Socialists Without Borders Program

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Socialists Without Borders is an internationalist organization fighting for a society free from economic exploitation and social oppression of any kind: we fight for a socialist society. This struggle extends to every country in the world. We fight to totally dismantle the global capitalist-imperialist economic and social system that is annihilating the world and its people. Only a mass international revolutionary organization can achieve this task. We are committed to building this organization. 

Socialists Without Borders asserts that the primary threat to humanity is the climate crisis, and that this crisis is caused by capitalism’s exploitation and destruction of nature. The trajectory of the crisis is clear: the Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Revolutionaries worldwide must mobilize workers and the oppressed against the destruction of the planet and towards a social system based on workers’ power. Our task is to empower those most affected by the ravages of environmental destruction in their fight for survival.

Socialists Without Borders upholds the historical experience of revolutionary Marxism made concrete through the lessons of the Paris Commune and clarified by the Third International. We believe the highest point in the socialist struggle of the exploited and oppressed worldwide was the Russian Revolution in 1917, under the political leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. We repudiate Stalinism and its legacy, which tarnishes the revolutionary Marxist movement to this day. We adhere to the theses of the Third International: any struggle for personal power is incompatible with membership in a revolutionary organization.

Socialists Without Borders is building an international revolutionary organization. The political program of this organization can only be developed by revolutionaries worldwide contributing their political, theoretical, and practical experiences to achieve an objective understanding of our reality and our tasks. Global capitalist-imperialism can only be defeated by a global revolutionary organization; our theory must be developed on this basis. This document is our starting point. 

Socialists Without Borders affirms that a revolutionary organization must adhere absolutely to the highest ethical standards of respect among its members, in their interactions with workers and the oppressed, and in their relationships with other revolutionary organizations. Such an organization must have a truly democratic structure, not merely a formal one, in which all members are effective agents in all aspects of party life, from its strategic and tactical political orientation to its organizational tasks.

Socialists Without Borders seeks political and programmatic agreements, both tactical and strategic, with other organizations that share our program and methodology. We participate in the struggles of workers and the oppressed in all arenas of class struggle, including in the use of electoral platforms. We present this document to develop political and programmatic agreements with other individuals and organizations committed to the fight for the liberation of workers and oppressed people everywhere.

Socialists Without Borders places all its resources in service of the struggles of workers and the oppressed. We commit to maintaining relationships of respect and solidarity with organizations dedicated to these same tasks – to struggle arm-in-arm to end capitalism and build a socialist world.

OUR PROGRAM

I

For the construction of a global revolutionary movement to contain and reverse the environmental destruction and the loss of life on the planet caused by imperialism, and to organize to mitigate the climate catastrophes already underway for the benefit of all humanity.

Humanity is facing its greatest challenge: a climate crisis caused by capitalist-imperialism is threatening all life on earth. Time is running out, and even with drastic action, it is likely that vast regions of the planet will become uninhabitable. We must fight for the urgent adoption of socialism at the international level to mitigate irreversible damage and protect all living beings.

The climate crisis is the direct result of the capitalist economy, which is centrally dependent on cheap fossil fuels. Despite decades of climate conferences, bureaucratic gestures, and “green” ventures, the imperialist bourgeoisie are accelerating fossil fuel exploration and extraction efforts worldwide, from the South Atlantic to Alaska. This shows that capitalists have no role in addressing the climate crisis; they will continue to prioritize their economic domination over humanity and the biosphere.

Socialists Without Borders fights for the complete decarbonization of economic activity, from the initial extraction of raw materials to the manufacture of consumer goods, their distribution, and transportation.

We oppose nuclear energy as an energy alternative because it is neither safe, nor economical, nor clean. This industry is unable to avoid accidents and cannot control its dangerous pollution: after decades of study, there are still no viable plans for the permanent disposal of radioactive waste. In cases like the Fukushima disaster, waste ends up being thrown into the sea or stored in precarious conditions, leading to further environmental contamination.

