ABOUT US
A World in Crisis
A deep and structural crisis of capitalism defines our world
The overall crisis of the capitalist mode of production has manifested itself in a social crisis that has deepened inequalities and increased poverty, hunger, precariousness, and the destruction of rights for the working class. The crisis has manifested itself in an environmental crisis, driven by capital’s aggressive relationship with natural resources; it has culminated in a political crisis of bourgeois forms of democracy produced by a neoliberal hollowing out of the State.
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
The social crisis of capitalism reveals itself in the decline and worsening living and working conditions throughout the world. Employment is less and less feasible, and unemployment defines the labour market. Capitalist agribusinesses eliminate small farmers and peasants, while automation and high productivity rates reduce the industrial and service workforce. It is a crisis that ranges from the dispossession of the peasants from the land to the dispossession of the urban poor from housing. This growing crisis is reflected in the ever-increasing number of people facing hunger and migration. The social crisis is crises of energy and the climate, environmental crises and food production.
From the standpoint of the capitalists, the crisis manifests in terms of declining profitability. Capitalist accumulation cannot generate sufficient profit for capital owners, who move their financial property into asset bubbles of all kinds. This avalanche towards finance reinforces finance capital domination over the entire system, finance capital that speculates for more profit and seeks to collect rent.
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
It is a crisis of Western and Eurocentric civilisation, evidenced in the collapse of its political institutions and its form of a liberal-republican and bourgeois State. Within their representative and liberal form, democracies are strongly restricted to express projects of profound and radical transformations that respond to the people’s problems. In many cases, through a hybrid war strategy, they even use large sectors of society to oppose the fundamental rights that the peoples have conquered. Including democracy
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
The United States’ imperialism subjects our peoples to hybrid and unconventional wars: It sends subversion packages disguised as humanitarian and development aid projects, intervenes in electoral processes to ensure access to our common goods, intends to couple our territories to their reproductive system, sanctions and blocks our sovereignties and resistance. The United States’ imperialism subjects our economies to illegitimate and unpayable debts and denies any possible contribution to the fundamental problems of our people.
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
The geopolitical tensions indicate the deepening crises produced by the decreasing United States’ power and the ending of its imposed unipolarity, China’s rise and the appearance of a new multipolar landscape. China is slowly becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world. Trade wars are a consequence of this change in economic power. Despite these economic changes, the United States maintains its military hegemony over the world. It remains the country with the greatest military might, even though its economic and ideological power continues to erode. Domination is not a substitute for hegemony.
The contradiction between the United States’ economic collapse and its military supremacy poses great dangers for the planet. The Covid-19 pandemic has acerbated China’s dominance as a global economic power as the inability of imperialist economies such as the United States to sustain its workforce and model under “new norms” has seen large scale unemployment.
A WORLD
IN CRISIS
The emergence of neofascism is a way for big capital to control the State by imposing authoritarian far-right governments to carry out its program against the people. This form of government is a severe threat to reason and social justice.
Capitalism cannot sustain itself. Its current political framework, neoliberalism, has demonstrated its limits.
The crisis of capitalism begets a crisis of values: increased individualism and consumerism, contempt for life and nature.
Programmatic Platform
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For anti-capitalist struggle and new forms of organizing society
The capitalist mode of production does not offer any progressive outcome from its numerous crises. It cannot provide a solution to people’s problems. Therefore, it will not provide employment, land, education, housing, income, and social equality. On the contrary, it is a system that only concentrates wealth and promotes social inequality and social injustice. For this reason, the IPA struggles to defeat that system and create the conditions for the adoption of a post capitalist mode of production, in accordance with the objective conditions (existing productive forces) and the subjective conditions (the people’s capacity for organization). This post-capitalist mode of production will find its name through our struggles – whether that is national liberation or socialism or harmonic living. Our various struggles are in search of a system based on eliminating the exploitation of the working class and based on the values of social equality, justice, and solidarity.
For anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and anti-zionist struggle and in defense of national and popular sovereignty
In this context of capitalism’s crisis, the forces of imperialism and finance capital have increased their offensive against workers of the world. They advance their attack on natural resources, such as oil, energy, land, mining, water, and biodiversity.
