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28 Theses on the American Socialist Revolution and Building the Revolutionary Party

[Submitted to the May 1983 plenum by the Opposition Bloc]

1. The economic crisis of American capitalism has steadily deepened since the late 1960s with the end of the postwar boom. Not only have the forces which fueled the economic stability and prosperity of the 1950s and ’60s exhausted themselves, they are rapidly turning into stimulants of severe economic dislocation and collapse.

The artificial expansion of industry and agriculture through unprecedented government spending (particularly military spending) has led to a swelling of the national public and private debt, becoming an immense burden on the economy. Europe and Japan, which U.S. imperialism was forced to rebuild after the war in order to save the world capitalist system from crumbling, now produce more efficiently than the United States. Trade and tariff wars are on the rise. The international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods has collapsed. As the international depression becomes more generalized, millions of additional workers are thrown out of work in the industrialized nations. In the colonial and semicolonial countries, hunger and starvation, continued displacement from the countryside, and a growing trade deficit are the order of the day. All capitalism in its death agony has to offer working people is austerity, greater unemployment, rising inflation, and the looming threat of a major economic collapse.

2. The postwar expansion of American imperialism rooted the United States in the powder kegs of the world. The more the United States put the world under its domination, the more it became dependent upon the rest of the world, with all its threatening contradictions and upheavals.

3. The political crisis of U.S. imperialism, intertwined with its deepening economic crisis, stems from its inability to drive back the advance of the world working class, particularly in the period opened up on a world scale in 1968 by the general strike in France, the Prague Spring, and the advance of the Vietnamese revolution.

Since World War II, although the working class in several countries has suffered severe blows, the world revolution has continued to advance. After the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 and the Cuban revolution in 1959, came the historic defeats of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam in 1975, and in Iran, Nicaragua, and Grenada in 1979.

When the working class has been defeated—as in Chile in 1973—the defeat was only imposed by a combination of brutal repression and the betrayal of the reformists within ’the working class movement. In Portugal in the mid-1970s, the reformist perspective derailed the prerevolutionary situation, leading it back into the swamp of a restabilized capitalist regime.

Beginning in the late 1960s, as the economic crisis of capitalism settled in, an entirely new stage of working class struggles opened up in the advanced industrialized nations and the bureaucratized workers’ states as well. The events of 1968 in France and Czechoslovakia were the first manifestations of this resurgence of working class combativity. They were sharp and clear expressions of the combined unity of the world revolution. The growing interconnection of the three sectors of the world revolution has been confirmed by the advance of the Central American revolution with the victory of the FSLN and the unfolding process of the Nicaraguan revolution. It has also been confirmed by the advance of the political revolution in Poland from 1970 to this day, and the growing struggle against austerity and militarization in the industrialized countries.

4. The international offensive by U.S. imperialism and its assault at home on the democratic rights and standard of living of American working people has also met with resistance and the growing consciousness and combativity of the American working class and its allies.

This growing combativity was first expressed on a mass level in the latter part of the 1950s with the rise of the Black liberation struggle. It subsequently deepened with the outpouring of opposition to the Vietnam war, the rise of the women’s struggle, and the beginnings of mobilizations of the organized working class against the employers’ austerity policies.

Although uneven, the post-sixties period has witnessed a development of the radicalization within the organized working class. The unions are becoming central arenas of the class struggle as the ruling class seeks to drive down wages and working conditions in order to shore up its faltering economy and maintain its gigantic profits.

This has been accompanied by a growing awareness among broad layers of the American people that foreign and domestic policy are two sides of the same coin. Both are carried out by the government in the interest of the ruling rich. Hitherto accepted premises and values about “American democracy” have been shattered by Vietnam and Watergate. Growing anger and ferment, and the development of fightback movements and mobilizations, are fueled by the increasing distrust in the political institutions of American capitalism. These are fundamental traits of American political life.

5. Since Reagan took office, he has used his position to openly attack the American working class and to try to reassert U.S. worldwide hegemony after its historic defeats in Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

The conscious policy to break PATCO’s strike, cripple the union and disbar all its members as air traffic controllers was a warning to working people of the government’s serious attempt to implement an austerity policy. Reagan’s budget projections through 1988 show that per capita real spending for low income families will decrease 22 percent while military spending will increase 63 percent.

