Published: 1977
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
We believe that the present system, of capitalism, is not part of an eternal “natural order” of things, not a consequence of “human nature”. It is a recent arrival in man’s history – and has already been done away with in some parts of the world. In Britain too, its days are numbered.
The problems we face – unemployment, poverty, slump, inflation, are not some “illness” of capitalism, they are an essential part of how it works. All these evils are the direct result of the private ownership of wealth, and the consequent exploitation by a few of the mass of the population, the workers who produce all wealth – and whose reward is a tiny pittance.
In Britain this disproportion is increasing as more and more wealth is concentrated into the group of fewer and fewer monopolies.
This tiny minority of the population holds complete control of the economy and political power, and effectively controls all the machinery of the state, the armed forces, the police, judiciary and upper rank of the Civil Service. The economic and political power of the capitalist class has its counterpart in the domination and control of the production of ideas, through which it maintains the repressive machinery of the state.
Experience throughout the world shows that the ruling class will defend its power by any means, legal or illegal, peaceful or violent, and so, if any fundamental change is to come about, the mass of exploited people must be prepared to use any means necessary, including revolutionary violence, to strip them of their power and wealth.
Such a change can only be effected by the working class and its allies if they are organised and disciplined, i.e. led by a working class Party dedicated to revolution. It cannot be done by a small group of plotters or terrorists. It can only come about when the development of capitalism, economically and politically has reached such a stage, such a pitch of crisis that the mass of workers has no option but to move.
The Party can expedite the conditions for such movement – the success of the move when it, comes is entirely dependent on how well the Party has organised and prepared the class.
Success in proletarian revolution can only be brought about through integrating the principles of scientific socialism, expressed in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung with the concrete conditions in our own country.
What do we mean by Socialism? Not the phoney socialism of the Labour Party with its sixty years history of betrayal, and its attempts to organise the working class to make capitalism work, nor is it the “socialism” of the USSR which uses pseudo-socialist phrases but where in fact one huge capitalist monopoly, the state, exploits the mass of Soviet workers and peasants on behalf of a small ruling elite of Party and State bosses, nor indeed the CPGB’s domestic amalgam of Soviet and ’left’ labour policies.
We are fighting for a working class democracy in which the producers of wealth, the working class will own the factories, the land, the hospitals, the schools, the courts etc. and will run them themselves according to the will of the majority, in which the working class will exercise dictatorship over the former capitalists in order to abolish capitalism’s forces. This is what is meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat, a step on the way to the ultimate aim, the classless society in which classes and therefore the state have finally disappeared.
Communism is not an ideology foreign to the working class as Tories, Labourites and Fascists would have us believe. It is the summation of the revolutionary struggles of our class and indicates our historic destiny, it cannot be brought to workers in Britain from outside, it grows through our own struggles to survive. How we build our future depends on us workers in Britain, on historical experiences and traditions.
The workers of Britain are not isolated, they are part of the struggles for human progress, and just as our experiences form part of that world struggle, so do the experiences and struggles of the world’s workers form part of our traditions, giving us invaluable, indeed indispensable lessons on the conduct of our struggle.
Indeed in the worldwide struggles against imperialism are found the factors which will bring about revolution here. Another is the successful struggles to defend and build Socialism in China, Albania and other socialist countries.
Similarly the success of our revolution here depends on our understanding of the contradictions in the world. These are the contradictions between imperialism and socialism, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between imperialism headed by the two superpowers USA and the USSR and the oppressed countries, and finally the complex contradiction between the imperialist powers. This latter include the contradiction between Soviet social imperialism and US imperialism (the two superpowers) and the contradiction between the superpowers and the less powerful imperialist countries.
In the present period these contradictions are best understood through the theory according to which there are three “worlds”, namely the “first world” (the two superpowers), the “second world” (the other imperialist countries) and the “third world” (the developing countries).
In the present stage of the development of the economic crisis, the superpowers are competing more fiercely with the minor imperialist powers of the Second World, thus the Second World shares with the Third World an interest in the defeat of hegemony.
These contradictions are so intense that a new imperialist war of unprecedented savagery is in the offing, which only the working classes of the world can prevent – by revolution.
At the same time the crisis is forcing all imperialist powers into confrontation with the peoples of the world, and this mounting repression is arousing people all over the world into the struggles for independence, national liberation and socialism.
In the industrialised countries such as Britain, the consequence of the crises is placed squarely on the shoulders of the working class, with the balm of social democracy to dampen the workers resistance. It is therefore our task as the CWM to help build that genuine working class party, through the fight against every aspect of the crisis, its redoubled oppression will provide the opportunity to unite all those sectors of the working people who have been bamboozled into supporting capitalism, and shown that their objective interests lie with the working class and socialism.
The need for the Party gets more and more pressing in Britain as repression and exploitation are increasing and the threat of fascism is growing. The Labour Party with its wage controls and other laws has plainly shown its willingness to strengthen the corporate state, 1n this it has won the support of trade union leaders and sown confusion among the working class.
In Ireland the techniques of repression are perfected, while the same struggle of the Irish people has given the state the legal power under the Prevention of Terrorism Act to arrest without trial, to extort confessions and generally in fact to deprive anybody of any rights they may have thought they had.
The CWM therefore declares its main aim as the building of the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class, for which purpose it is willing to unite with any other Marxist-Leninist organisation with similar policies.
We ask you to join us in building such a party.