Communist Unity

#Preamble

11. With the unification of the entire earth into a single world market, the growth of enormous financial and industrial monopolies, the intensifying rivalry between imperialists, and the threat of global war and ecological crisis, the capitalist system has definitively outgrown its historical purpose. This system, which has immiserated and subjugated the workers of the world, all in the pursuit of profits, now threatens human civilisation and culture itself. To defeat the ruling class in Australia, and overturn the international power of the capitalist class, the working-class must organize itself into an independent political party with the aim of conquering political power, replacing the oligarchic state with a radically democratic political system, and beginning the transition to socialism.

22. Capitalism transforms all existing social structures to serve the production of surplus-value, the root of the ruling classes’ incomes of profit, interest, and rent. It is made possible only by the exploitation of a global class of dispossessed labourers — the proletariat. In its tireless drive to surpass every limit to this exploitation, this system concentrates capital in fewer hands, crosses every national border, subsumes every aspect of society into one vast market, and renders obsolete every small-scale and individual means of economic production. It gathers the majority of the world’s population together into an increasingly desperate working-class that labours collectively to set increasingly concentrated means of production into motion.

33. Because capitalism enriches a small few at the expense of the many, it must be maintained by undemocratic means. In the liberal capitalist countries, this anti-democratic impulse has most often taken the form of a state which counterposes limited enfranchisement for the working-classes with unequal suffrage, disproportional legislatures, unelected judiciaries, unlimited power in the hands of executives, and the civil-military bureaucracy. Alongside these anti-democratic measures exists the direct rule of money through legal bribery, bought-and-sold elections, and business-owned press, allowing the capitalist class to keep the working-class majority out of political power. The British monarchist system, originally created to cement the power of capitalists and aristocrats, is one of the clearest examples of this form of rule.

44. Capitalism on the Australian continent developed as a direct outgrowth of the British Empire and its policies of colonialism in the late 18th Century. By the time of the colonisation of Australia, the capitalist mode of production had fully developed in Britain. As in North America, the colonists engaged in a ruthless campaign of genocide against Australia’s indigenous peoples, dispossessing them of their lands and destroying hundreds of distinct cultural and linguistic groups. From this genocidal campaign, and the use of occupied indigenous lands for agriculture and mining, Australian capitalism developed free of the fetters of pre-capitalist modes of production.

55. The relatively stable development of Australian capitalism, and the relatively small size of the industrial working-class, meant that the labour movement developed relatively late; marked from the outset by the inclusion of petit-bourgeois independent workers and the dominance of craft unionism. The petit-bourgeois composition of the labour movement, and the inability of the petit-bourgeois democratic struggles to separate themselves from the liberal wing of the bourgeois class, meant that the primary tasks of developing the Australian nation-state at the turn of the 20th Century was left largely in the hands of a labour movement dominated by petit-bourgeois reformers and national-protectionists. The chronic shortage of labour that has marked Australian capitalism from the beginning also produced a labour movement that was dependent upon immigration control to maintain relatively high wages through the late 19th and early 20th Century.

66. All of these developments led to the emergence of Laborism, and the creation of the Australian Labor Party on the basis of class collaboration, nationalism, white supremacy, and protectionism. This history has given the Australian labour movement and the Labor Party-ACTU bureaucracy a fundamentally corporatist character, distinguishing it from the social democratic and labourist traditions of European trade unionism. The Australian Labor Party is, as it was at the time of its founding, a bourgeois workers party — that is a workers’ party with a bourgeois outlook, a bourgeois program, and a bourgeois leadership.

77. With the emergence of the modern Australian state, Australia has been able to bring itself into the capitalist-imperialist core and position itself as a regional enforcer for British and then American imperialism. In the course of this development, Australian capitalism has transitioned towards a more open migration policy, the restructuring of capitalist production during the period of globalisation, and the class compromise that was the Prices and Incomes Accord and the subsequent defeat of the trade union movement as a fighting force for the working-class.

88. In the 21st Century, Australian capitalism exists as in junior partnership with the US-NATO imperialist bloc. Australian capitalists and their state have enriched themselves through imperialist exploitation in South-East Asia and Oceania, enacting a bloody program of colonial violence, environmental destruction, strengthening of military ties, and diplomatic support for reactionary forces. The United States and its bloc of rich nations — constituting the forces of global imperialism and the bulwark of global reaction — would much prefer to keep poorer, formerly colonized nations in a constant state of economic and political dependence to be exploited as a massive reserve of low-wage labour. However, Australian capitalism is shifting into a period of crisis. The systematic decomposition of Australia’s manufacturing base has left Australian capital dependent upon a series of economic bubbles; namely in minerals and housing. In addition, the decline of American hegemony has placed Australia in direct geopolitical competition with China in South-East Asia, while at the same time being a major Chinese trade partner.

