1. Capitalism condemns the vast majority of mankind to poverty, insecurity and war. Once a progressive system which vastly enlarged the productive forces on a scale hitherto unknown, it always rested upon the concentration of ownership and control in the hands of a few while the vast majority laboured in conditions of poverty and squalor.
Capitalism, having as its source the exploitation of the working class, is constantly impelled to increase the rate of exploitation in the interests of the competitive survival of each unit against its rivals. Blind production for profit, ever sharper rivalry and competition, result in periodic, more or less sharp, economic crises of over-production. Capitalism is torn with contradictions internal to itself; the most general is the conflict between the tremendous expansive powers of modern large scale industrial production and the fetters imposed on it by production for profit, national barriers and the planless rivalry of world market. The constant revolutionising of science and technology and the potential this holds for improving the lot of mankind is never realised under capitalism. Millions starve in a world of abundance. Indeed, the gap between the wealthy and the poor becomes ever wider.
The so-called communist countries are not communist or socialist. The proletariat does not hold state power in these countries. The mode of production is bureaucratic state capitalism and the bureaucracy is the ruling class.
The increasing intensity of competition between multinational cartels and nation states (including the Stalinist states) threatens mankind with economic ruin and war. The capitalists and the Stalinist bureaucracies are driven to intensify their exploitation of the working-class to escape from the crisis of their own making. From the deepening crisis and stagnation capitalism can only escape by crushing all the independent organs of resistance of the working class.
2. Imperialism marks the maturing of capitalism into a conflict ridden world wide system of exploitation. It marks the opening of the epoch of wars and revolutions.
Imperialism condemns two-thirds of humanity to super-exploitation and systematic under-development of their countries, crushing the development of their productive forces and making them sources of super profits and raw materials for the ‘advanced countries’.
The exploitation and oppression practised by capitalism and imperialism call forth forces of resistance both from the working class — the proletariat — and the oppressed masses and nationalities.
The working class, itself the product of capitalism, has shown its power to challenge and overthrow this system in a series of struggles unprecedented in the history of all exploited classes.
The exploited nationalities, victims of imperialism, have also shown their ability to challenge and overthrow the forces of the strongest imperialist powers. The successful socialist outcome of such struggles, however, depends on the conscious leadership of the working class in national struggles under the leadership of a revolutionary party basing its programme on the theory of the permanent revolution: the independent organisation of the working class for power, the leadership by the working class of all anti-imperialist forces, the spreading of the revolution beyond the boundaries of a single state. The working class must take up, as its own, struggles of all oppressed classes and social strata: peasantry, oppressed nationalities, races, women etc. It must take up as its own, every serious democratic demand of the broad masses. It alone can lead these struggles to final victory.
3. The bourgeois state must be smashed by the working class. It must be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat over the exploiters. Democratic collective control over the means of production and distribution is possible only by a state of workers’ councils. The dictatorship of the proletariat is only a transitional period, ending with the complete withering away of the state and the abolition of classes — Communism.
Though a workers’ state can come into existence in a single country, prolonged isolation opens the way to defeat or degeneration. The proletarian revolution must expand internationally or perish. The working class is the only class capable of leading an international onslaught against the bourgeoisie, though all oppressed classes and nationalities have a direct interest in supporting and forwarding its struggles.
4. At the same time, the nature of capitalist production, the development of technology, its increasing concentration makes more and more possible and necessary the replacement of bourgeois relations by true social production — democratically planned production for social need.
Only a social revolution led by the working class can accomplish this transformation. Such a revolution would transfer the means of production into common property and abolish the division of society into classes, liberate all the oppressed and rid society of distinctions of class, creed, race and sex.
The working class gains the experience to revolutionise society by constant struggle against the ruling class, through mass organisations created in the course of that struggle — trade unions, factory committees, workers’ councils, and through the struggle of the oppressed for their own liberation.
5. However, the more intense and concentrated the class struggle, the deeper the social crisis, the more does the bourgeoisie seek to divide and confuse the forces of the working class, attempting through its various agencies to sow sectionalism, craft consciousness, nationalism, sexism and the worst poison of all, racism.