Through these attacks, the capitalist forces increase their profits as workers lose their rights. The imperialists use all possible political and ideological forms to wage hybrid wars in various regions. They use tools such as Zionism to maintain their domination in the Maghreb and Arab region. These wars are not without reason. Transnational corporations follow the tanks, taking possession of territories to extract raw materials, and force people to use the goods and services of these corporations. Las bases militares de las potencias imperialistas se instalan en lugares geoestratégicos para mantener el poder de las corporaciones y de la clase dominante.
We fight for our people’s self-determination to build their destiny and our regions as zones of peace, without the intervention of the imperialist forces of the United States, the European Union or multilateral institutions such as NATO. We must focus our attention on the United States’ imperialist forces’ interventions, the European Union and multilateral instruments of war, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
For anti-capitalist and people’s feminism
Anti-capitalist feminism condemns patriarchy, which acts on a cultural and ideological level and is part of the current system’s structural basis, relying on class, gender, and racial inequalities for economic benefits. The alliance between capitalism and patriarchy has been fundamental for developing a system that makes invisible the very reproduction of life that sustains it. We fight for a world that puts life at the center, recognizing the interdependence of human beings, the sustainability of life and men’s co-responsibility with the labor of care, and the State.
A heterosexual and heteronormative family model was imposed on society to structure the system that subordinates women. This model prevents people from freely expressing their sexuality and gender identity. We struggle to change that symbolic and ideological order that upholds the vision of women’s inferiority to men. The feminist struggle has proposed a reconceptualization that recognizes women’s contribution to the whole of society and has called to creating a society with freedom, equality, and diversity.
Currently, women’s material reality is marked by violence (murders, gender violence, sexual violence, institutional violence), lack of rights (sexual and reproductive rights, access to property, education) and economic precariousness (double exploitation, labor gap, feminization of poverty, unpaid work). Our struggle is against all violence and exploitation of women.
The fight against the patriarchal system and for an egalitarian society, is a fight to build our emancipatory projects. A new feminist wave of mobilizations of millions of women is currently sweeping the world.
For the anti-racist struggle and against racial discrimination
We affirm that capitalism has been developed based on white supremacy and racism as principles to impose and justify its domination and oppression, for capitalist accumulation and the division of the working class. The struggle against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, is a fundamental component of our struggle against capitalism and for internationalism, and a precondition for the unity of the working class.
We reaffirm and we defend all people’s right to have their land, territory, their language, religion, cultivate and develop their cosmovision, identity, culture, productive systems and their social and political autonomy.
We recognize that the respect to the dignity, rights and diversity of the people, cultures and populations is fundamental to build solidarity among people and we fight against any manifestation of racism, xenophobia, discrimination based on nationality or ethnicity, culture or due to skin color.
For an end to the failed bourgeois State
The state model we know, which has been organized since the emergence of industrial capitalism and nation-states, has failed. It does not work. The distribution of powers along three branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial – was meant to prevent autocracy; they have failed as the ruling class exercises its power over all three branches and uses them to maintain and extend its power .
For this reason, we have to debate and propose new forms of how the State should function and be organized. We have to think about how a State form can represent the people’s interests, the majority of the population, and how the State form can control for the people the wealth produced by society. In each country, the people’s movements and organizations must build proposals for new State models.
For a new people’s democracy
Formal bourgeois democracies are in crisis. The republican states and liberal democracies that emerged after the French Revolution, which was consolidated during the 20th century, are in crisis, as are their parallel liberal institutions. Today, big capital has forced the judiciary and the media, and other liberal institutions to work entirely for its benefit. The corporate-controlled media shapes and manipulates popular opinion, bypassing reason and fact. Demagoguery eclipses democracy.
We must denounce these collapsed democracies and advance in the construction of popular democracies. We have to build new proposals for popular participation in politics, with new platforms created through dialogue and debate around reason and not fear, hope, and not hate. We must have concrete forms of participation by the people in all areas of political power, be it the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Power only has legitimacy if the majority of the people participate in it.
For the defense of natural resources as common goods
The international crisis has reinforced the onslaught of economic power focused on appropriating and exploiting natural resources to maintain their profit rates, expel people from lands that contain precious resources, and exploit nature beyond its capacity. The wars over oil and forest lands, wars over rare earth minerals, and water sources are a front line in our current battles.