99. The working-class constitutes the majority of the population in Australia – as well as in Europe, the US, Japan, and other advanced capitalist powers. Within the borders of Australia, the working-class is millions strong: made up of Indigenous workers, the descendants of dispossessed small farmers, shearers, diggers, sailors, and petty artisans, and the descendants of millions of immigrant workers from Europe, Asia, and Africa. It encompasses men and women, gay and straight, old and young. It is in the objective interests of the whole of the working-class to unite into a single, multinational workers movement in the struggle for democracy and socialism and to unite with the working-classes and oppressed masses of Indonesia, the Pacific, the Philippines, and the vast industrial and agricultural working-classes of South-East Asia, India, and China.

1010. Alongside the working proletariat, organised by capital into heavy and light industry, services, agriculture, and logistics, there are many layers that are partly or fully dependant on the wage system — the children and dependants of workers, pensioners, those on sickness and unemployment benefit, carers looking after young children or aged relatives, landless workers, peasant-workers, students being trained for the labour market, etc. Because the emancipation of the proletariat is necessarily the emancipation of the whole of humanity, it is possible for the proletariat and its industrial and political organisations to take leadership of the whole of the oppressed masses, and to win over vacillating middle strata in a struggle for democracy and socialism.

1111. Without political or economic power as individuals, the working-class must organize collectively. The experience of uniting with fellow workers in the class struggle forces the working-class to confront differences imposed by race, gender, nationality, labor specialization, and other forms of stratification, or suffer from disunity and mutual destruction for the sake of special privileges for a fortunate few. The working-class needs democracy, both in its own organizations and in society at large, to effectively fight back against the ruling class. No part of the working-class can win freedom from capitalist rule unless every worker enjoys total political and social equality and the freedom to participate in determining the fate of the society as a whole.

1212. The workers’ movement has arisen from the struggle of workers to improve their conditions against the interests of their bosses, landlords, and rulers through demands that only partially address their domination under capitalism. These struggles and the collective organizations that wage them—trade-unions, cooperatives, mutual aid societies, and at the highest level, the political party—hold within their elementary forms of organisation the secret to reconstructing a world without a ruling class and an exploited class: the democratic control of society by the people whose labour creates it. In producing the conditions that give rise to working-class organization through the process of capitalist development, the capitalist class creates the possibility for its own overthrow. The capitalists understand this and seek to disarm the working-class by opposing democracy everywhere, from the realm of trade-union struggle to the form of government. Under the political rule of the capitalist class, organized worker power is under constant attack, exhausting working-class struggles and incentivizing compromises in leadership and organization.

1313. Only communism, the movement to emancipate the working-class and abolish the existing world-order, can overcome such adversity. As socialists, we must lead the fight for the highest possible degree of organization and unity within the working-class; to universalize its many particular struggles through agitation, education, and organization; and to develop the most militant layers of these movements into dedicated communists, bringing these communist workers into our ranks. In short, we must merge the political movement for socialism with the workers’ movement. As this merger develops, so too will the farsightedness, confidence, and organization of the working-class that enables their emergence as the hegemonic class of society. Working-class victory in this struggle—the conquest of political power—is propelled by the formation and practice of the communist party.

1414. The framework established by the colonial constitution, the surrounding legal order, the dominating influence of wealth on political power, and the repressive arm of the state—the police, military, and prisons—constitute the dictatorship of the capitalist class. Alongside this dictatorship is a great civil and ideological structure — the religious institutions, community organisations, professional and property owner associations, business councils, education and media institutions, with armies of paid functionaries who produce and reproduce the ideology of capitalist rule. These institutions strangle the working-class in even its most basic struggles against the bosses and landlords—let alone its conquest of political power. The working-class must lead the battle to sweep away this political order and establish a truly democratic republic, overthrow the imperialist world order, and set the stage for the working-class to lead a socialist transformation of our society.

1515. Whether revolution breaks out and triumphs first in a peripheral, semi-peripheral, or an advanced core-imperialist country, it is vital that it swiftly spreads beyond that state’s borders. This is necessary both to defend what has been gained and to achieve the full potential of socialist society. Wherever the workers seize power they will be attacked by foreign capitalist powers, especially the main imperialist powers. The most effective form of defence is therefore the spreading of the revolution to those countries through aiding the struggle for power by their working-classes. “Socialism in One Country” is a reactionary utopia.

1616. The victory of socialist revolution in one or more countries is only partial until the balance of forces has tilted decisively against capitalism. That means the socialist revolution must triumph in a tranche of advanced countries if it is not to suffer deformation and counterrevolution in one form or another. National revolutions are therefore best coordinated and where possible synchronised.

1717. The productive forces developed by capitalism over centuries demand an international order. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the nation-state itself has become a fetter on their further development. Therefore, the necessity for the strategy of world revolution flows from the need to combat continued resistance from the old ruling classes and from the fact a rational and sustainable development of humanity’s productive forces can only be achieved on a global level.

1818. A prerequisite for the final victory of the working-class is winning power in the industrial economies. Only here has capitalism fully proletarianised the bulk of the population and accumulated the technical basis for communism. The imperial core, while no longer being the centre of capitalist industrial production, maintains strict monopolies on many forms of advanced technical production. In turn, it is these countries that militarily maintain the world order of imperialism. The working-class can come to power in the peripheral countries, usually in alliance with the peasantry or other popular classes, but these valiant efforts will prove short-lived while world-imperialism still stands bestride humanity. The defeat and destruction of world-imperialism is the material precondition for the realisation of a socialist world system.

