On November 8 and 9 delegates from around the country met in Chicago to establish Socialist Horizon as a national revolutionary party organization and to found the International Socialist League US Coordinating Committee.
On Saturday, Socialist Horizon comrades discussed the national perspectives for the organization, one marked by the MAGA offensive, emerging resistance, radicalization and opportunities for building revolutionary organizations. The Convention adopted an orientation of advancing united struggle and leading the effort for revolutionary regroupment in the US left. It discussed the organization’s work in the Left Platform and the Defend Tom Alter Campaign, where SH plays a leading role, anti-ICE, Palestine solidarity and community organizing.
The Convention adopted an organizational structure and membership guidelines, voted the leadership of Socialist Horizon and its delegate to the upcoming III ISL Congress. It also adopted the organization’s points of unity that constitute its programmatic basis, and we reproduce below.
On Sunday, Socialist Horizon comrades met with other ISL members and sympathizers who are also members of Tempest and other at large members. The meeting discussed the common objectives of carrying out ISL campaigns, building the Left Platform that Socialist Horizon, Tempest and other groups on the left formed in July for joint intervention in the class struggle, and advancing revolutionary regroupment for the building of a revolutionary party linked to the ISL in the United States. It also established a joint ISL-US Coordinating Committee to coordinate that effort and to jointly participate in the discussions of the III ISL Congress.
Socialist Horizon Points of Unity
AGAINST CAPITALISM, FOR SOCIALISM
Capitalism is a worldwide political and economic system in which the majority of the global population, the working class, is exploited and oppressed by a small capitalist minority. The capitalist class is a parasitic class dominated by oligarchs that own and control the economic means of production and who also control the state.
Capitalism is the cause of war and genocide, mass impoverishment, global ecological crisis, vast social inequality, and is degenerating societies across the globe into authoritarianism and barbarism.
Only the working class has the power to oppose and eliminate capitalism, and to organize and replace it with a socialist system. Socialism is based on workers’ collective ownership of the economy, universal and direct democracy, and the abolition of exploitation, oppression, the profit system, and the social class structure in its entirety.
A workers’ socialist democracy will plan and direct all socially produced wealth to be used to satisfy all of the needs of the people: food, housing, universal education, health care, child, elder, and disability care, transportation, recreation, progressive scientific and technological advancement, sustainable ecological practice, and all other human needs.
MARXISM AND CLASS STRUGGLE
Our political practice is based on the fundamental principle that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle. We apply a Marxist understanding that only through organized and unified class struggle can exploited and oppressed working class people advance the cause of self-emancipation and liberation. We support all workers’ struggles against capitalism, and support all struggles against oppression, colonialism, and imperialism.
Marxism is a living and evolving body of theory whose value can only be realized by applying it to the practice of class struggle. We follow in the Marxist traditions of Leninism and Trotskyism, and also acknowledge the contributions of decolonial Marxist, ecosocialist, socialist feminist, and social-reproduction theory and practice. We ground our political theory in a materialist conception of history, which means that we see real human struggle as the only motive force for historical change.
REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels described the capitalist state as “the executive of the capitalist class”. Furthermore, Vladimir Lenin identified the state as fundamentally an instrument of class rule used by the capitalist class to suppress the working class through its armed agents, legislative bodies, courts, prisons, and bureaucracies.
Since capitalism can only exist through the oppression and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist class consciously maintains its power through a state apparatus that resists any challenge to its supremacy through repression of the working class, labor unions, and leftwing parties and social movements.
The capitalist state also opposes all efforts at reform that challenges its capacity to maximize exploitation and profit-making, but will make temporary reform if the balance of class forces shifts in favor of the working class struggle and threatens their power. We support the struggles of workers and oppressed people for economic and social reforms, both for the sake of improving the material standard and quality of life, and to develop the power, confidence, and capacity of workers’ organizations to fight beyond reform.
From the point of view of the capitalist class and state, reform is always temporary until the balance of power can be shifted back in favor of the capitalists, and their power maintained. Therefore, working class people will never achieve emancipation from exploitation or liberation from oppression while the capitalist class exercises what Marx called the “dictatorship of capital” through the capitalist state.
The working class needs an entirely new and different political form, a democratic socialist workers’ state, that can only be achieved by the abolition of capitalism and the state, and through the expropriation of the capitalist class through the process of revolutionary transformation.
The revolutionary process will require that the working class seize the economic means of production and run them under democratic worker’s control. A workers’ socialist democracy can only be developed and flourish through a mass movement of workers and oppressed people that collectively make social revolution.
ELECTIONS UNDER CAPITALISM
Under capitalism, the richest and most powerful factions of the capitalist class control and work through the Republican and Democratic parties to rig the electoral system in order to maintain the dominance of their class. They perpetuate the facade of democratic legitimacy by presenting only candidates from their pro-capitalist parties for working class people to choose from, while actively working together to prevent, block, and undermine the development of working class and socialist parties and their participation in electoral politics.
The capitalist class dominates the electoral system by being the main funders of both the Democratic and Republican parties and their candidates, and by limiting access to office to candidates that will champion the interests of billionaire donors and corporate entities against the interests of the working class. Capitalist party candidates are vetted, funded, and put into office based on their capacity, willingness, and ability to manage the capitalist state and fulfill the political program of the ruling capitalist class.
The capitalist state suppresses the working class vote and reduces eligibility through means of punitive disqualification, racist and discriminatory law and policy, national and citizenship-based exclusions, and the manipulation of electoral rules and practices.
