• our right to organize ourselves to struggle and fight for our collective class interests;
• our right to the wealth we create with our collective labor;
• our right to defend ourselves and our class from any and all attacks by those who seek to maintain this system of exploitation and oppression;
• our right to empower our class through all possible avenues of activity; and
• our belief that whenever any system of social relations becomes destructive toward the laboring masses of society, it is the right of those laboring masses to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new social system, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

In order to fulfill this declaration, we come together on the basis of the following principles:

2. We believe that working people are the only class that can bring about communism and the abolition of classes. Because of the nature of modern class society, the proletariat is an international class and can only bring about its liberation on an international scale; history has shown that it is impossible to achieve a classless society in a single country. Working people have no “homeland” and no common interests with the other classes in society. Because the capitalists are organized on a world scale, so too must working people. A world party of working people is needed to defeat the world system of capitalism.

3. The liberation of working people from exploitation and oppression is the task of working people themselves. Neither the capitalists nor the “middle class” as classes, nor any section of them, can carry out the tasks necessary to make the abolition of classes possible. Only working people, organized into their own political party and fighting on the basis of their own class program, can fulfill these tasks. Such a party can only be described as a communist party. The communist party, if it is to succeed, cannot represent class interests other than those of working people and cannot be composed of any other than working people.

4. The goal of any communist party worthy of the title is the defeat of capitalism, the establishment of a working people’s republic and abolition of the old order, and laying the foundation of the new, communist society — a society of general freedom, without classes and class antagonisms, and without privately-owned means of production.

5. Capitalist class society cannot be reformed out of existence, nor can the capitalist state simply be captured and used in the interests of working people. Capitalism must be overthrown and replaced with working people’s rule, based on their own organizations. Since the state is a weapon created and wielded by one class against all others — either to maintain its rule or, as in the case of working people, to abolish all other classes — the capitalist state must be replaced by the working people’s republic in order to open the path to the abolition of class society.

6. Modern capitalism — imperialism — seeks to organize and reorganize the world on its own basis. It does this through both economic and military war, especially in neo-colonial countries. Working people have no stake in the success of “their own” capitalists in times of war; rather, they only have an interest in capitalism’s defeat, which weakens its grip on the world. The defeat of imperialism in a time of war allows working people the ability to transform such conflicts into decisive battles that can lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a working people’s republic.

7. Capitalist class society claims to be based on “democracy.” However, their “democracy” is only made for capitalists, not working people. This can be seen not only in the general restrictions on the political rights of working people, but most acutely in the systematic oppression of people on the basis of gender, race, nationality, age, ability and sexuality. The liberation of working people, and, in turn, the abolition of class society, can only come about alongside the struggle for social equality and liberation of all oppressed people, and such struggles are a necessary task of the communist party. The yoke of exploitation and oppression must be lifted from all shoulders or it is not lifted at all.

8. Modern class society is a sweatshop of nations. Oppressed people, living either in the modern imperialist centers or in the oppressed neo-colonies, suffer under the twin heels of both imperialist masters and local overseers. The right of oppressed people to greater control over their lives — up to and including the formation of their own independent state — is one in which all working people have an interest, since such actions may weaken the control imperialism has on the world. While working people might not advocate such action, they can and must respect and support the right of their brothers and sisters to take this course, and understand that such action is but a step on the road to a greater class unity across racial and national lines.

9. The most basic foundation needed to achieve the goals of working people and their communist party is the organization and mobilization of our brothers and sisters around a platform of action that addresses immediate demands and also points the way to the final battle to overthrow capitalism. This platform should be a combination and distillation of the objective needs and tasks of working people, based on material conditions and flexible in its application.

10. The communist party is, by necessity, a critically thinking and self-acting party. It must, at once, allow for the widest possible freedom of criticism and debate, while also expecting the highest possible unity in action after its members decide a course of action. This unity can only be based on political principle, which comes about through education, discussion and struggle. The communist party must be flexible enough to allow for discussions to take place before the class as a whole, while at the same time strong enough to withstand attacks that capitalism and its agents wage against the party.

In uniting as a communist party based on the principles above, we not only declare our unbending opposition to the exploiting and oppressing classes, and their agents, but also their ideologies, “official histories,” and phony “truths” used to swindle members of our class into accepting capitalism as “the only viable system.”

Moreover, in uniting as a communist party of working people, we declare our rejection of the false “partisans” of our class that, while calling themselves revolutionaries, socialists or even communists, serve as one link in a chain that binds our class to the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, and appeal to our working brothers and sisters inside of these false-flag organizations to join with us in organizing and fighting for the liberation of our class.

* To explain further, the working class is that class in society that does not own or administer means of production, and has only their ability to work (their labor-power) to sell as a means of survival. The means of production are not only large factories, mines, mills and shops, but also means of independent production, such as farms, small businesses and individual professional agencies. For purposes of this document, an individual professional agency includes private and public armed and unarmed security and police departments and the professional military-officer corps.

Adopted as the Preamble to the Constitution of the Workers Party in America