1919. The development of socialism under working-class rule gradually extends the principle of democratic planning to the whole economy and undermines the basis of inequality in the social division of labour — whether between intellectual and manual workers, national groups, or by gender. This society will combine the common labour of the many with a democracy that empowers and involves the many, struggling day by day for a collective life that enables the flourishing of the collective individual, rather than their atomization and subordination to the powerful few. Through this process, the special role of the state standing above society withers away and, as the revolution expands internationally, national divisions and inequalities between peoples are eliminated. The result is a society in which general planning takes the place of the anarchy of the market, and in which money, social classes, markets, and private property wither away, along with the national-state, the family-system, and the mysticism of religion. In this society, a free association of producers realises the unity between individual needs and social development, and provides for all according to their need.

2020. The first step in the long road to socialist society is to win the battle for democracy. Only through its own republic can the working-class organise society in the interests of the overwhelming majority. To that end, the immediate political task of the workers’ movement is abolition of the monarchy and its replacement with a democratic and social republic. The minimalist presidential ‘republic’ of the liberal establishment neither inspires nor suffices. Instead, what is needed is a democratic constituent assembly with full powers to establish a provisional government and a new republican constitution.

2121. With that in mind, communists have gathered in Melbourne, Australia, to propose the following program for the communist movement. This program is not a program for communists alone, but for the whole of the working-class — it is only with the active participation of millions of workers will our revolution be triumphant.

#For a Democratic Workers Republic

2222. Our aim is a democratic and socialist republic of the working-class in Australia. The existing state, with its minoritarian, monarchistic form of government and its unaccountable bureaucracies and police agencies, must be replaced with a democratic republic based on the undivided sovereignty of the masses. The working-class, at the head of the oppressed peoples of the world, have nothing to lose from democracy, for they are the majority class in the vast tranche of industrial countries. They have everything to gain.

2323. As such, we will:

Abolish the existing federal system and establish a unitary, democratic republic.
Constitute a popular assembly of delegates directly elected annually by proportional representation in multi-member districts, bound to the platform upon which they were elected, recallable and paid at the rate of a skilled worker.
Manage government by commissions directly subordinated to the popular assembly and local government. Subordinate the state administration to democratic oversight and begin the gradual democratisation of the state, so that the workers may govern themselves.
End special status and influence for religious groups and churches, so religion becomes a purely private affair. Nationalise all property portfolios, art treasures and archives held by religious institutions. Secularise all public holidays and establish a scientific and atheistic education system.
Hold publicly funded elections on public holidays, with all parties that accept the laws of the republic free to take part.
For genuine and autonomous local democracy at the neighbourhood, town, and regional levels within a framework of the maximum unity between the working-class’ national sections, i.e. decentralisation to the greatest possible degree, centralisation to the degree necessary.
Make all government and corporate secrets public.

#For Political and Social Freedom

2424. We will sweep away all limitations on political and social freedom, as well as all limitations on democratic rights. Our republic will herald a new epoch of freedom and equality.

2525. As such, we will:

Guarantee freedom of the press, assembly, speech and association.
Put press and broadcasting under the control of cooperatives and government bodies.
Abolish laws concerning ‘public morality’.
Establish a code of civil law, subordinating the judiciary to the popular assembly and abolishing the adversarial court system.
Judges will be selected from qualified persons by democratically elected bodies.
Guarantee the right to a jury trial and high-quality legal assistance from a state legal service. End the free market in legal services.
Establish a public investigations and mediation service which is democratically accountable.
End youth detention in favour of community care.
Set all fines as a proportion of income and assets.
Decriminalise non-violent offences and victimless crimes and abolish the punitive and carceral system in favour of state-owned and community-operated support, rehabilitation services, and mediation.
Review and assess all previous convictions.
Make prison the last option, with prisoners accorded full human and political rights and the facilities to develop themselves as human beings.

#For Education and Culture for All

2626. In capitalist society, the school and university are institutions of bourgeois enculturation, ideological ritual, and the production of workers for the demands of capital. A socialist revolution would turn this system on its head.

