Introductory Note
This draft platform is intended as a preliminary expression of our programmatic positions. As such, it is not a fixed or final program but a living, evolving document that will be refined, amended, and developed as our organisation grows and deepens its relations with the class by intervening in its struggles. We encourage and welcome fraternal discussion of its content, certain that political clarity can only be a product of continuous self-reflection.
Capitalist Society and the Proletarian Struggle for Communism
The proletariat, or working class, comprises all individuals whose survival depends on selling their labour-power for wages—whether by producing goods, providing services, or surviving unemployment as part of the reserve army of labour. In contrast, the capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) owns the means of production—whether privately or through the state—and generates surplus value from the appropriation of workers’ surplus labour.
Capital is not merely an object, but a social relation: it is the domination of living labour by accumulated, i.e., dead, labour. It is directly created from the global exploitation of the working class. For this reason, we reject capitalism in all its forms, whether it appears as liberal democracy, military dictatorship, fascism, or one-party “socialist” state. Behind their ideological differences lies the same fundamental reality: the dictatorship of capital.
Communism has nothing whatsoever to do with the state-capitalist regimes of the 20th century—such as the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, among others—where a ruling minority exploited the proletariat in the name of “socialism.” Communism is not state control over the economy or democratization of capitalist production relations.
It is a stateless, classless, moneyless society in which the means of production, transportation, and all material resources are held in common. In such a society, people contribute whatever they can and have their needs provided for. It is an entirely new mode of social life, where the division between productive and reproductive labour—structured along gendered lines—is abolished and reabsorbed into the collective work of society.
Proletarian Revolution and Bourgeois Counter-Revolution
The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was a genuine proletarian revolution—not merely a Bolshevik coup or an anti-feudal uprising. However, its degeneration into counter-revolution occurred rapidly. This was shaped by a number of decisive setbacks: the defeat of the German Revolution, the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion, the banning of political factions, the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), and above all, the failure of international revolution to spread into the developed capitalist countries.
We recognise the corrosive influence of social democracy within the revolutionary workers’ movement, and particularly the adoption of the logic of the Second International—manifested in the Third through Kautskyism and Leninism: voluntarism, party-building, parliamentary engagement, tactical flexibility, and reformist compromise.
Social democracy revealed its loyalty to the capitalist order when it supported national war efforts during the First World War, sending workers off to die for their exploiters. Stalinism—so-called Marxism-Leninism—and its many variants and iterations (Maoism, Castroism, Guevarism, Titoism, Juche, Hoxhaism, Dengism, etc.), along with Trotskyism, constitute living and historical expressions of the counter-revolution. These movements helped consolidate capitalist rule under the guise of socialism and led nationalist “revolutions” that replaced foreign capitalists with native ones. All these regimes—“actually existing socialism,” “deformed workers’ states,” etc.—were and remain forms of state-capitalism, and their parties are instruments of bourgeois domination.
Similarly, we reject the nationalist pseudo-“anarchism” that defends the nation-state under the pretense of anti-imperialism—such as in Kurdistan, Palestine, and Ukraine. These positions betray anarchism’s own internationalist and anti-state roots. The political currents we have named above form what we call the left wing of capital, or leftism.
Contrary to this, the historical experience of our movement has demonstrated in a definitive way that the future proletarian revolution must be international, or it will be condemned to defeat. There is no national road to communism. No section of the working class can be liberated without the emancipation of working people the whole world over.
Nationalism and Imperialist War
Imperialism is not a policy choice; it is the militaristic expression of the already-existing competition between different nationally-organised capitals. No state can be anti-imperialist, and no nationalist movement can possibly serve proletarian interests. The “nation” is not a fraternal community but the regime of capital within a geographic area.
Nationalism, even when disguised as the “nationalism of the oppressed,” is an ideology that fabricates a false unity between exploited and exploiting classes, rallying workers to die for the interests of capital. The liberation of all oppressed groups is dependent upon the international communist revolution and the self-organisation of the working class.