We also oppose all extractive megaprojects and demand the cancellation of existing fossil fuel exploitation licenses. The net-zero pollution scheme and others like it are fraudulent and deceptive tactics, which pretend that it is possible to save the environment while destroying it.  These schemes are used by capitalists to maintain and increase fossil fuel extraction and justify other destructive megaprojects.

Inevitably, workers and oppressed peoples face the greatest threat from the climate crisis. World economic activity must be reorganized to guarantee the existence and material reproduction of life on the planet and address the manifold crises resulting from climate change.

 II

Against the military intervention of U.S. imperialism and other imperialist countries anywhere in the world. For the disarmament of all of these countries and the dismantling of the arms industry.

Socialists Without Borders opposes all wars and the industries that sustain them. The ruling class uses violence to exploit its subjects everywhere in the world. We oppose all military alliances that divide the world to the benefit of a handful of imperialist countries.

The deterioration of basic material conditions for the majority of humanity under capitalism inevitably creates conditions for major social upheavals and economic chaos, which the ruling class meets with escalating violence. 

We stand for the disarmament of the United States, Russia, China, and any other imperialist country or nuclear-armed nation. We fight for the dissolution and abolition of military alliances and the closure and dismantling of the entire armaments industry, especially nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. 

All existing resources must be directed to the organization of workers and socialist civil service brigades to aid in adapting to changes imposed by climate catastrophes, including geographical relocation.

We call on all members of existing armies to rebel against their superiors and refuse to engage in combat with other nations or to suppress the civilian population in their own countries.

III

For a society that guarantees to all the inalienable right to healthy food, to clothing, to shelter, to healthcare, to education, and to full rights to freedom of expression under a government of workers and the oppressed.

A truly human, fair, and egalitarian society will be based on the principle that production is social, and that the means of production should be owned in common. Each person should be able to contribute according to their abilities and should unconditionally receive everything necessary to live a full and dignified life. All current material goods and cultural treasures are the collective heritage of humanity, and their administration should be directed and coordinated by the democratic organizations of workers and the oppressed. 

We demand a universal minimum income for all individuals, regardless of their age or employment status, and for those who are able and willing to work, full employment in jobs that are socially beneficial and ecologically responsible. Household laborers and students should be considered as workers and will be paid wages; parents who work and study will be provided with free, high-quality childcare.  

All people should be provided with dignified and secure housing to be maintained by municipalities. Utility services should be free, controlled by workers, and optimized for ecologically responsible use. 

We call for universal and equal access to healthcare services, to be ensured by training and employment of needed workers and the construction of hospitals, health centers, and any other required infrastructure. The necessities for a healthy life should be freely available to all, including nutritious, high-quality food. We call for the production and distribution of food to be controlled by workers, and for all those participating in such activities to be fairly paid. 

The division between “basic” needs and cultural life is an artifact of the capitalist division of labor. We demand free access to education at all levels, as well as the construction of museums, sports centers, cultural centers, recreational centers, parks and other venues for social and intellectual life. Artists will receive wages as workers, and creative production will be encouraged and supported in schools and workplaces. The right of all to be educated and pursue intellectual and creative work goes hand-in-hand with the right to freedom of expression: we call for this right to be universal and inalienable.

IV

Against all forms of oppression and their violent manifestations, including: misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, child abuse, elder abuse, abuse of people with disabilities, abuse of immigrants, and abuse on the basis of religious or cultural identification.

We oppose all forms of oppression. This includes oppression against women, racial, and religious minorities, sexual minorities, youth and children, people with different abilities, and other minorities. These oppressive systems of the ruling class are reproduced by and within the institutions it dominates. We call for the re-design of the educational system to explicitly include a comprehensive anti-patriarchal and anti-racist curriculum.

The U.S. originated from a settler colony founded on land stolen from Native Americans and built with the uncompensated forced labor of enslaved Africans. Racism against non-white people permeates nearly every aspect of life in the U.S. We demand an end of violence and discrimination because of race, especially against African Americans, and we call for reparations from slavery.

We demand full reproductive rights for women and all those with reproductive capacity: unrestricted access to abortion, an end to forced sterilization, and full access to fertility treatments for anyone who chooses them. 