2727. As such, we will:

Establish a single, integrated and universal education system that covers childcare-creche, primary, secondary, and tertiary education, separate from religious authorities. End all state support for private education.
Fund schools as social centres, with medical clinics, social workers, and a full range of social and cultural activities, with extracurriculars and student clubs funded by the state.
Guarantee free accommodation, uniforms, books, and school meals for all students.
Provide education of a polytechnic nature, combining artistic, historical, scientific, technical, cultural, and social education with community service and industrial training. Expand teacher numbers, with wages and training that reflect their vital role in society.
Reform universities to provide quality scientific, cultural, and social education, as well as serving as research and public education institutions.
Transfer professional training to a system of state-funded and worker-controlled vocational schools.
Abolish fees for education and pay wages for students provided by the state.
Place democratic administration of schools and universities in the hands of students, staff, and members of the community.
Expand and strengthen library systems.
Establish state publishing cooperatives to promote literacy and produce and distribute books.
Support and promote workers' fitness associations, sports clubs, hiking and wilderness societies, and other cultural and athletic bodies under the control of the working-class.
Allocate generous state endowments for the arts to support art education, collectives, orchestras, film and theatre groups and workshops for the plastic, visual and literary arts.
Employ artists in community artistic and cultural projects.
Nationalise all social media companies and similar communications platforms. Limit the usage of Large Language Models to strictly industrial and scientific applications; oppose the utilisation of user content within training data.
Democratise Internet services, for free and universal access to a common internet.
Establish state support for digital encyclopedias and archives, as well as provide state support for printed encyclopedias.
Nationalise all research and development programs to guarantee state employment for scientists and technicians.
Democratise public space and architecture, placing them under immediate public control for the benefit and accessibility of all.
Open free galleries, parks, sports facilities, gymnasiums, bathhouses, libraries, cinemas, theatres, youth centres, and music venues.

#For a Life Worth Living

2828. Our starting point is what the working-class needs — not what the capitalists can afford. We must ensure that all people have a life worth living.

2929. As such, we will:

Guarantee provision to all people of essential needs in housing, food and drink, clothing, care for children and access to water and power.
Index all wages and benefits to inflation, as calculated by workers organisation.
Set a guaranteed minimum living income for all at the level needed to support one adult and one dependent, with additional support for those with more dependents.
Implement a maximum 7-hour day and 4-day working week, with reduced hours for dangerous or demanding work, pregnancy, or extreme conditions of weather and with no reduction in overall wages.
Provide for minimum uninterrupted weekly breaks of 65 hours, with 6 weeks paid annual leave and long service leave in all industries, generous sick and parental leave and breaks during the working day of at least 1.5 hours.
Provide break rooms and dining halls for employees in all medium and large workplaces with free food and water, and workers’ dining halls in densely populated areas to serve workers in small firms.
Negotiate and pay wages on a whole-economy basis, with equal pay for equal work guaranteed.
Strict conditions will be established limiting casual work, promoting permanent part time status and governing layoffs and dismissal.
Private superannuation will be transitioned to a universal state pension guaranteeing a liveable income and housing for retirees from age 65.
A State Employment Service will guarantee stable employment in nationalised industries for all who can work.
A progressive income tax system based on income and wealth taxes, as well as inheritance and gift taxes which will replace current income and indirect taxes.

#For Workers Power

3030. The basis for a democratic, socialist republic is the organised might of the working-class. The trade unions are the mass defensive organisations of the working-class. We seek to transform them from defensive organs for sectoral interests into weapons of the whole working-class.

3131. As such, we will:

Organise the entire working-class into industrial unions and associated workers organisations, with a single, democratic union federation uniting all workers, regardless of citizenship or status.
Expand union membership to include secondary and technical college students, sex workers and other precarious sectors, and home workers and domestic workers.
Establish independent caucuses in the unions for women, queer people, indigenous people, and migrant workers, as well as youth and children’s auxiliaries. Include elected representatives of the workers in all negotiations and union representatives will have the unlimited freedom to enter workplaces to review payroll, ensure worker safety and politically organise.
Provide systematic state support for any spontaneous acts of collective expropriation of private property, space, and workplaces by the working-class; and bring them into wider democratic management. Provide general state support for workers in their struggles against capital.

#For Industrial Democracy

3232. We seek the socialisation of the commanding heights of the economy, placing economic power into the hands of the working-class.

3333. As such, we will:

Expropriate the commanding heights of the economy: all land and natural resources, finance, telecommunications, insurance, banking, steel, mineral processing and smelting, railways, logistics, groceries, mining, pharmaceuticals, energy, and utilities, bringing these vital industries under collective ownership.
Establish commissions of workers and experts to begin the work of socialisation and planning of the economy and develop a ten-year plan to build the lasting infrastructure and industrial capacity needed to drastically improve living standards.
Joint worker-community management for all state industries.
Subordinate all enterprise bureaucracy to workers’ management, open all accounting books to the public, and force professional administrators to train workers to manage their work directly and replace them.
Abolition of intellectual property and the open sourcing of all software, firmware, manuals, and schematics. Enshrine the ability for workers to repair their machinery, implement a program of component standardisation, and intraoperative design.
Establish a state monopoly over foreign trade.

#For a Universal Militia

3434. The standing army and police are weapons of the capitalist class for the oppression of the workers. We will do away with them. The armed forces of international capital—the prison system, police, and the military—will be replaced by a democratic and popular militia, flowing from the working-class and the oppressed’s organs of self-defense established under capitalism. In turn, all institutions currently used to spy on and intimidate the working-class, harass activists and oppressed people, and gather information on the populace, will be done away with.