Capital’s aggression against natural resources causes the environmental crisis we are living in. This crisis has left us with ecological crimes, climatic changes, scarcity of water, land, and as the entire planet’s life is at risk. These environmental crises affect the most vulnerable and poor disproportionately. The biodiversity destroyed by capitalist interests leaves indigenous peoples the most vulnerable to the degradation of their natural environment.
We must defend our people’s national sovereignty against the advances of transnational corporations. We must defend our biodiversity, our land, and our water against the annihilating form of capitalism. We must balance what we take from nature with its rhythms. The State must democratically act to harness nature without destroying it and operate with the widespread participation of those who live in those territories.
For a people’s land reform
There is a permanent struggle between two models of agricultural production throughout the world. On the one hand, capital model with its agribusiness, which operates through control over large estates, and the intensive use of agrochemicals, mechanization, monoculture, and the labor expulsion. And on the other hand, the food sovereignty model prioritizes production to produce food (and not just merchandise/commodities), with land for farmers, with respect for nature’s assets and biodiversity. That is why we defend a new type of agrarian reform that guarantees land and work to all who want to live in the countryside. It has as a priority the social use of land, the production of healthy food for all the people, the adoption of agroecology, and living in balance with nature. We must also cooperatively organize agro-industries and generate employment for young people. The struggle for land is a question of agricultural production and of spatial justice. This as the workers who build and sustain urban cities are often relegated to living on their peripheries and slum conditions. Furthermore, we must value education and culture to present in all rural communities. We must defend our food, our cuisine, and food sovereignty, which is the principle that all the people and each country must have the right and the duty to produce all the food necessary for their survival. International agricultural trade can no longer develop based on commodities controlled by a few transnational corporations but rather on the fair exchange of surpluses in each country.
For control and nationalization of the financial system, tax havens, and transnational corporations
We live in a historical time where capitalism is dominated by finance capital and large transnational corporations, which control world production and trade. Fewer than 500 companies/banks dominate most of finance and trade. But they do not generate sufficient employment and well-being for the people. Therefore, we stand for the public control of all finance systems as a transition measure to fight the power of oligopolies, the concentration of wealth and transnational corporate power. Upholding the creation and use of a new international currency controlled by all countries, not the US dollar or the euro.
We call for the abolition of tax havens and the debt of Global South countries, and the exercise of international control over fictitious capital. The assets that exist in the form of money in our countries must be invested in producing goods to meet all the people’s needs.
For the right to work for all with rights and wages with dignity
We defend that every worker has the right to work, decent wages and social rights, which guarantee their health, vacations, and family’s future. Domestic and care work weighs on women’s lives; it is made invisible and unknown in a patriarchal logic of organization of life focused on capital concentration. We need to put life and care at the center.
We affirm that the solidarity among the world’s workers is an essential way of life and of fighting against the exploiters who are now international. Never before has the slogan been so vital: “Workers of the world, unite!”
For social and human rights
The offensive of capital has prioritized its return on investment, including its refusal to pay taxes. Governments that are beholden to capital have found their capacity to deliver social services to the population limited by a lack of resources because of this tax strike. That is why these governments do not guarantee social and labor rights. It is also why public health care and public education have been cut dramatically, and it is why care for the elderly, and the disabled has decreased. Public services have been privatized, transformed into commodities, and rights have become goods that only money can access.
We demand that everyone has the right to work, housing, land, decent wages, food, culture, and recreation; these must be universal rights of every human being.
For the right to education and access to knowledge
Knowledge is a world heritage. Knowledge is increasingly a condition of freedom and human dignity. Only a person who has knowledge can truly be free. The way to democratize access and universalize knowledge is above all through schools, libraries, access to books, culture, etc., in what is known as an education system. We demand that every person, regardless of age and social status, has the right to access free and public education.
Social transformation requires us to rethink education so that it is not at the service of capital, forming docile workers with neoliberal values whose skills serve the market and where the humanities, arts, and philosophy have no place. We insist on education for emancipation, for democratic and egalitarian values. Education has to provide skills but also work against hatred, racism, xenophobia and misogyny. We must build a public and universal system of education equipped with sufficient material and human resources.
