Action Program

Our action program for revolution in the United States.

What we stand for

REVOLUTION is an international socialist youth organization. We are an organization of young activists who are fed up with unemployment, war, poverty, cuts, and capitalism.

We want to bring down the government of the US capitalist class and replace it with workers’-council democracy and socialism.

The rich and powerful clique responsible for breaking up our public services, slashing benefits, and leaving millions of us on unemployment will not give up its wealth and property by being voted out. They are launching a class war to make youth and workers pay the cost of capitalism’s crisis.

We want to seize their assets and abolish class society with a socialist revolution. We know that the capitalists won’t accept this, and they will fight back using all the forces at their disposal. This is why we need a revolution; this is what we are fighting for.

We won’t pay for their crisis!

Capitalism is a failing system. In 2007 this was suddenly exposed as an almighty crisis took place in financial markets across the world. Banks across the USA and Europe suddenly found that their immense wealth was based upon debts that their clients could not pay back. The vast fortunes they “owned” didn’t actually exist in the real world.

The banks were deemed “too big to fail” and were bailed out to the tune of trillions across the world. This was especially the case in America, which is heavily reliant on banking and finance.

Despite receiving these massive funds and, in many cases, although they were now controlled by the government, they continued to pay their investors and top staff billions in bonuses while repossessing people’s homes and refusing ordinary people and small businesses credit.

As the economy deteriorated, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and unemployment rocketed. The reduction in tax income and the surge in benefits applications all added to the government’s already huge expenditure.

The capitalists and the super-rich across the world were quick to decide who should pay the cost of this great crisis. And the answer was everyone but themselves – the people able to afford it.

Unemployment

Job losses in the private sector since the onset of the crisis – in financial services, retail, and manufacturing – have caused the worst youth unemployment since records began.

Condemned to leave school, college or university and face immediate unemployment, some analysts talk of the creation of a “lost generation” of young people.

Now both the Democrats and Republicans are going on the offensive on behalf of their paymasters, attacking public-sector workers and social services all across the country. But these attacks won’t “sort out” the economy – the truth is that these millionaires WANT unemployment to rise, that way they can pay workers less and make us fight each other and scrap for every job instead of fighting them.

We say:

• Fight for every job with strikes and occupations – no to all voluntary layoffs and position freezes, which are job cuts through attrition.




• The unemployed are not to blame! Benefits should be paid at the wage of one’s last job or at the level the workers’ movement deems necessary to ensure a dignified existence.




• Cut the hours with no loss of pay, not our jobs – it makes no sense for some people to work 60-hour weeks while others can’t find any.




• Tax the rich to fund a massive hospital, school, and infrastructure improvement and building program providing the unemployed with decent jobs at livable pay.




• Nationalize greedy bosses’ companies without compensation that try to close shop or lay off workers. Run them under democratic workers’ control instead.




• End poverty-conscription into the military! For good-paying, permanent, and socially-useful jobs for all workers and youth.

Cuts

America’s national debt is huge – but this apparently had nothing to do with the trillion dollar bailout packages or the historic global economic crisis that had taken place.

No, it was the “bloated public sector” which had spent too much money on “gold plated” public-sector pensions and services that working people rely on everyday.

The Democrats and Republicans have set themselves the task of destroying public services, cutting pay and pensions across the board, and privatizing services that we rely on by selling any profitable parts to big business while starving the rest of cash.

We say:

• No to every single cut! Unite to defend every service, institution, and industry. Defend the Welfare state!




• Build a broad movement of youth, workers, pensioners, migrants – entire communities to fight the cuts




• Build committees of action in each town and city to link up all people fighting the cuts in their area.




• Build a coalition of resistance that can link every local struggle into a national fight against the cuts




• Stop privatization! Nationalize all private-public contractors without compensation.




• Place all public utilities and services under direct workers’ management.