3535. As such, we will:

Abolish the police, standing army and security services.
Create a universal, democratic and popular militia, under rigorous democratic control.
Abolish the privileged officer class; for the election and recall of all commanding officers by workers within a particular unit on the basis of merit and character.
Enshrine the ability for workers in the militia to refuse unjust orders from their elected officers.
Establish a regime of universal training of all workers in the safe, effective, and disciplined use and storage of firearms, munitions, communications equipment, and other materiel.
Create academies of communist military science and promote the elaboration of communist military theory.
Integrate military logistics into non-military supply chains; for the placement of the militia’s logistics under the control of the active elements of the militia at any given time alongside the workers involved in the production and transport of any arms, perishables, fuel, medicine, and other dual use materiel utilised by the militia.

#For Housing for All

3636. The power of the rentiers is another boot on the neck of the working-class — with a worker’s republic, we will sweep away landlord power for good. We will end the housing crisis and ensure that everyone can live well.

3737. As such, we will:

Guarantee housing as a basic right, with rents capped at 20% of income, and National Housing Insurance Scheme for poor and working people.
Expropriate all empty buildings and large real estate portfolios, and progressively acquire investment properties for the state, to be incorporated into public housing stock.
Nationalise hotels and ban Airbnb and similar schemes.
Establish a massive program of socially useful public works to provide full employment, develop housing, economic and social infrastructure, and restore the environment.
Create a publicly owned building corporation to ensure that planned targets for housebuilding are reached and to provide permanent employment and ongoing training for building workers.
Ensure new housing developments are spacious, high quality, energy-efficient and include outside play areas, green space, leisure facilities and social services such as schools and clinics. Incorporate collective services and amenities, as well as communal dwellings, into the stock of housing.
Allocate accommodation on the basis of need, with each person being guaranteed a room of their own and secure tenure for as long as they need.
Set public housing payments to cover maintenance and nothing more.
Manage housing estates and blocks of flats democratically by tenants in conjunction with the local authorities and relevant trade unions. Establish democratic housing cooperatives and cooperative land trusts with state incentives for those who sell their property into communal land schemes.

#For Health and Social Care

3838. Health and social care will be the common right of all, guaranteed through a universal service and the vast expansion of state care.

3939. As such, we will:

Expand the public healthcare system into a socialised national health service that guarantees free access to all medical care, including dentistry, optometry and mental health care.
Emphasise preventative interventions and public health.
Nationalise all health centres and employ all medical staff in the state system, with shorter hours and reserve staff for emergencies.
Ensure public healthcare is available in every neighbourhood, school, village, and tower block through primary medical centres, urgent care clinics, and polyclinics, operated democratically by staff and the communities they serve.
Expand public health initiatives such as mass vaccination, disease prevention, and health awareness.
Decriminalise drug-use, adopting a policy of harm reduction. Empower public healthcare to support people working through addiction.
Guarantee free, socially organised exercise and public sports, as well as gymnasiums and organised sports for children.
Establish a National Disability and Aged Care Service to take over all existing social care, disability care, and aged care centres.
Eliminate hostile architecture, loitering laws, laws against public drinking and smoking, and other limits on public gatherings.

#For Action on the Climate Emergency

4040. Capitalist civilisation has unleashed an ecological catastrophe upon humanity. Our republic will immediately act to address this crisis through industrial democracy.

4141. As such, we will:

Create a general industrial plan to move towards a negative carbon society as soon as possible through a crash energy transition and sweeping ecological reorganisation.
Provide immediate, alternative long-term employment in sustainable industries to regional towns reliant on fossil fuel production.
Break up the oil-auto-steel complex, limit urban automobile use and undertake radical expansion of rail, tram, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure.
For free or low-cost transit; abolish all fees and tickets associated with public transport.
Limit the production and use of chemical products and hazardous substances, based on the precautionary principle.
Reduce energy demand by supporting workers who want flexible working arrangements; limiting air travel and car use; ensuring that the existing housing stock is radically upgraded and exacting building standards are enforced; and imposing taxes on big scale polluters.
Limit the meat and dairy industries and support research into sustainable meat alternatives as well as sustainable farming practices.
Create towns and cities that are full of trees, roof gardens, planted walls, allotments, wild parks, waterways, and small-scale cooperative farms, both to improve food security and to sequester carbon.
Seek to re-establish imperilled ecosystems where possible: forests, natural floodplains, marshes, and rainforests should be rejuvenated and strive to reintroduce the full array of native flora and fauna.
Create a plan for the reforestation of destroyed forests while protecting the existing close-to-natural ecosystems, by imposing strict limitations on logging, and working to preserve old growth forests and nature preserves.
Protect water resources, with massive investments in drinking water supply and wastewater treatment through common management of water resources.
Institute a general program to conserve resources, and to avoid and manage waste, with recycling cooperatives established in every community.
Ban destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling, and institute wide no-catch areas, with the aim to fully restore marine life and thus create a sustainable fishing industry.

#For Land Reform

4242. With the establishment of a democratic republic, and the bringing of all land and natural resources under democratic control, a revolution will sweep the land. We will break the stranglehold of capitalist agriculture and return life to the countryside.