In the class struggle the working class must develop a clear class strategy for conquering power. History has shown that the indispensable instrument for this is a party basing itself on a Marxist programme and rallying the most class conscious militants to it.
The party sets as its tasks the overcoming of the unevenness of working class experience, the fighting of bourgeois ideas and forces in the working class, the presentation of the lessons of past struggles and the bonding together and unifying of all fragmented struggles. All this with the aim of developing a conscious and coherent offensive against capitalism.
Such a party must consist of revolutionary working class militants; it must be the real vanguard of the class. The creation of such a party is the urgent task of all revolutionaries and working class militants.
The revolutionary party cannot be built on a national basis alone. We fight to build an international democratic centralist party — to combat the bourgeoisie on the basis of an international programme for workers’ power. Such an international programme and party must be built on the lessons and experience of the first four Congresses of the Communist International and the re-elaboration of the 1938 programme of the Fourth International.
Workers Power does not believe such an international party exists. Neither has the necessary programmatic work been completed. The Fourth International needs to be re-created around a re-elaborated transitional programme, on a democratic-centralist basis.
6. In the twentieth century capitalism’s survival has principally been the result of two forces:
i) The reformist and Stalinist leaderships in the international labour movement. After World War I, capitalism, challenged by the first workers’ state and a mass revolutionary wave, was saved in its heartlands by the reformist parties of the Second International. The incorporation of the reformist workers’ parties and Trade Union leaders has remained a vital component of capitalist stability.
After World War II capitalism could not have survived and consolidated without the conscious support of the Stalinist parties. Notably in France, Italy and Greece the Stalinist parties disarmed the potentially revolutionary forces, giving power back to the bourgeoisie. In East Europe independent working class, peasant and nationalist movements were subordinated to the interests of the Russian bureaucracy (stability and shared spheres of interest) by the creation of client states to the Russian bureaucracy.
Born of the isolation of the Russian Revolution, nurtured on the destruction of the vestiges of workers’ power in Russia and the elimination of revolutionary vitality in the Comintern, the Stalinist parties crossed to the camp of the bourgeoisie. In Russia and East Europe they have created states that must be destroyed by workers’ revolutions. In the West they offer only collaborationist, national reformist programmes. Stalinism and Stalinist parties are reactionary, an obstacle on a world scale, to the Socialist Revolution.
ii) In addition to the conscious counter-revolutionary role of the Stalinist and reformist workers’ parties, capitalism has only survived as the result of the wholesale destruction of capital in two imperialist world wars and the subordination of the world economy to American Imperialism’s massive expansion after World War II.
The exceptional stability and expansion of world capitalism after World War II has to be understood primarily as a result of these two factors. However, capitalism in the twentieth century cannot free itself from the pressures of inflation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, increasing instability and a sharpening of competition on a world scale except at the expense of the working class.
7. The working class has, over the last 150 years, fought to create organisations capable of leading the struggle for Socialism. The early workers’ organisations (e.g. the Chartists in England) the Social Democratic and Labour parties, the Communist parties of the 1920s, all, at their foundations, were looked to by the workers to accomplish their emancipation. Yet the bourgeoisie and its agents in the working class exerted enormous pressure to corrupt and destroy them as weapons of class struggle.
This corruption has taken the form of reformism and capitulation to chauvinism. That is, the supposedly gradual transformation of capitalism through parliamentary reform and the identification of the working class with “its” nation and ruling class against the workers of other nations. The Labour and Communist Parties are thoroughly corrupted in this way — although many of their members and supporters sincerely wish to destroy capitalism.
8. The Labour Party, in its programme and policies, is firmly tied to the bourgeois state, committed to managing capitalism. It is a bourgeois party. In periods of boom, under working class pressure, it has enacted limited reforms which, however, leave the fundamental power bases of the ruling class intact. In periods of gathering storm like the present it acts as the bosses’ most subtle weapon to claw back the concessions made over decades, attacking workers in struggle again and again.
