Foreword

The following is the platform of the Sonoran International. Its purpose is to outline our general beliefs and principles, as well as the doctrine of Communism. Many of the theses we put forth here are not elaborated upon fully within this document due to this narrow purpose, but as we continue to further analyze and release more works; these points will be further solidified and proven elsewhere. This platform is also heavily guided by our current situation, and as such it will evolve as both the class struggle and our place within it grows over time.

Where We Are In the Modern Day

Today the international working class must face one of its greatest challenges in its history. Everywhere, capital is strengthening its control and has become so confident in its authority that it feels empowered to take the new measures of exploitation that are necessary to maintain profits in the increasingly competitive world market.

Meanwhile, the doctrine of Communism is actively misrepresented by both those who fear it and those who use its bastardization for their own gain. The motive for this misinformation is irrelevant, for the outcome is the same: the discrediting of the idea that the working class must fight and defend itself against the bourgeoisie. This is contradicted by the reality of the majority of people’s lived experience, which instead point to the truth: the world is based on classes of people, and one small class, the bourgeoisie, holds all the power over the vast majority of humanity, who survive by earning a wage, the proletariat. 

We find ourselves in a new period of ever worsening crisis due to the contradictions of this system, and this time, the survival of all life on Earth depends on how this crisis is navigated. Symptoms of this crisis of capital include the climate crisis, a potential third World War, and countless other societal threats. Whether we can avert disaster and extinction depends entirely on whether or not the working class can supersede the capitalist class by seizing all power for itself, making decisions not for the profits and maintenance of power for some, but for the liberation and benefit of all. 

How the Relations of Production Have Historically Informed Society

Economic realities do not fall from the sky, nor are they revealed to great men in dreams. Social systems are informed overwhelmingly by the material realities of how value is produced, and the social relations involving who is given its final rights.

Under feudalism, guilds existed in the cities where the key form of capital existed in tools and the knowledge of how to use them while serfs were bound to farmland in the countryside that was owned by nobility. This material reality led to the development of societal relations along the lines of guilds that would spread knowledge from master to apprentice. As well as serfs dominated by local lords, reporting to the royalty and the religious order that would reinforce them.

Over the centuries, advancements in technology brought increased efficiency but often required increased complexity. The need to manage this complicated technology necessitated a similarly complex social hierarchy. This cycle of increasing technological innovation inspiring social change, is what brought the higher stages of feudal society, defined by production from specialized craftsmen in workshops, worldwide exchange by merchants, and governance conducted by centralized nation states and religious institutions.

In the mid 18th century the industrial revolution paved the way for the end of late feudalism and the rise of the capitalist mode of production. Technological innovations allowed for mechanized factories to produce goods of higher quality and with greater efficiency than the old tools of workshop workers. Because these new machines were so expensive yet easy to operate, a new class of capitalists emerged who had the funds to buy these machines and factories, as well as to pay a low wage to workers in exchange for operating them. This is the origin of the capitalist system.

The Tendencies of Capitalism

There are several phenomena that are inherent to this economic model that we can analyze. First is the fact that as it enters its highest stages, Capital will continually find itself in crisis. This is primarily due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The result of this is that Capital has to resort to every possible measure in order to maintain profitability. Everything external to Capital, the environment, working conditions, human lives themselves, anything and everything that stands between Capital and profitability, no matter how sacred or treasured, will eventually be abandoned or commodified for the sake of Capital accumulation.

Also inherent to this system are cycles of economic depression and recovery. This has been noted by many bourgeois economists as unavoidable, yet they often miss that the ultimate expression of this cycle is the necessity of war. Modern war is an inevitable manifestation of the competition between capitalist power blocs. It is a consequence of global imperialism. Thus, it cannot be solved by supporting one side or another, and it will continue for as long as Capitalism exists.