For the rights of LGBT people
Sexual and gender diversity is a reality in all countries and societies as part of human life. That is why we defend the right to self-determination of LGBT people as we must combat social discrimination, denounce violence, intolerance, and exclusion against them.
The break with the patriarchal-heteronormative model of sexuality and the heterosexual family as the only model is part of the fight to eliminate the exploitation-domination pillars of today’s society.
For our rights as migrants, refugees, populations in diasporas, indigenous and afro descendent peoples, and all those who are especially vulnerable in our societies
The crisis of capitalism and humanity has launched an exodus of tens of millions of people from their homes and families. They flee from war and hunger for a better life. Some let themselves be carried away by the dream of “western” happiness, eager to go to Europe or North America. As these countries promote themselves as superior to others, they tighten barriers to prevent displaced people from entering – a wall on the US-Mexico border, a set of military posts in the Sahel region in Africa. In these countries, xenophobia is promoted against migrants and refugees, who are falsely blamed for the problems of inequality, unemployment, and hunger. In societies, worldwide, forms of hierarchy – against people of African descent in the Americas or Dalits in South Asia – lower the human soul.
We defend all people’s right to have their territory, language, religion, cultivate their culture, and social and political autonomy. We fight against racism and all forms of ethnic and racial discrimination. We defend the right of free movement of people to migrate and to seek refuge in conditions of dignity.
For the freedom of all political prisoners in the world
Throughout the history of capitalism, the ruling classes, the wealthy, have always used repression and persecution as ways to dominate the exploited, impede their organization, persecute their leaders, and thereby, maintain dominance. Historically, they used the power of the bourgeois State or of private militias.
Today, the ruling classes also use the judiciary and the media to persecute and demoralize all those who fight for social justice. That is why, in most countries, where there are popular struggles, there are people’s organizations, and many leaders who have suffered persecution, imprisonment, and assassinations.
We demand the immediate freedom of all political prisoners in the world. In light of this, we pledge to increase the visibility of the ruling class’s aggression against the people’s leaders and activists. Global campaigns highlighting this oppression are an essential part of the anti-capitalist struggle and for popular democracy.
For struggle with political power
The institutional spaces occupied by local and national governments can be essential to improving people’s living conditions and confronting the capitalist class. They also help to strengthen popular forces for structural changes in society. We can and must make alliances with parties and forces that occupy political power but maintain our programmatic autonomy and political independence.
We must not forget that structural and anti-capitalist changes depend fundamentally on the organizing and mobilizing capacity of the masses, of the entire people.
Fight against fundamentalism, sectarianism, and religious intolerance
Fundamentalism and religious intolerance are instruments of division and subjugation of our people. These ideologies put rigidity at the center of our societies. They separate us and send us into civil wars of one kind or another. These are not only rooted in one or the other country. They are part of international right-wing, ideologically reactionary movements against any socio economic change, and stimulated by the ruling classes, as a way to maintain their privileges. We must fight against all discrimination and intolerance.
We must make the ideological struggle permanent, in order to build societies based on social equality, dignity, and justice.
POLITICAL
PLATFORM
POLITICAL
PLATFORM
There is a Way Out
For years, new forms of international coordination have been under construction, in different spaces, and continents.
For example, in Latin America, ALBA Movements and the São Paulo Forum have convened movements to a regional coordination; the World March of Women, La Via Campesina and others have provided a global platform for movements.
THERE IS A WAY OUT
THERE IS A WAY OUT
THERE IS A WAY OUT
THERE IS A WAY OUT
In Africa, the 2016 Pan Africanism Today Lusaka Conference laid the foundation to build a strong unity across the continent, which is ideologically clear in socialist values and praxis. This event led to the development of multiple political education processes, the successes of the Tunis (2017), and Ghana (2018) Pan Africanism Today Conferences. Consequently, there has been the rapid growth of coordinated efforts to fight imperialism and build a socialist Pan Africanism across Africa.
In this process, and for years, we have brought together political and social movements into the International Peoples’ Assembly. This formation convenes organizations and movements without seeking to replace any of them.
