Statement of Principles

We are revolutionary socialists

We understand capitalism as inherently exploitative and reject all notions that it can be merely reformed. Those who own as private property the means of production steal the wealth produced by wage workers in the form of surplus value. As socialists, we advocate the abolition of the bourgeois state.

We are anti-imperialists

We uphold the right of all nations to self-determination and recognize that in the United States the national liberation of Black and Indigenous peoples must be prioritized in the struggle to overthrow capitalism. We focus our anti-imperialist criticism on “our own” bourgeoisie and their campaigns of brutal repression and violence against colonized people and the international working class.

We are materialists

We are committed to studying and participating in the development of a scientific understanding of class struggle on the basis of dialectical and historical materialism. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” We hold as essential the practice of self-criticism as our understanding grows.

We reject white supremacy, patriarchy, and ableism

We recognize capitalism’s role in perpetuating the violent institutions of white supremacy through anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, Orientalist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic racism; of the patriarchal institutions of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia; and of the systematic exclusion of disabled persons from economic and social life. It is essential to combat the ideological components of these systems within our movement and among the working class even while working to overturn their material base.

We are environmentalists

In their determination to accumulate capital by any means, the capitalist class has brought humanity to the brink of extinction with the destruction of the global climate. The socialist struggle necessarily includes a commitment to ending climate destroying practices and replacing them with ecologically responsible policies in the interest of the working class, humanity, and all life.