Following these devastating conflicts there is usually a period of recovery, as the economy can again shift to peace time needs and entire societies are rebuilt, with particular economic benefits being achieved by the victorious side. An example of this is the massive economic boom in the United States following the Second World War. But these periods of prosperity and the seemingly progressive social developments that accompany them are eventually lost in later periods of depression.

What must be therefore understood of the nature of Capitalism is that its place as a progressive force in history is over. Those in the reformist left (whether or not they admit it as such) who advocate for a fairer and more progressive form of Capitalism fundamentally fail to understand this reality. They point to the grand reforms made during the growth of Capital and proclaim that such a tendency will continue until capitalism reforms itself into a progressive utopia, without seeing the historical tendency of Capital to begin reforming itself towards fascism in times of crisis when its growth slows.

Summary of the Nature of Bourgeois Government and the Role of Reform

First and foremost, it must be understood that the state (regardless of its exact form) existing under a capitalist mode of production is not a neutral entity between classes but a mechanism for the exertion of the power of the ruling class over the oppressed class. 

Under Capitalism, Capital is held as private property. It is owned by an individual or a small group of individuals who dictate everything relating to these assets. As these relations of production first appeared, new forms of government were established, nakedly in the interests of the Capitalist class in their earliest appearances, and still ultimately serving their interests today.

Even voting, which is advertised as the ultimate form of democratic government, came into its modern form with the exclusion of all who did not own sufficient property or pay a high enough tax. 

What must be understood is that despite the apparent extension of voting rights to previously disenfranchised groups; state power under Capitalism is still ultimately held by the bourgeoisie. As Capitalism developed further and a larger number of educated workers were needed; educated workers eventually began to demand more rights and powers. For each movement that grew in strength enough to challenge the status quo; Capital responded with a strategy of violence against its radical elements and active support for those willing to work within the system. Examples of this include the suffragettes in 1920 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. 

Because the aftermath of these movements amounted to mere concessions from the ruling class, they had no true guarantee. During times of crisis and class struggle, and especially as technology allows for more efficient means of surveillance and control, the state can be directed to take rights and privileges away just as quickly as they were once granted. These supposed guarantees are not new universal liberties written in stone, but tactical decisions to be applied or repealed freely, as necessitated by what best supports the continuation of Capital at any given moment. 

Politics and economics are today falsely understood as separate concepts, but in actuality are inextricably linked. For as long as the basis of our society is the profit motive, any state that exists will always exist at the behest of the profit motive. To attempt to change such a state of affairs in order to improve the lives of the local or national working class, without fundamentally addressing the base means of production that underlie it, is an exercise in futility. Likenable to throwing oil onto a grease fire in order to smother it.

There exists also those organizations that attempt to reform and improve Capitalism through means outside of the state. Whether charity, non-profit, or mutual aid network; they attempt to, through great effort (often of the proletariat) improve the lives of those most harmed by the Capitalist system. Though this is an admirable goal, we must judge organizations not based on their names or goals (stated or believed) but by their actual place in the struggle between the bourgeois and proletariat.

Such organizations allow only for the further exploitation of the proletariat and the continuation of Capital. Like any other commodity under Capitalism, labor will inevitably fall in value towards its value of reproduction. As such, any effort which seeks to improve the lives of the proletariat under capitalism will ultimately lead to a subsequent lowering of wages provided by the bourgeois and a temporary upturn in the rate of profit.

Whether through means inside or outside the political system, reform of capitalism will, by its very nature, always reinforce capital. Whether by materially increasing the state’s strength and proletarian reliance upon it, or simply via acting as a distraction for the radical elements of the proletariat from true revolutionary change; any effort to reform such a system will be incapable of transforming its inherent nature as one based on class domination.

What is Communism

What we advocate for is Communism, in essence, a system where the proletariat as a whole holds political and economic power in society. Politically, this power will be held by directly democratic organizations known as workers’ councils. This form of organization has formed spontaneously numerous times in the past and is the historically discovered method of bringing about directly democratic control of governance and the economy. Workers’ councils of some form or another can be the only authority to govern in the wake of the bourgeois state. 