Through discussion and debate, we are building a common political platform that helps us face the dilemmas of humanity and the crisis of capitalism.
The discussion and debate process is dynamic because capitalist contradictions and the correlation of forces are dynamic. The dynamic nature of the system forces us to keep updating the issues and the political platform. Hence, this document is an instrument for building a political and ideological understanding amongst our various partners; it is a dynamic document which changes based on the changes in the class struggle. It is not a finalized document, but a one that provides the basis for debate and the convergence of ideas.
THERE IS A WAY OUT
Regions
ASIA
Nari Mukti Sangsad (Bangladesh Women’s Liberation Council)
Nari Mukti Sangsad, known as the Bangladesh Women’s Liberation Council, works to advance gender justice, grassroots women’s mobilization and the empowerment of rural women in Bangladesh, in South Asia.
Mazdoor Kisan Party
The Mazdoor Kisan Party of Pakistan, born in 1968, has its roots in the struggle of workers (mazdoor) and peasants (kisan) against feudal and colonial legacies. The party continues to mobilize for land rights, tenant protections and class justice in Pakistan’s rural areas.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
ARAB AND
MAGHREB
Workers’ Party of Tunisia
The Workers’ Party of Tunisia (Parti des Travailleurs) is a Marxist-Leninist party founded in 1986, legalized in 2011, rooted in the Tunisian working class and the struggle against neoliberalism and imperialism. It participates in popular movements, trade-unions and political education, seeking to advance socialism, workers’ rights and democracy in Tunisia.
OFFICIAL WEBSITEMoroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH)
Founded in 1979 in Rabat, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) is one of Morocco’s largest civil-society organisations, devoted to the defence of human dignity, civil, political, social and economic rights in Morocco and Western Sahara. With more than 60 local sections, it engages in education, monitoring rights violations and empowering victims.
OFFICIAL WEBSITEEUROPE
Potere al Popolo (Power to the People)
Potere al Popolo (Power to the People) is an Italian is a political party founded in 2017 that unites activists, worker movements and social forces around anti-capitalism, feminism, ecology, and popular participation. Representing a renewal of popular politics in Europe, it advocates real democracy through everyday self-organization and international solidarity.
OFFICIAL WEBSITELATIN
AMERICA
AND THE
CARIBBEAN
ALBA Movements
ALBA Movimientos (ALBA Movements) is a regional network that brings together more than 200 organisations across 25 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Rooted in popular movements and anti-imperialist politics, it advances a project of social emancipation from the peoples themselves. ALBA Mevements coordinates continental mobilisations, political training and solidarity campaigns that challenge neoliberal integration and defend sovereignty across the region.
OFFICIAL WEBSITECUC (Committee for Peasant Unity)
The CUC – Committee for Peasangt Unity (Comité de Unidad Campesina) is a broad and pluralist organization of Guatemalan peasants and indigenous rural workers, founded in 1978. It fights for agrarian justice, gender equity, ethnic rights, and self-determination of rural communities in the face of militarization and land grabbing.
OFFICIAL WEBSITENORTH
AMERICA
CodePink: Women for Peace
CodePink: Women for Peace is a U.S.-based grassroots anti-war and feminist movement founded in 2002, committed to ending militarism and U.S. interventions worldwide. Through direct actions, digital campaigns and alliances with global peace initiatives, CodePink redirects military spending toward healthcare, education and sustainable jobs.
OFFICIAL WEBSITEPSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation)
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), founded in 2004 in the United States, is a revolutionary socialist organization which argues that capitalism and imperialism must be overthrown for humanity to thrive. With a programme rooted in workers’ rights, racial justice and international solidarity, the PSL participates in electoral campaigns, mass protest and political education.
OFFICIAL WEBSITESUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA
Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP)
The Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) was founded in 2019 in South Africa by key union activistc. The party adopts a clear socialist, anti-capitalist and worker-controlled programme, committed to transforming society from below rather than simply contesting elections.
Socialist Party
The Socialist Party of Zambia is a Marxist-Leninist party founded in 2018, promoting policies of universal education, healthcare, land reform and worker-peasant power. It represents a new strand of socialist organizing in Zambia’s political landscape and connects local struggles to global anti-capitalist movements.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
