

family form, and the nation. In its place, a new society shall emerge, a cooperative

commonwealth, a planned economy where each contributes according to their

ability, and benefits according to their needs.

2. The modern working class, the proletariat, is the only consistently revolutionary

class in capitalist society, and as such it is the only class that can overthrow the

capitalist world system. To undertake this task, the proletariat must win to its

program all revolutionary layers of peasants, the urban and rural poor, youth,

national minorities, women, intellectuals, and professionals. It wages a

revolutionary struggle, not just against the capitalist world system, but against the

entire edifice of class society.

3. The first step in the proletarian revolution is to bring the proletariat to political

power - that is, it must “win the battle of democracy”. Only on the basis of the

political rule of the proletariat can the key tasks in the transition to a socialist

society be undertaken: the expropriation of bourgeois property, the elimination of

the wage system, and the establishment of socialist planning.

4. In order to assume political power, the proletariat must first overthrow the

capitalist nation-state system that defends the old order, and then establish a

proletarian dictatorship - meaning the direct and uncompromising rule of the

proletariat and its allies. The political form of this class dictatorship is necessarily

that of a democratic republic - a workers commonwealth.

The Proletariat and its Relationship to Other Social Classes

5. The Proletariat is the labouring class of the capitalist mode of production. Unlike

previous labouring classes (such as the serf, the yeoman farmer, the artisan, or the

slave), the proletarian possesses no means of production of their own, and is forced

to sell their labour power in exchange for wages. In turn, the proletariat is free

labour - unbound from the bonds of slavery, indenture, or vassalage. The

proletarian is thus dependent on the wage, and represents an entire social class

who lives by that dependency - apprentices, those on wage substitutes, dependants

and children, pensioners, etc.

6. Possessing nothing, the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains, and a world to

gain. However, the struggle between capitalist and worker is only absolute in the

general sense. In any given firm, sector, or nation, it is at times possible for workers

and capitalists to form a common interest in order to advance profitability. This fact

gives rise to sectoral interests within the working class, and thus the development

of opportunistic tendencies.

7. The development of sectoral interests amongst the working class has been further

accelerated by active efforts on the part of bourgeois society in the capitalist core

and semi-periphery to elevate loyal and conservative layers of the workers

movement into positions of relative privilege in relation to the rest of the class. The

formation of this “aristocracy of labour” has been facilitated by narrow craft

unionism, the expansion of property ownership, the tying of labour unions to the

financial markets via pension fund speculation, the promotion of racial, national,

and gender caste structures within the working class, and other policies designed

to divide and rule the proletariat and encourage the formation of reformist,

nationalist, racist, and other misapprehensions.

8. Absent the development of revolutionary consciousness, and the adoption of s

scientific socialist program, the proletariat will find itself riven by sectoral divisions

and confined to minimal economic struggles.

9. The capitalist class – those who live by exploiting labour power and who serve the

self-expansion of capital – are very small in number. But history, wealth, positions

of corporate power, connections with the state make it the ruling class, and the class

whose ideas rule society. There are, however, deep internal contradictions. Not only

is capitalist pitted against capitalist in the market, but finance capital confronts

industrial capital and big capital confronts medium and small capital. In times of

crisis, the fraternal relations between capitalists are stripped asunder, as factions of

the ruling class struggle to choose winners and losers. In these periods, the struggle

between capitalists is at its most intense.

10. What does this mean for small and medium capitalists? On the one hand, medium

and small capitalists suffer due to their disadvantageous position in the market and

lack of an intimate relationship with the state. On the other, they benefit from big

capital’s global reach and ability to pacify the working class. All capitalists are

united in needing the working class to remain wage slaves in perpetuity. This is the

basis for a unity of interests of the capitalist class.

11. This unity of interests is mirrored politically. Medium and small capitalists are

united behind the monopolies and great financial corporations. They have no real

independent voice. Ideologically narrow-minded, the small capitalists try to

influence society through institutions which are in the main entirely subordinate to

big capital. Where the small capitalists do act independently, they universally

favour a regressive, reactionary policy to return capitalism to a previous stage in its

development.

12. The task of communists is to break the working class from the influence of all

sections of the bourgeoisie. There can be no strategic alliance with the medium and

small capitalists. Individuals from the bourgeoisie can come over to the side of the

working class, but never any section of it. However, the working class can and

should take advantage of the contradictions within the bourgeoisie. Some

capitalists may support concessions to the working class, though this damages

other capitalists. Concessions open up fissures in the ranks of our enemy and help

to neutralise sections of it.