Economically, a socialist system necessitates the abolition of both private property and the profit motive, which will be superseded by direct democratic ownership of all means of both production and exchange. In effect workers themselves will decide all matters of their workplace, community, and ultimately their lives, with deference to higher or lower councils as is appropriate for the topic at hand. 

The structure of the economy will represent a fundamental break with the capitalist system and its distribution of power. This new society will not be one of renters and laborers earning a wage at a workplace owned by someone else, and for the purposes of that individual’s profit. A socialist economy will be a society of freely associated producers who work only as is necessary to fulfill human needs, and no further. 

History of Left Communism

These ideas do not come to us in a vacuum, from either intense self-reflection or divine revelation. These analyses on the nature of Capitalism, the class struggle, socialism, etc, have been continually passed down and updated by the experiences of the working class and the Communist Left within it, from all across the world. While much better described elsewhere, it is possible to give a brief introduction to the history of our ideological tendency.  

In September of 1915, during the opening stages of the First World War, the Zimmerwald Conference was held in Switzerland. It was attended by representatives of various socialist organizations around Europe who were disgruntled by their larger leftist parties, which had agreed to support their respective national governments in the imperialist slaughter of the war. This was the start of the break of the revolutionary Left in Europe, where revolutionaries found themselves abandoned by their larger organizations that had moved away from their previously stated duty to the international proletariat and the necessity of revolution, and instead towards reformism and assimilation into the bourgeois state. 

It was only in the former Russian Empire that, for a time, the working class managed to take power in 1917 before finally succumbing to a slow and inevitable counterrevolution throughout the 1920s following the total isolation of the USSR and the number of intense wars and humanitarian disasters in such a short time.

There were Communists around the world (largely in Europe and especially Italy) who had organized and agitated throughout this time and saw this counterrevolution for what it was, denounced it, and continued to organize in the hopes of another eventual wave of global revolution, such as in 1917. This tradition has survived decades of attacks, exiles, and betrayals by Stalinists and Fascists alike. These revolutionaries were known by many identifiers, Committees, and Organizations. The term we find most succinct is: ”The Internationalists”. 

The Circumstances of The Sonoran Internationalists

Today, Capitalism is increasingly strained. Both the US and, more recently, China, have saturated the world market. With the rate of profit falling (albeit more quickly in the West), the interests of the bourgeoisie have begun to tighten the screws on the proletariat. With the support of various reactionary currents, supposedly “universal and unalienable” rights are being taken away while proletarians the world over are being prepared for inter-imperialist war. Such conditions both necessitate and create the impetus for the class struggle. In Tucson, where we are located, the currently existing left currents are largely opportunist and reformist. Our purpose, as The Sonoran Internationalists, is to analyze the ongoing class struggle in our area, and further to connect it to what is happening in the larger world. We will focus the majority of our analysis on the reformist left, that is, the left wing of capital. As we believe that it is their deception of the proletariat that proves the largest obstacle to true revolutionary class consciousness.

What We Are Not

As a result of such deception, intentional or not, the nature of what actual Communist organizing means, is largely misunderstood by not only the wider working class but even self-professed Communist agitators. 

Firstly, we are not social democrats or any other flavor of reformist. As stated in our above section, reform is first and foremost a mechanism by which capital stabilizes itself and is a vent of proletarian struggle away from class consciousness towards temporary gains. Historically speaking, social democratic parties have either become subsumed into the bourgeois system or been violently expelled from it.

Secondly, we are not Marxist-Leninists. While we uphold the 1917 revolution as part of the only successful Communist revolution in history we also understand the fact that many of the measures taken by the Bolsheviks were compromises rather than a revolutionary starting point, as well as the fact that such compromises directly contributed to the counterrevolution within the state. While these actions were taken out of necessity, there was never an opportunity to actualize the goals of the Communist revolution. 