The announcement that $19 million would be used to “destabilize” Nicaragua was an attempt to intimidate revolutionaries throughout Central America and to tighten the economic noose around the neck of the Sandinistas. Yet the ruling class has not been able to convince or bludgeon American workers into accepting these perspectives. The overriding characteristic of this period is the polarization of class forces, and a mood of combativity among the masses.

6. The Reagan victory was by no means a popular mandate for reactionary programs. On the contrary. It was the expression of the increased distrust and disaffection with the two-party system by half of the eligible voting-age population who preferred to abstain from voting. This attitude of cynicism and indifference to the two capitalist parties could only express itself in the negative, given the complete lack of any independent expression of working class politics. And many of those who did vote for Reagan cast their vote as a protest against the incumbent.

7. The absence of a labor party based on the unions has put its stamp on all aspects of the class struggle in the United States. This has prevented the working class from using its potential strength as an organized and independent political force. At the same time it has attenuated and put a brake on the developing crisis of U.S. imperialism.

The tremendous working class upsurges during the thirties as well as those immediately following the Second World War did not lead to the creation of a labor party. This is the direct result of the counterrevolutionary policies of the reformist leaderships, particularly the Stalinists. They were able to channel this powerful movement back into the Democratic Party.

The consolidation of a labor bureaucracy in the context of the witch-hunt of the Cold War has left the labor movement still weaker. Today only one out of every five workers belongs to a union. Since the 1950s, the labor bureaucracy has joined with the ruling class to set up AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development), a front for the CIA. Organized labor—because it has tied itself to its class enemy—has not been able to repeal such antilabor legislation as the Taft-Hartley Act despite the fact that it has spent millions to elect its “friends” in the two capitalist parties.

8. The Democratic Party has attempted to present itself as a coalition of the vast majority of the American people. But the Democratic-liberal-labor-women-minorities coalition which had been an indispensable mechanism of class collaboration and social pacification throughout the entire postwar period is continuing to disintegrate.

In the 1980 presidential election, just over 20 percent of the voting-age population voted for the Democrats. This was a rejection of Carter’s austerity policies and other attacks on the working class and its allies.

The 1982 mid-term elections are yet another indication of the growing crisis of the Democratic Party. Despite the incessant appeals of the labor officialdom to funnel the anti-Reagan sentiment back into the Democratic Party, the increase in the voter turnout was small The Reaganites did suffer important defeats, but these mid-term elections did not indicate that the masses had developed any new interest or confidence in the two-party system or in the Democratic Party.

Thus, with their political safety net torn, the American bourgeoisie fears that major class battles, which are already brewing, might manifest themselves in the i.dependent political action of the working class and its allies. Discussions at labor conferences indicate a growing interest in the idea of a labor party which could pose an alternative to the austerity drive.

But so long as the working class is not able to break through the obstacles placed in the path of independent political action, the moribund capitalist system and its two-party structure will be able to survive its growing contradictions and crisis. Periods of respite for the Democratic Party, in this context, are not excluded.

9. The bipartisan character of the ruling class assault is becoming clearer. The Democrats are unable to pose any significant alternative to Reagan’s policies. In fact, they stand implicated in this austerity drive. It was Carter who drew up the plan to decertify PATCO, who allowed the ERA to remain stalled, and who resurrected the plan for the draft.

But this does not mean that the bourgeoisie has reached a consensus as to how to confront the American and world working class. Heated debates and divisions have already surfaced over national and international policies. These are likely to increase. They may even lead to major fissures as the economic and political situation of U.S. imperialism continues to deteriorate.

It is precisely their inability so far to demobilize and defeat the working class at home and abroad which is at the root of these divisions. In turn, these divisions can provide opportunities for the working class to gain confidence in its own ability to provide the solutions to the pressing problems of the day.

10. The combined economic and political crisis of U.S. imperialism in a context where the American working class has not been defeated will objectively pave the way for the development of a prerevolutionary and revolutionary situation in the period ahead.

This is not the 1930s, where the severe economic depression was accompanied by the crushing defeats of the world proletariat in Italy, Germany, France, and Spain—resulting from the betrayals of reformist leaderships within the labor movement. The U.S. ruling class under Reagan has moved forward on an increasingly reactionary course. But it is doing so in the context of an increasingly deteriorating situation for U.S. imperialism. To achieve any long-term solution to its crisis, it must destroy the unions, effectively abolish democratic rights, and change the forms and institutions of class rule towards totalitarianism and fascism. It must also change the relationship of class forces on a world scale in favor of imperialism.

