CAPITALISM
There is something very wrong with our society. Massive wealth is all around us in this city — and yet so many of us can’t seem to live with any sense of security, let alone prosperity. Many of us struggle even to make ends meet, to cover the basic costs of living month-by-month. This is not a city or a world built around our actual needs.
If we had a choice, a genuine choice, is this really how we would want things to be? If we could start anew, do you think we would collectively design anything that remotely resembles what we have right now?
Despite what we are told, this isn’t just “how life is”. It isn’t “the way things have always been”. This is life under a particular system: capitalism, which is just one way of organising society. It is a system driven not by human needs and wants, but by the pursuit of profit that has no end.
This system has only been around for a few hundred years. But in that short time it has reshaped the world with new technologies, infrastructures and innovations. This has given us the potential to truly meet the needs of everyone, to give everyone a life of freedom and fulfilment.
But capitalism can never achieve this potential. This is because, in this system a minority — the capitalist class — own most of the resources we need to produce and distribute goods and services. They own the offices, factories, machinery, infrastructure, land; those things that we use to make what we need and want. Without access to these resources no-one else can work, and so, this small minority are able to use their economic position to make the majority of the rest of us work for them in the service of profit for them. Ownership and control of these resources allows them to decide what is produced, how it is produced and for whom; shaping the direction of society as a whole. This progressively gives the capitalist class a greater and greater share of the collective wealth of society. Under the current system wealth will always be held in the hands of a minority: it’s the way it works.
Instead of giving us freedom and fulfilment, this system only offers crisis and instability: economic, health, political, environmental. These crises constantly disrupt the world around us; eroding our living standards, plunging our futures into uncertainty, fuelling wars and destruction across the globe.
This system pits nations and economic blocs against each other and — as the power of the United States declines — this competition is leading to wars on every continent, threatening a greater confrontation that would set the world alight. Likewise, the growing ecological crisis — and the inability of governments to act upon it meaningfully — shows capitalism to be incapable of holding back its inherently destructive relationship to nature.
We now exist in a period of permanent crisis, where disruptive events follow one another seemingly at random. But the conditions that brought these crises about were all produced by an unstable system driven only by a competitive pursuit of profit, no matter the cost to society or the planet.
Other parties will stand before you at this election claiming to have the power to fix this system; to make things stable, to make things work for all of us. But we are not standing to fix this system, because it cannot be fixed. Short-term reforms will never get to the root of the problems we see around us. It is not a question of electing this party or that party, but of the system itself. There is no scenario in which we can stabilise capitalism, in which we make it work, in which it provides a future for everyone.
But there is an alternative.
COMMUNISM
Change — real change — must look beyond this system. This means breaking the domination of the minority and instead putting the control of society and its resources into the hands of the majority, the working class.
By working class we don’t mean a cultural identity, or how much money you make a year, or whether you’ve been to university: these are all experiences that relate to class, but class itself is more fundamental. By working class, we mean those of us who have no real way to live except by working in exchange for a wage. In other words, we are probably talking about you. Because we have no ownership or control over the resources we need to produce goods and services, we have no option but to work for someone else, and we often have to submit to whatever terms they dictate. As a result, we often have little control over our work and our day-to-day lives.
Some of us may find a way out of this by becoming our own boss, seeking some control over aspects of life (even if we are then exposed to other pressures of instability and competition in the process).
But self-employment can never be an answer for everyone. Most of us work in jobs that can’t be done individually — whether that be in hospitals, power stations, distribution centres, factories, schools, call centres, care homes or supermarkets. There is no way for us all to gain control over our lives by becoming our own boss as individuals. The freedom of the majority as a whole can only ever come collectively — by taking control together. This means ending the private ownership of the things we need to produce and distribute goods and services. These must be transformed instead into the shared property of all, democratically managed and controlled together — allowing us to decide collectively what is produced, how it is produced, and for whom.
The political power of the majority — the working class — is a force that can transform the world. The communist future would not result in replacing the dominance of one group with another, but through collective ownership would do away with the need for a class system at all. This is what we mean when we speak about revolution: an overcoming of the limitations of the system, an absolute reorganisation of society as a whole.
This transformation would overcome the root causes of all forms of domination and exploitation, not just those that affect us as workers. Communism is a world of shared freedom for all. A society in which we would overcome the basis of the state and instead govern ourselves collectively with the active involvement of all: in other words, democratically. This is the communist future we look towards — a society of freedom and fulfilment for all, a setting free of human potential. This dream of the future is often dismissed as naive and utopian by those who look to manage capitalism. But what is truly naive is to imagine that you can save a system, which by its very nature simply cannot provide a good life for everyone.
here and now
In the here and now, we support anything which strengthens the position of the majority of us, the working class. We support demands that allow us to develop ourselves intellectually, socially and culturally, that give us the time and space for political action. As communists we support any initiatives taken through trade unions, community organising and wider social movements towards these goals.
We support demands for greater economic security for the majority: to improve pay and benefits; to provide liveable housing; for controls on rent and energy prices; to ensure a healthcare system that meets the needs of all. We support demands for greater control of our own time: to reduce working hours; to increase access to childcare; to radically expand social care. Finally, we support steps to open up access to places where we can enjoy, entertain and develop ourselves culturally, socially and educationally.