4343. As such, we will:

Guarantee long-term tenure for family farms and agricultural cooperatives, as well as inalienable land rights to indigenous communities. Bring corporate ranches, farms, and estates under state ownership and reorganise them as state farms under workers control. Open the wastelands and abandoned farmland to cooperative farmers.
Nationalise the grocery monopolies, as well as collectivise the grain elevators, mills, and other key agricultural processing plants, to guarantee fair returns to rural communities while keeping prices of food and other goods low for workers in the city.
Transition from capitalist small farms to cooperatives through cheap credit, state agronomic support, and industrial products for farmers who enter into collectivisation schemes.
Establish joint, elected committees of workers and scientists to undertake management of waterways, top soil, forests, and other vital, shared resources.
Ensure quality health and social care, art and culture, and education is accessible to all in rural communities.

#Action Against Racism

4444. We oppose the division of the working-class into national sections, and on that basis seek to consistently struggle against and overcome racism. By overcoming racial, ethnic, and linguistic divisions, we will forge a multiracial, multinational, democratic republic.

4545. As such, we will:

Oppose and overcome all forms of racial discrimination in all sections of the working-class.
Guarantee rights to use minority languages in all sectors of government and industry and promote multilingualism and the use of auxiliary languages.
Abolish border controls, citizenship, and immigration restrictions; welcoming migrants and asylum seekers who come to the new republic as equal participants in all aspects of social life.
Enable safe and affordable travel for migrants and asylum seekers. Work to dismantle underground smuggling rackets which force workers into unsafe or dangerous working conditions.
Empower a general struggle against racism, strengthen and enforce legislation that outlaws racial discrimination in education, housing, employment, or any other field, and wage a vigorous campaign of education and cultural struggle to overcome racism, and promote peace and fraternity between peoples.
Abolish all work visa payments and provide free education for migrants.
Establish a system of recognition of qualifications on the basis of an aptitude test.

#For Indigenous Liberation

4646. A new republic will allow Indigenous people to free themselves from colonial oppression and bring about a revival of popular power.

4747. As such, we will:

Immediately prepare a Treaty with Australia’s Indigenous peoples and foster democratic self-determination for all Indigenous peoples as well as democratic representation in our common republic’s government.
Support the democratic self-determination of the toilers of the Zenadh Kes Islands (the Torres Strait), including the right to establish their own, fraternal republic.
Support elected Indigenous community councils with government block-funding allocated to combat poverty, disease, poor housing, unemployment and legal abuses.
Train more Aboriginal teachers, health, welfare and legal workers.
Recognise the right of Indigenous community councils to establish public inquiries to review the cases of all Indigenous prisoners and any cases of abuse or death of Indigenous people while in legal custody.
Place outreach services under community control and oversight.
Pay reparations for the ongoing effects of colonial oppression in the form of consistent increases in living conditions and social services, as well as collective, inalienable land rights overseen by elected councils.
Support the material basis for Indigenous cultural regeneration with land rights and socially owned resources, farming, and industry.
Expand Indigenous run health clinics, schools, child protection organisations, and social welfare centres. Schooling will be conducted in local languages where possible, and the state will promote preservation and use of indigenous languages.
Integrate Indigenous culture into general social life, with the inclusion of indigenous people into all common democratic processes, with Indigenous studies programs in schools, and research institutions focused on the linguistic, historical, cultural, social, economic, and the political development of Indigenous culture.

#For Women's Liberation

4848. We uphold the struggle for women’s liberation and seek to carry it into the streets and into state power through mass women’s organisations, defence groups, social collectives, and union factions, with their own press and street organisations. Our new republic will turn formal equality into substantive equality and open the way for women’s liberation.

4949. As such, we will:

End all forms of legal discrimination against women and establish equal rights and responsibilities for women to participate in all public and social activity.
Mandate equal pay for women in all sectors, enforced by the organised labour movement, and help women to escape concentration in the informal and family business sector through programs to provide full–time job opportunities with decent wages for women.
Establish the legal right for women to dress as they please.
Institute a civil partnership system, where the legal status of marriage is replaced with a simple system of de facto relationship through declaration. Family status and associated rights will be based on voluntary declaration and dependent children.
Guarantee wages for housework, paid by the state, with the unionisation of all domestic workers.
Expand free, 24-hour crèches and kindergartens to facilitate full participation for parents in social life outside the home, including in schools, universities, and large workplaces. Society will take collective responsibility for the rearing of children.
Create high-quality canteens with cheap prices in every neighbourhood, as well as expanding canteens and free meals at schools and large workplaces.
Establish laundry, gardening, and house-cleaning services undertaken by local authorities and the state.
Institute paid maternity leave of 12 months, which can be taken up to three months before giving birth, with 12 months paid parental leave for non-birthing parents, 3 months of which should be compulsory. Provide paid leave to parents and carers to look after sick children, and a maximum six-hour working day for all breastfeeding parents.
Fight against sexual violence in all forms, with expanded domestic violence and assault support shelters under democratic control and the formation of independent women’s committees to investigate acts of sexual abuse and bring them before public trial.
Guarantee the provision of women’s health and support clinics, as well as free abortion and contraception on demand, with universal sexual education that promotes sexual freedom, dignity, responsibility, and health.