Yet the Labour Party is a party rooted in the working class movement. The Trade Unions finance and support it and provide it with most of its activists. The vast majority of workers vote for it and see it as their party — as the one that should act for them and against the bosses. It is a bourgeois workers’ party. In this contradiction lies the possibility of overcoming the crippling illusions in a peaceful parliamentary road to Socialism. We fight to strengthen every anti-capitalist action of the rank and file members within the Labour Party, every attempt to use it in the service of the class.
The Labour Party claims to be the party of the working class based on the Trade Unions. We defend the right of all varieties of Socialist thought to exist and organise in the Labour Party.
9. The revolutionary Left consists of fragmented and disunited groups stemming from the only consistently revolutionary communism tradition to emerge from the collapse of revolutionary communism in the 1920s and 1930s, the followers of L.D. Trotsky and the Fourth International movement. Opportunism, sectarianism and dogmatism have wreaked havoc within this movement. However, the recreation of revolutionary parties and an International can take place only on the basis of the fundamental elements of this doctrine and method applied creatively to the new period of capitalist crisis opening before us.
The Workers’ Power group sets itself the task of fighting for revolutionary unity based upon a principled programme. The elements of this programme are the basis for our current work and activity. We will co-operate in a non-sectarian fashion with all who agree with us in whole or in part. We seek fusion with all those with whom we have fundamental programmatic agreement.
The principle planks of our platform
For a workers’ revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The parliamentary road to Socialism is an illusion demonstrated time and time again, most recently in the Chilean catastrophe.
For a revolutionary party based on a transitional programme and organised according to the principles of democratic-centralism — full freedom of political debate, disciplined unity in action.
For the reconstruction of the Fourth International on the basis of an international transitional programme and a democratic-centralist practice.
For unconditional support to all national liberation struggles against Imperialism and practical opposition to “our own” ruling class’ policy of oppression.
No platform for Fascists. Against all forms of racism and immigration controls. For the right of immigrants to organise in their own defence. We fight mercilessly against racist ideas and leaders in the Labour Movement and for Labour Movement based united fronts to fight for these policies.
We support the workers of the so-called Communist states against their bureaucratic oppressors, considering that only a workers’ revolution can transform them into true Workers’ States. Such a revolution would mean the creation of Soviets, the smashing of the secret police and army and its replacement by a workers’ militia, the smashing of the bureaucratic state apparatus and its replacement by soviet democracy and democratic, workers’ controlled planned production. We adopt a defeatist position in any conflict between the Russian/East European bureaucracy, itself imperialist, and U.S./West European Imperialism. We, however, defend Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China against imperialism as these countries are non-imperialist powers.
We fight for complete social and political equality for Women, supporting their fight against male domination — a feature of capitalism as of all previous class societies. We fight for all immediate demands promoting this aim while recognising that only the transition to Communism will remove the last vestiges of women’s enslavement. In particular we fight for working class women who suffer both oppression as women and super-exploitation within the workforce at present. We fight against male chauvinism and the unequal treatment of women in society and the Labour Movement, for full and equal rights in the workplace. We fight for a woman’s right to control her own fertility, for the socialisation of housework and for a mass working class women’s movement. We support the struggle of gay people against discrimination on the grounds of their sexual orientation.
In the workers’ movement and the Trade Unions we fight for: the total independence of the Trade Unions from the State and from all legal shackles on the right to organise and to strike.
We fight to democratise the unions, putting them under the control of the rank and file. We fight for militant class policies; for all immediate and partial demands which increase and strengthen the morale and confidence of the working class. Against all attempts to make the workers pay the enormous cost, in terms of the loss of the partial gains made by generations of workers’ struggles, for the British bourgeoisie to rationalise and re-structure industry for their own benefit.
For a working class counter-offensive, fighting to impose workers’ control (not participation) of production, the only conclusion to this struggle is a planned economy and a workers’ state. It is the duty of revolutionaries to convince the masses of workers in struggle and step by step, of the inevitability, necessity and possibility of achieving Socialism — the only alternative offered to mankind is barbarism.
For practical solidarity with workers in struggle throughout the world. For the international unity of trade unions and especially for links between the rank and file of different countries.
We commit ourselves to polemic, debate and discussion with other tendencies of the Left to clarify the political differences, the possibilities of joint work, and to lay the basis for a principled regroupment on and international and national basis.