13. The middling classes, which include layers of professionals, middle managers, the

self-employed, intellectuals, middling bureaucrats and trade union officials,

inevitably waver between the two main classes in society. To the extent that it has

its own political programme, it is based on reactionary and utopian calls for a

return to small, family production and national independence, or to social

liberalism and self-satisfied managerialism.

14. As capitalism relentlessly revolutionises the circumstances of production, elements

within the middle classes find their old, privileged positions being dissolved. Such a

process gives rise to explosive shifts and political intervention can speed the

process of proletarianisation. Economic crises plunge the middle classes into

turmoil and into political action. Workers ought to seek, as opportunities present

themselves, alliances with the various organisations and manifestations of these

intermediate strata, albeit only when doing so advances the workers interests.

15. The trend of proletarianisation - that is the constant reduction of the middling

layers to another layer in the broader proletariat, produces specific forms of

subjectivity. Sections of the middling layers that are being proletarianised are often

prone to emphasising the social and/or democratic necessity of their professions,

arguing that their special status is vital to maintaining a "healthy society".

Politically, this is an attempt to arrest the proletarianisation of the professions by

appealing to the importance of elevated social layers distinct from the broader

working class. It is necessary for communists to break with these romantic

delusions and assert the centrality of proletarian unity and solidarity against

sectionalism and stratification.

16. The intelligentsia consists of that social strata which participates in intellectual and

artistic production. While most intellectuals are of the middling and ruling classes,

the intelligentsia of any class plays a decisive role in articulating that class'

historical interests, and as such proletarian intellectuals can play a most

revolutionary part. Students are perhaps the clearest expression of this dynamic, as

they often play the role of the detonator of the revolutionary situation, pursuing

militant activity by which an otherwise stable situation is rendered volatile. Today,

students are themselves heavily stratified between proletarian, middling, and

bourgeois layers.

17. In the period of advanced capitalism, the shifting composition of capital and the

general tendency towards overaccumulation has produced vast masses of under-

and unemployed workers, often permanently so. The historical phenomenon of the

reserve army of labour, a necessary aspect of the capitalist labour market, is

expanded into a vast surplus population, often concentrated into urban slums and

rural hinterlands. This mass is today playing a decisive role in politics, and can

often be the instigators of revolutionary situations. An alliance between surplus

proletarians and industrial workers is necessary if a revolution is to be successful

in the contemporary epoch.

Merger of Socialism and the Workers Movement

18. The dual revolutions of industrialisation and the fall of absolutism gave rise to a

profound intellectual crisis within bourgeois civilisation. The growth of the urban

slums, the dispossession of the peasantry, the revolutionary agitation of the

Jacobins and Enrages, the growth of republican revolutionary sentiments, and the

entrance of the industrial working class onto the stage of history demanded an

intellectual response. Socialism, in its most general sense, refers to a critique of

liberal modernity and the capitalist social order that developed alongside it.

Socialism took several forms:

a. Reactionary Socialism which possessed aristocratic and petit-bourgeois

varieties, and sought to reverse the development of capitalist society in

general by restoring a pre-capitalist social order of the feudal commune and

petty production. Today, reactionary socialism is largely expressed through

reactionary populism and fascist movements that articulate the political

outlook of the petit-bourgeois in the epoch of capitalist crisis.

b. During the period of the bourgeois revolutions, the trend of petit-bourgeois

democracy was the most advanced wing of that movement. Within this

movement, the proletariat was part of an undistinguished popular mass

alongside the peasantry and petit-bourgeois. These trend seek to

subordinate the workers to their political program - revolutionary

democracy without socialisation of production. In the epoch of advanced

capitalism, this is an impossibility.

c. Bourgeois “State Socialism” represents the reforming tendency of bourgeois

society - the desire to overcome the miseries and hardships of capitalist

society while maintaining the social edifice. They propose welfare systems,

and reforms to labour law, as the basis of a general reform of capitalist

society. In general, the bourgeois socialists represent the bourgeois class -

they fear the possibility of revolution, and seek to preserve the system by

reforming it.

d. Utopian and Sentimental Socialism are tendencies that are critical of

capitalist society, but possess no connection to the proletariat and its

revolutionary capacity. At worst, the utopians seek to escape capitalist

society and create utopian communities. At best, they draw on moral

doctrines and sentimental arguments to attempt to convince society at large

of the legitimacy of a socialist reorganisation of society.

e. Social Reformism (or contemporary Social Democracy) refers to those

tendencies that embrace some elements of the communist program, but do

not embrace it in its full. They represent the underdeveloped layers of the

working class, that are yet to embrace a fully revolutionary program, and

instead embrace partial reforms of the social order.

f. Scientific Socialism stands apart from all other tendencies within the

socialist movement by the systematic application of the scientific study of

human social development to the question of the revolutionary

transformation of society. Its component parts are the Critique of Political

Economy, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and the Critique of

Ideology.

