Revolutionary Workers' Movement - Sudbury

We propose the unity of communist and class-conscious workers within and outside the labour movement, to begin forming a new workers’ movement that advances a conscious class-struggle politics – a Revolutionary Workers' Movement with the following unifying perspectives:

★ WE ARE ANTI-CAPITALIST. Capitalism is the primary cause of the misery, poverty, alienation, oppression, and exploitation of t

he working class. There can be no final liberation for workers under capitalism. Workers and capitalists, employees and employers, have a fundamentally antagonistic set of interests which cannot be reconciled. Workers must overthrow the capitalist class, and build a society in which the working class is the ruling class. We are for socialism on the road to communism.

★ WE ARE ANTI-IMPERIALIST. Workers in all countries have a common set of interests that transcend national borders. We have more in common with workers in Iran, for instance, than we do with capitalists in Canada. We oppose all attempts by the Canadian imperialist capitalist class to force war and increased misery on workers overseas. In turn, we recognize that imperialism –the export of capital from Canada in the search for higher profits elsewhere – and colonialism – the domination of the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis – have been used as means to “buy off” sections of Canada’s working class in the past. We reject any attempt to bribe the working class in Canada at the expense of workers elsewhere or oppressed nations within our own borders.

★ WE ARE AGAINST THE LABOUR BUREAUCRACY. The labour movement, as it exists now, is inundated with highly paid officers that sit above the workers, doing no organizing, and dictate the labour movement’s direction. This phenomenon extends down to the shop floor, where local executives are content to hold positions with no real attempts at building union democracy or connections with union members. For a fighting workers’ movement we must constantly struggle against labour bureaucrats, who seek to usurp the power of the organized working class for their own material and political gains. By extension, we are against the dues check-off, in which the employer automatically deducts union dues from the worker and gives them to the union. This ensures that the union receives funding no matter what, ending the organic link between the worker and the union leadership. The dues check-off is the life-line of the labour bureaucracy.

★ WE ARE AGAINST ECONOMISM. We reject the idea that the working class can achieve any lasting gains by fighting only for small economic benefits. Workers produce all value; as a class, workers deserve all of the value they produce. While fighting for higher pay, increased benefits, etc. can be useful to show the working class that victory is possible and to increase the level of organization of workers, our goal is revolution. All of our organizing efforts must be subordinated to the broader goal of revolution.

★ WE ARE AGAINST COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS, as they allow the capitalist class to plan for labour disruptions and tie the working class to the conditions set out in the collective agreement for the duration of the collective agreement, regardless of developments in the class struggle; collective agreements are an attempt to enforce a momentary truce in the class struggle by the state. Class-struggle unionism and class-struggle politics must be at the forefront of our work.

★ WE ARE FOR A FIGHTING WORKERS' MOVEMENT GUIDED BY CLASS-STRUGGLE UNIONISM. Capital’s attack on the working class has produced ideal conditions under which to organize and fight. We are for a workers’ movement that is not afraid to organize the entire working class –focusing on the most exploited workers – and fight against bosses. We must not confine ourselves to bourgeois legality; we must be ready to push the envelope of what is thought possible at every opportunity. As such, we are for political unionism. Joining a union must be a political choice for it to be meaningful. For unionism to be effective in the broader class struggle, it must be connected to a revolutionary political project and a revolutionary political party

★ WE ARE AN INITIATIVE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY (PCR-RCP). We believe that unions should be organized politically, and that workers should have a choice between different politically based unions. As such, we are against the closed-shop model of union organizing, which limits each workplace to one union and makes union membership mandatory for workers, eliminating the political nature of union membership. We are for class-struggle unions that set their sights on the conquest of political power, rather than small economic victories.