But this is not on the order of the day. On the contrary. The advance of the world revolution and the resulting crisis of reformism mean that the balance of forces is shifting to the disadvantage of imperialism. This will inevitably lead to major confrontations between the two contending social classes—both at home and abroad—and to the development of explosive situations in the period ahead.

11. To say that the objective political situation is headed towards major convulsions and explosions by no means signifies that the victory of the working class is in any way guaranteed or inevitable in the coming struggles. The history of this century is full of tragic examples of revolutionary situations which were lost, not because of the lack of combativity of the proletariat, but because of its crisis of leadership.

12. The entire history of the world class struggle in the epoch of imperialism points to the need to resolve that crisis of leadership. For this, a world party of socialist revolution—a genuine mass Leninist international party—based on the historic, programmatic acquisitions of the world working class movement must be built.

For us in this country, this can only mean building the Socialist Workers Party as a revolutionary combat party, inseparably linked to the task of building the world party of socialist revolution. The history of the workers’ movement has taught us that only by beginning with an international program can national parties, rooted in the struggles of the working class, be built.

For us, this national and international party can only be built on the basis of the programmatic framework of the Fourth International. Only the Fourth International, although still small, expresses the historic continuity of the revolutionary Marxist movement. Only the Fourth International offers a revolutionary perspective and strategy for the working class and all the oppressed in all three sectors of the world revolution.

In order to resolve the crisis of revolutionary leadership, we in the Socialist Workers Party must affirm our central task of building parties of the Fourth International throughout the world based on our program as it has been developed—beginning with the works of Marx and Engels, the experience of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the first four congresses of the Comintern, the documents of the Left Opposition, and the founding documents of the SWP and of the Fourth International.

We must continue to test and develop that program and the strategy on which it is based. The unfolding reality of the class struggle and our immersion in mass struggles on a national and international level is the best way we can confirm and revitalize our program. No alternative which attempts to shortcut any of the essential lessons and experiences of the world working class that are capsulized in our program can provide a correct strategy for the world revolution today.

13. The continued upsurge of the world working class has begun to shake the control of the Stalinist and Social Democratic apparatuses over the workers’ movement. The Polish crackdown sent shock waves through the international Stalinist apparatus, widening already existing rifts. Millions of working people in the advanced industrialized nations are turning towards their traditional organizations and parties, not because they are innately reformist, but because they hope to find in them a vehicle through which to advance their demands. However, their aspirations and illusions are beginning to frontally collide with the anti-working class policies of the Social Democratic and Stalinist leader ships. This is already occurring in the British Labour Party and in France, Spain, and Greece where the working class first turned towards the mass Social Democratic parties. This in turn is leading to an extremely unstable situation within the reformist parties, with the likely growth of important left-wing developments.

14. In the United States, the union bureaucracy and the reformist leaderships of all stripes continue to place obstacles in the way of the independent working class struggles against the bosses and their two-party system. Concessions, class collaborationism, belt-tightening, and protectionism are all they have been able to offer working people.

In the context of the increased polarization of the class struggle and a growing distrust in the Democratic Party, new appeals for class collaboration are likely to be advanced. The perspective of “gender gap” politics—a strategy advocated by NOW—remains tied to the two-party system. In Chicago in the spring of 1983, all the reformists and many so-called revolutionists supported Black Democrat Harold Washington for mayor, some of them on the basis that this was not an election per se but rather a referendum on racism. In the future, it is likely that these same forces will support some liberal Democrat for president on the basis that it is a referendum on Reaganism. The “United Front Against Fascism” (based on the assertion that Reagan is the first step in the direction of fascism) has already been hinted at by the Stalinists and is likely to be advocated by them in the near future.

However, if it proves impossible to channel the anti-Reagan wave back into the Democratic Party, the reformists may advocate and even take steps in the direction of forming an “anti-monopoly” or “all-people’s” party. Such a formation could come into existence separately from the Democratic Party apparatus—around the Congressional Black Caucus, for instance.

Such a party would not lead toward the creation of an independent labor party based on the unions and rooted in the working class, but rather away from the possibility of waging an effective political struggle. These “anti-monopoly” or “all peoples’” parties blur class lines, obscure the need for working class solutions, and serve a function similar to that of People’s Front formations. They are dead ends for working people. The coming American revolution will be victorious only if the working class can avoid the trap of People’s Frontism which only dooms the working class to impotence and thereby clears the road for fascism.

