13.02.2014
Communist Platform
This is the new version, as amended by the February 8 meeting
1. The Communist Platform is committed to building Left Unity as a socialist party, a party that seeks to bring about the end of capitalism and its replacement by the rule of the working class.
2. Under socialism the means of production pass into common ownership. Our ultimate aim is a society based on the principle of ‘From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs’. A moneyless, classless, stateless society, within which each individual can develop their fullest individuality.
3. The rule of the working class requires a state to defend itself, but a state that is withering away, a partial state.
4. Socialism and democracy are inseparable. Democracy is not just about casting votes. It is a process of the constant forming of ideas, and taking and carrying out decisions. Hence the need for the entire population to exercise control over every sphere of social life: the state and politics, work and the economy, international relations, etc. Without open discussion as a norm and the right to form parties, platforms and oppositions, democracy can only be formal or simply fictional.
5. We stand on the historic examples of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Bolshevik-led revolution in October 1917 as the first attempts of the working class to dispossess the capitalists and begin the construction of socialism. We reject the idea that the Soviet Union and similar regimes were democratic, socialist or represented either the political rule of the working class or some kind of step on the road to socialism.
6. Socialism is international or it is nothing. The victory of socialism in one or more country is only partial until the balance of forces has decisively tilted against capitalism. That means socialism 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.
7. Towards this end the working class should as a means of organisation and struggle use both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means.
8. All members of Left Unity who agree with these aims and principles are urged to join the Communist Platform.
Amended motions
European Union
Left Unity opposes all programmes and demands for a British withdrawal from the European Union. By the same measure we oppose the EU of commissioners, corruption and capital. However, as the political, bureaucratic and economic elite has created the reality of a confederal EU, the working class should take it, not the narrow limits of the nation-state, as its decisive point of departure.
The constituent national parts of the EU exhibit a definite commonality due to geography, culture, history, economics and politics. Put another way, the EU is not an empire kept together by force. Nor is it just a trading bloc. Far from capitalism pushing through what is objectively necessary - the unity of Europe - on the contrary capitalism has held back European unification.
For the working class that necessitates organising at an EU level: campaigns, trade unions, cooperatives, for the levelling up of working conditions and wages across Europe to the best status quo currently in force, and the fight for extreme democracy.
Left Unity wants not a quasi-democratic, confederal EU, but a united Europe under the rule of the working class.
- Power to the EU parliament. Replace the EU commission by an executive democratically responsible to the parliament. Abolish the council of ministers.
- For a democratically controlled European Central Bank.
- Towards indivisible European unity.
- For the free movement of people. Against all immigration controls.
Naturally, to the degree the working class extends its power over the EU it will exercise attraction for the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Such a bloc would be able to face down all threats and quickly spread the flame of universal liberation.
Women’s liberation
Women are oppressed because of the system of exploitation and the division of labour. Women’s oppression has existed since the dawn of class society. Ending exploitation will create the framework for the full realisation of women’s emancipation. Therefore the struggle for both is interconnected.
Women’s emancipation is not a question for women alone. Just as the abolition of class exploitation is of concern to female workers, so the emancipation of women is of concern to male workers. The struggle for socialism and the emancipation of women cannot be separated.
Women carry the main burden of feeding babies, house management, supermarket buying, family cooking, child ferrying, etc, which is performed gratis. Given the ever increasing pressure on time, such work is often frantic, demoralising and allows no kind of rounded, cultural development.
Advanced capitalism has created the material prerequisites for the liberation of women. However, women cannot be fully emancipated until the disappearance of the division of labour and without going beyond bourgeois right, which entails ‘To each according to work done’.
In Britain women have won or been granted formal equality with men. But the capitalist system makes a mockery of that. At work, at home, in trade unions, in official politics, in culture, in organised religion, women are still faced with inequality, discrimination or oppression.
There has been a rapid increase in women’s participation in the economy. As a norm, therefore, women are exploited by capital as cheap wage workers and domestic slaves. Hence they suffer a double burden.
Women have their own problems and demands. These demands, however, do not conflict with the demands of the working class: rather they reinforce them.
Left Unity says:
1. Turn formal equality into genuine equality. Socially, economically, politically and culturally there must be substantial equality.
2. Open free, 24-hour creches and kindergartens to facilitate full participation in social life outside the home. Open high-quality canteens with cheap prices. Establish laundry and house-cleaning services undertaken by local authorities and the state. This to be the first step in the socialisation of housework.
3. 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 six months’ fully paid paternity leave - three months of which should be compulsory - to encourage equality and bonding with the child.
4. Free abortion and contraception on demand.
5. Provision for either parent to be allowed paid leave to look after sick children.
6. Maximum six-hour working day for all nursing mothers.
7. Full support for women fleeing violence within the home.
Youth and education
Youth are used as cheap labour, sexually policed 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.
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 are greatly disproportionate amongst the young.
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.
Higher education is increasingly designed to suit the commercial interests of employers - university courses included. This sector churns out the next generation of skilled workers. Elite universities specialise in the reproduction of the upper-middle and ruling classes. Not surprisingly, here something like a proper education is on offer.
The following demands are of crucial importance for youth:
1. Compulsory education up until the age of 16 and from then on within a fully democratic system. Secondary education should be of a polytechnical nature. That is, rounded to include technical and personal skills, as well as scientific, social, historical and artistic subjects. Tertiary education should be a right, not a privilege. Abolish student fees. Everyone should be encouraged to develop themselves and their intellectual and critical abilities to the fullest degree.
2. For academic freedom in teaching and research.
3. Students over the age of 16 should receive grants set at the level of the minimum wage.
4. No state funding, charitable status or tax breaks for religious and private schools and colleges.
5. 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.
6. The right of every young person on leaving education to a job, proper technical training or full benefits.
7. Remove all obstacles to the participation of youth in social life. Votes and the right to be elected from the age of 16.
8. The provision of a broad range of sports and cultural centres under the control of representatives elected by youth.
[Remitted for further discussion: 9. Abolish age-of-consent laws. We recognise the right of individuals to enter into the sexual relations they choose, provided this does not conflict with the rights of others. Alternative legislation to protect children from sexual abuse.]
10. The extensive provision of education and counselling facilities on all sexual matters, free from moralistic judgement, is an essential prerequisite to enable youth to develop themselves in all areas of sexuality and reproduction.
This motion was agreed unamended:
Governmental power
Left Unity aims to win political power to end capitalism, not to manage it. It will not participate in governmental coalitions with capitalist parties at national or local level. Nor will it aim to administer the existing capitalist state alone or in coalition with reformists, in the manner of either old or New Labour.
The elevation of Left Unity to government either alone or as part of a working class bloc must be generally understood as heralding the abolition of the core of the capitalist state - centrally the police, the officer caste of the armed forces, the capitalist judiciary and prison system, and the command structure of the civil service, etc. The creation of such a workers’ government must therefore be accompanied by the existence of independent, armed working class organisations, capable of successfully defending the government and its working class base against the disintegrating capitalist state forces.
It must be clearly understood that without such conditions being in place, no working class government can be formed.