1. Within Britain the principal contradiction, which plays the leading and decisive role, is the contradiction between the working class and the imperialist bourgeoisie.
2. Britain is an imperialist country run by a ruling class in an advanced stage of decadence. British imperialism is rotting alive!
3. The working class must overthrow the dictatorship of the imperialist (monopoly capitalist) bourgeoisie by socialist revolution, smash the bourgeois state, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. This will be a dictatorship over the minority, the bourgeoisie, in order to smash their attempts to return to power, and will be a democracy for the great majority, the working class and working people.
4. The bourgeoisie will not step down from the stage of history voluntarily. It is always the first to put the tank and machinegun on the agenda. The working class must expect the bourgeoisie to use armed force in an attempt to suppress the socialist revolution, and must be ready to use armed force to defend the working people and to carry though to the end the struggle to seize state power from the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie. The working class would prefer to take power peacefully, but never has this happened in the history of socialist revolution. We cannot expect a “peaceful transition” to socialism. Furthermore, it is impossible to smash the monopoly capitalist state by relying on winning a majority in Parliament.
5. The contradiction between the people of Britain and the two superpowers is not the principal contradiction within Britain, but is a subordinate one. It will only become the principal contradiction if Britain is directly threatened with invasion by one of the superpowers.,/p>
6. It is essential to combine the struggle against the British monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie with the struggle against the two superpowers. The key to combining these two struggles properly is to pay attention to combating and exposing the policy of the British government towards the superpowers.
7. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, the monopoly stage of capitalism, in which ownership of the means of production is concentrated in ever larger economic combines. Imperialism sharpens all the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme.
8. The basic contradiction is between the social character of production and the ownership and control of the means of production by the members bf the monopoly capitalist class. This basic contradiction manifests itself in the principal contradiction between the working class and the imperialist bourgeoisie, and gives rise to economic and political crises which the bourgeoisie is unable to solve.
9. In the era of imperialism capitalism has outlived its progressive role. The gigantic increase of productive power cannot be fully used under capitalist conditions, and the forces of production are in acute conflict with the relations of production. This is the era of socialist revolution.
10. The interests of the monopoly capitalists and of the working class are irreconcilable. Unpitying exploitation and the anarchy and the deep and recurrent crises of the capitalist mode of production oppress the working class and working people in a thousand different ways. The continual attacks of the monopoly capitalists on working people meet resistance in fierce and bitter economic class struggles. This resistance limits the extent to which the monopoly capitalists can increase the rate of exploitation, and trains the working class in battle.
11. Capital must accumulate in order to survive. It grows by keeping for itself the surplus value produced by workers after they have reproduced the value of their labour power, their wages. Surplus value is the source of all profit. The unending search for surplus value, for profit, is the motive force of capitalist production.
12. Capitalism can produce only for profit. It is forced constantly to seek new ways to achieve the maximum rate of profit. Competition between rival capitals (which still persists in modified form in the monopoly stage of capitalism) ensures the destruction of all capitals which do not conform to the blind laws of capitalist production.
13. Because an increased proportion of constant capital is needed as a result of the development of the means of production, the general tendency of the rate of profit is to fall. This tendency becomes ever stronger as capitalism develops and this process greatly sharpens the contradictions of capitalism.
14. The monopoly capitalists must continually try to raise their rate of profit by cutting the labour costs of production. They are also forced to seek superprofit from colonial and neo-colonial exploitation.
15. The monopoly capitalists cut their costs of production mainly by stepping up their already vicious exploitation of the working class. They cut their wage bills by reducing wages and sacking workers. They also make the remaining workers work longer hours and they increase the intensity of labour. Monopoly capitalists also reduce their wage bill by buying more advanced machinery in order to produce the same goods with less labour.
16. The cut-throat competition between monopoly capitalists, particularly at times of crisis, means that eventually factories using outdated machinery will inevitably be closed down unless the owners can make a profit by installing new machinery, and have the capital to do so. In many cases they cannot. And so repeatedly the monopoly capitalists are forced by the laws of capitalist production to destroy the means of production on a massive scale and make thousands of workers unemployed.
17. As a result of these different tendencies the growing number of unemployed in Britain now totals well over a million. The monopoly capitalists expect the figure over the next few years to rise higher still. They take advantage of the existence of this vast “reserve army of labour” in the struggle over wages to attempt to hold down still more firmly the wages of the working class as a whole.
18. In its restless search for maximum profits, spurred on by ruthless competition, each monopoly capitalist company is bound to attempt to increase its productive strength to the full. Yet this continually increasing capacity to produce goods inevitably and repeatedly comes up with a jolt against the restricted purchasing power of the workers to buy these goods. Goods pile up unsold, factories run well below capacity or go bankrupt. These are crises of overproduction, cyclical crises of capitalism, which are now occurring with increasing frequency and without full recovery of production after each crisis.