The proletariat is a class of migrants, whose “homeland” is the whole world. We oppose all wars between capitalist states—small or large; weak, middling or powerful—as imperialist endeavours in which workers massacre each other for the exclusive profit of capital.
Our position is, therefore, identified with proletarian internationalism: we reject any collaboration between workers and capitalists on any grounds, for any length of time, under any pretense, in favour of global class war, to be fought without compromise or restraint, until the disappearance of classes and the establishment of world communism.
Discrimination, Class Collaboration, and Single-Issue Campaigns
Movements based on interclassist ideologies—e.g., environmentalism, women’s, LGBTQ+, immigrant or minority rights—cannot overcome the root causes of oppression and environmental destruction because they operate entirely within the capitalist framework and seek reform through collaboration with “progressive” factions of the bourgeoisie. Such movements serve only to subordinate the working class, integrating it into the system as willing participants.
We are opposed to all forms of discrimination and oppression, which are generated and maintained by capitalism: sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, ageism, et al. These social antagonisms are woven into the fabric of capitalist society and cannot be eradicated without unravelling the system as a whole.
Communists must intervene wherever possible with a clear class position, forging proletarians of all backgrounds together into a unified revolutionary force. While Indigenous and other minority workers are disproportionately targeted by capitalist violence and marginalisation, the path to their liberation lies not in nationalist or decolonial projects that empower Indigenous or subaltern capitalists at their expense, but in the international struggle of the working class to establish communism.
Prisons, Borders, and Police
We oppose all prisons, police forces, and systems of state repression across the entire world. These institutions exist to uphold capitalist property relations and discipline the working class. Whether during strikes, protests, or spontaneous uprisings, the violence of the state everywhere has no other purpose besides maintaining class domination.
We reject, as constructs of capitalism, borders and the entire architecture of the nation-state. As internationalist communists, we understand the working class to be a global class without a homeland. The ruling class uses borders to divide us and mobilise us to fight and die on their behalf. Our struggle is not for national self-determination but world revolution to overthrow the capitalist system.
Electoralism, Dictatorship, and Democracy
We reject every “side” of capitalist politics—left, right, or center. The politics of the “lesser evil” are a tool of capital to shackle workers to its interests. Parliamentary democracy is a ritual of mass self-delusion that masks capital’s dictatorship. Workers’ strength lies not in being a voting bloc for political parties but rather in their numbers and self-organisation as a conscious political force.
There is no path to working-class emancipation through the ballot box. Instead, workers’ freedom must be won through the destruction of the bourgeois state and gradual suppression of capitalist relations of production. The metamorphosis of formerly revolutionary organisations into ordinary bourgeois parties in the Second and Third Internationals demonstrates the futility (and danger!) of participating in electoral politics.
Unions: Instruments of Capital
Trade unions arose in the first half of the 19th century as associations of workers to bargain with capitalists on the purchasing price of labour power. Today, they have been fully integrated into the machinery of capitalist domination. They function as tools to control and contain class struggle—not as vehicles for proletarian revolution.
The unions cannot be transformed into revolutionary bodies. Their social function is to regulate the purchase and sale of labour power, as such they have a vested interest in the continuation of wage labour, without which they would become superfluous. Communists cannot intervene in unions without being drawn into their conservative logic.
In moments of intense class struggle, workers will have to spontaneously create their own fighting organs—strike committees, mass assemblies, workers’ councils—that will operate outside and against the unions. In these struggles, it is inevitable that the unions will become an obstacle, negotiating with capital to pacify workers and restore labour peace.
The Decadence of Capitalist Civilisation
Capitalism has long ago entered its decadent phase: having developed the material productive forces of society up to the point necessary for communism, it now obstructs any further human progress. This decline is not collapse, but stagnation—a prolonged social-historical impasse which only the proletarian revolution can overcome.
