Struggle from Below

The Tempest Collective sees the activity of the vast majority of the world’s population whose ability to work is their only means of survival as the crucial factor in building the socialist movement and winning reforms. The socialist movement is the movement of the international working class orgnaized against the present state of things. Its commitment must be always to stand for abolition of capitalism and the establishment of communism. Reforms of capitalism directly support the continued existence of capitalism. The working class is the agent of social transformation – of ridding our society of capitalism, addressing the existential environmental catastrophe, and building a socialist society – if we can organize ourselves.

Struggle is the key vehicle through which the balance of class forces can shift and on which working class demands like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Defunding the Police, Gender Liberation, Open Borders, etc, All of these demands other than gender liberation necessarily amount to reforms conceded by the state, and as such, directly advocating for them represents a betrayal of the fight for socialism. will be won. We support running socialist candidates for office, but we do not believe that amassing more socialist officeholders is the way we are going to win. People cannot be understood by the labels they claim or the words they say, they have to be understood by their role in the class struggle. Whatever else they may do, anyone who holds office in bourgeois government is someone who is taking part in the operation of that institution, which exists only to manage bourgeois control over the working class. It is good you dont see this measure as the main path to socialism, but it has to be understood that it is not even a stepping stone. It is a tactic that history has shown time and time again to actively harm socialist movements. However popular policy reforms are, historically these have not been won without a mass-based movement that involves millions of ordinary people.

Mass struggle would also be the key to a revolutionary break with capitalism that starts a transition to ecosocialism. By ecosocialism we mean a classless and stateless society of freedom in which people democratically plan production to meet their needs and repair humanity’s relationship with the rest of nature. This is literally just Communism. We have to assume that this choice in language was chosen deliberately so that the scary word “Communism” could be avoided. Efficiently, this confuses and waters down the meaning of a word that has a definition and centuries of precedent behind it, just for the purposes of recruiting those who would be scared off by the word “Communism” but not “Ecosocialism”. A transition to ecosocialism would have to be a liberatory process carried out by ordinary people themselves, running society through new radically democratic institutions.

Antiracism & Abolition

We are antiracists and abolitionists. The US working class has moved most forcefully and consistently when it has confronted racism, in particular anti-Black racism. We take this lesson seriously and prioritize antiracist struggle even when it is unpopular or appears to detract from broader ‘class-wide’ interests. The priority of anything above the class struggle is a fundamentally non-communist position. If the working class was especially interested in climate change activism at this moment would you then prioritize that struggle over the class struggle as well? If the socialist movement does not center the primacy of anti-oppression inside the working class, in all its diversity, it is not going to be effective. The George Floyd uprising was an important reminder of the power of Black-led resistance and how forcefully it can assert itself as a political actor, demonstrating the absolute necessity of systemic transformation. We seek not a transformation of the system, but its complete overthrow. The George Floyd uprising was indeed a key reminder of spontaneous working class power, but it is also a reminder of what happens when there is not a strong communist party capable of focusing that energy into the class struggle and towards the overthrow of capitalism. This is what allowed capital to co-opt and destroy that movement. Our response to this as communist is not just to blame the system, but to organize around the demand of revolution, something the system can by its very nature not co-opt. We see the anti-racist rebellion that took place in the summer of 2020 as the most important development of the current radicalization. Even with a movement still in development, its potential should not be underestimated.

Crucial to the politics of abolition is the recognition that the state under capitalism is a means of violent repression wielded to ensure the domination of the ruling class. In the U.S., prisons and police are indispensable tools of racist oppression. As socialists, we fight for the full abolition of the cops, the courts, the prisons, and the capitalist state.

Feminism & LGBTQ Liberation

Internationally, the feminist and gender justice movement is the leading edge of working class resistance. Structural gender oppression under capitalism shapes life and resistance in myriad ways. It has shown itself to be a potent vehicle for social transformation.

Standing against sexual violence, domestic violence, and femicide are questions of principle that socialists must develop ways of addressing – politically, but also organizationally, as very few groups can point to processes that have helped address grievances inside left organizations.

We demand full equality and liberation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and unequivocally oppose the attacks against transgender people, especially transgender women of color. The resurgence of trans-exclusionary feminism on the Left must be challenged. The project of revolutionary socialism aims to build a world based on sexual and gender freedom and self-determination.