Socialist participation in elections can help propagate working-class demands, force concessions from the ruling class, and serve as a platform for socialist ideas, but socialism cannot be won or implemented through elections under capitalism. Since capitalists control the levers of the economy, the media, and the state apparatus, they will use all of their power in this capacity to undermine, prevent, and defeat any efforts at changing the capitalist system through political office.
We do not support candidates of capitalist parties like the Democrats or the Republicans at any level or in any capacity. We do support running independent socialist candidates against the capitalist parties, under the condition that they use the electoral platform to oppose the capitalist state and to actively promote the demands and interests of the working class and oppressed peoples and to support building the power of the workers and oppressed peoples in workplaces, homes, schools, and the streets.
AGAINST COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM, CAMPISM
The struggle against capitalism and for socialism is international. It requires coordinated struggle of workers and oppressed people across all national borders and boundaries. The working class is an international class that has a shared material interest in building unity, solidarity, and coordinated class struggle against the international capitalist classes that collectively oppress and exploit us.
We oppose US military intervention everywhere without exception. We support the defunding and demobilization of the US military, the removal of US troops and bases from across the globe, and the dismantling of US imperialism.
We stand in principled solidarity with the struggles of the global South, all anti-colonial struggles, and for the liberation of oppressed national, racial, indigenous, and cultural groups. We believe that all people and nations have the right to resist colonial occupation and imperialist intervention and to struggle by whatever means available and necessary to achieve self-determination.
We also stand in solidarity with workers and oppressed people in all capitalist countries of the world and support their resistance to oppressive and exploitative governments serving their capitalist classes. We oppose campism and do not align with any capitalist or imperialist state, including those who may call themselves socialist, or those that are rivals or opponents of US imperialism. We place our unconditional support and solidarity with workers and the oppressed of the world.
We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, support the Palestinian resistance and liberation struggle. We call for the complete decolonization of Palestine by the US-backed, settler colonial Zionist entity of Israel, and for the construction of a single, secular, socialist Palestine from the river to the sea.
We support self-determination for Puerto Rico and all US colonies. We support all nations in their efforts to withstand and resist US imperialist intervention, militarism, neocolonialism, and economic warfare.
We oppose settler colonialism and support decolonization and the rights to self-determination for all Indigenous peoples in North America and internationally.
AGAINST ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION
Many oppressed groups worldwide are engaged in struggles against structures of inequality and discrimination under capitalism. We maintain that the destruction of these structures of oppression is an essential part of socialist struggle. We oppose racism and white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, national chauvinism, and all other forms of oppression.
We support the struggle for full rights and equality for immigrants, migrants, refugees, and internationally displaced peoples, and oppose all borders, walls, migrant policing agencies and policies, and all other forms of enforcement. We believe no one is illegal and that all people have the right to migrate, work, and live where they can have their needs met.
We support the struggles for Black, Indigenous, and Chicanx liberation.
We oppose cisheteronormativity and fight for the full social equality of women and LGBTQ+ people. We support the right of oppressed groups to self-defense, self-determination, and self-organization.
We call for the dismantling and abolition of all policing and state repressive agencies and carceral systems used to repress the working class and oppressed people.
We reject the neoliberal idea that peaceful protest is the only valid form of resistance, and we affirm the right of oppressed people to resist by any means necessary. We fight against fascism and authoritarianism as aspects of the capitalist system in crisis that seeks to victimize the oppressed as a means of repressing the whole working class.
COALITION BUILDING AND THE UNITED FRONT
We look forward to working in coalition with any group or organization fighting for the emancipation of humankind. We welcome any opportunity to work alongside activists fighting for the rights of women, oppressed groups, migrant workers, and all other sectors of the working class. We support and participate in coalition-based organizations combating police violence, ICE repression, gentrification, imperialist war, ecological despoliation, homelessness, and other important struggles.
We fight within trade unions and the labor movement for reforms that can benefit workers and ultimately lead to a socialist society.
We are open socialists, and will not hide or disguise our Marxist principles in any political work or struggle that we organize or join. Therefore we approach our coalition building work using the United Front method. The United Front is a political strategy where we will work with all willing partners to unite the broad sections of the working class for immediate struggles against capitalism, fascism, imperialism, war, or any other campaign, while also maintaining our independent socialist political identity.
BUILDING A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY
The ruling class is highly organized and disciplined and uses their capital to control the courts, the police, the military, the schools and universities, and much of the print and electronic media. To effectively oppose it, we ourselves must respond with discipline and organization informed by historical struggles.
We are committed to the task of performing the groundwork for constructing a revolutionary party organization. This refers to a socialist organizational model that endeavors to unite and group revolutionary socialists together, to develop and train new generations of class-conscious militants to participate, coordinate, and lead in the class struggles of today and those to come, and to ultimately support the process of uniting the vanguard–or the leading, most militant and organized, and most class conscious sectors of the working class–into a mass revolutionary socialist party that can ultimately lead the working class in the struggle for power against the capitalist state and ruling capitalist class.
The process of building a revolutionary party organization is grounded in firm principles of revolutionary strategy, class independence and internationalism. It is structured with dedicated and independent-thinking political cadres, an internal method of democratic discussion and united intervention, and a collective, principled and accountable leadership. It has the tactical flexibility to build political and social movements of the working class and the oppressed without sectarianism, and with the strategic and political firmness to push the class struggle forward at all points.
We also see the process of revolutionary regroupment as a part of creating the revolutionary organization we need. What we mean by revolutionary regroupment is making a serious effort to bring together organizations and individuals who agree that we must begin building a revolutionary party in the US and internationally today, and agree to do so around a core set of principled political points of unity. We seek to work with all revolutionary socialists and organizations who share our commitment to regroupment and to building a new revolutionary socialist organization on a national scale.