Thirdly, we are not Trotskyists. As stated in the previous paragraph, we believe that the degeneration of worker democracy in the Soviet Union was first and foremost due to their foundational decisions following isolation as the sole proletarian outpost, not due to the actions of a few great men. We also contend that the Trotskyist stance that National Liberation is revolutionary in character is fundamentally wrong. We stand firm that all class collaboration, even to defeat imperialism, is no substitute for international proletarian revolution. We believe “No War But The Class War” is not just a slogan, but a revolutionary imperative. We also disavow the belief that reformist structures can be on any large scale infiltrated in order to either turn them into revolutionary movements or to gain members, as such strategies have historically led to either absorption or expulsion.

Fourthly, we are not anti-fascists, we are not interested in forming a broad coalition with the left wing of Capital to stop the rise of the right wing of Capital, and we understand that Fascism, as a form of Capitalism, will only be stopped by ending Capitalism through class revolution.

Fifth, we are not humanitarians. Regardless of aesthetic or ideological differences; charity only serves to reinforce the Capitalist system of exploitation by allowing the bourgeoisie to provide less and less to its workers. Mutual aid has an important place in fostering community connections and building resilience within the revolutionary movement but it can never be the foundation of any organizational effort.

Finally, we are not adventurists. Participating in individual acts of violence does not further the cause of revolution; it actively damages it. Furthermore; pointless activism serves only to vent real class conflict into what is ultimately reformism.

There is no substitute for international proletarian revolution. 

Reactionary Beliefs and Social Structures

We are staunchly opposed to all forms of bigotry and discrimination within and without our organization. Racism, Sexism, and other such reactionary tendencies; while not directly stemming from Capitalism, are directly and intentionally reproduced by it. In times of Capital entering crisis, the bourgeoisie has historically attempted to divide the proletariat against each other so that they do not unite against their true enemy.

That being said, such bigotry is not the sole responsibility of the bourgeoisie. Racism, Sexism, and other reactionary beliefs spread among the proletariat not due to the prevalence of morally bad people, but because those proletarians at the top of the social pyramid often benefit directly and materially from these structures. 

Such mechanisms of stratification amongst the proletariat exist most clearly internationally; where the exploitation of proletarians in peripheral regions of the world and the profits taken from them are used in order to fund social programs that improve the lives of the proletariat in the imperial core.

For as long as capitalism remains in place; such bigoted abstractions and social structures will continue to exist. For as long as it remains useful for the bourgeoisie to propagate these myths and as long as the proletarians that are given status by them continue to believe these lies, they will persist.

What is to be Done

The task of revolutionaries in the modern day is a daunting one; however the alternative to revolution is to accept extinction. It is our work as organizations, not individuals, that can build what is desperately needed to achieve socialism: a clear programme for the working class and its organizations to uphold as its own. 

While we cannot induce genuine revolution, any crisis of Capital without widespread class consciousness will necessarily amount to a rebellion rooted in localized goals, either temporally or geographically, or it will unite around some kind of Non-Communist ideology. Thus, a clear Socialist programme is necessary to achieve the liberation of the proletariat as a whole, which is the only measure that can truly solve the myriad of interconnected problems that we face.

Our organization’s goals are as follows. 

Firstly, to critique and attempt to win over those who advocate for Anti-Socialist ideas within the left.

Secondly, to spread class consciousness and the necessity of revolution within the larger working class.

Thirdly, to continually analyze Capitalist society and its newest developments, especially in our geographic area, and to contribute to the programme and eventual creation of an Internationalist Communist party in the future.

The Revolutionary Refrain

As has been said countless times; we have a world to win. In the contemporary era, however, we must add that we quite literally have a world to lose. Long gone are the days when the working class could wait for Capitalism to destroy itself. For every decade wasted in the delay of the revolution, the future of all life on earth is brought closer to its end. It is the duty of the working class to fight for its freedom, and it is the duty of its revolutionaries to remember:

Socialism or Barbarism, Communism or Extinction

There is no third way!