Preamble

Capitalist society has brought human civilization to the brink of disaster. There can be no peace as long as our lives are determined by the bloody rule of capital. Capitalism sees billions dwell in poverty and misery, all the while supporting an ecocidal extraction of resources that threatens all life on earth. The vast proletariat - the striving working class that includes factory workers and baristas and farm labourers - can only be free if we organise as a class. As one we can smash the capitalist state, seize control of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and achieve a communist society.

 

Only in a society based on the abolition of private property, where production and consumption is organised according to a common need, can the challenges facing human civilisation be confronted and overcome. Only in a society where each contributes according to their ability, and where each receives what they need, can millennia of poverty, and exploitation be overcome. Only in a society where patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, and racism have been overthrown can we truly move into our collective future as free people. A free people who live and love without the repressive apparatuses of borders, nations, and states. This society, the aim of our organisation and movement, is communism. 

 

Communism is not an abstract aim to which we aspire. It is the real movement, emerging out of the struggles of the working class, to abolish the present state of things. In every battle with the capitalist class, in the real solidarity growing between workers, the fight for our future has already started to emerge. To play our part in fighting for this future, the Revolutionary Communist Organisation has formed. Our purpose is to advance communist theory and practice, to link up and organise with the diverse and diffuse masses, and to prepare ourselves for the coming struggle with capitalism. The following document is the distillation of our Program, which serves as the basis for our unity and the centre of our organisation.

 

 

Points of Unity

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

 

• We are communists. The capitalist mode of production has brought humanity to the brink of catastrophe. Only the communist movement - the real movement to abolish the present conditions of life and secure a society without the state, markets, classes or money - can save humanity from the tyranny, hunger, poverty, despair, boredom and anxiety of capitalist existence.

• We are committed to revolution in our lifetime. Only revolutionary class struggle can overthrow the capitalist mode of production. All attempts to reform this system, to alter its innate logics or subvert its own structures, simply end in the reproduction of the system itself. In order to make a revolution it is necessary to smash the entire apparatus of the capitalist state and replace it with new forms of collective life based on the power of the working class. For us, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is neither “just around the corner”, nor a hypothetical to be delayed eternally to some future date. We must begin working now to actualise the overthrow of capitalist society and prepare for the seizure of power in the coming decades.

• We are committed to an ecological society. Industrial capitalist civilisation has brought the biosphere into a profound metabolic crisis. We recognise that the ecological struggle must be on the forefront of a revolutionary agenda. Indeed, it is only through fundamentally reorienting our relationship with the earth - and abolishing the profit motive - that we may live in a humane future at all.

• We are internationalists. There is no national capitalism. There is only a singular world market, composed of many capitalist firms (and cartels of firms) and national, sub-national and supra-national institutions, all driven to maintain the dominant mode of production and govern it in their interest. Even as they predate upon each other, and even as nationalist antagonism re-emerges in new and vicious forms, the international character of the system persists. As the capitalist system is global by nature, it follows that any response to it must be the same. We are opposed to militarism and war, to imperialism and empire, to border controls, and capitalist extraction and exploitation. It is necessary for workers to stand together across borders and organise an international movement of the exploited.

• We are against sexual and gender oppression. Despite rapid changes in the dominant modes of production and social reproduction, the patriarchal form of life persists. Its symptoms - the degradation and exploitation of women and the prevalence of homophobia and transphobia - persist with it. This is despite the integration of a minority of women and queer people into the liberal-democratic political project. Indeed, this integration is simply another innovation on the patriarchal form - one that maintains the fundamental structure of patriarchal oppression. We recognise that only a total revolution in the dominant mode of social life - and a revolution in social reproduction - can end the oppression of women and queer people.

• We are against racial and colonial oppression. In the course of its development, capitalism has created a system of racial hierarchies. The nation-state system, with its attendant border guards and detention centres, serves to divide and weaken the working class, allowing for the regulation of the labour market to the benefit of capital. It is to this purpose that racial oppression is turned, serving to mantain servile working conditions of undocumented workers and recent immigrants. This same racial system is used to justify wars of imperial domination and extraction, and the repression of political dissidents and the expansion of the security state. In Australia and other settler-colonies, this system of race, border and citizenship is built upon another racial order, that of the colonial dispossession of indigenous people. This dispossession, both historically and contemporarily, lays the foundation of capitalism’s existence as a world system. 