Disability Justice

Capitalism both creates the category of disability and discriminates against the disabled on that basis. Capitalism privileges bodies that can labor in ways optimal to the production of profit for employers. The fight against oppression based on ability is thus inherently a struggle for working-class liberation and against the capitalist system. It is also tied to the abolitionist project of destroying the carceral state. Yes, however, this is included in the struggle against the capitalist system. By separating this into a separate category, even if unwillingly, you allow for argumentation and organization to the contrary of this fact.

In the short term, we support reforms that can break down the systematic marginalization, impoverishment, and oppression of disabled people. While these are undoubtedly good things that would help the lives of disabled people, how exactly should such support of reforms be done? If this entails working within the capitalist state that was just rightly denounced, then it is an utterly anti-socialist statement. If terms besides working within the state apparatus are meant here, then this quote is generally acceptable.

But because disability oppression is endemic to capitalism and implicated in the carceral state, overcoming it requires a revolutionary abolitionist program. Tempest stands with the disability justice movement and its calls for intersectional, anti-capitalist politics and full equality and liberation for disabled people. In practice, we are committed to making spaces for meeting, organizing, and protesting fully accessible.

Electoral Strategy

Elections are a crucial tactic of working class organization, Yes, elections within independent mass assemblies, worker councils, the International Party of the Working Class, Communes, etc. Elections as are meant here, elections in a bourgeois republic where one member or party of the ruling class is given years to enact their plan for what is best for capital, are inherently a tool of capitalist class domination and must be opposed alongside the rest of this rotten system. but they are not the motor-force of change. Elections can help develop and spread demands, contribute to concessions from the ruling class, Concessions from the ruling class do not come from electoral success but militant action of the working class. When they feel sufficiently threatened, reforms are given out to appease the masses and stablize their domination. Reforms are a tactical decision made by the ruling class when they deem it helpful, they are not a goal communists should aspire to enact. and project a socialist worldview. However, we do not believe that winning elections is the same thing as winning power or changing the balance of class forces. The capitalist state is an anti-worker apparatus that cannot simply be taken over by workers. For that reason, elections are a vehicle towards the development of struggle and independent working class institutions, not an end in themselves. Why would any worker trust a group who infiltrates the capitalist state, enganges with its archaic procedures, and involves itself in the active repression of the working class. You cannot expect any worker to support this party just because it claims, as all other bourgeois parties do, that the other parties are bad but this one is good.

Independent Working Class Institutions

We believe the Democratic Party cannot be reformed or realigned. Every previous effort to do so has weakened and undercut our ability to build the type of struggle organizations that could transcend the choices on offer under a two-party system. There are bourgeois democracies with 8 parties, 10 parties, even more. Is this what Marxists advocate for? The problem with capitalist government is that it is capitalist; it represents the interests of the ruling class. This fact has nothing to do with there only being two bourgeois parties to choose from.

We are for an independent working class membership party and we are open to different tactics and roads to get us there. However, we insist that this strategy and process cannot be deferred down the line to a more favorable moment. A new party can come together as struggle rises, Yes, an International Party of Communists working to help organize the working class towards an international revolution. Not another electoralist party, that history has shown will never be able to participate in or support revolution. we need to prepare for that now. Even people who support the Democrats over the Republicans in elections are more ready to criticize them and advocate a new party than ever before. Socialists should never be the people telling anyone who wants to break from the Democrats that they should stay inside. The socialist movement should be the home for those who yearn for political independence. Political independence must mean from bourgeois politics itself not from one or the other bourgeois parties. If a successful social democratic party were created in the US tomorrow it would follow the path of the various leftist electral parties from history. It would fade into irrelevance or be absorbed again into a larger party. This is because all capitalist parties have the same goal, win elections. Representing the actual interests of the working class is and must always be secondary.

The key ingredient in the formation of new working class organizations and parties is heightened working class self-activity and struggle that raises expectations and makes millions feel that change is possible. The growth of working class organization should go hand in hand with the growth of all wings of the movement, including a revolutionary one. This is the pole of the movement we aim to contribute to building, with the goal of a strong and vibrant revolutionary current, front or organization.

Democracy

Flowing from the centrality of struggle and working class self-activity is an insistence on democracy. Democracy is relevant in multiple ways – from ensuring that our organizations are run by the membership, to the need to defend and expand democratic rights, to the threat of far right authoritarianism. If this involves collaboration with the left wing of capital against the right wing of capital, then this is betrayal of the working class in the worst form. The only way to prevent fascism and other reactionary movements is with the abolition of the material conditions which create them and their rise to popularity, that is, the abolition of capitalism. We believe that the weakness of the organized left goes hand in hand with a lack of organizations through which working class people can participate in political, workplace and community decisions. Whether it is a tenant group, a labor union, a BLM organization, etc, democracy and participation is a crucial factor to the development of working class institutions. The lifeblood of socialist organization, in particular, is a thriving democratic culture.