19. Especially at times of crisis the monopoly capitalists tell us to tighten our belts and slave harder for them, “in the national interest”. They try to increase exploitation so as to get the huge profit needed to start capital expanding again. Competition among the monopoly capitalists to minimise losses is very fierce. In this battle the winners as well as the losers lay workers off and further reduce living standards. Inflation and unemployment are the two main ways the British monopoly capitalists at present are trying] to offload their acute crisis onto the backs of the working class.
20. In addition to cyclical crises British capitalism is suffering a general crisis as it continues to decline internationally after once being the strongest imperialist power in the world. Economically this is seen in the massive| destruction of old industries without counterbalancing building of new industrial strength.
21. With a restricted home market, British monopoly capitalist companies desperately compete to sell their commodities in the home markets of other capitalist countries. British monopoly capitalism must “export or die”. But rival imperialist countries such as the United States, West Germany and Japan, have more powerful and economical means of production and can sell their commodities more cheaply while still making a profit. With this profit they can develop even more powerful means of production. In addition the increasingly aggressive economic competition from Soviet social imperialism in fields such as shipping further sharpens the international plight of British imperialism. In this desperate economic struggle, British monopoly capitalism cannot catch up. It is being relentlessly wiped out in one sector of production after another.
22. In response to this fierce international economic competition a section of the British imperialist bourgeoisie, backed by the revisionists, calls for import controls and other protectionist devices. But such measures in the long term further restrict the international market and intensify the crisis.
23. British imperialism also tries to offload its crisis onto the backs of the people of the third world, but it is suffering relentless blows from the rise of the third world countries. The struggle of the third world countries against neo-colonialism for a “new international economic order” is a great anti-imperialist struggle. They are seizing control of imperialist “investments of capital in their own countries, which have enabled imperialism, including British imperialism, parasitically to suck rich super-profits from the sweat of the oppressed peoples and nations. The third world countries are progressive smashing imperialist control of international markets and the imperialist practice of selling industrial goods dear and buying third world raw material goods cheap. Through united struggle they are gradually forcing more equal trading relations on second world countries.
24. Despite its will British imperialism is being increasingly stripped of the rich pickings it has stolen by exploiting the countries of the third world. This further greatly increases its crisis. In particular, in the next few years the irresistible surge of the national liberation struggles of the peoples of southern Africa will deliver an extremely powerful blow to British imperialism, which has huge economic interests in the area. British imperialism cannot escape this blow, whichever way it wriggles’.
25. The government is an executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. With the great sharpening of the crisis of British monopoly capitalism on all fronts, the government inevitably plays a greater and greater part in the imperialist economy, whatever the desires of any individual monopoly capitalist on this matter. Monopoly capitalism is increasingly openly becoming state monopoly capitalism.
26. As section after section of British monopoly capitalism totters towards complete bankruptcy, more and more only the state can provide the massive source of funds for huge investments in more advanced production equipment needed to stay in the cut-throat race with other imperialist economies. British Steel, Rolls Royce, British Leyland: whether it is called “nationalization” or “government assistance” the essence of the matter is the same. The industries are still run for profit by committees composed of members of the monopoly capitalist class. Such state-capitalist nationalizations are vivid examples of the general tendency under monopoly capitalism to extreme concentration and centralization of capital in ever fewer hands. They intensify the exploitation of the working class.
27. The hundreds of millions of pounds which the state gives these monopoly capitalist companies are screwed out of the pockets of the working people by taxes. Taxation is one major way the state robs the workers on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
28. Another major way the state robs the workers is by inflation. By spending thousands of millions of pounds each year more than if. receives in revenue, the state debases the currency, that is, it “inflates” the currency. Increased government overspending in the short term gives the appearance of stimulating the economy, but in the long term, by cutting the purchasing power of the workers it shrinks the market for the goods of the monopoly capitalists and only intensifies the crisis.
29. During this raging inflation of the currency the giant monopoly capitalist companies have merely to put up their prices to compensate themselves for the fall in the value of money. But the working class has to fight hard for each wage rise it gets. At the same time the imperialist bourgeoisie conducts a protracted political campaign to convince people that workers’ wage rises are the cause of inflation. They say that workers may increase their wages by only a few percent when the currency is falling in value by 15 to 20%. This is their way of cutting the living standard-of the workers and shifting the crisis of capitalism onto the backs of the working class.
30. The government covers the massive budget deficits which cause inflation, by borrowing huge sums of money from British and foreign finance capital. The interest charges on these debts come to £6,000 million a year. Once again, the working people have to pay for this through taxation!