While reproduction is a primary target of capitalist-imperialist domination, all other forms of gendered oppression must be abolished. We call for the unconditional right to gender reassignment regardless of age and the necessary psychological and medical support for anyone who chooses it. As a social structure, the patriarchal family is the primary source of gender oppression: we call for its abolition.

As climate catastrophe and geographic inequity continue to spur mass migration, immigrants have increasingly come under attack by the ruling class and its agents. We demand full rights for immigrants, including equal status, equal access to services, and the unconditional right to work wherever they choose.

V

For the self-organizing, self-determination, and self-defense of workers and all oppressed groups and peoples. 

We do not believe that we should wait until the conquest of socialism to demand an end to inequality and oppression: we demand it now. At the same time, we also do not believe that oppression will automatically vanish with the triumph of socialism. The fight against oppression is a daily struggle for the eradication of prejudice.

We strive to establish solidarity and cooperation between all workers of the world as an absolute condition for the liberation of all peoples. We are for an end to borders, and we hold immigration to be a fundamental human right. This right will become more important as capitalist-imperialists increasingly use the climate crisis as a justification for building fortress-nations. We believe no fortress will be able to contain migrations caused by the climate crisis, and that humanity faces the danger of an era of violent civil wars and genocide. We are against the militarization of borders.

We demand reparations for slavery and for genocide against all original peoples in North America and indigenous communities around the world, and for the return of all stolen land to the stewardship of the peoples from whom it was stolen. We support all peoples’ right to live in peace in their ancestral lands, for the right to self-determination and self-defense of all peoples wherever they are, including their right to territorial separation, and the right to democratically adopt whatever independent forms of government they desire. 

VI

For the principle of workers’ democracy in every organization and instance of the liberation struggle of workers, the oppressed, the dispossessed masses, and revolutionary organizations.

We call for a combative workers’ movement to assume leadership in the fight against environmental destruction and the climate crisis.

To develop this movement, we call for unionization in all workplaces as a tool to win dignified labor and wage conditions, never forgetting that any achievement gained can be snatched away at the first opportunity by capitalists. We call for all unionized workers to support the demands of all other workers, whether they are unionized or not. We believe that workers should oppose all imperialist military ventures and support all struggles against wars and military intervention.

To participate consciously in the class struggle, workers need to develop a political leadership accountable to themselves as a class. Only through the free exchange of ideas and information and the development of programs centered on struggle can the necessary strategies and organizational tactics be advanced. This absolute freedom to discuss all ideas must be in the service of solidarity that will allow us to act in concert. Workers’ democracy entails complete freedom of debate, with all stakeholders enjoying an equal voice in the decision-making process. While the rights of the minority to hold their positions is preserved, once decisions have been made, we act together.

We advocate for the principle of workers’ democracy as a guide to the systematic renewal of the leadership of workers’ organizations, from trade unions to political organizations. All members of workers’ organizations are agents of their construction, and this is the only guarantee of survival. The same democratic principles are necessary for every organization dedicated to struggle, including organizations of youth, students, and oppressed communities. The values of the socialist society to which we aspire, in which democratic freedoms are extended to all, must permeate the daily practice of organizations in struggle.

VII

For an end to the interference of religion and churches in public life, in healthcare, and education.

As Marxists, while we recognize the right of all oppressed people to believe as they choose and to the enjoyment of their traditional practices, we consider religious institutions to be the ruling classes’ instruments of ideological control over workers and the oppressed. 

Organized religions in their interpretations of nature, the cosmos, and human experience as elements of an unchangeable divine creation, serve to justify social inequalities, and are complicit in atrocities committed by rulers and religious leaders. Religious leaders promote passive submission to the established order, and despite ostensible legal separation, church and state maintain common material interests.

Too often have churches used their spiritual authority to perpetuate systems of oppression. Churches claim to be repositories of moral wisdom, and they use this authority to prescribe rules of social behavior, denying rights to groups with different sexual orientations or gender identities, while protecting priests accused of child sexual abuse and blessing repressive and dictatorial regimes. Churches, despite revolutions in the sciences, continue to uphold false and fabricated assertions about the provenance and nature of the universe, all in service of the imperialist bourgeoisie’s war on human rights. 