15. We in the Socialist Workers Party must redouble our efforts to build the revolutionary combat party which can solve the crisis of revolutionary leadership in this country and lead the American working class to power. The political climate is favorable for our growth.

From its inception, the American Trotskyist movement has been dedicated to this task. In collaboration with our co-thinkers in the Fourth International, we have concentrated on the one key element that can be prepared in advance by conscious effort—construction of a leadership capable of achieving success.

Today, we must proceed from the recognition that the SWP is still a small nucleus of the mass party we seek to build. We are a nucleus of cadres formed around the revolutionary socialist program necessary to build such a party. We cannot be organizational fetishists. We understand that the development of the revolutionary vanguard party will require varied approaches including fusions, splits, entries, as well as simple organic growth through recruitment. But we also recognize that throughout this process we must defend and apply the programmatic conquests of the Fourth International—of the Socialist Workers Party.

In order for the revolution to be victorious in this country—particularly when the working class is up against the most powerful and centralized enemy on the face of the earth—a Leninist combat party based on the principles of democratic centralism is necessary. It cannot be an amorphous, all-inclusive party.

The SWP and its program will be decisive in leading the working class to power in this country. As the “Theses on the Coming American Revolution” adopted at the 1946 SWP national convention clearly stated: “The task of the Socialist Workers Party consists simply in this: to remain true to its program and banner; to render it more precise with each new development and apply it correctly in the class struggle; and to expand and grow with the growth of the revolutionary mass movement, always aspiring to lead it to victory in the struggle for political power.”

16. Our effectiveness in this surging movement and our prospects for building the revolutionary party depend on how deeply we root ourselves in the struggles of the American working class and its allies, on how correctly we apply the Transitional Program and method in these struggles, and on how boldly we apply the united front tactic in the period ahead to help advance these struggles.

17. To build the revolutionary party, we must advance a program of independent mass action, union democracy, and class solidarity which can signal the way forward towards forging a class struggle left wing in the labor movement.

To do this, we must involve ourselves in the daily life and struggles of the working class and its allies, seeking at every stage to win political influence for our party. We must stand in the front lines of all kinds of struggles, even when they involve the most modest material interests or democratic rights of the working class. Only on the basis of such work within the trade unions and mass organizations can a successful struggle be waged against the bosses and reformist leaderships.

At all times we must combine an effective fight for the immediate needs of the class with the fight for its longer term interests. Emphasis on one to the exclusion of the other can lead either to opportunism (by downplaying the historic needs of the class) or to sectarianism (by being incapable of dealing with its present needs).

18. As we participate in, and try to provide leadership for, the struggles of the working class, we must advance a program of transitional demands which grow organically from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness and which can thereby help wide layers of the working class find the bridge between the present demands and the program of socialist revolution.

On the economic level, these transitional demands point towards production for human needs rather than for profit. They point to the need for the planned economy of socialism which can ensure this production. On the political level, they center on the necessity for the workers to establish their own party and government, and take control over their own lives.

Transitional slogans such as the escalator clause for all workers and a shorter workweek with no cut in pay express demands that cannot be fully won by a single local or national union. Our goal in raising these demands, in addition to advancing class consciousness, must be to unite the entire working class and its allies behind central struggles. Such demands effectively point to a solution to the problems of inflation and unemployment.

19. A fundamental vehicle for giving expression to the need for class solidarity and unity is the united front tactic.

The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the revolutionary party proposes to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups, and all the unaligned workers, in a common struggle to defend the immediate basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. The main aim of the united front tactic is to unify the working masses in the struggle for their own interests. The two inseparable tenets of this tactic are united action for any genuine step forward and organizational independence of the revolutionary party.

It is a tactic which is necessary because of the divisions within the working class. Unity is necessary not only within the walls of a single factory or industry for the fight against concessions, but also for such national political battles as the struggle against U.S. intervention in Central America, the fight against nuclear power and weapons, and the fight for a labor party. The united front is a tactic which arises out of the need for the revolutionary party, which is not yet the recognized leader of the proletariat, to prove to the masses that it is ready to wage a common battle with anyone, so long as that battle lies on the historic road of the proletariat towards its emancipation from capital.