Labor Strategy

We see working class self-activity and democracy – both inside and outside of the existing trade union movement – as the key roads to winning working class demands and power. Trade unions, which exist to mediate demands between the proletariat and bourgeoisie under the capitalist system, are at this point of capitalist development purely counter-revolutionary and anti-communist organizations similar to social democratic parties. The goal of socialists is not to win working class demands under capitalism, but to overthrow capitalism. We look to workers in their workplaces to organize themselves for their own interests, a rank-and-file labor strategy, which is a political and organizational orientation on the self-activity of workers inside the workers movement. We believe this will facilitate the creation of our goals more than a strategy of building influence through the labor bureaucracy or staffers in the existing unions. For us, the rank-and-file strategy is about much more than simply having socialists inside strategic sectors or getting union jobs. It is about building a socialist wing of the workers movement, fostering bottom-up organizing, and continuing to reverse the 40 year isolation that socialist politics have had from working class institutions. These all absolutely have to be done, but the reasons behind the current state of the socialist movements across the world are not really addressed anywhere in this text. It is not because of a lack of trade union activism (mistaking a symptom for a cause) or a random decrease in self organization. The period of counterrevolution that is only now ending is due to many factors including the large scale bastardization and conflation of Communism with state capitalism perpetuated by the USSR, China, etc, the lack of widely known and mature internationalist communist organizations, and the relative luxury that has up to now been enjoyed by workers within the imperial core, especially in the West. Without understanding the cause of the past failures of communist movements we cannot hope to rebuild as these sentences call for. Through the development of a socialist wing of the workers movement, a strategy for class power can become a reality by overcoming the strategic impediments that have hamstrung the organized labor movement for decades.

Internationalism, Anti-Imperialism & Self Determination

We are internationalists. We support working class self activity in every country and oppose the borders that physically, violently, and ideologically divide workers from one another. We are always on the side of ordinary people in their quest for democracy and self-determination and liberation against authoritarian rule. While we are not opposed to these per se. It is another selection of language that sows more confusion than clarity. The quest for Communism involves the establishment of the only form of true democracy, the only end to authoritarian rule, the only possibility for real self-determination free from the control of capitalist society. We must clearly and consistently call for only workers’ democracy, in a system of workers councils with delegates representing a specific mandate straight from the workers who elected that delegate. Specific language when talking about these concepts is necessary to avoid moralist or idealistic claims that rely on vague concepts rather than material aims.

We are principally opposed to imperialism, which we understand to be the manifestation of capitalist relations at the level of the nation-state. Imperialism is not an abstract concept, it is the inevitable outgrowth of a system built on profit and competition between capitalist states. As the economic crisis intensifies, so too will ramped up rivalries between different countries. Military activity is part of the package of attacks on working class people internationally.

We vehemently oppose US imperialism, which has destroyed the lives of our brothers and sisters across the world and has served as the justification for amped up islamophobia and xenophobia. We also hold a principled opposition to all imperial interests that are competing for international power. Instead of choosing sides with one imperial bloc over the other, we look to the strengthening of working class solidarity internationally as the central opposition to capitalism.

As socialists in the world’s biggest imperial power — in a country founded on settler-colonialism — we see our support for the struggles of indigenous, colonized and occupied people as a cornerstone of anti-imperialism. From Turtle Island to Palestine and beyond, our internationalism is inextricable from national liberation. If your internationalism “is inextricable from national liberation” then it is not worthy of the word. National liberation is the support of class collaboration within an “oppressed nation” as a means to uplift that country as a stronger actor on the bourgeois international stage. That is to say, rather than support of international revolution, this is the promotion of bourgeois nationalism, backed up only by a misplaced desire to assist particularly oppressed people along nationalist lines. By perpetuating this understanding you are doing a disservice to the working class of the nation/s at hand who will be brought from under the rule of one ruling class into the rule of another. The brutal legacy of imperialism can only be truly addressed when the working class of the whole world is free as one, and thus able to collaborate freely for the building of a new just system for all (communism). You are at the same time misleading the international working class into organizing around individual struggles that ultimately amount to reshuffling the capitalist world order rather than doing the essential work of preparing its downfall and replacement with communism.

---

Link to Original