#For Sexual Liberation

5050. We will unleash a sexual revolution that sweeps away the hegemony of bourgeois society. In this revolution, gay, trans, and queer people are at the forefront of the struggle.

5151. As such, we will:

Decriminalise consensual sexual activities and eliminate all “public morality” and “moral outrage” laws which are used to enforce conservative social values. Ensure sex workers’ fundamental rights to organise their labour, refuse unsafe work, work in a safe environment, receive medical treatment, and have affordable and safe living conditions.
Expunge all criminal convictions and licensing records related to queer life, sex work, or morality laws.
End harassment by the state and religious institutions: sexual orientation and all consensual sexual activity must be a matter of personal choice.
Ban ‘conversion therapy’.
Outlaw all discrimination against queer people and sex workers, in housing, in access to financial services, in medical treatment, and in parenting. We will expand state support for co-parenting and the collective rearing of children, and guarantee state support for fertility treatment.
Overturn all bans on eroticism and “promotion of homosexuality”, end all censorship of library books and films, and expand access to sexual health clinics and other vital institutions of the gay community.
Provide free healthcare for trans people, and establish democratic community control over gender clinics, easy provision of hormones, expanded youth gender clinics and access to medical support and advice. Protect intersex individuals and prohibit unnecessary “corrective” surgeries on intersex children.
Provide material support for queer cultural life and promote the expansion, expropriation and democratisation of bars and festivals.
Abolish the legal recognition of sex in government documentation.

#Open the Way for Youth

5252. Our republic will sweep aside all limitations of young people that keep them confined, oppressed, and subject to some of the harshest forms of social degradation. We are for the liberation of youth, on the basis of the democratic unification of children, students, and youth into mass organisations. Only a socialist revolution can give a future to young people.

5353. As such, we will:

Ensure that every young person can leave education to a job, training, or benefits, and be free to rejoin the education system whenever they wish.
Guarantee jobs for all young people on wages and conditions equal to those of older workers, with youth wages being abolished.
Suppress child labour and ensure that children have a chance to go to school while providing for families while their children are at school.
Provide housing and hostels for youth, for use for as long or short a time period as they may need, allowing young people to leave home when they wish to. Establish a broad range of sports and cultural centres under the control of representatives elected by youth and build youth centres in every neighbourhood.
Remove all obstacles to young people participating in social and political life, including introducing the right to vote and be elected for all workers and students from the age of 15.
Create a robust system of social services to protect young people from abuse and exploitation.
Ensure young people are free to develop their personal, social, cultural, and sexual lives free from interference by parents, police, or religious authorities through universal sexual education and free access to reproductive medicine and contraception.

#For International Revolution

5454. We will oppose imperialism and seek a union of socialist republics in Asia and the Pacific. The establishment of a democratic republic in Australia will be only one step in the emancipation of the international working-class, a single front in a general struggle against the behemoth of capital. Together, we will raise the banner of socialism across Asia, the Pacific, and the world.

5555. As such, we will:

Withdraw from all alliances which cement the interest of the imperial capitalist class as state policy; oppose the utilisation of public funds for the exploitation of the imperial periphery.
Withdraw all Australian police, military, and intelligence personnel from international operations, and expel the military and intelligence personnel of colonial and imperial nations. Close all foreign military and intelligence installations.
Support unconditional and total cancellation of the debts of all semi-colonial and peripheral nations. For monetary, material, and military support to all workers movements struggling against capital, towards the final victory of the working-class across the planet.
Institute a new program of fair trade and support for international development based on equality of labour-time between workers of all nations, guaranteed free passage of essential resources, technologies, and supplies, and democratic and social development of all peoples.
Withdraw from the United Nations and its related institutions and seek to convene an international congress of delegates elected from the organisations of workers.
Fight for a Union of Oceanian and Asian Socialist Republics, the inclusion of such a union in a larger union of all socialist republics, and a revolutionary struggle to drive imperialism and capitalism out of Asia and the Pacific.

#Epilogue

5656. The working-class must use all necessary economic, electoral, social, and political means to win a democratic mandate for socialism and to implement our program. We make no artificial distinction between legal and illegal, constitutional and unconstitutional, peaceful or forceful means. When elected workers’ representatives should only take a skilled workers’ wage. They should not form governments with representatives of the capitalist class; nor form coalition governments that cannot guarantee the above program.

5757. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

5858. Proletarians of all countries, Unite!

#Appendix One: What We Fight For

5959. Communist Unity is a partyist fighting organisation of workers and youth committed to the struggle for democracy, peace, and socialism. This is a summary of our vision for the activities and aims of communists in Australia as it exists right now. These are our principles – this is what we are fighting for!