A correct use of this tactic will help win radicalizing workers and other activists to the revolutionary party and to its perspectives for transforming the unions and mass organizations into revolutionary instruments. It exposes the unwillingness of the reformist misleaderships to fight for the interests of the working class, and at the same time is the best method for carrying out the immediate fight against the capitalist class through unity in action.

Every opportunity must be used to establish organizational footholds among the working masses themselves in the form of action committees, rank-and-file caucuses against concessions and for union democracy, and groupings that seek to advance the labor party as a generalization of such a class struggle strategy. Such formations must correspond to the needs of the moment and to the level of consciousness and combativity of the working class.

20. In this country, the tactic of the united front will find its highest political expression in the struggle for the labor party based on the unions. This is the next historic step the working class and its allies must take.

The entire history of the American labor movement shows that the workers tend to resort to independent political action when their rights and gains are being attacked and when they find themselves defeated or frustrated in the economic field. With the growing political and economic crisis of U.S. capitalism, and the growing ferment among the working masses, the preconditions for the development of a labor party continue to ripen.

The revolutionary party must pay increasing attention to the possibilities and openings which are beginning to present themselves for using a united front approach with the purpose of getting the unions and other mass organizations to take the first steps in launching a labor party. To do this, we must also pay closer attention to the rifts which are already beginning to occur (and which will inevitably deepen) in the trade union officialdom, particularly at its secondary level.

With the stormy developments of the class struggle which lie ahead, it cannot be predetermined whether the labor party will be reformist in its first stage, or whether it will be impelled to go beyond the bounds of reformism from the outset. We should pose no programmatic preconditions to the formation of a genuine labor party based on the unions. If the labor party were initially under the influence of the reformists, we would demand that they break with the logic of capitalist production and satisfy the demands of the millions of workers they represent. It is by this method that we would counterpose our program to theirs. We would also maintain our own independent organizational expression with which to fight for such a program.

21. The coming American revolution will have a combined character. It will be a socialist revolution by the working class and its allies against the bourgeoisie. At the same time it will be a revolution of national liberation by Blacks and other oppressed nationalities.

22. Only through the establishment of workers’ power in this country will this combined struggle be brought to a successful conclusion. Only a government based on the working class and all the oppressed will guarantee the democratic rights of all oppressed nationalities. There can be no solution to the national democratic demands of the oppressed nationalities apart from the solution to capitalist exploitation of the workers. The revolution, if it is to be victorious, must combine the uncompleted tasks of the democratic revolution—including the right to self-determination of all oppressed nationalities—with the socialist revolution.

The working class character and composition of the Black and Hispanic community will make the national question a most explosive force on the political scene in the United States. It will play an essential role in regenerating the unions into organs of struggle. Black and Hispanic workers will play a vanguard role in all of the struggles of the working class.

The revolutionary party supports the independent organization of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. This will advance both their own struggles for self-determination and the struggle of the working class as a whole. There is no contradiction between building independent organizations of the oppressed and building the multinational vanguard party in this country. For the revolutionary party to win over Black revolutionaries, it will have to be among the best fighters for the rights of the oppressed, not only in theory but in practice as well.

It cannot be predetermined whether the formation of an independent Black party with a genuine following among the Black masses will give an impetus to forming a labor party, or whether a labor party based on the unions will emerge first with Blacks playing a central and leading role. Combined developments are also likely in which candidates independent of the bourgeoisie are jointly sponsored by labor unions and organizations of the Black community.

22. The struggle for women’s liberation emerged in the late 1960s with a political character and social depth which firmly established that the fight for women’s rights would be one of the driving forces in the coming American revolution. The fight for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion rights, no sterilization without consent, affirmative action, and equal pay brought before millions of working people the issues of women’s double and triple oppression in this capitalist society.

With the growing percentage of women in the workforce, the struggle for women’s liberation will also have a dynamic role in the class struggle similar in many respects to that of oppressed nationalities. Women as trade unionists will also be at the forefront of the fight to transform the unions and build a labor party which can qualitatively advance the fight for women’s rights.

The revolutionary party has a special responsibility to support an independent women’s movement, and revolutionary socialist women within that movement can play a crucial role in providing it with valuable analyses, clear strategic and tactical perspectives, and practical experience. Women’s oppression is rooted in class society—and the dynamic of this movement challenges not only a class-based society, but its ideological underpinnings.

The women’s liberation movement, to be successful, must go beyond the bounds of capitalist property relations, and requires the intervention of revolutionary socialists to lead the movement in this direction.