For this reason, we absolutely oppose the participation of these religious institutions and leaders in political life, health services, and public education, and demand an end to the tax exemption of religious institutions. We advocate for a scientific and socialist education based on a dialectical materialist conception of history and human society. This does not prevent us from speaking out against any form of discrimination against individuals for religious reasons.

VIII

For the political independence of the working class. 

Capitalist society is a complex network of exploitation that has impoverished most of the world’s people while massively enriching a very select few. As a tiny minority of humanity, the ruling class would never be able to exploit the overwhelming majority of humanity without some degree of participation by the oppressed masses themselves. Under capitalism, the political system is composed of institutions that have evolved under the direction of the ruling class to exercise political control over a volatile and divided society. The capitalist-imperialist political system, with its institutions, elections, and parties is the means by which the ruling class extracts social cooperation from the oppressed masses.

The institutions that make up these political systems take many forms, and they vary over time as political and material conditions change. They range from seemingly generous social democracies to brutal dictatorships. What they all share is their primary function: pacifying societies that are racked by tensions between classes.

In the United States, the current political system allows workers and the oppressed to participate in a limited way to determine the allocation of social resources by casting votes for candidates and measures put forth by one of two capitalist parties – Democrats or Republicans. These parties, however, are much more than collections of candidates that represent different points of view. They are the institutions through which the ruling class – the imperialist bourgeoisie – of the United States exerts its political control. The Republican Party is the more overtly reactionary of the two and therefore puts forth candidates and policies that are more obviously nationalistic and militaristic, thereby maintaining the support of more reactionary elements of U.S. society. The Democratic Party – while also a frighteningly reactionary organization – puts forth candidates and policies that pander to the working class. Despite their apparent differences, these two parties collaborate to administer the interests of the U.S. bourgeoisie as a whole: locally, nationally, and internationally.

Socialists Without Borders understands that to revolutionize society, it is necessary to politically organize workers independently of all capitalist parties and never place the slightest trust in any bourgeois leader or organizer. The interests of workers and the oppressed are, and always will be, diametrically opposed to the interests of the bourgeoisie. We do not believe in well intended bosses or good or “socially responsible” capitalists.

Socialists Without Borders stands for the political independence of the U.S. working class from the two parties of the US imperialist ruling class, Democrats and Republicans. One or the other of these parties might, at times, appear closer to the working class, but this is only a ruse designed to deceive workers. In the end, both Democrats and Republicans guard the imperialist way of life. Both support military actions against other nations, police enforcement within the country, and ultimately offer nothing to the working class and the oppressed. 

Socialists Without Borders will support independent working-class organizations and coalitions offering a political alternative to the parties of the ruling class. We do not believe, however, that it is possible to transform society through elections, nor is it sufficient to have working-class candidates and politicians. Electoral politics can’t change the underlying economic structures of society or the class nature of the state. 

IX

For the abolition of the police, immigration enforcement, and all repressive state apparatuses.

To preserve its dominance over all other social classes, the imperialist ruling class uses the judicial system, police, border guards, and the armed forces to prevent workers and oppressed people from gaining power. The ruling class also goes to great effort and expense to promote the illusion that these repressive apparatuses exist to maintain security and order for individual workers and oppressed people. The truth is that any service these institutions allegedly provide is designed to make workers and the oppressed complicit in their own oppression.

As environmental conditions worsen, basic goods and services become scarcer and more expensive to consumers. Living conditions deteriorate for workers and the oppressed, and the middle class grows poorer and more restive as their privileges drain away. This deterioration of living conditions intensifies the conflict between the ruling class and the oppressed masses.

Internationally, imperialism–especially U.S. imperialism–finances and arms dictatorial and repressive regimes to maintain class dominance. When workers and oppressed peoples rebel against such regimes, the imperialist bourgeoisie launches military interventions to maintain the status quo, destroying essential infrastructure, which the same bourgeoisie will then pay itself to rebuild with the resources of the country it destroyed.