Education

All across the USA, the public-school system is under assault. Teachers throughout the K-12 system are routinely and unjustifiably made scapegoats of by both pundit and politician alike for the severe budget shortfalls afflicting many school districts. Their unions have come under the most savage of attacks; many state governments and governors are trying to severely curtail their rights or get rid of them entirely.

The billions required each year to keep America’s public-school system functioning is becoming more burdensome for a capitalist class that is growing more impatient and desirous of seeing the US government get its financial house in order. To pay back the creditors who loaned the USA money to fund the bailout packages, the stimulus spending measures, and the latest round of tax cuts for the rich, government at all levels is hacking and slashing away at education.

Charter schools and a variety of private and for-profit educational institutions have developed and extended their reach tremendously. They are being promoted by government, corporate entities, and would-be profiteers of all types seeking an outlet for their capital, as a cheap and profitable alternative to the public system and the teachers and instructors the rich don’t care to contribute towards.

Public universities are raising tuition rates and cutting financial aid to levels that will force many working-class youth to end their studies. Degree programs and curricula have been brutally eliminated. Instructors, adjuncts, and campus workers – the backbone of the university system – have endured sweeping pay cuts and seen benefits’ packages axed to the bone.

Student debt is soaring out of control – it is now larger on average than credit-card debt. The average debt accrued for a 4 year undergraduate degree is now $35,000. Some young people are completing their education and just beginning their adult lives with debts as high as $200,000! No small wonder that a major portion of American society is now saying that higher education is just not worth the costs.

In short, the capitalists, their political parties, and government, above all, want to inflict a historic defeat on the public-education system by making it pay for capitalism’s failures with steep budget cuts and by converting universities into privileged training centers for business and the rich. We must stop all their plans with direct action, occupations, and strikes.

We say:

Build an indefinite national-education strike of students and workers together to fight for:

• Free education for all paid for by taxing the rich, banks, and corporations. Provide living grants to those 16 and older, and abolish all student debt for both national and international students




• No to all the cuts! Down with the attacks against teachers and their unions!




• Kick out fat-cat managers – schools (primary and secondary) and universities to be controlled by students, teachers, parents, and workers. Education institutions should not be run like capitalist enterprises with bosses who earn hundreds of thousands each year.




• For a secular, public-education system! Nationalize under workers and students’ control all for-profit, private schools. No to religious schools – for education not indoctrination. No to privately managed charter schools.




• Build education assemblies in every town and city with delegates from every institution to coordinate and organize action and fight to generalize them into broad-based action committees.




• Organize and build independent student unions




• Knowledge accessible to all – open up the universities!




• Join with education unions in struggle and workers fighting against every cut

Unions

Trade Unions are very powerful bodies, as they represent the largest organizations of the working-class. Historically, they have played a major role in the struggle against capitalism and its excesses. The recent mass mobilizations in Wisconsin and other mid-western states provide us with a contemporary example.

In America today over 15 million workers are members of trade unions. Despite an enormous potential for action, however, trade unions are often restricted by both internal and external restraints.

The leaders of the trade unions are often paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. They have little in common with their members, and their massive salaries mean that they are cushioned from any attacks on their members. An army of appointed officials and a lack of genuine internal democracy bolster their position and attempt to stifle dissent.

Key to the role of the union leaders is negotiating between rich bosses and poorly paid workers. But to follow this strategy through indefinitely, at a time of an almighty offensive by the bosses, often means desperate pleading for the tiniest crumbs at the expense of their members.

Complimenting these leaders is a set of anti-union laws, which make political strikes and solidarity actions illegal. The courts and the police use these laws against striking workers, trying to limit the success of strikes and picket lines.

We say:

• Down with the anti-union bills! For the right to join or build a union with fully recognized and unmitigated collective-bargaining rights.




• For union recognition in every workplace.




• Abolish the Taft-Hartley Act and all “right-to-work” laws. Mobilize to force the passage of the Employee Free-Choice Act.




• One out, all out” – delegate based cross-union strike committees in every workplace, town, and city to serve as the basis for workers’ control over production.