• We are an organisation of Marxists. Standing within the tradition of communist thought that began with Marx and Engels, we uphold a commitment to the Philosophy of Praxis, not as a dogma or vulgar method, but as a living discipline, a vital red thread that runs from pre-Marxist thinkers through countless schools of revolutionary theory and practice. Our Marxism is revolutionary and critical, neither abandoning our past nor fetishising it.

• We are fighting for a party for revolution, the Party of Freedom, the Communist Party. We remain committed to the notion of a democratic centralist revolutionary party, guided by a shared programmatic basis and made up of revolutionary cadres capable of theoretical debate and inquiry, and of political action. However it is evident that no party of this kind currently exists, nor is one on the verge of emerging. Only in the encounter between the proletariat’s revolutionary, emergent institutions of class struggle and an authentic revolutionary communist politics, program and analysis can generate such an organisation. We seek to aid in preparing the ground-work for that encounter. In light of this, we are building a Marxist pre-party fighting organisation to win workers and youth to communist politics, and to train cadres for the coming Communist Party.  

 

 

10-Point Platform

The aim of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation is the abolition of class society and the achievement of a communist mode of production. Our communism is twofold: it is firstly the real movement of the proletariat, that seeks to abolish the present conditions of class society and capital accumulation, and secondly a program that emerges from this real movement, a program that seeks to construct a totally different form of society - one based on solidarity and non-domination.

 

This new mode of life, the horizon that we call communism, emerging from the decaying morass of capitalist society, brings forth the following transformations:

 

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

• 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”.

• In place of the anarchy 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 and the maintenance of a healthy biosphere and ecology.

• In place of the 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.

• In place of social oppression, of the exploitation and degradation of women, of racial and colonial chauvinism and prejudices, of nationalism, of homophobia and transphobia, communism seeks to abolish all social oppression, all chauvinisms and bigotries, and all forms of social domination.

 

The Revolutionary Communist Organisation recognises that such a revolutionary transformation of our mode of living cannot be accomplished without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist society through the mass action of the working class and the oppressed. Such a revolutionary struggle must utilise all means to achieve its aims, and cannot be allowed to settle for compromises with the old order. A total break with capitalist society is necessary to achieve the transformation we need.

 

As such, the Revolutionary Communist Organisation proposes the following immediate, revolutionary measures as a first assault upon the power of capital and capitalist society in general:

 

1. For a Workers Republic. For the formation of a socialist workers republic, on the basis of universal, popular democracy, supported by a people’s militia recruited on the basis of universal service. The dissolution of all capitalist governments, security forces, and standing armies.  The creation of expanded domestic units, neighbourhood and workplace councils, and industrial and city/regional councils and communes. For a treaty with first nations people that enshrines linguistic and land rights.

2. For Workers Power. The establishment of universal high standards for wages and conditions, with wages being pegged to inflation. The elimination of poverty wages and squalid working conditions. The democratic self-management of all workplaces by the workers themselves. The universal reduction of working hours and a dramatic expansion in free time and leisure activities.

3. For a Life Worth Living. The cancellation of all state debts, and a jubilee on all debts held by households, including student debts and mortgages. For a universal basic income. The placing of price controls on essential goods. For the progressive decommodification of vital goods and services.

4. For the Socialisation of Social Reproduction. The provision of free, collectivised childcare, laundromats, and kitchens. The payment of wages for all forms of domestic labour, as well as extensive support for parents. The universal provision of contraception and sex education, and the provision of free, safe, and accessible abortions. 

5. For Universal, Social Education. Free, universal education in a single education service. The placing of all educational institutions under democratic teacher and student management. The promotion of a scientific and social education for all. 

6. For Universal Health and Social Care. The creation of a fully free, universal healthcare system that covers mental health, dental care, aged care, disability care, and gender affirmation care, with the rapid expansion of the existing health infrastructure through a socialised plan for health.

7. For Universal Housing. The expropriation of all housing from the landlord class. The elimination of the market in housing, the elimination of rents, and the planned distribution of living quarters. For tenant management over all housing projects and estates.

8. For the Socialisation of All Industry. The socialisation of industry and its incorporation into a common plan. The elimination of wasteful and socially unnecessary forms of labour, and the sharing up of work in order to reduce the working week. The reorganisation of production on the basis of social need. The elimination of money and its replacement with labour tokens and direct provision.

9. For an Ecological Society. The radical reorganisation of production and distribution to bring it into accordance with the needs of preserving a healthy ecology. For the implementation of ecological balance planning.

10. For the World Revolution. Down with imperialism, colonialism, and militarism! For the internationalisation of the revolutionary struggle. For a socialist federation in Oceania and South-East Asia as the basis of a World Revolutionary Commune!

 

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.

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