The environmental destruction and the repressive dictatorships that act as local representatives of the imperialist bourgeoisie force workers and oppressed people to leave their homes for the imperial core, which responds with the building of walls, fences, and prisons

As social volatility increases and material conditions worsen, the ruling class hires more police and soldiers, builds more walls and prisons, manufactures more weapons with greater destructive power, and imprisons and murders more people. This is coupled with the encouragement of militarism and valorization of the agents of the state. This alarming growth of an already extremely violent repressive apparatus will continue until we rise up to stop it.

Socialists Without Borders calls for the dissolution of the US army, the repurposing of all weapons manufacturing capabilities, the closure of all detention centers and prison facilities, the dismantling of local and state police forces, and the reallocation of public funds away from this repressive apparatus and toward providing social services in and out of the U.S.

Socialists Without Borders calls for the demilitarization of schools and for an end to the recruitment of youth to the armed forces through programs like ROTC.

Socialists Without Borders calls for the establishment of autonomous arbitration boards of workers and involved communities to settle disagreements and conflicts between individuals, families, groups and communities. 

In this way, Socialist Without Borders challenges the dominance of state institutions through the development of democratic community agencies in all aspects of society from local to global issues.

X

For a socialist, ecologically sustainable, and egalitarian society.

For generations, revolutionary Marxists have said that we only need to change the capitalist ruling class with a ruling class composed of workers and the oppressed to build socialism, believing that the material conditions established under capitalism had already provided the economic and social basis for building socialism. We said this, and believed it, because too many of us were projecting the conditions of advanced capitalist countries to everywhere in the world. 

We did not understand the damage that was being inflicted on the environment by capitalism’s emphasis on endlessly increasing industrial production, a trend that revolutionary Marxists intended to continue under socialism to improve the living standards of the international working class. Socialists Without Borders now understands that is not the way forward. We now seek to organize ourselves so that we can live in harmony with nature and with each other as equals.

Human society emerged from nature and can be viable only under social and material conditions that guarantee sustainability. The capitalist economy is focused exclusively on economic growth, consumption, and profit maximization at the expense of the natural world. The blind inertia of this mode of production has led to the imminent collapse of global ecology.

Socialists Without Borders understands that it won’t be sufficient to build socialism within the current capitalist infrastructure. Certainly, all of the ruling class’ wealth and resources can and should be expropriated, and workers and oppressed people should be in control of the construction of a society that supports the survival of all living species on the planet. Socialism, however, is no longer limited to the distribution of the accumulated wealth of capitalists. Socialism today means the coordination of our survival and of our resistance to social regression. The environment will not be restored to its pristine, pre-capitalist conditions. The damage is too deep. 

Socialism is the best opportunity we have to save the greatest number of people and species, as well as the shared treasure of human knowledge and experience. Socialism for us is finding the best possible way to look after each other and to plan for the best possible outcome for all. In this program, we call for the abolition of private property, for the expropriation of all capitalist wealth, for the immediate cessation of all contaminating industries, for the dismantling of the arms industry, for the abolition of all repressive forces, for the provision of housing, food, and healthcare to all, for the access to education, culture, science and recreation for all, for massive campaigns against misogyny, patriarchy and racism, and for the creation of local bodies to organize communities in coordination with larger democratically-run organisms. At the same time, we call for all scientific knowledge, technology and infrastructure, as well as the intellectual power of all specialists, to be placed at the service of planning the response and actions to address our devastating environmental crisis. 

The capitalist ruling class is the obstacle to making resources available for the struggle against the extinction of life on the planet. The capitalist ruling class is extremely well-resourced and well-organized. To defeat them, we must build an organization as well-resourced and well-organized, and as committed to liberation, as the capitalists are committed to oppression. 

We aim to build a mass revolutionary international organization composed of workers and oppressed people mobilized in their struggle for liberation. We want to build an organization led by those most affected by the global climate crisis. We commit to actively resisting the abusive and undemocratic legacy that has characterized so many revolutionary socialist organizations throughout the history of our movement. We will do all of this in service of the liberation of the working class and the building of a socialist and ecologically sustainable society. We are eager to collaborate with other revolutionary organizations that share our objectives.

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