Introduction
The American Party of Labor is the vanguard Marxist-Leninist Party of the United States of America. It is our aim, goal and desire to establish a socialist republic under the dictatorship of the proletariat on the American continent. To ensure that a correct line is maintained, that the Party effectively communicates to the working class its plans, aims and goals, and to reinforce our statements on American society, our ideology and general line we do hereby ordain and establish this document as our Party Program.
Our General Line
1. The American Party of Labor comes from and represents the American working class. From time to time and place to place there may be individuals who are admitted to the Party who do not have a working class background, or are not currently considered to be working class by Marxist-Leninist ideology and principles. Such individuals are exceptions to the general rule, as they have in effect transcended their class identification through conscious application of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
2. The American Party of Labor maintains that value in society is produced by human action within the material world. That is to say, value is created by the consumption of labor power. The working classes, which have only their labor power to sell for their daily sustenance, therefore make production possible. We call for the reorganization of society to provide the means of productions to the working class to be administrated either under an elected or selected management or collectively through a council system.
3. The American Party of Labor demands the abolition of private property and that all means of production be in the hands of the working class. Profit under capitalism is extracted surplus value from the consumption of labor power and constitutes a theft from the working class by the bourgeois ruling class. Under our system, the working class will be paid the full value of their production less the necessary deductions to support the state and its various cultural, economic and social support projects.
4. The American Party of Labor demands that all oppressed nations within the context of the American Empire, including, but by no means limited to, Indigenous peoples, Native Hawaiians, Guamanians and Puerto Ricans (within the context of Puerto Rico), be given national self-determination as to whether or not they wish to remain in the American socialist state, which shall be constructed on the remnants of the United States. We call for the end of the so-called commonwealth system in all U.S. imperial possessions. The nations in these political organizations should either choose to become a U.S. state or an independent country.
5. The American Party of Labor demands the cancellation of all current debt held by developing countries to the US. It is our opinion that in the most part these loans were not made with the intention of helping the people of these countries, but rather to enslave those countries with debt.
6. The American Party of Labor is a party against all imperialism. We are opposed to all wars of aggression on the world stage and all other threats of war and military intervention. We call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from abroad. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all occupied peoples and with all nations living underneath neo-colonial regimes. We call for the end of foreign aid to Israel, Colombia and other outposts of capitalist and imperialist aggression.
7. The American Party of Labor is an internationalist party. All peoples around the globe struggling for their 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 because our cause is one and the same.
8. The American Party of Labor demands the U.S. withdrawal from NATO and other imperialist alliances. The American Party of Labor does support continued participation in the United Nations and feels that the U.N. should find new headquarters outside of our national boundaries.
9. The American Party of Labor stands fully against the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border. It supports the rights of immigrants and the ending of neo-liberal policies in other countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, that drive sustenance farmers off their lands and to the United States due to a lack of economic opportunity in their native countries.
10. The American Party of Labor has a more generalized list of our demands and positions in a separate document called the Party Platform. We strongly encourage all to read that document as well as this one.
Revolution
The American Party of Labor understands that so long as we limit ourselves to peaceful electoral politics, socialism can never be constructed in the United States. The United States is a dictatorship run by those who own the means of disseminating information and control what is produced, what is advertised, who runs for office and who is elected. Even though there are contradictions between various groups within the ruling class, we understand that the whole point of periodic elections between Republicans and Democrats is just an illusion of choice. The reality is that both parties serve the same people and the same class; that class is the bourgeoisie, not the working class.
Therefore, the only solution is the eventual socialist revolution in the United States. Our movement, while based on the ideology of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Enver Hoxha, is also based on the belief that governments should be instituted amongst people to ensure their rights, and among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is therefore our responsibility to state that the pursuit of 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 prevented from necessary health care, cultural outlets and general personal freedom.
In short, so long as the bourgeois dictatorship continues to exist the inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are mere empty words. Therefore, the American Party of Labor calls for proletarian revolution to seize the state for the working people of America, to take over the economic apparatus of the United States and to form for the first time on this continent a state based on “We The People.” To do this we will be required to wage revolution decisively.
To that end, the American Party of Labor sets before itself the immediate and necessary task of expanding itself into a mass party capable of carrying out revolution and of creating the conditions necessary for socialist revolution in the United States.
Our General Strategy
The American Party of Labor feels that in order to carry out its revolutionary mission it must lay out its general strategy. We will not fill this document with specific details; instead, we will only cover generally our methods to execute our revolutionary mission.
1. The American Party of Labor shall incorporate itself into the labor movement, local protests against war, poverty, social injustice and any other cause deemed appropriate and necessary. While the Party has no control over what individuals or groups may participate in broad mass movements or events such as rallies, the American Party of Labor will under no circumstances enter into alliances or working relationships with groups which espouse right-wing or reactionary views clothed in populist language.
2. The American Party of Labor shall have a main mass line publication, regularly published. This organ is known as the Red Phoenix.
3. The American Party of Labor shall engage in ideological line struggle with other parties and groups, and use for internal and external education a theoretical journal known as the Revolutionary Spirit. This journal shall be published three times yearly.
4. The American Party of Labor shall engage in activities locally as deemed most expedient by the local divisions of the Party. These activities shall include, but not be limited to, the publication and distribution of flyers, posters, pamphlets, stickers and pins as well as the passing out of copies of the Phoenix and Spirit and any other means of disseminating information deemed appropriate and useful by the local division of the Party.
5. The American Party of Labor authorizes members to create and construct educational and entertainment videos for distribution.
6. The American Party of Labor shall create printed educational material to combat bourgeois culture and ideology that is not strictly related to the Red Phoenix or the Revolutionary Spirit.
7. The American Party of Labor shall engage in local and state elections when and where appropriate and necessary.
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. The American Party of Labor is both teacher and student of the working class.
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, banks and land) as well as the principal means of distribution of commodities in the hands of the workers as public assets with the surplus geared towards the common good of working people.
3. Establish agricultural and worker’s cooperatives and forms of social and collective property to allow workers direct control as part of their political empowerment.
4. Establish a centrally-planned economy working on the principle of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.”
5. Establish a worker’s state, with all legislating power in the hands of a worker’s government. The democratic life of the nation will be based on proletarian democracy, which will consist of participation in economic, political and social life by the working class, farmers, youth, women, immigrants, veterans, etc. The Amerindian communities and nations will have these same rights as well as their autonomy (use of their language, respect of their traditions, culture, customs, respect of their political and administrative organizations, etc.) All historically oppressed nations will have the right to self-determination including the right to secession from our future socialist state.
6. Public and collective ownership will be introduced over all American land, soil, airspace, minerals and resources for the common good. Private ownership of American resources will be abolished so as not to allow the resurfacing of class divisions.
7. The socialist state shall observe an internationalist foreign policy which shall support proletarian movements in other countries while respecting their sovereignty and self-determination.
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 of the current situation 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.
Onward towards socialism!