19. With the development of scientific socialism and the elaboration of a scientific

account of capitalist historical and social development by Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels, the proletariat was armed with a scientific world-outlook and theoretical

framework for making revolution. There is no weapon more powerful in the hands

of the proletarian masses - for it equips them to fulfil their world-historical task.

20. The emergence of the proletarian class onto the stage of world-history was

accompanied by the development of its forms of organisation. Beginning with

spontaneous uprisings and bread riots, the working class soon found its essential

form of economic organisation - the trade union.

21. The growth of the trade unions, the emergence of movements such as Chartism, the

development of syndicalism, and the development of a political workers movement

in the form of the mass workers parties, all show the growing strength and

organisation of the working class. However, absent the program of scientific

socialism, the workers movement was unable to grasp its world-historical task.

22. The historical accomplishment of Marx and Engels was to fuse socialism and the

workers movement. By bringing these two historical forces together both are

transformed, creating a higher form of organisation - a workers movement in

possession of revolutionary socialist consciousness.

The Need for Unity

23. In order for the proletariat to come to political power, it must first consciously

embrace a socialist program. Absent this political consciousness, the proletariat

will not be able to adequately organise itself to transform society, and instead fall

victim to opportunist illusions. The proletariat as a whole, and its advanced layers

in particular, must cultivate itself as a ruling class - embracing a clear historical

consciousness and world outlook based on scientific socialism.

24. The proletariat needs unity. It is only through unity that the proletariat triumphs in

its daily economic struggles with the capitalist class, and it is only through unity

that the proletariat triumphs on the stage of history. Communists possess no

interests separate to the proletariat as a whole. What distinguishes the communist

is their consciousness of the historical task of the proletariat, and their sensitivity

to the need for international unity of the proletariat.

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25. The proletariat objectively needs unity, but is everywhere divided. The combined

and uneven development of capitalism has created many historical divisions within

the proletariat, as has the sectoral division of workers by industry, and the division

of workers into competing economic units. These divisions give rise to sectoralism

and opportunism - that is, placing the specific interests of a single part of the

proletariat over the historical, universal interests of the class. If the proletariat is to

be triumphant, the international unity of the class must be upheld. The part must

be subordinated to the whole.

The Strategy of Patience

26. Opportunism is the tendency to place the immediate interests or gains of the

workers movement, or only a section of that movement, ahead of the long term

orientation of the working class towards class power and socialist revolution.

Opportunism has two essential types: opportunism of the left, and opportunism of

the right.

27. The right opportunists within the workers movement promotes a strategy of

Coalitionism. This tendency seeks to forge alliances with bourgeois and

petit-bourgeois parties in order to form governments that can advance workers

interests. Such “Ministerial Socialism” is often justified in democratic language,

proclaiming the need to defend political freedoms through an alliance with the

liberal bourgeois. Such calls must be rejected on the grounds that to forge a

government with the bourgeois would be to rule over the working class, to form a

government incapable of implementing the program of the workers republic.

28. Coalitionism tends to give rise to a State Loyalist trend within the labour movement.

This trend openly proclaims its alliance with imperialism and the bourgeois state -

its loyalty to the constitution, the rule of law, and the police and army. State

Loyalism, the toxic child of Coalition, is born from the need to demonstrate that the

Coalitionist is a viable, “trustworthy” partner in government. In turn, the rightists

seek to muzzle and suppress revolutionary activity, usually through

anti-democratic means. State loyalism, in placing national interests ahead of the

world movement of the working class, is a scab movement.

29. The tendency of State Loyalism to muzzle and repress the revolutionary wing of the

workers movement requires that communists strongly demarcate from the state

loyalists, so as to uphold their capacity for revolutionary activity.

