1. Capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the proletariat (laboring classes) by the bourgeoisie (property-owning classes), governed according to value-relations, structured by the generalization of commodity-production and wage-labor; whether manifested as managed by individual capitalists, private corporations, state enterprises, or workers’ self-managed co-operatives.

2. The proletariat is a universal political subject that is the only class capable of ending the exploitation of ‘Man’ by ‘Man’, and it is the historic task of the proletariat to achieve this through the supersession of capitalism.

3. The movement towards the supersession of capitalism is defined as communism. Communism is the abolition of all social classes through the common ownership of the means of living and direct association of human subjects.

4. Communism can only be achieved by the proletariat seizing and consolidating political power for itself, wherein a transitional period follows that suppresses the economic relationships of capitalism. Communism cannot be gradually established through the administration of the capitalist state; communism presupposes the destruction of the capitalist state. All manifestations of capitalism (private, state, workers’ self-managed) are equally opposed to the task of communism. Additionally, the USSR (1921-1991), People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. are all examples of state-managed capitalism.

5. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the highest expression of the proletariat in its effort to achieve its historic task.

6. A world communist party is a necessary body in order for the proletariat to seize political power.

7. Because communism is by definition an international system, the proletariat are necessarily an internationalist class. The proletariat unifies across, effectively dissolving, national boundaries when struggling on its own class terrain. Nationalism/chauvinism – the division of the proletariat based on national boundaries and the unification of the proletariat with exploiting classes based on national boundaries – is the most significant enemy to the internationalism that is a defining axis of the proletarian class terrain.

8. What is inherent to internationalism, the other side of the axis of the proletarian class terrain, is centralism. Without centralism, internationalism is merely an empty phrase. Whereas internationalism represents the geographic unification of the proletariat as a universal political subject, centralism expresses its organizational unification. Anti-centralism in its different incarnations are all enemies to the organizational unity of the proletariat: federalism, horizontalism, individualism, identitarianism (gender, sexuality, race, language), etc.

9. Capitalism has its opposing faces, or political wings; a left and a right-wing. The ‘left-wing’ of capital are the movements, organizations, and milieu that advocate for a modification of capitalism under the farcical guise of “communism” (democratic socialism, Marxism-Leninism/Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism, anarchism). Leftism (left-of-capital) either denies internationalism, centralism, or both, one way or the other; for that reason, the leftist milieu is firmly in the political camp of the bourgeoisie. Communists don’t share any community with leftism.

10. Communists have concluded that, in the declining phase of capitalism, forming inter-classist fronts, coalitions, or collaborations of any kind, especially with the ‘left-wing of capital’, is a crossing of the class boundary defined by the principles of nationalism vs. internationalism/anti-centralism vs. centralism.

11. In the rising phase of capitalism, communists supported certain national independence movements on the condition that they would further the development of capitalism through the destruction of pre-capitalist forms, thus facilitating the unification and constitution of the proletariat as a political agent. However, in the declining phase of capitalism, national liberation movements divide the proletariat up for warring imperialist factions, thus violating the principle of internationalism.

12. In the rising phase of capitalism, communists defended the importance of standing in bourgeois elections for the purpose of propaganda and attaining reforms that would help the proletariat establish its presence as a political agent; but in the declining phase of capitalism, communists recognize that running in elections is generally a poor tactic, albeit not necessarily always out of the question. What this does mean is that communists may stand in elections to expose the sham of bourgeois democracy, but supporting bourgeois electoral campaigns, or the accepting of bourgeois office, is a crossing of the class boundary.

13. In the rising phase of capitalism, communists understood that trade unions were defensive organs of the proletariat that assisted in establishing itself as an independent political agent, and that the struggle for immediate economic demands was an important component of the proletariat’s development during a period when the development of productive forces had not yet exhausted their compatibility with the social relations. However, in the declining phase of capitalism, communists recognize trade unions to have been wholly integrated into the capitalist state, rendering them defensive organs of the capitalist firm that regulate the price of labor-power and sabotage the self-organization of the proletariat, and that the struggle for immediate economic demands must be unified with the struggle for political power in a period when the productive forces are in acute contradiction with the social relations. It is hypothetically possible for communists to collaborate with other communists who mistakenly think it’s possible for communists to build from the ground-up unions that still have the function they had in the rising phase of capital, but to work with those who unionize and intervene on the behalf of the existing union-apparatus is to amount to working with those who act on the behalf of the state-apparatus.

14. Communists oppose individualist acts of appropriation that disorient/fragment the collectivity of the proletariat – such as looting, ‘rioting’, plundering, banditry, petty-thievery, etc. – because they are a clear violation of the principle of centralism.

15. Communists oppose the militarization of political struggle – such as guerrilla warfare, protracted people’s war, focoism, etc. – because it’s a clear abandonment of the class terrain of the proletariat, favoring the military terrain of the bourgeoisie.