23. Young workers will be the vanguard elements in the coming American revolution. Student youth in the high schools and on college campuses have also demonstrated in the mass struggles of the 1960s and 70s—and most recently by their refusal to register for the draft, and their involvement in Central American solidarity efforts—that they too are determined to fight against injustice and oppression. This indicates that they too can play an important role in the fight for socialism in this country.

In order to help advance the fightback against school budget cuts, for the right to a free education, against militarization and the draft, and against racist and sexist discrimination, the revolutionary party must allocate some of its forces to the campuses with major responsibilities assigned to the YSA for winning over student fighters. Youth is playing an important role in the revolutions in Central America, the Mideast, and Africa. This process will continue to inspire youth here at home.

24. Although working farmers represent an increasingly smaller percentage of the American population, their struggle for parity and against the economic stranglehold of the banks is playing a significant role in the developing radicalization. It further exposes the government as a supporter of the food monopolies and big business. The support of the American Agricultural Movement to the 1981 miners’ strike is an example of the growing awareness about the interconnections between the struggles of working farmers and those of the proletariat. The fight of the unemployed worker against home fore closure or eviction is also linked to the farmer’s struggle against foreclosures. Their enemy is the same.

25. The international nature of the class struggle has a special impact in the United States because it is the most “advanced” of the imperialist countries.

The interests of the American working class are intimately bound up with the interests of U.S. imperialism’s greatest enemies—the workers, the oppressed, the insurgent forces in the world’s three sectors. Within the American working class there is a growing sense of international solidarity with the struggles in Central America, South Africa, Poland, and elsewhere. There is a growing understanding, as well, of the importance of the anti-austerity struggles of workers in advanced capitalist countries. And there is a growing rejection of the U.S. ruling class’s inclination to use war, including the threat of nuclear war, to stem the tide of world revolution.

Today as never before, there is a basis within the consciousness of the American working class for an independent foreign policy of labor which has objectively revolutionary implications. A central task of our party must be to help advance the working class’s internationalism in its consciousness and actions.

26. Revolutionary socialists have always appealed to the soldiers as a decisive element that must be won over to a revolutionary perspective—arms in hand. During the Vietnam war, the party helped to orient the antiwar movement around the soldier, using the slogan “Bring the GIs Home Now!” Special attention must be paid to supporting the democratic rights of soldiers, including their right to receive literature and to discuss government policy.

27. It is only in the context of a concretized propaganda and agitational campaign around the labor party, along with our active participation in the struggles of all the sectors of the working class and its allies, that we can correctly apply our slogan for a “workers’ and farmers’ government.”

We must explain that in order to resolve the urgent problems confronting working people and to fulfill their demands, it is necessary to establish such a government—run and controlled by the workers and farmers themselves. This is a slogan which is capable of giving focus to the developing revolutionary struggles.

But in raising this slogan, we must be completely clear about the class content that we, as a proletarian party, give to it. As the Transitional Program states: “The formula of ’workers’ and farmers’ government’ first appeared in the agitation of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was definitely accepted after the October Revolution. In the final instance, it represented nothing more than the popular designation for the already established dictatorship of the proletariat.”

We in the SWP must resolutely reject the slogan “workers’ and farmers’ government” in the bourgeois-democratic version as proposed by the Mensheviks in 1917 and by the Stalinists since the degeneration of the Soviet workers’ state. We must reject this slogan when it is counterposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat; we can accept it in the same sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an antibourgeois and anticapitalist slogan.

This slogan must be raised in opposition to all forms of people’s frontism. It must be a bridge towards the coming American socialist revolution, and not some allegedly “necessary” intermediate stage in the revolutionary process between the bourgeois and proletarian dictatorships.

28. The coming American revolution will see the emergence of workers’ councils or Soviets as the forms of workers’ power and democracy which can control the economy and the everyday functioning of society.

These councils will throw open the doors to all the exploited. All the political currents of the proletariat will struggle for leadership within them. They will arise only at the time when the mass movement enters into an openly revolutionary stage, and will initiate a period of dual power.

Only one of the two irreconcilably opposed social regimes which this dual power represents can emerge victorious. The fate of all humanity depends on the outcome. The alternative will be the fascist dictatorship and perhaps the eclipse of civilization, or the victory of the workers’ councils, i.e., the dictator ship of the proletariat—and the socialist reconstruction of society.

May 8, 1983


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