30. Opportunism of the left poses a different problem. Represented by the “strikist”

tendency of the workers movement, the left poses the general strike as the primary

weapon in the arsenal of the proletariat. In the view of the lefts, the spontaneous

activity of the working class will give rise to explosions of class struggle, during

which revolutionaries may lead an insurrection. This viewpoint, which is one step

away from adventurist actions, underplays or even denies the vital role of the

revolutionary party in preparing the groundwork for insurrectionary activity

through winning hegemony over the working class and its many institutions.

31. Against opportunisms of the left and right, the communists must chart a narrow

path. Our strategy is that of revolutionary patience. Opportunism, in both its leftist

and rightist forms, represents a fundamental impatience with the long and

deliberate process of building and consolidating a Communist Party and a mass

socialist workers movement. Instead the opportunists seek shortcuts, be they

electoral coalitions or strike waves. The task of the communists is to patiently win

the masses of workers to communist ideas, to educate them and organise them in

preparation for a revolutionary struggle to establish a democratic republic. In doing

so, the communists must win a mandate to implement their minimum program -

and must not allow any barriers established by the ruling order to stop them.

The Communist Party on the Road to Power

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

The Communist Party is a class party, as it is made up of the advanced part of the

proletariat. 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.

33. The struggle to build the Communist Party consists of three interlocking tasks: the

elaboration and defence of a revolutionary program, the formation and hardening

of a revolutionary cadre, and the winning of mass influence for the Communist

Party.

34. In general terms, the Communist Party seeks to win the vast masses of workers and

the oppressed to its program for social revolution and class dictatorship. It does

this through mass work and systematic propaganda and agitation at all levels.

35. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the proletariat arms itself with a

movement of workers organisations and institutions. The Communist Party

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transforms itself into a party-movement, drawing under its hegemony hundreds of

thousands and then millions of proletarians. In the ranks of the party-movement

stand industrial unions, tenants and housing organisations, poor-people's

organisations, workers committees on healthcare, welfare, and education, a

red-green ecological movement, women and youth organisations, social and

cultural clubs, intellectual circles, mutual aid societies, and organisations of the

nationally oppressed. It will build roots in factories and schools and working class

neighbourhoods, and from these bases build a Red Fortress from which to conquer

power.

36. The Communist Party will quickly win to its ranks the advanced layers of workers

who are already moving into struggle against the capitalist system. These layers

must be hardened in the furnace of class struggle, and transformed into the leading

forces of the coming revolution. Importantly, these layers must be systematically

politically educated and trained in revolutionary politics and the program of the

communists.

37. Trade unions are basic organisations of working class defence. The Communist

Party is the highest form of working class organisation. The party and the trade

unions are therefore different organisations of the same class.

38. Communists do not seek to blur the different roles of the party and the trade

unions. When trade unionists attempt to assume the functions of the Communist

Party, they weaken the trade unions and the party. When the Communist Party

attempts to assume the functions of the trade unions, it likewise weakens the trade

unions and the party.

39. Communists defend the organisational independence of the unions, but seek to win

them to accept the political leadership of the Communist Party. Communists fight

for internal democracy in the unions and against all forms of bureaucracy.

40. Communists are confident that sooner or later the trade unions will be won to their

views and be made into schools for communism. Communists put forward a

consistent perspective which unites, not divides, the trade unions. Communists

fight both sectionalism and splits along economic or political lines in the trade

union movement and bring to the fore the common interest. In this way,

communists show that they are the best fighters for the day-to-day interests of the

proletariat, as well as those who look after the interests of the future.

41. Communists tirelessly work in the trade unions to fight bourgeois ideology. We

explain that no trade union demand can be made permanent while wage-slavery

lasts. All economic, trade union and political demands must be connected with the

task of putting society as a whole into the hands of the working class.

42. On the basis of the unity of the advanced layers of the class, the Communist Party

must conduct systematic mass work, propaganda, and agitation to win over the

middling layers of the proletariat, as well as various middling layers of

professionals, intellectuals, peasants, and others.

43. The Communist Party and the movement that grows around it represents an

alternative to the capitalist state and its bourgeois civil society. As the movement

grows, it will play the role of political compass for the whole working class.

The Class Struggle

44. The development of capitalism, and the dynamic of class struggle within that

broader development, produces a systematic cycle of struggles, through which

working class power and organisation waxes and wanes. The orientation of our

mass work will differ depending on the broader dynamics of the class struggle.