• Union leaders and officials to be paid the same as their members and replaceable at any time.




• Build a rank-and-file movement across our unions that can work with the leaders where possible and without them where necessary.




• The unions need to go on a massive campaign amongst young people in the workplaces, the schools, and the streets to create a consciousness of the importance of being organized. This is necessary to revitalize the unions.




• The unions need to fight for unity between the unemployed and those who work. This means raising the slogan “the right to work – jobs for everyone” and setting up union sub-organizations for the unemployed.




• Demand the unions fight for a national minimum wage at a level determined by the workers’ movement.

Youth Oppression

Young people are particularly exploited under capitalism. We are often forced to do the most menial jobs for the lowest pay of anyone in the workplace. All too often we are the first to be laid off when a boss wants to increase his or her profits. Now millions of us are unemployed, the bosses try to make us work for free in return for a couple of nice-sounding sentences on our next resume.

In the family, we can be mistreated and subject to the caprice of our parents or guardians. We are told what we can or cannot do and, in some cases, what our future will be. It mimes closely the relationship between employee and employer in the workplace. It denies the fundamental right of youth to their independence.

When young people hang out in the streets or around shopping centers, we’re portrayed as “hoodlums.” Dispersal Orders are used to break up groups of people and criminalize behavior if we don’t buy enough to justify our presence.

We say:

• Low pay, no way! Abolish age-segregated wages, benefits, and end internships and “free-labor” schemes




• Fight for the right to free association




• No to second-class citizenship; we want to be able to choose where we live and who with; what education we receive; and whether we want to work




• Legalize immediately all internet file-sharing! We have a right to such elements of culture as music, art, and literature.




• We need a government program to create more youth centers and free access to leisure, sports, and entertainment facilities. These centers and facilities should be run democratically by groups of workers and service users.




• No criminalization of young people. No laws against consenting sex.




• No parental or religious restrictions on sex education in schools.

Racism and Xenophobia

The historic function of racism is to obstruct working-class unity. Muslims and immigrant laborers today are constantly scapegoated in the media, by bosses’ politicians, and even by labor leaders to distract millions of working-class people from the conditions associated with capitalism in crisis.

From protests at the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City to a Florida pastor’s threat to burn the Koran, overt reactionary elements and groups are spreading and inciting vehement hate speech against people of the Muslim faith

Government surveillance programs supposedly to keep tabs on members of the Muslim community and arrest developments in home-grown Islamist radicalism have been extended and utilized to target a variety of progressive activists and causes at the same time. The indictments and grand-jury proceedings against a number of prominent anti-war activists remain ongoing.

The US-led wars of occupation help justify the repression and curtailment of fundamental democratic rights at home, and such measures at home in turn help to justify the continuation of the occupations and further extension of such wars abroad.

Islamophobia’s rise is becoming a real danger to working-class unity and democratic rights. It is predominantly a crucial tool in the hands of the most right-wing, reactionary elements in America to manufacture an artificial social enemy out of Muslims and promote the most imperialist of interests of the US capitalist class.

Migrant and immigrant laborers – originating mostly from Central and South America – represent some of the most heavily exploited and disenfranchised sectors of the population working and existing currently in the United States. Oppressed and brutalized under some of the most appalling living and working conditions, forced to work long hours for the most meager of wages, and left with little if any legal recourse to defend themselves, this super-exploited segment of the working class has become a veritable pariah in both society and within the labor movement.

Labor leaders have spread the most vicious of lies and vilified migrants and undocumented workers falsely for the cause of low wages, unemployment, “social degradation,” etc. Many unions simply refuse to recruit and organize such workers. But migrant laborers and immigrants were not responsible for the financial meltdown or the “Great Recession” brought in its wake. They were then and remain some of its greatest victims. The problems of our present society were not caused by too many people being here but by capitalism.

African-Americans make up roughly 50% of the prison population today – mostly as a result of violations of petty drug crimes. As if unemployment were not bad enough – which is devastatingly high for black youth – blacks suffer the indignities of widespread police oppression, deployed by a system that refuses to acknowledge the relationship between drug activity and economic desperation.

