1) The solution to the basic problems of our people in the United States can only come as the result of a profound revolutionary transformation of our society That is, only socialism can provide the context to build a society free from exploitation, racism, oppression and war.
2) The foundation of all the varied forms of oppression in our society is the socio-economic system called imperialism. The economic essence of imperialism is monopoly capitalism. Under monopoly capitalism, a handful of monopolies ruthlessly exploit the overwhelming majority of the population, chiefly the working class.
3) However, imperialism develops not only on the basis of exploiting its domestic population. Imperialism also exploits whole peoples and nations in other parts the world. This exploitation, like the exploitation of its own working class, is a fundamental feature of imperialism.
4) It is only the working class which has the capacity to lead the entire working and exploited population in the struggle to overthrow monopoly capitalism, in the struggle to consolidate its victory, in the building of socialism and in the struggle for the abolition of all classes.
5) The leading section of the working class, owing to its socialization and discipline which grow out of the material conditions of large scale capitalist production, is the industrial proletariat.
6) The economic exploitation by monopoly capitalism is preserved and protected by the US government. Taken as a whole, the legislative, judicial and executive branches, together with their subordinate bureaucracy and the military, make up the capitalist state. It is through this state apparatus that the monopoly capitalists exercise their dictatorship. The rule of monopoly capital cannot be ended without the overthrow of this apparatus. The entire history of the revolutionary struggle of the working class has demonstrated that this state can neither be taken over nor transformed. It must be smashed and replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
7) While the working class will always choose the most peaceful road to power possible, as long as the military-bureaucratic capitalist state exists, there is no possibility of a peaceful parliamentary transition. Consequently, the working class and its allies must prepare for armed struggle.
8) The working class cannot accomplish its mission without the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard party. This party must base itself on the science of Marxism-Leninism which is the only consistently revolutionary outlook in the world. It must draw together all the most advanced fighters from the movements of the working class and the oppressed nationalities and unite them in a single, tightly organized, and well disciplined political organization.
9) In the United States today there is no such party. The chief claimant to this role is the CPUSA. However, because they have deviated from essential principles of Marxism-Leninism and have sought to revise its revolutionary essence, their claim is without substance. These revisionists have falsely argued that a peaceful parliamentary transition is possible, that imperialism can cease its tendency towards war and fascism, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is an outmoded concept. The other and smaller claimants to the role of vanguard in the US are equally bankrupt. All have embraced opportunism and are therefore a incapable of leading the proletariat to victory.
10) Thus the building of a vanguard party remains the central task of all honest Marxist-Leninists. Such a party cannot be built in isolation from the great movements of the working class and the oppressed nationalities. It only becomes possible on the basis of the development of a correct application of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions in the US and a fusing of the communist movement with the class struggle of the proletariat.
11) Since the US working class is multinational, it must have a single multinational vanguard party. While organizations of Marxist-Leninists of a single oppressed nationality have a certain historic justification, in principle, Marxist-Leninists must strive to develop a single multinational pre-party organization.
12) Multinational unity is impossible without a thoroughgoing struggle against national divisions in the working class. Any unity between oppressed nationality and white workers which is not based on a principled struggle against every manifestation of racism is fictitious unity. The white workers must be won to taking up the special demands, of nationally oppressed peoples. However, unity in the struggle against racism cannot be built on the basis of moral appeals to the white workers to ”repudiate their white skin privileges”; it must be founded upon their class interest in the struggle against capital. Unity also demands defeating narrow nationalism. However, because narrow nationalism is, in large measure, a reaction to racism, the struggle against narrow nationalism can only progress to the extent that real strides are made in the struggle against racism.
13) It is impossible to develop a revolutionary vanguard party without a vigorous struggle against all manifestations of sexism in every aspect of social life. The unity of men and women is critical to the victory of the working class and such unity demands a principled struggle against sexism, i.e. men must take up the special demands of women.
14) It is impossible to develop a revolutionary vanguard without an all-sided struggle against opportunism – the sacrificing of the fundamental interests of the masses to the temporary interests of an insignificant minority of the workers. Unless opportunism of all shades is systematically rooted out of the working class movement and its vanguard, the proletariat will never sustain a revolutionary struggle against imperialism and will never succeed in taking power.
15) Presently within the working class movement the main opportunist danger to posed by reformism and right opportunism. Within the party building movement, however, a different situation exists. While in the long run, the main opportunist danger to the developing Marxist-Leninist forces is presented by modern revisionism led by the CPUSA, in the present period, within the forces struggling to build a new revolutionary party, the main danger takes the form of ’left’ opportunism. Dialectics teaches us that a thing can turn into its opposite. amd so it is with a “danger.” In the struggle against ultra-leftism, the potential exists for going over to the standpoint of right opportunism.
16) Trotskyism shares with both modern revisionism and modern dogmatism a petty-bourgeois essence. Given its purist positions on the question of socialism in one country, the role of the national bourgeoisie in the national liberation struggle, the united front and other central questions, it is a viewpoint which objectively coincides with the interests of the bourgeoisie.
17) The struggle in the United States cannot be seen apart from its context in the world. On the contrary the struggle here is only a single part of a worldwide revolutionary process, which includes not only the proletariat’s struggle for socialism in the advanced capitalist countries, but also the struggle of the peoples where the working class holds power to build socialism and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary national liberation movements. Thus the working class must see itself as part of a single worldwide united front against imperialism.
18) The working class must practice the principles of proletarian internationalism. Thus it must take up every struggle against imperialism anywhere in the world and champion it as its own struggle. In the present context, the practice of proletarian internationalism is impossible without correctly identifying the main enemy of the world’s people. By main enemy, Marxist-Leninists understand the main obstacle to the consolidation of national liberation, democracy, peace and socialism. Today that main enemy is US imperialism.