* Our objective is socialism. Our aim is not to humanise or improve capitalism but to replace it with a new social and economic system. This flows from our analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, leading to the conclusion that this system has long outlived any historical usefulness.
* We do not counterpose in an abstract way socialism to capitalism. We present it concretely, by relating the struggle for socialism to the day to day problems that working class people face. That is what we mean by the transitional approach.
* We do not believe that capitalism can be reformed out of existence. Specifically, we do not believe that the working class can simply take hold of the existing institutions of the bourgeois state, in particular parliament, and use them to carry out the overthrow of capitalism. It is necessary for the working class to create its own forms of organisation in the course of the struggle which will later become the embryo of a new form of state. That does not mean that we do not take full advantage of bourgeois democratic institutions, we obviously do. It simply means that in the last analysis we subordinate the struggle inside these institutions to the struggle outside.
* We fight to defend and improve the day to day conditions of working class people. To fight for reforms does not make you a reformist. It all depends within what overall framework the reforms are fought for. In fact, it is no accident that today the wing of the workersÂ’ movement which has traditionally been called reformist, with a few honourable exceptions, no longer even fights for reforms.
* We seek to unify the working class, to overcome divisions within it and to maintain its class independence and clear demarcation from all bourgeois parties. In the struggles of today and tomorrow, our aim is to attain the maximum unity of the working class to defend and advance its own class interests.
* We defend the principles of socialist democracy. We are for the selforganisation of working people, whether in the workplace or in the communities, for them to democratically take charge of their own struggles and their own lives. Within that framework we defend the right of all currents of opinion to be expressed. We prepare the kind of society we want to build in the future in the way we organise in the present. Based on historical experience, we seek to counteract bureaucratic tendencies by the widest possible democracy and by strict refusal of material privileges.
* We understand that capitalism is an international system and that imperialism oppresses the peoples of the world. We therefore stress the international nature of our struggle and our solidarity with all workers in struggle anywhere and all peoples oppressed by imperialism. We see the highest point of internationalism as the building of a workersÂ’ international.
* In the course of the 20th century, questions not directly flowing from the economic exploitation of the working class, such as the oppression of women, national oppression, racism, homophobia, and the environment have assumed greater importance, not just in the way we struggle to overthrow capitalism but in the way we conceive socialism. These questions therefore form an essential part of a socialist programme today.