Historically, a mode of production becomes decadent when it creates the material basis for its own supersession yet persists beyond this point. The proletarian uprisings of the last century gave the clearest signs that this turning point had been reached. In response, the bourgeoisie unleashed barbarism—world wars, genocides, environmental destruction—and created weapons of mass destruction capable of exterminating the entire species.
Economically, capitalist decadence follows Marx’s observation and subsequent explanation of the historically declining rate of profit. As capital increases its investment in machinery (constant capital), it reduces the share of labour (variable capital), leading to declining profits, overproduction, and crisis—each more destructive and severe than the last. Capitalism resorts to financialisation, austerity, and ultimately war, but it only defers the consequences of the crisis, while preparing the ground for future economic collapse.
Today, capitalism is a global force of destruction. It is long past its proverbial ‘sell-by’ date. Its continued existence threatens not only our social and material well-being but the survival of the species itself. Only the proletariat, through communist revolution, can end this barbarism and bring material production into harmony with ecology and human needs.
Marxism? Anarchism? Communism
The historical division between Marxists and Anarchists, rooted in the split within the First International, has hamstrung the revolutionary proletarian movement across the world from inception. Without delving into all the specifics—which would be far beyond the scope of this document, in any case—it should suffice to say that this schism has been the source of much antipathy and mutual misunderstanding within the proletarian camp.
While we recognise Marx’s enormous contributions and affirm his critique of political economy and materialist method as foundational to our communist perspective, we also recognise that both Marxism and Anarchism (that is, “proper” proletarian and communist anarchism; not the Proudhonist-Federalist bile of Bakunin, Kropotkin and their epigones) are authentic expressions of the communist movement and we reject the partitioning of this movement into wholly separate and mutually-exclusive ideological “families”.
As we understand it, there is one revolutionary workers’ movement, of which proper (i.e., internationalist communist) anarchism and Marxism are formal expressions. The crucial question for us as intransigent communists and internationalists has therefore never been about which ideological franchise to align ourselves with, but instead to identify the forces — historical, present, emerging — that are carrying out the essential tasks of the communist party: to push the class struggle forward and strengthen the impulse within the proletarian class for self-organisation and political autonomy.
The future revolutionary wave will not be confined by the ideological fault lines of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, this unity cannot come about through artificial fusion, but through common struggle which clarifies all the political questions of today and tomorrow. What matters for us is not how revolutionaries or groups self-describe but the content of their political positions.
Unity between these different currents cannot be hastened or created by forming a common organisation but will be the product of a shared revolutionary practice. In the future, the advancing class struggle will integrate diverse tendencies into a singular revolutionary intelligence, which will operate as a kind of neural network in motion.
Revolutionary Party and Workers’ Self-Organisation
The lessons of the last revolutionary wave are clear: the working class must be armed with a party of its own. This Party will not a government-in-waiting, but a “Party of a new kind”: a centralised, international organisation of militants fighting for the communist program. This party will be formed in the next wave of revolutionary struggle and must remain a minority that participates within the class struggle without substituting itself for the class.
We do not claim to be that party or its sole nucleus. Instead, we are revolutionaries working toward its emergence through discussion, coordination, and intervention in the class struggle. The party will not arise from one single organisation, but from the convergence of revolutionary energies across the globe as a community of work. We reject all sectarian claims to be “the” party. Any such claim today—when the working class is fragmented, and our forces are small—could only inject confusions into the working class.
Workers’ councils—mass assemblies of mandated and revocable delegates—are the historically discovered form of proletarian political power. These organs, controlled by the class, will be responsible for coordinating the revolutionary offensive, dismantling capitalist social relations, and exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat—the transitional power of the working class—until the complete abolition of classes. In the future communist society, which will not know exploitation or oppression, these organs will function as the foundation for the collective regulation of social life by the freely associated producers, ensuring that production is organised to meet humanity’s needs.
League of Internationalist Communists – 2025
League of Internationalist Communists 