Our central aim is the organisation of communists, revolutionary socialists, Marxists, worker-internationalists, and all politically advanced workers and youth into a Communist Party. Without organisation the working-class is nothing; with the highest form of organisation it is everything.
Our aim is the formation of a mass communist party, but there exists no real Communist Party today. There are many so-called ‘parties’ on the left, but in reality none have the character of a mass, ecumenical party of the socialist workers movement. Rather, they are political sects. The sect form is a sign of the immaturity of the workers movement, and must be overcome if a Communist Party is to be built. The emergence of a socialist workers party with a mass membership and base within the advanced sections of the proletariat is only means by which the working-class movement can reach its political maturity and begin the long march to political power. The centre of such a party is its program, which outlines the preconditions both for the working-class to take power and the transition to socialism. In its wake, it will create a vast party-movement of workers organisations, defence groups, educational and cultural groups, publications and literary circles, tenants and neighbourhood organisations, and organisations of national minorities, women, and youth.
Communists have no interest apart from the working-class as a whole. They differ only in recognising the importance of scientific socialism as a guide to practice, and they recognise the world-historical task of the proletariat. That theory is no dogma but must be constantly added to and enriched. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement, and as such the foremost task of all communists is to promote the ideas of the scientific socialist program and world-outlook amongst the working-class. Absent scientific socialism, the movement of the proletariat will be seized upon by romantic, reactionary, religious, chauvinistic, or opportunistic illusions fostered by the reactionary, bourgeois, and petit bourgeois socialists.
Communists operate according to the principles of democratic centralism. Through ongoing debate, we seek to achieve unity in action and a common world outlook. As long as they support agreed actions and abide by programmatic unity, members have the right to debate their views in the party press, to express their positions publicly in a principled manner, and to form temporary or permanent factions.
Communists oppose all imperialist wars and occupations but constantly strive to bring to the fore the fundamental question – ending war is bound up with ending capitalism.
Communists are internationalists. Everywhere we strive for the closest unity and agreement of proletarian parties of all countries. We oppose every manifestation of national sectionalism. The working-class must be organised globally. Without a global Communist Party, a Communist International, the World Party, the struggle against capital is weakened and lacks coordination.
Capitalism in its ceaseless search for profit puts the future of humanity at risk. Capitalism is synonymous with war, pollution, exploitation and crisis. As a global system capitalism can only be superseded globally. All forms of national socialism are reactionary and anti-working-class.
The capitalist class will never willingly allow their wealth and power to be taken away by a parliamentary vote. They will resist using every means at their disposal. Communists are not opposed to using parliament and winning the biggest possible working-class representation. But workers must be prepared to make revolution – by any means necessary.
Communists fight for revolutionary democracy in all spheres of society. Democracy must be given a reality by social revolution. Communists are the most consistent and revolutionary democrats. In order for the working-class to begin the transition to a socialist society and do away with capitalist production, it must first bring itself to political power — it must win the battle of democracy. In winning this battle, the working-class cannot simply seize the old state apparatus of the constitutional, liberal state — it must instead create a new republic, based on the organised power of the working-class, with maximal democratic freedoms.
We will use the most militant methods objective circumstances allow to achieve a socialist republic in Oceania, the self-determination of Indigenous Australians, and a socialist federation in Asia.
Communists oppose class collaboration, and oppose all forms of Popular Frontism, populism, corporatism, and nationalism. The independence of the working-class and its organisations must be maintained.
Communists favour industrial unions. Bureaucracy and class compromise must be fought and the trade unions transformed into schools for communism.
Communists are champions of the oppressed. The struggle against women’s and gay oppression, combatting racism and chauvinism, and the struggle for peace and ecological sustainability are just as much working-class questions as pay, conditions, trade union rights and demands for high-quality health, housing and education.
Unity of Action requires a common political outlook. Freedom of Criticism requires freedom of thought and debate. The consequence of these facts requires political unity around a concrete program of demands to be made the core of communist organising. The proliferation of doctrinaire sects which profess a specific factional outlook is a consequence of the immaturity of the socialist movement, and it is a hindrance that must be overcome through unity around a common program. This program must include two parts — the immediate aims of the communist, which would outline the preconditions under which the working can take power, and the tasks for its new revolutionary government, and the maximal program of the communists — the transition from capitalism to communism, the withering away of the state, the abolition of the family, religion, and nation.
The workers’ republic is the first stage of the worldwide transition to communism – a system which knows neither wars, exploitation, money, classes, states nor nations. Communism is genuine freedom and the real beginning of human history.
There are no shortcuts to bringing the working-class to power. With the formation of its party, the working-class will be furnished with its political program. However, it will take a period of patient work to win popular support for such a program amongst the working-class and the various middling strata. It is only when popular support has been won that the working-class can take up the tasks of taking political power and implement its minimum program by any means necessary. We are opposed to all manifestations of impatience in the workers movement — be they electoral cretinism or adventurist left-opportunism.
In the absence of a Communist Party, the first duty of all communists is to forge one.

6060. All who accept these principles are urged to join Communist Unity and fight to build a Communist Party!