Fundamentally though, we believe reforms like this are limited. In the end, this system can’t provide the majority with anything other than short-term gains, which are invariably eroded in the next political cycle. It is not the project of communists to manage this system. Our ultimate goal is the real transformation of life for everyone: a collective, shared freedom. This will only come about when we, the majority, exercise a political power far more profound than simply marking an X on a ballot paper once every five years.
Taking action towards real change means dealing with the power of the state itself. The state and its institutions — the police, the legal system, the army, the secret service — are there to maintain “order” in society. But what is this order? Presently, “order” means the defence of a system in which a handful of people have more wealth and power than half the world’s population; a system in which we have the technology and resources to provide for everyone, but are prevented from doing so by the dominance of a minority. This order needs to be changed.
The current form of the state and its institutions are a barrier to real change and to the power of the majority to determine their own lives. Laws which restrict the right to protest and strike, controls on free expression and speech, unelected and unaccountable decision making, surveillance and monitoring, heavy handed policing — all of these hold back political organising in society. To fundamentally challenge the basis of this system — in the here and now—we need to first deal with the question of the state and its institutions.
This means we support demands that promote political freedom — opposing any restrictions on political organising in the public sphere, as well as opposing restrictions on political expression and speech. We support demands which aim to ensure all political representatives are democratically elected and accountable — with clear processes of recall, proportional representation, and an end to the House of Lords and the monarchy. Finally — and fundamentally — we support demands that challenge the capacity of the minority to enforce its will on the majority. This means the transferral of the powers and responsibilities of the armed forces and the police into the hands of a collective citizens body, which is run on principles of full community participation and democratic control.
The purpose of these demands is to secure the space in which the majority can politically organise and gain power, breaking down the dominance and rule of the minority — and laying the basis, then, for the genuine transformation of society in the interests of all.
MANCHESTER
Manchester helped give birth to capitalism; the great mills, canals and workshops propelled this system across the globe, building the world we know. Manchester today, similarly, is dominated by the interests of landlords, property speculators, careerist politicians and dictatorships like Abu Dhabi. ‘Brand Manchester’ makes the claim: “this is Manchester, we do things differently here” — but in reality this empty slogan is a cheap facade barely covering up an all too familiar scene of widespread poverty, brought about by profiteering and control of our city by a tiny minority.
We say let’s actually do things differently.
Across Manchester, there are tenants and housing campaigners working to end evictions and leading calls for the expansion of council housing, for rent controls and tougher enforcement against landlords. Trade unionists in the city are organising and taking action to defend workers’ conditions, challenging legislative restrictions like minimum service levels. Community organisers are developing spaces of collective and mutual support within the city; independent spaces for sports, leisure, food growing etc. Campaigners are working to restrain the overreaching powers of the police and to end police presence in schools. This work echoes the radical history of our city which fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and for gay and lesbian liberation.
The tireless actions of these groups are the result of a communal desire for a different, better world. They are actions that point to a society of shared control, freedom and cooperation. Of actually doing things differently. We believe that — coordinated and organised together, with the goal of societal transformation at the forefront — they are the basis from which we can realise this collective and truly democratic vision of this city, and society as a whole.
POLITICAL
ORGANISATION
We are not standing in this election to help you by doing things for you.
Our current political system encourages us to imagine that a better world can be won for us, that we must be a spectator to the actions of professional politicians. But what we want cannot be done for us, it is a task that we must all take into our hands, that we must achieve together through political organisation.
We want to work with others to bring about an organisation and coordination of the different sections and movements of the working class.
The working class has always been made up of people of diverse social and cultural experience; of people working across a multitude of different sectors, of people working and living in a variety of different ways.
What we are interested in is our similarities, not our differences. We maintain our focus on our shared experiences of having no option but to work for someone else in exchange for a wage, of having no ownership over the resources needed to produce goods and provide services.
It is our differences that are used against us, that are exploited and exaggerated by the media, by politicians and by the state in order to divide us, to pit us against each other in all manner of competitions.
We want to see the formation of a party that serves to link together our different experiences and advance our collective interests as a whole. This wouldn’t be a party like the Labour party, which pacifies the interest of the majority while claiming to speak for them, but an independent communist party that is absolutely clear in its long-term goal of a widespread transformation of society. We don’t need a party that seeks to rule on behalf of the majority, but a party in which we organise and prepare to take control collectively.
When we are organised and we act together, we have the power to transform the world.
VOTE COMMUNIST
We are standing for election to publicly present and advance communist politics — to make the argument for the kind of political organisation and change we all need. We will use any opportunity and publicity gained through votes to openly put forward the ideas of communism. We call for all who agree with these ideas to come together and organise locally to advance this vision for a society that can be free.
If elected, a communist MP would serve as a voice of the people, promoting ways in which together we can lay claim to the course of our own lives. They would take only the average wage of those they represent. They would champion the interests of the majority and advance the ideas of communism in front of the whole country through the media, in parliament, or by any platform available.
A communist MP would vote:
- FOR any measures which strengthen the working class, while making clear that only a complete change to the system will make a real difference.
- AGAINST all funding for militarism and war.
- AGAINST new police powers or restrictions on the right to democratic protest.
- FOR measures which protect our environment and planet without passing the cost onto the working class.
The rest of their time in parliament would be spent tirelessly and ruthlessly exposing the system, holding the powerful to account, and putting forward the vision of a communist future — a consistent voice that proclaims the profound and simple truth that there is an alternative.
We ask for your vote in this election — but above all we ask for your engagement. We want you to join with us in building a communist presence in this city — in working towards the communist future that we need.
Communist Future 