45. In periods of high intensity class struggle, often accompanying popular explosions

or intense crises of capitalist power, we must orient ourselves towards mobilisation

of class forces. In these periods, all our forces must be deployed to bring as many

proletarians into the struggle as possible by mobilising the organised layers that

have been constructed in previous periods of organisation. Communists should not

flinch away from calling for the most militant tactics during the highest periods of

class struggle.

46. In periods of retreat, often following large uprisings, our forces must emphasise

consolidation and deepening of revolutionary activity, in particular the

development of cadres and systematic theoretical work.

47. In the long periods of quiet, where class struggle is not playing a decisive or

revolutionary role, our orientation must be towards organisation of class forces.

Emphasis should be placed on building mass organisations of class struggle, and

winning layers to the socialist program through consistent propaganda and

education.

The United Front

48. The strategy of the United Front emerges from the objective need for unity in the

struggles of the working class, and the objective disunity of the working class in the

face of state loyalism. In the context of the division of the working class between the

Communist Party and the state-loyalist wing of the workers movement, the strategy

of the United Front becomes applicable.

49. The concrete tactics of the United Front take two forms. The Workers United Front

concerns the unity of the proletariat in its struggle for fundamental economic and

democratic demands absent a communist majority. The Anti-Imperialist United

Front concerns the question of workers struggle in the context of struggles against

colonial and imperialist oppression, and the relationship of the proletariat to

bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalist movements.

50. The Workers United Front is a united front of all proletarian forces, regardless of

their political orientation, united around a common program of demands that

advance the struggle of the working class. Such unity can only exist on the freedom

to criticise the reformist and state-loyalist leadership of workers organisations, and

the freedom of communists to raise communist slogans. Importantly, the

distinction between communists and state-loyalists must always be made clear to

the working class.

51. The Anti-Imperialist United Front is applicable in conditions of struggle against

colonial and imperialist oppression. In such conditions, the working class will find

itself under the influence of nationalist movements led by the bourgeois or

petit-bourgeois, promoting a broad struggle for national liberation. In these

circumstances, communists can enter a common front with these nationalist forces

under two conditions: firstly, that the nationalists are actually struggling against

imperialism, and secondly, that this alliance does not hinder the efforts of the

communists to organise the proletariat and peasantry. Importantly, the

communists must not sow illusions in the ability of the ‘national revolutionary’

movement i.e. the bourgeoisie, to take the struggle through to the end, to break the

stranglehold of imperialism. Communists must emphasise that ‘a determined fight’

will need to be waged against painting these movements in communist colours.

Independence of propaganda, organisation and action is necessary because the

national bourgeoisie would vacillate and compromise in the struggle against

imperialism.

52. Neither the Workers United Front nor the Anti-Imperialist United Front strategy

extends to support for a “united front government” made up of communists and

bourgeois, petit-bourgeois, or state-loyalist forces. Under no circumstances can

communists support a government of the exploiters. Neither can the Communist

Party enter government absent the mandate to implement its minimum program.

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The State and Revolution

53. Communists do not seek to take political power via a minority putsch. Indeed, we

chart a democratic road, by which we win the vast masses to our banner, and win a

crushing mandate for the implementation of our program. However, we do not

delude ourselves into thinking that a democratic road to power will be a peaceful,

constitutional, or legal road.

54. We cannot expect the ruling class to voluntarily relinquish power, nor to concede

their hold of humanity through peaceful means. Nor can we simply lay our hands

upon the existing apparatus of the modern repressive state. The bourgeois state

apparatus must be overthrown through proletarian, socialist revolution.

Communists should use all opportunities available to prepare for the actuality of a

socialist offensive and the need for insurrectionary tactics.

55. The growth of the revolutionary movement will lead to the necessary development

of a working class military organisation. The development of a workers militia and

the disciplining of that militia, as well as preparation for insurrectionary military

strategy is vital to protecting the workers movement from counter-revolutionary

terror.

Unity of Marxists

56. In absence of a Communist Party, communists have a duty to establish one. This

task can only be accomplished through winning the unity of Marxists, of

Communists, of revolutionary socialists and internationalists, to a single program

and political framework.

57. Both the sectarian and coalitionist forms of socialist organisation represent

backwards and immature stages in the development of the socialist movement.

These stages must be systematically overcome if a Communist Party is to develop.

58. A Communist Party is not constructed by avoiding the existing socialist movement

and going “directly to the masses”. Instead, it is won through struggle within the

socialist movement, and winning hegemony for partyist Marxism against the

Bakuninist and Coalitionist wings of the workers movement.