The Program of the American Party of Labor
The program of a Marxist-Leninist Party is a full explanation of its world outlook and wider political aims. The immediate political demands we fight for can be found under Our Platform. Last updated at the Fifth Congress of the American Party of Labor, 2024.
Introduction
The American Party of Labor is a Marxist-Leninist organization whose purpose is to dismantle the capitalist-imperialist system of the United States and build a socialist republic under proletarian democracy, in which all power is vested in the workers. To ensure that a correct line is maintained, that the Party effectively communicates to the working class and its organizations, and to all marginalized and oppressed peoples our aims, our ideology and general line, we do hereby establish this document as our Party Program.
Our General Line
1. The American Party of Labor comes from and represents the American working class; it has no interests aside from those of the working class and the workers’ movement as a whole. As such, the Party champions and defends the peoples’ struggle for progress and liberation. To that end, the Party participates in mass and popular struggles for social justice, peace, and democracy.
2. The American Party of Labor maintains that value in society is produced by human labor through the consumption of labor power. The working class, having only their labor power to exchange for sustenance, make production possible but receive only a fraction of the value they produce, while the owners of private property appropriate the rest. The Party therefore demands the abolition of private property and for all means of production to be under the democratic control of the working class.
3. The American Party of Labor asserts that profit under capitalism is extorted from the working class and constitutes theft by the capitalist ruling class. This relationship constitutes the oppressive dictatorship of private property. We advocate a socialist system where the working class will keep the full value of their labor, expressed through a democratically planned economy.
4. The American Party of Labor demands the abolition of the so-called commonwealth system in all U.S. possessions. The socialist republic which will be constructed on the remnants of the United States, will give all oppressed nations and peoples within its boundaries, including, but not limited to Indigenous peoples of North America, Chicanos, Native Hawaiians, Guamanians and Puerto Ricans, the opportunity to vote on independence or union with the socialist republic. If they opt to stay in the socialist republic, they will have the autonomy to democratically determine the form of their relationship with it.
5. The American Party of Labor is an anti-imperialist party. We oppose imperialism, wars of aggression, and the machinations and intrigues of capitalism in all of their forms. We call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from overseas, an end to all imperialist wars, for nuclear disarmament, and the conventional disarmament of the imperialist powers. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all occupied peoples and with all nations living underneath neo-colonial regimes. We call for the end of military aid to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, the Philippines, and other outposts of capitalist and imperialist aggression.
6. The American Party of Labor is an internationalist party. All peoples around the globe struggling for emancipation from their own systems of exploitation are our allies. We extend our hands to all revolutionary organizations guided by Marxism-Leninism worldwide and to national liberation movements of exploited peoples of all countries, for our cause is one and the same.
7. The American Party of Labor demands the U.S. withdrawal from NATO and other imperialist alliances.
8. The American Party of Labor stands fully against the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border. The Party supports the full rights of immigrants and the ending of neo-liberal policies in other countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Party demands the cancellation of all debts exacted on countries subjected to super-exploitation by U.S. imperialism. These loans were not made with the intention of helping the people of these countries, but rather to enslave them with debt.
9. The American Party of Labor recognizes that climate change caused by human activity threatens the very existence of life on this planet. This global warming has been accelerated by capitalism through waste, the burning of fossil fuels, and environmental destruction tied to the profit motive. We demand the reorganization of production on an environmentally sound and sustainable foundation.
10. The American Party of Labor has a more extensive list of our demands and positions in our Party Platform.
Revolution
1. The American Party of Labor understands that so long as we limit ourselves to electoral politics, socialism can never be constructed in the United States. The U.S. is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, run by the capitalists who own and control what is produced, the media, what is advertised, who runs for office, and who is elected. Although contradictions exist between various groups within the ruling class, we understand that the purpose of periodic elections between Republicans and Democrats is to create the illusion of choice. The reality is that both parties serve the same ruling class.