We say:

• Unemployment is not caused by immigration! For a massive public-works program under workers’ control to provide good-paying, socially-useful jobs for migrants, immigrant laborers, blacks, and everyone suffering undue hardship under conditions of mass unemployment.




• Immediate citizenship and amnesty for all “illegals!” Scrap the Dream Act and any act that requires military service or college enrollment before citizenship.




• Extend full democratic rights to everyone!




• End all border controls!




• Defend and extend Affirmative Action programs




• Equal pay for equal work




• Tear down the border wall along the Mexican border. Remove the National Guard. Build a mass workers’ response to confront and disperse proto-fascist organizations like the “Minute-Men” group.




• For the right of immigrants and migrant workers to form independent unions.




• For the right of minority groups to caucus inside the labor movement.




• No racist or religious scapegoating by anyone – including the government, racist and fascist groups, the media, or employers.




• Down with calls for a “national” language! For the right of immigrants and migrants to use their primary language in all areas of public life.




• Fight against the government’s tactic of divide and conquer between ethnicities and nationalities

Sexism and Homophobia

As the Republicans and Democrats slash public spending on vital services and welfare, women in particular will feel the bite. Republicans and their Tea-Party wing are determined to force women back into the home and roll-back the progress of women’s liberation. The recent attacks on Planned Parenthood and Article X are just a couple examples.

The bosses and their politicians want to strengthen the “nuclear family,” meaning LGBT communities will continue to be vilified as “abnormal” and “unproductive.”

Not only is it impossible currently in over 40 states for gay men and women to become married, those states that do allow for it provide disparaging second-tier “legal unions.” Many of the rights afforded to married couples do not apply to them.

We say:

• Free childcare for all paid for by taxing the rich and bankers




• For a woman’s right to choose – free, safe abortion at her discretion. Fight for an end to attacks on abortion rights and defend and extend free contraception to all. Rights to free breast screenings on demand.




• Equal pay for equal work




• Massive investment in refugees and other women’s centers and services. If the government tries to cut them, occupy to ensure these vital services remain open.




• Legalize gay marriage nationwide. Full rights afforded to such couples.




• Scrap the Defense of Marriage Act




• Rescind Proposition 8 in California




• No discrimination based on sexuality – for the right to marry, to become ordained, take up any job, give blood, etc.




• Organize against homophobic attacks




• Education on what it means to be LGBT in schools, including in sex education.

Imperialism, War, and Capitalism

Over the past decade, Western countries have faced major problems extracting enough wealth from the rest of the world. They turned to the age-old remedy of invading poorer nations to take control of their economies. Both the Republicans and Democrats led these invasions under the guise of the “War on Terror.”

This is the latest form of imperialism, a system where the highly-developed capitalist countries take charge of large sections of the world through economic, political, and military control. They then open up the conquered territories and allow their own multinationals and financial institutions to ruthlessly exploit its peoples to a much higher degree than they would be able to in their own countries.

With the current economic crisis making profits even less stable, and new competitors such as China rising to challenge the traditional imperialist powerhouses, we can expect an upturn in wars of conquest across the globe.

REVOLUTION stands in solidarity with all peoples and groups fighting imperialism and calls on American workers to defeat US imperialism.

We say:

• Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! Close the bases. Freedom for Palestine! Stop the bombings in Libya!




• Victory to the resistance! We support the right of all people to fight back against all forms of modern imperialism, privatized / globalized agendas, the state’s economic motives, and call for a fighting unity of all forces.




• Take direct action and strikes to stop the war-machine! Not a penny or a person for imperialist war.




• Soldiers should have the right to democratic organization within the army and should be able to refuse the orders of their officers




• Soldiers should not have to serve a minimum of four years in the military.




• Defend all international revolutions, national-liberation struggles and revolutionary situations, and oppose imperialist intervention into them.