31. The working class must fight all attempts by the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie to shift the burden of their economic crisis onto our backs. We must resist all wage cuts, price rises, unemployment, speed ups, tax rises, and cuts in government welfare services. We must make the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie pay for their crisis!
32. The economic crisis of British imperialism greatly sharpens the political contradictions of the bourgeois state. The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another. The fundamental political problem for the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie is to protect the class interests of the small exploiting minority while obscuring the true nature of its state from the great majority of the people.
33. At present the British monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie hide their dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under the mask of bourgeois democracy. This is democracy for the monopoly capitalist class and their servants and dictatorship for the working class and working people. Once every few years the mass of the people have the shoddy right to vote for one or another representative of the bourgeoisie who will repress and try to fool them in parliament.
34. The so-called two party system is nothing but a device for maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. By creating a great song and dance about which party will win an election and form a government, the bourgeoisie tries to prevent us seeing that both parties serve the interests of the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
35. The two main political parties are two wings of a single bird of prey. The Conservative Party plays the “hard man” towards the working class. The Labour Party plays the “soft man”, who poses as the friend of the working class. Both unite in trying to fool and confuse the working class and to keep it trapped within the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
36. The social democratic Labour Party is a bourgeois political party. This is determined by the class it serves politically and the bourgeois class character of its ideology.
37. The Labour Party is especially valuable to the bourgeoisie in hiding the class nature of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In words the Labor Party claims to be the party of the working class but in deeds it serves the bourgeoisie. The Labour Party is “the best bosses’ party”. By posing as a friend of the working class it can get the cooperation of the opportunist leaders of the trade unions for its capitalist policies of attacking the working class, in a way that the Conservative Party cannot. Thus it success fully binds the workers’ economic organizations, the Trade Unions, into the capitalist system.
The opportunists and some sections of the bourgeoisie say that the Labor Party at times wobbles towards serving the interests of the working class. These are not accidental wobbles. They are a deliberate and conscious balancing act. This continual balancing act is essential if the Labour Party is to fool the working class to give into the demands of the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
38. As between the two main bourgeois political parties, the Labour Party is not “the lesser evil”, as the opportunists shout. The Labour Party is the greater danger! By their cry the opportunists try to tie the working class to the coat-tails of a bourgeois reformist political party.
39. Compared to the Conservative Party, the Labour Party represents that wing of the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie which favours greater state intervention. Although this is disliked by some individual capitalists, greater state monopoly capitalism is the only way British monopoly capitalism can last out a few more years. In this respect the Labour Party is the more far-sighted political party of the bourgeoisie.
40. By tying the opportunist trade union leaders to the bourgeois state the Labour Party opens the way to fascism - the open and terroristic dictatorship of the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie. The decisive step from bourgeois democracy to fascism is the institution of state trade unions coupled with violent repression of independent working class organizations.
41. The bourgeoisie prefer to conceal their dictatorship under the mask of bourgeois democracy. But increasingly, if their rule is fundamentally threatened and whenever it is in their interests to do so, they will attempt to prolong their rule by introducing fascism and fascist methods. The main danger of fascism comes from the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie, through their control of the state machine, but they also promote various open fascist organizations as front-runners to prepare public opinion for state fascism. The working class and the people must be fully prepared to meet the danger of fascism.
42. The bourgeoisie has control of the ideological organs of the state and uses them to promote bourgeois individualism and idealism, to try to fool and mystify the working class and keep it ignorant. They push religions of various forms and sickly bourgeois “humanism”. They attack the proletarian science of Marxism-Leninism directly and also by making use of revisionists who use its words but rob it of its revolutionary class content. The bourgeoisie pushes ideological viewpoints that split and divide the working class, especially racism, and also such attitudes as male superiority and bourgeois feminism.
43. Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.
44. Our enemies are the monopoly capitalist class and all those in league with them.
45. The leading force and the main force in the socialist revolution in Britain is the working class, and in particular the industrial working class. Capitalism brings into being and unites the working class in great masses and teaches them to fight in a disciplined and united way. It is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most unselfish and most thoroughly revolutionary. Only the working class, led by its Party, can unite the great majority of the people in the struggle for socialism.
46. The petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia form a large body of middle strata of working people, most of whom can become the close friends of the working class in the struggle for the socialist revolution.
47. The petty bourgeoisie, mainly composed of small businessmen, shopkeepers and small farmers, is a class caught between the working class and the bourgeoisie: it inevitably vacillates between these two classes. The intelligentsia, who do mental work, have a range of strata within them. The lowest intelligentsia are closest to the working class. The middle intelligentsia waver; while the small body of the reactionary higher intelligentsia are in league with the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
48. The small and medium bourgeoisie is partly oppressed by the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie, but in general it lines up with the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie. Our aim with these sections of the bourgeoisie is to neutralize them in the struggle for the socialist revolution.