2. The only solution is socialist revolution in the United States. Our Party is based on Marxism-Leninism, the theoretical writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin; defended by Enver Hoxha, and enriched by the experience of figures such as Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. Further, we draw inspiration from our own history of rebellion and resistance, including Osceola, Nat Turner, John Brown, Harry Haywood, William Z. Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the countless other revolutionaries who have dedicated their lives to the struggle for liberation from oppression.
3. With respect to the freedoms that capitalism claims to grant, we believe that liberty is impossible so long as the system of wage slavery continues to exist. It is impossible for the majority to pursue life so long as they are one paycheck away from homelessness, destitution, starvation, and death. In this system it is impossible to pursue happiness as long as the workers are subjected to wage slavery and excluded from necessary healthcare, cultural outlets, and general personal freedom.
4. In short, so long as the capitalist dictatorship continues to exist, the inalienable rights mentioned in the U.S. Constitution are mere empty words. The American Party of Labor calls for socialist revolution to build a state for the working people of the United States, reorganize the economy along socialist lines, and to form for the first time on this continent a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
5. To that end, the American Party of Labor sets before itself the immediate and necessary task of expanding into a mass party capable of helping to create the conditions necessary for socialist revolution in the United States.
Our General Strategy
1. The purpose of the American Party of Labor is to combine the working class movement with the socialist movement. This can be accomplished by uniting with the most politically conscious workers on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
2. The Party seeks to cultivate working class leadership by participating fully in those struggles which can mobilize the broad masses in pursuit of their interests through popular and progressive movements against war, poverty, and social injustice. The American Party of Labor organizes for and with the working class and oppressed against capitalism and for emancipation from bourgeois society.
3. The Party will under no circumstances enter into alliances or working relationships with groups which espouse right-wing or reactionary views clothed in populist language.
4. The Party is led in democratic-centralist fashion, meaning decisions are made democratically, and after a decision is reached, the entire Party, including the minority and dissenting opinions, is obliged to carry out the will of the majority. The role of the Party leadership is to enforce the decisions of the majority and to guide their implementation.
5. The Party presently holds that major tasks for Marxist-Leninists in our country include
a) Combating fascism and;
b) Supporting the struggle against revisionist and reactionary ideology within the movement.
These tasks address the fact that attempts to combine the labor and Marxist-Leninist movement will fail unless the Marxist-Leninist movement is free from counter-revolutionary tendencies and is able to articulate an anti-revisionist line on revolution and socialist construction.
6. We work directly in labor-based groups in order to agitate and lead from where the people are, within the centers of struggle.
7. We support the legitimate and justified right of self-defense against fascist and reactionary violence.
8. Above all, the American Party of Labor shall be where the working class is, wherever people are oppressed because of their national origin, wherever people are exploited because of their class and wherever there is social injustice.
Our Goals
1. Establish socialism in the United States and place all political power in the hands of the working class.
2. Place all the means of production (factories, land, machines and implements, etc.) as well as the principal means of the distribution of commodities in the hands of the workers as public assets, with the surplus geared towards the common good.
3. Establish agricultural and workers’ cooperatives and other forms of social and collective property to allow workers direct control of the workplace as part of their political empowerment.
4. Establish a centrally-planned economy working on the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their work,” building towards an economy working on the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their need.”
5. Establish a workers’ state, with all power in the hands of a workers’ government. The life of the country will be based on proletarian democracy, which will consist of democratic participation in economic, political and social life by the working class, including farmers, youth, women, immigrants, and all oppressed and marginalized peoples. All historically oppressed nations will have the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to secession.
6. Establish public and collective ownership over all land, soil, airspace, minerals and resources for the common good. This public ownership of resources will be managed with the aim of total abolition of capitalist class relations and exploitation.
7. Observe an internationalist foreign policy. The socialist state shall support proletarian and anti-imperialist movements.
The fight for the working people is the force that drives us. Socialist revolution is the means to our emancipation. Armed with a correct political analysis and a strong resolve, we will struggle forward to victory. With the power of the American working class, and the workers of all countries, we have a world to win.