Defend the Environment

Capitalism’s never-ending search for profits means that as a system it cannot end the destruction of the environment. Some bosses can make some money from going green (or appearing to), but many environmentally-disastrous industries and practices are too profitable to be abandoned by the system as a whole.

The BP oil spill in Mexico and the failure of all major international climate conferences show that the capitalists don’t care about the future of this planet.

Only the workers and poor of the world have an interest in ensuring its survival. The planet should be under the control of the many who depend on it, not the few who exploit it.

We say:

• Punitive fines and strict controls for the corporate polluters. Stop the wreckers from profiting from their crimes.




• A major investment in alternative energy and a planned shift away from an economy based on fossil-fuels. Take the wealth of the oil companies and use it to invest in wind, air, and solar power.




• No more Green Wash! Stop the carbon-credits system which prevents poor countries from developing/li>
  
  

• We need a free and comprehensive public-transport system paid for by taxing the rich




• Factories in the car industry threatened by closure must be nationalized and reorganized to produce vehicles for public transport, all monitored under workers’ control.




• All imperialist nations have to put unconditional cuts on carbon emissions by at least 30% and aim to reduce by the year 2020.

Democratic Rights

America is frequently touted as the most free, democratic country in the world. But current political and social conditions speak for themselves.

In Michigan, elected legislators can be removed if they contradict the policies of appointed “managers” of the executive.

Across the country, the rights of workers’ combinations / unions have been seriously restricted or outright dissolved.

The nation’s second chamber, the Senate, is one of the least democratic / representative institutions in the country; a small handful of senators from combined thinly populated states can hold the rest of the nation hostage.

The power of the executive branch is out of control and trumps the “checks” of Congress.

The highest legal authority in the USA, the Supreme Court, is a body composed of appointees of the executive; the millions have no say in who gets to interpret the nation’s laws and decide matters of national importance.

While there is no way to reform the current capitalist state into an organ that can meet the needs of the working class and poor, we can fight for demands that facilitate our struggle to overthrow the capitalists and their chief organ of class dominance and violence.

We say:

• For a unitary not a federal system – laws made by the millions to be recognized in every state without exception.




• Make all levels of the judiciary electable by the masses of the people.




• Abolish the Senate




• Abolish the presidency and the executive branch




• End “winner take all.” For proportional party representation based on votes gained in all legislatures. For the right of immediate recall of legislative representatives by the masses.




• Ban the death penalty nationwide




• Defend and improve the benefits of the Welfare state: unemployment insurance, health care, and state assistance of all kinds to the poor and needy.




• End the “surveillance” state. Mobilize to abolish the government’s spying programs on and legal oppression of activists and minorities.




• Dissolve the standing army; for the creation of a democratically coordinated and armed national workers and small farmers’ militia under the control of mass assemblies of the people.

Revolutionary-youth movement and a Fifth International

Young people show at every turn that they can be the most militant, radical fighters against capitalism, war, and poverty. We need an organization of our own – an organization that belongs to us and is not under the control of any “adult” party or movement. We need to do it ourselves. Only in this way, by making our own initiatives, learning from our own mistakes, and developing our own methods of campaigning will we be able to bring hundreds of thousands of young people into revolutionary struggle. We must organize into a international revolutionary socialist youth movement, one that can decide its policies through democratic meetings in every country and international delegate meetings.

But young people alone cannot beat this system: it is the workers of the world who move the economy and who have to consent or be coerced into being ruled over by the capitalists. That is why we fight for the formation of revolutionary parties in every country with the explicit aim of fighting for the abolition of capitalism globally and for international socialism.

But there is no national road to socialism. We need to create an international party of the working class and fight for it to adopt a revolutionary program.

There have been four international parties formed in working-class history. Now is the time to form a new, fifth, revolutionary international.

Young workers, students, unemployed, of the world – unite! We have a future to reclaim, a world to free from fear and a new life to build for all humanity.

ONE SOLUTION: REVOLUTION!