49. Our fundamental strategic line for the socialist revolution is to build the broadest possible united front of all people who can be united against the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie, under the leadership of the working class and its vanguard revolutionary Communist Party. In the united front the working class must follow a policy of both unity and struggle with its vacillating allies, in the early stages of building the united front it is necessary to concentrate on rallying the working class, and especially the industrial working class, before attempting to broaden the united front later. Otherwise there is a danger of falling into right opportunist errors of abandoning the leading role of the working class in the united front.
50. Our basic method is the mass line, “from the masses, to the masses”. The revolutionary Communist Party will increasingly lead and guide the mass of the people to struggle for their just demands, sum up their experience and raise their ideological and political consciousness and their organizational strength step by step, until they form a giant army capable of overthrowing the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
51. We place our faith in the people. We will help them to raise their understanding of individual oppression to collective oppression, from collective oppression to class oppression, from awareness only of economic oppression to awareness of political oppression, and from awareness of the need for reforms within the existing system to awareness of the need for political struggles for socialist revolution.
52. At the place of work, in the course of struggle against the employer and the capitalist class, we will 1) rally the advanced workers around the revolutionary Communist Party and deepen their consciousness, and 2) strive to turn the trade unions into fighting class organizations through bold and wise Communist leadership.
53. The revolutionary Communist Party must pay particular attention to those sections of the working class that are doubly oppressed. It must unite with them as part of the class and mobilize them for the socialist revolution.
54. Women “hold up half the sky”. But they have been oppressed since the beginning of class society because the exploiting classes have continually forced them to accept an inferior position in social production and society. Only the socialist revolution will lay the basis for the complete emancipation of women.
55. Working class women are mainly oppressed economically. Women in social production are often super-exploited. Married women are used as a major part of the reserve army of labour. Their tasks in the home are socially isolated and full of drudgery. In crises of capitalism women are forced to work harder in the home to make up for cuts in living standards, health and education. The monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie uses the doubly-oppressed position of women to hold down the living standards of the working class as a who1e.
Women also suffer political and social inequality.
56. Bourgeois reforms can make no fundamental difference to the position of women under capitalism. The revolutionary Communist Party must specifically mobilize women in the struggle against their severe oppression as an essential front in the overall battle against the imperialist bourgeoisie.
57. We oppose all national oppression within the United Kingdom and work to strengthen the fighting unity of the working class of the British Isles against the British monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
58. We uphold the right to self-determination, including the right to separation, for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
59. We support the demand for regional autonomy within a federal republic for Scotland and Wales, but do not advocate separation for them.
60. We advocate separation of Northern Ireland from the British state, and demand that British troops get out of Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland the target of the revolution is for independence from British imperialism. We will work to help the unity of the Irish nation grow in the course of the common struggle for independence against imperialism, especially British imperialism.
61. In order to build the strongest possible proletarian organization to resist and overthrow the united forces of British imperialism throughout the British imperialist state, the revolutionary Communist Party must be built and must rally the working class and working people in the struggle against British imperialism and opportunism in all parts of that British state. This includes Northern Ireland until the time when the struggle to separate Northern Ireland from the British state is successful. The regional organization of the revolutionary Communist Party in Northern Ireland must develop close fraternal links with the genuine revolutionary Communist organization in the Irish Republic. When Northern Ireland has been successfully separated from the United Kingdom state, the revolutionary Communists in Northern Ireland must strengthen their organizational unity with the revolutionary Communist Party in the south with the aim of forming a single Party for the whole of Ireland.
62. Black and other national minorities make up another important section of the working class that is doubly oppressed. National oppression is an inherent feature of imperialism and can only be completely eliminated with the overthrow of imperialism. At the same time the revolutionary Communist League must firmly support and specifically mobilize the national minorities in the struggle against their bitter oppression, as one front in the overall battle against the imperialist bourgeoisie.
63. Revolutionary Communists must fight all forms of racial discrimination, particularly at the place of work. The Immigration Act of 1971 must be repealed; like all immigration laws under imperialism, it is racist and must be opposed. The Immigration Act discriminates racially between immigrants conning to this country. Furthermore it implies that black immigrants are responsible for such things as unemployment, housing shortages, bad schools, and inadequate social services. In addition it sets up a system of harassment of black people and threatens any immigrant who struggles against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its state with automatic deportation.
64. Black communities menaced by racist attacks must rely on their own strength and on the working class, and must build self-defence organizations. They must not rely on the bourgeois state or rosy stories about bourgeois reforms.
65. Black and other national minority workers will play an important and proud role in the revolutionary struggles of the whole of the British working class.
66. Overall, nationally and internationally, the target of the British socialist revolution, for which we will wage a protracted, complicated and heroic campaign until final victory, is summed up in the following slogan: